MousePotatoPower

I recently found OpenCube.com and their fantastic CSS menu system called QuickMenu6.  The options that can be selected, the configuration interface, and it’s compatibility with different web browsers is fantastic.  It is composed of unordered lists and in my book is SEO-friendly, it can even provide a working multi-level menu with javascript disabled!

Well, OpenCube offers the menu system for free and it is available for download directly from their website.  QuickMenu6 may even be worth the $149 price tag.  OpenCube has a “piracy prevention counter-measure” embedded in the javascript.  The unfortunate part about this is that their security involves spitting out a pop-up window in Internet Explorer that says “This copy of QuickMenu has not been purchased“.  The funny thing is that the pop-up doesn’t work in Firefox.  This brings back memories of monkeys who think that using javascript to disable right-clicking on a webpage will really protect their stuff.

Javascript is plain-text and isn’t very complicated when it comes to copyright protection.  Although I have not been able to find a published solution on the web for getting rid of the copy-protection code, my feeble programming skills include the ability to recognize obfuscated javascript and I was able to find a few hints online about QuickMenu’s code.

The end result is that found what I was looking for and have been able to successfully remove the copy-protection code from QuickMenu’s javascript.  I was worried that I didn’t remove enough semi-colons, but the script continues to work and there are no more pop-ups on my website.

The Internet is all about free. Most of the time the shared information is created and meant to be shared for free, sometimes it is not. Cheatsheets are documents that contain useful reference information for applications or programming languages. Here are some of my favorite cheatsheet websites

• edocr (searchable repository containing single-page cheatsheets all the way up to small books)
• CustomGuide (a training website that offers free cheatsheets for different version of MS Office applications)
• ilovejackdaniels cheat-sheets/ (cheatsheets for programming and web development stuff)
• Mashable (a list of keyboard shortcuts for web apps. Mashable also posts awesome lists every so often)

At work, I deal with a lot of e-mail issues.  Today, somebody had trouble sending an e-mail:

• The e-mail was an 8-page newsletter made in MS Word
• the newsletter was 15 MB
• There were only about 8 graphics in it, mostly digital pictures
• The last page was a 1-page scan of a letter from the president
• The e-mail was being sent to 144 employees within the company
• It was also being sent to approximately 100 non-employees outside the company

244 recipients x 15 MB = a whole lot of e-mail

In an effort to reduce the load on our servers, I found this great tutorial on compressing graphics in Word.  It also applies to Powerpoint.  About 6 mouse clicks and Word compressed the 15 MB attachment down to 4.5 MB.  Taking out the 1-page scan dropped the newsletter down to an amazing 450 KB.

In Powerpoint 2007, you’ll need to click on a graphic, select Picture Tools, then find the Compress Pictures button on the new Ribbon interface.

I am a big fan of portable apps. I installed the PortableApps.com Suite onto my Ipod Video and have been using it for more than 6 months now.  Hooking up to any Windows computer and getting my personalized Firefox is awesome.

Just yesterday, I found out that  FireFox, Thunderbird, Sunbird, and Open Office (and quite a few other programs) for Mac OS X are available as portable apps.  Installation is easy, running them for the first time is a little slow, but now, with one Ipod, I can connect to just about any computer and have a customized web browser and a full Office suite ready to go!

Opensource software is a wonderful thing. It’s free and most opensource software has a big enough market that somebody has put together a decent forum where you can get help.

Then again, you need the guts and tech-savvyness to experiment on your own, because sometimes, the forums aren’t very good and sometimes, the documention isn’t very good.

I have been looking for a Personal Information Manager (PIM) for a while. Here is a short list of my wants/needs:

• I prefer opensource, since free is good
• I frequently use multiple computer from different locations, so it should be web-accessible so that I can add information from anywhere
• a portable app is a possiblity (can be run from a USB drive)
• it should be based on either Stephen Covey’s top-down planing method or David Allen’s GTD method. flexibility to support both is a plus
• it would be fun if I can host it on my web server at home
• the interface has to make sense
• I don’t carry a PDA, so sync-ing is not an issue

I’ve seen a few links to Chandler, an opensource PIM that is primarily a desktop application. However, it also has an option to use a Hub (a free web-based version) or to download your own server (and provide your own web-based version).

To save you the reading, I will tell you up front that I was not impressed. The app is still at version 0.6, so there’s quite a bit of room for improvement, but Chandler just didn’t fit my style of information management. Read on if you want to learn more about my gripes.

I went straight for the Chandler server…and I had problems configuring it. Chandler runs on Java and requires that an environment variable JAVA_HOME be set (on Windows computers) for the server to work. I have Java installed on my computer, but the JAVA_HOME was not set. After a couple of hours of Google-ing, I finally figured out where the setting is and that JAVA_HOME needs to point to a JDK, not a JRE. Your path to the JDK must also include a trailing slash.

For whatever reason, I have multiple JREs and JDKs installed on my computer. I chose the most recent JDK and set the environment variable. Control Panel > System > Advanced > Environment Variables. In the System Variables section, click on New.

Variable Name: JAVA_HOME
Variable Value: pathToJDK (don’t forget the trailing slash)

You’ll need to restart your computer to update JAVA_HOME, at least I needed to.

Continue following the instructions for running the server and the installation was complete.

I could now connect to my new Chandler server at http://127.0.0.1:8080 to see the snazzy web interface. But good grief, the interface was confusing. The “list of items” took center stage and the content of each item gets displayed in the lower right corner of the web page. Being a Java app, it’s a little bit sluggish. Entering tasks and calender events is NOT intuitive, selecting the start and end time of an event is cumbersome, and the concept of Collections is a bit alien to me.

After playing around with it for a few minutes, I eventually figured out how to create tasks, events, collections, and I downloaded the client. Playing around with the sync feature on the client and “pushing” events and items to my Hub account and to my server account was pretty neat. After adding items to the desktop client, then sync-ing, my desktop items became available via the web. Too cool!

Alas, I am not a big fan of the interface. The list of “items” takes up a majority of the middle of the screen and even after re-sizing some of the sections, having the item details (like date, start time, end time, and notes) over on the right side of the screen doesn’t feel right.

There is no way to prioritize things other than Now and Later. I guess I could add a priority code to the beginning of the title of each item, but the app as a whole just doesn’t appeal to me.

The ability to store contacts would be nice, but that doesn’t appear to be in the scope of the Chandler project.

Overall, I think this project has potential. For now, it’s too early in the development phase to have much use to me.

I have come across too many friends that don’t know how to convert their own DVDs and put them on their Ipod. The best part about it, is that the whole process can be done for free! Part 1 of this series will show you how to rip your DVD to your computer and convert it into an AVI file.

It is a time-consuming process, but the end result will be a 700MB AVI file (approximate) that you can watch on your computer or copy to a CD and watch on somebody else’s computer.

Ingredients:

• an Apple computer
• Handbrake

Handbrake does everything on a Mac and it’s very simple. Download Handbrake and install it.

Handbrake is wonderfully easy to use.

Click on the Source icon

Select the drive that you DVD movie is in and click Open. There is no need to specify the AUDIO_TS or VIDEO_TS folder.

Choose your desired output, I chose Ipod High-Rez. You can choose to encode at Low Resolution, for the PSP, or the PS3.

Select the save location and file name by using the Browse button.

Click on the Start button to begin encoding.

If your Mac is fast, you may be able to encode a movie in less time than it takes to watch the movie.

If you Mac is slow…you may want to get a good night’s rest while Handbrake works on your new mp4.

The last and perhaps most important thing to do is open up iTunes,  do a File > Add to Library, and select your newly created mp4 file.  From here, you can watch it on your Mac or copy it onto you iPod to watch it on the go.

We are going to do a number of things:

• Enable disk use
  • To store files besides music on the iPod, just like a BIG flash drive
• Disable synchronization
  • This allows us to choose what songs to put on the iPod
• Make sure that iTunes imports music as MP3s at an appropriate quality level
  • MP3s are easier to deal with than AAC, or other formats
  • For the average person, encoding quality does not make a very big difference in sound quality

The first and most important thing to do is set Enable Disk Use. This turns your iPod into a HUGE USB drive. Notice that I have over 9GB of non-music files on my iPod.

Next, Manually manage music and videos. I find it much easier to drag and drop the albums and audiobooks that I want onto my iPod, my music collection is too large to fit on my iPod anyway.

Confirm that your Music is NOT sync-ed.

Next: Edit > Preferences

Advanced > Importing

Unless you are an audiophile, stick with

Import Using: MP3 Encoder

Setting: High Quality (160 kbps)

iPod Basics Tutorial

You’ve seen how easy it is to find your music on your iPod, and even without any extra software, you can simply drag and drop it back onto your computer.

The next problem is finding a particular track on your iPod without having to sort through all 50 of your F-directories. And again, it can be done easily, this time with a free program.

(more…)

Getting music off of our Ipod is easier than I thought. Getting 1 specific song off of your Ipod is a little harder, but it can still be done for free.

• Plug in your Ipod
• In iTunes, enable disk use. This will turn your iPod into a USB drive
• Open up My Computer
• By default, the music on your iPod is hidden, let’s reveal all of the hidden files.
• Select Tools > Folder Options
• switch to the View tab
• select Show hidden files and folders
• click on the Apply button, then click on OK

• Open your iPod (mine is L:)
• go to the ipod_Control\Music directory
• Here you will find subfolders that contain your music

Although the file names are coded, if you have labeled your music, the ID3 tags will contain all of the necessary information (artist, album, song name, etc).

If you mouse over any of the files, you will see the ID3 tag information

If you want to, you can copy all of the music to your computer.

Of you can grab another piece of software to view all of the track information (tutorial to follow this weekend).

Get Music Off Your Ipod

Windows XP can do a lot, but there are a lot of things that it can’t do. Stay tuned for weekly posts about cheap and free software that will make you more productive.

The first piece of essential software is WinRAR. Currently at version 3.70, WinRAR can create and read compressed files (archives) of just about any file format that you can find on the web including: zip, rar, lzh, tar, gz, tar.gz, bz2, iso, and handful of others that I have yet to encounter.

The integrated ZIP-file utility that Windows comes with is alright, but for free, there’s really no reason not to use WinRAR.

Head to the RARLab’s download page and grab the most recent version of WinRAR.