Archive for the "Hacks" Category
Apr22

New Commenting System

Posted at 8:09 PM • 2 Comments

I’ve pretty much neglected the comments area on this blog, probably because there was never much activity. But as the blog starts to pull in more readers this year there’s been more feedback and I was beginning to realize how crap the default WordPress commenting system is. Ideally I was looking for a plug-in that offered threaded commenting to keep the conversation flow more fluid and easier to follow.

I’d seen Disqus on a few other blogs but was unaware of the speed and efficiency of this neat little WordPress plugin.

In about half an hour I’d downloaded the plug-in, installed it and set it up. The other really neat feature is that Disqus will import all the comments already on your blog. It makes it more user friendly with its threaded commenting.

Its also integrated with the option to include Facebook Connect so people can comment using their Facebook login details rather than having to go through the new sign up process just to comment. Will have to see how much, if any difference this makes, but whatever, am really loving this set-up right now. Highly recomended.

Apr21

Some Simple Branding Hacks To Supercharge Your Social Media URLs

Posted at 10:47 PM • One Comment

I remember trying to design one of those flash pro-looking Twitter backgrounds where you list all your social media profiles in a box in the top left hand corner. You know, like all those MLM ‘gurus’ have. I gave up.

But it did bring attention to a couple of things for me. I noticed that not all my social media profiles are blessed with URLs that fit in with my ‘social profile’ (or, branding if you like) and my Facebook URL is particularly unruly. (As is everyone elses!)

So I took five minutes to login to my website management software and using the sub domain feature added a couple of new subdomains under buzzsonic.com. Then I pointed them to my social profiles. So……

www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=528551668 becomes www.facebook.buzzsonic.com and my Linkedin profile goes from www.linkedin.com/in/fusiarski to: www.linkedin.buzzsonic.com  And so on. Typing in the shorter name takes you directly to the long one.

What you need. 1.Your own domain name 2. A webhosting account 3. A few minutes.

Its all done using a simple trick using sub-domains and URL re-directs.

CPanel online webhosting management software

When you get a webhosting account you’ll get an online control panel that goes along with it to admin things like file uploads, email accounts, database stuff, installs and other geeky stuff. I think the two most popular web control panels are probably Plesk and CPanel. If you use Plesk you probably hate CPanel and visa versa. Its kinda like the Mac vs PC thing but even more nerdy!

But anyway. CPanel is my weapon of choice. There are several other control panels you may use but they all kind of do the same thing. So these steps should be similar on any software.

To set-up a sub domain login to your control panel (and there’s a live demo of CPanel here if you want to check it out) and head for the subdomain area.  First thing to do is to head for the sub-domain admin area. Its a simple task of adding your subdomain of choice.

CPanel online webhosting management software

So for example I added facebook.buzzsonic.com. Then added my lengthy default Facebook URL. So. What happens is simply that you (or anyone from now on!) types in your new shiny short Facebook and off it goes to the crappy URL that Facebook gives you!

Just follow the process for any URL you want to point to. I’ve actually seen people use one of those URL shortening services to hide their long Facebook URL. This looks way better.

Related Reading

URL Redirection (Wikipedia)
A Bloggers Guide to Branding With Social Media (ProBlogger)
100 Personal Branding Tactics Using Social Media (ChrisBrogan.com)

Jan31

Google Gone Wild!

Posted at 10:40 AM • 3 Comments

Google is broken this morning, EST 10.18am.

Was looking around for Pro Tools 8 M Boxed/LE prices this AM and headed to Google search to check the shopping comparison for the iLok USB key. Surprised to find that the manufacturers site had been tagged with the dreaded Google malware ‘kiss of death’ page. Searching around for other terms brought up the same results.

youtube2

Even Google’s own paid shopping links were being redirected to the malware page. Last gasp try to search for my own music as 99th Floor Elevators. Every search result for that term got the malware redirect including the link to my video on YouTube.

Headed to Twitter to see what people are finding.

Breaking:What’s The Matter With Google? (Geekbrief.TV)
The Day Google Broke (The Next Web)
Google Broken (Google News Search)

Mar20

Greedy Torrent, A BT For Leechers

Posted at 10:24 PM • 2 Comments

The Bit Torrent protocol has been well documented. BitTorrent is a method of distributing large amounts of data widely without the original distributor incurring the whole of the corresponding costs of hardware, hosting and bandwidth resources.

So, filesharing in the truest sense if you like, where downloaders also upload as they download (if you follow). The more bandwidth and upload stream you share the faster your download (in theory).

greedy2

Going against that whole equal sharing thing comes a new ratio cheating program called appropriately, ‘Greedy Torrent’. The India based software author Alex NJ calls his app “the survival kit for a leech” . What the freeware program promises to do in a nutshell is boost your bittorrent upload ratio.

GreedyTorrent promises to help you survive on trackers that enforce a minimum 1:1 trading ratio, and can keep you from getting banned for not uploading. It modifies the conversation between your bittorrent client and the tracker, suppressing the actual upload amount.
via Zero Paid

Related Reading

How To Cheat BitTorrent Ratio By Spoofing (Raymond.cc)
RatioMaster (Moofdev.org)
Is BitTorrent Share Ratio Enforcement Really Necessary? (Zeropaid.com)

Mar20

Converting Word Docs to PDF

Posted at 12:59 PM • No Comments

 

I was designing an invoice last week for a friends business using Word. I hate the way Word formats everything and although I was pleased with the end result it took me longer than I would have liked. Still, before I sent it off to my colleague I cleaned up the final article and made it more printer friendly by converting it to a PDF which gave it a final polish.

pdf-online

There’s a number of PDF converters online though the one I’m using right now is the excellent PDF Online. One of the beauties of the (free) service is the simplicity and speed of it. Upload your document, enter your email address and bingo, you’re done. Your document is emailed to you minutes later. Brilliant.

Mar10

Flickr4Writer Adds to Live Writer Usability

Posted at 3:17 PM • No Comments

I’m toggling between using Windows Live Writer for posting right now vs. using the Performancing Firefox add-on ScribeFire. Though for the last two days the Live Writer has been crashing everytime I try to add an image to the post. After losing two hours work yesterday I was on the brink of dumping the app completely and returning to ScribeFire.Having second thoughts Writer is simply fuller featured and offers things like the ability to add images to posts (ScribeFire doesn’t) and preview the post in your blog before publishing (much like WordPress does in the admin panel), two features I cant really do without.

flickrforwriter

Also ScribeFire doesn’t seem to have a minimize option so you either have to put up with it hogging the bottom of your screen, or you save and close. Obtrusive and I hate obtrusive, its what sends me rushing to the delete option!

Anyway, the crashing. Until I find the conflict (it used to work fine) I found an excellent plug-in which works around the problem Flickr4Writer.

Flickr4Writer is a simple plugin for Windows Live Writer that enables you to browse Flickr and insert an image from Flickr into a Writer post. The project is part of CodePlex, Microsoft’s open source project hosting web site.

Mar8

Postalicious

Posted at 5:10 PM • No Comments

I mentioned this WordPress plug-in briefly in yesterdays post here , though I didn’t elaborate much. But anyway, Postalicious is another useful plug-in that you may find of use if you’re running a WordPress blog.

Postalicious is a plug-in that automatically posts your del.icio.us bookmarks to your blog. I’m using it here and it works great if you are running Firefox with the del.icio.us browser extension. That way you can add bookmarks as you browse without visiting del.icio.us and at the end of the day the plug-in will add your daily finds as a post. Neato.

Related

Absolutely Del.icio.us Tools Collection (QuickOnlineTips.com)
Del.icio.us Firefox Extension (Del.icio.us)
Del.icio.us A to Z By Function (Econsultant.com)

Mar7

Eleven Killer WordPress Hacks

Posted at 11:46 PM • No Comments

Wordpress Login Old Buzzsonic Word Press Semiologic Theme WP Screenshot Word Press How? PSP WordPress

I’ve been using the blogging software WordPress for around three years now and in all of that time there really is nothing to touch it. Why? Its free (Open Source), it has a massive user base and support network, plug-ins, mods, widgets and themes galore, oh and did I mention it doesn’t cost a penny?

Of course free doesn’t always mean great but in this case, you get what you don’t pay for. I have tried literally hundreds of mods over the years, different themes/skins and modifications. Basically I like to tinker and I think I’m getting closer to my ideal WordPress install (at least for my needs).

Buzzsonic.com (as of today) runs on WordPress v2.0.2, so its not the latest install (which is v2.1.2). Anyway, I thought I’d list my top ten (or eleven!) modifications which I’m finding the most useful right now. This could well change soon but these are what I consider the most useful WordPress mods.

1. Glossy Blue Theme- For a simple, quick overhaul of the default WordPress look this neat two column Web 2.0-ish looking theme is one of the easiest ways to get a cool looking make-over. A close second was Glued Ideas Subtle which you might go for if you prefer a three column look. Honorable mentions go to Misty Look and Semiologic (I’m using an older install of this theme here). Read the rest of this entry »

Mar5

Share All del.icio.us Hacking

Posted at 7:49 PM • No Comments

WashingtonPost.com Does a Good Job of Linking Both Ways songbird dotted Alexa graph : Comparing del.icio.us,BlueDot and Ma.gnolia newdelaccount.png My Bookmark System
The Yahoo owned bookmarking service del.icio.us (also reachable simply by typing the URL delicious.com!) is easily the most popular of many, many similar services. I bookmark hundreds of websites weekly so I try and upload them by exporting from my browser and importing them into del.icio.us.

Uploading is relatively painless for me from Firefox. Bookmarks>Organize>File>Export>Bookmarks, go to your Delicious page and upload.

The most annoying thing about the del.cio.us service is that by default, sharing is actually turned off when you import your bookmarks which means that you have to turn on sharing individually for each bookmark you want to share. Bizarre and annoying and with over 500+ bookmarks just uploaded by me its just not happening.

Luckily some wag has has come up with a handy ‘work-around’ script which I used succesfully to change the settings on over 600 links yesterday.

Greg at Freshblog has wrote the awesome javascript that goes through and automatically changes all your bookmarks to “share”. Copy and paste the code (from the above link) into the address bar of your browser when you have loaded the appropriate delicious page. Hit enter, bosh! An alert box will pop up telling you how many posts are on the page and off it goes automatically turning the “not shared” setting off. Brilliant.

Found at Freshblogs

Related Reading

Buzzsonic del.icio.us
Blogger Migration For Delicious and FreshTags (Freshblogs.com)
Do You Have Anything to Declare? (del.icio.us Blog)

Jul24

Gnarls Barkley Get Mashed

Posted at 10:00 PM • No Comments

Its been a while since we featured any posts on musical mash-ups here. Since the last mention (the excellent Green Day mash) the word mash up has taken on a slightly different meaning. Now the term is more likely associated with the latest Google Maps Api mash up rather than the latest frankenstein pop remix flying out of some digital DJ’s laptop studio.

Gnarls Barkley gets mashed by NY DJs Sound Advice

Latest renegade remixers to join the fray are the Brooklyn based DJ duo Sound Advice who have ironically (see DJ Dangermouse) chosen to weld the music from the ubiquitous Gnarls Barkley album ‘St Elsewhere’ to the vocals from deceased rapper Biggie Smalls biggest hits.
The result is Gnarls Biggie a hit and miss collection of eleven tracks (all available as MP3′s naturally). ‘Smilie Faces Hypnotize’, ‘Gimme The Online Loot’ and ‘The Last Nasty Boy’ are worth more than one spin but the simple A vs. B formula is not nearly as inspired as the more elaborate examples of the ‘art’ like DJ Dangermouse’s (half of Gnarls Barkley) groundbreaking Beatles vs Jay Z mash up the ‘Grey Album’ or the aformentioned Green Day (or Dean Gray) remix project.

The guys have already got themselves banned from MySpace (though another ‘fan page’ has already sprung up). The cease and desist is in the post.

Related Reading

Gnarls Barkley Mashed Up with B.I.G (Spin.com)
Green Day Mash Up Leads to Cease and Desist Order, Grey Tuesday Style Protest (MTV News)
Grey Album Poducer Danger Mouse Explains How He Did It (MTV News)
Gnarls Barkley (Wikipedia)
Sound Advice Blog (Blogspot)
Party Ben (PartyBen.com)
Mark Vidler (GoHomeProductions)
Grey Tuesday:A Quick Overview of the Legal Terrain (EFF.org)
Grey Tuesday-Free the Grey Album (GreyTuesday.org)