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Widget Basics 2007-10-29 18:37:46 The total number of widget platforms and deployment options intimidate many newcomers. Each platform offers a unique audience and features, but widget basics remain the same across Windows Vista, Nokia S60, Google, MySpace. and more. In this post I will outline the basic components of a widget including static assets, user preferences, processing remote data, and rendering your final widget. Create a default view Apple’s Dashboard weather widget has a slim background with a simple layout showing the current temperature and weather condition. Today’s temperature is displayed on the right, with a degree sign built-in for data context. The current weather condition (sunny, cloudy, raining, etc) will appear in the center. Gather custom preferences Widget preference data is stored on the widget platform — Windows Vista, iGoogle, etc. — inside a user data store. Preferences can be structured as drop down lists, sliders, numbers, text, and much more depending on the ...

Reader Query: Delete A Custom Toolbar In Firefox 2007-10-29 16:12:13 Getting back to the question Maya Asks me About Firefox, I do some blogging, and made a new tool bar to use for the blogging related buttons and named it "blog" toolbar. Later on I was able to fit in all my buttons on the regular two toolbars and had no need for this anymore. But there is no option to delete one. I do hide it, but it pops out on every restart of the browser, a blank toolbar taking up precious screen space and I have to hide it again, which is very irritating. The answer to the question is not pretty straight forward and once again there is no outright way in which you can delete the toolbar. To remove the toolbar completely you have to remove all the buttons from the toolbar one by one from the customized toolbar. Here is a step by step way you can remove a customized toolbar. The first step you will have to undertake is to again choose to customize the toolbar once again. To do this right click anywhere on the Customized toolbar you created and click on th ...

project: paint it black: the iPhone 2007-10-29 08:06:06 …title says all… *^_^* paint it black: the iPhone Digg it! DIY trackback MAKE:blog NOTCOT TUAW Gizmodo From:geek technique ... Iphone

Around the Blogosphere, October 29th 2007 2007-10-29 06:30:34 Well for the past few days I have been reading quite a few interesting articles and here are some of them which you can feast your eyes on. Nirmal has a very interesting post on how Making your Gtalk status to Always Idle Raj from Technobuzz.net tells you more about Instant Eyedropper a color picking tool. Ram from Technology Bites showcases 13 Online Photo Editors you can use. Ashish tells you How To Create Symlinks in Vista. Shankar Ganesh tells you how to Stop Yahoo Messenger from starting up with Windows. Ashiwni has some information on how Widgetbucks outperforms AdSense. Shiva tells us how to View Google Calendar inside Outlook 2007. Kyles tells you about 10 Greasemonkey scripts for YouTube. Brown Baron has an interesting post on How To Extract Videos From Your Browser’s Cache. Madhur Kapoor tells us How to Watch the Sky with Stellarium. Mani Karthik has an interesting post on how to make your pages appear beneath snippets in Google SERPs. Rishi Raj has got some good tips ...

Find Out Who Is Hosting A Website 2007-10-29 06:26:02 Many a times we may want to know where a website is hosted and due to non disclosure from the site itself will be unable to do so. Who Is Hosting This is a service that allows you check who is hosting a particular website. All you need is the URL of the site you want to check the host for. You enter it and click the tell me button, within a few seconds you will be shown the results as to where the site is exactly hosted. Why is this useful? Here is what the output of your query will look like; BTW I will be moving shortly from DreamHost to a dedicated server from my friend, it may take 1-2 more weeks or more than that :-), you can look up my new host using this service. Technorati tags: webhosting, who hosts, hosts Copyright © 2007 Techie Buzz. All rights reserved. From:Techie Buzz ...

DCMI Architecture Forum video conferences 2007-10-28 01:20:21 The DCMI Architecture Forum is now holding regular teleconferences/videoconferences to complement the use of the existing Jiscmail mailing list. The plan is to hold the meetings about every three weeks, and they are open to all. We are using Flashmeeting, which is a Flash-based service hosted by the Open University. The client runs from the browser, and it accommodates text chat as well as audio and video so you can participate even without a Webcam and microphone. The first meeting took place last Friday and the recording is available for replay. The next meeting is scheduled for Wednesday 14 November 2007 at 14.00 UTC (I think that’s the right time - I may have got confused with the summer time switchover, so please do check the mailing list closer to the date to confirm!) From:eFoundations ...

An Open Request To Make WPAU 100% Compatible 2007-10-27 14:04:15 WordPress Automatic Upgrade has two bugs which is irritating me because I cannot create a system where these bugs occur I have fixed most of the bugs and WPAU plugin is compatible with 90% of the blogs. The 10% that are not compatible is causing me to lose sleep. I know that some of you cannot update your WordPress installation using the WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin. Thanks Keith Technorati tags: WPAU request, WPAU pluging Copyright © 2007 Techie Buzz. All rights reserved. From:Techie Buzz ...

That’s how you get to Carnegie Hall 2007-10-27 13:16:26 There’s that old joke: A tourist in New York asks a pretzel seller, “How do I get to Carnegie Hall?” He answers, “Practice, practice, practice.” My friend Bernard Woma is playing with the New York Philharmonic at Lincoln Center in two weeks. The story of how he got there - and on stage at Carnegie Hall last year - is just slightly more complicated than your ordinary rags to riches story of musicianship. Bernard grew up in Nandom, a small town in northwestern Ghana, near the borders with Burkina Faso and Cote d’Ivoire. As a boy, he wanted to be a Catholic priest. His father had other ideas - Bernard was born with his fists clenched, a sign in the Dagara culture that he was to become a xylophonist. He learned the sacred and secular music of the Dagara people and, by the time he was in his late twenties, was good enough to move to Accra and join the resident ensemble at the National Theatre of Ghana, a company he now serves as master drummer of. That& ...

WordPress 2.3.1 Release and WPAU updates 2007-10-26 23:44:57 WordPress 2.3.1 has been released today and Techie Buzz has been updated using the handy plugin WordPress Automatic Upgrade. There were some bugs I found while updating from WordPress 2.3 to 2.3.1 due to database table name changes which has been fixed. I have released a new version 0.8 which should fix this error. WPAU is now also available through the official WordPress Extend page so you should see a update note in your Plugins page, please upgrade to the latest version if you are using WordPress 2.3. Here are list of changes in WordPress 2.3.1 2.3.1 fixes over twenty bugs. Some of the notable fixes are: Tagging support for Windows Live Writer Fixes for a login bug that affected those with a Blog Address different than their WordPress Address Faster taxonomy database queries, especially tag intersection queries Link importer fixes   WPAU 0.8 Fix for database table name changes in WordPress 2.3 this should only affect blogs that are running WordPress 2.3 while runnin ...

I Cried Today … 2007-10-26 20:21:15 I just watched the documentary ‘Dale’ tonight - when there is a will, there is a way. I can’t really believe it has been over 6 years since that fateful February day.Another thing I can’t really believe is how much the sport has changed since he left us.Nothing about the documentary shocked me, or surprised me for that matter. I was left wanting more though … enough said.I’ll write about this again when I’ve had a chance to absorb it more. There was one thing in particular that I found very interesting, and I don’t know if anyone else who saw the movie noticed it either. I’m going to do a little investigating before I write about it though, just to be sure.From:NASCAR Ranting and Raving Blog ...

interview in dutch MacFan magazine 2007-10-26 11:59:29 A while ago I got interviewed by dutch MacFan magazine. It was a very pleasant interview and the journalist (Ben Melis) did an awesome job getting all my ranting onto two pages, I mean, I must’ve talked for hours and he really managed to get it all on paper very well. I’m quite thrilled with the result. click to enlarge click to enlarge The contents of this issue can be found here and the issue itself is on sale, starting today, in Holland in almost every newsstand/bookstore. From:geek technique ...

Microsoft opens widget marketplace for Vista and Windows Live 2007-10-26 02:25:20 Microsoft opened a new online marketplace last night to sell a new class of desktop and web applications directly to consumers. The new version of Windows Live Gallery extends the existing Windows Live Gold partnership program with premium content listings, partner storefronts, and the ability to charge Microsoft’s users for each new widget. Microsoft’s widget marketplace uses the same Microsoft Points currency system as Xbox Live Marketplace and Zune Marketplace. The new gallery site also includes the ability to rate reviews (”4 out of 5 people found this review helpful”) and widget developers featured on the front page of the site. Customers can buy a new widget and customize before making a final purchase. A music company might license songs bloggers can include in their Windows Live Spaces page, or The Wall Street Journal might sell a premium content widget for Vista Sidebar users. Publishers can set their own price and tap into Microsoft’s existing p ... Microsoft

Google Supporting Spammers / Sploggers Not Bloggers 2007-10-25 16:04:48 Have you been getting spam comments from a site talkf(dot)com? Do you get tons of spam from them? Well if you do you are not the only one, there may be tons of sites that get spam comments from them, I have got 300 spam comments in last two days from them and thanks to Akismet I am safe enough but then, few of them do escape the Akismet web too and land up in your normal comments. The surprise of all is that Google Search is archiving 50,800 links related to talkf(dot)com, just do a search for talkf(dot)com (replace (dot) with "." without the quotes and you will see it) or else follow this Google Search link and you will see. Can they explain the spam links? Can they explain paying sploggers for robbing our content? Now I see a spammer has 50800 search results and the spammer is not even a month old yet in spamming (here is the email id for the site khan_fly@yahoo.com please spam him, more from whois), is this justified? Being a silent victim is like saying run a truck over ... Google

Have an Idea? Then Work in ASAP mode 2007-10-25 04:10:57 There have many a times you may have had a great idea but decide to work on a leisurely pace. You build that idea bit by bit and then suddenly read or hear that something similar to your idea got launched today and you still hovering at the 50% mark of completion. Another such example is that as a blogger you have 10-15 great post ideas and don’t act on it immediately, within a few days someone else has already made a post about it. Many human minds think alike and a idea that you just may come up in the minds of 100s of other people. There is no way your idea will be the one and only, because people are always trying to innovate. This does not involve people copying your idea it involves many people having the same idea at the same time. The key to making your idea a success is beating everyone else to the finish line. Being first does matter with innovation. So if you have an idea and think it rocks do not waste time on it, put all the other low priority tasks aside and work on ...

Stewart Brand and thinking about Megacities 2007-10-25 00:34:21 While I get a lot out of liveblogging these events, I’m starting to think that I may not be doing it as much in the future. One reason is that I’m apparently scaring some others off from blogging each session. Several bloggers came up to me during or after Pop!Tech and thanked me for blogging each event, telling me that because I was blogging each session, they would be focusing on blogging longer, sythesis posts or on commentary on the event. That’s great - I’m grateful for those posts, and I agree that there’s no need for everyone to do the same thing at a conference. But I miss having other people’s liveblogging to rely on. I really enjoy blogging conferences with Bruno Giussani because we get different things out of the talks and produce different summaries. I suspect that if there were half a dozen livebloggers at each of these events, we’d all produce slightly different accounts and that people really interested in those talks would benef ...