There’s nothing more frustrating than searching for a page, finding what looks like a promising result, and then clicking though only to discover that the page is gone. Unfortunately it happens all the time. Servers get jammed, pages are removed, some servers move and some servers are simply no longer maintained. Here’s how to resurrect a copy of that missing page….
One of my pet obsessions at the moment, besides Pidgin and chat bots, are keyboard shortcuts. Not only does it make me faster and more efficient at computer tasks but a lot of browser & toolbar features can be disabled because there are keyboard equivalents. One prime example is Stumbleupon.
If you have the Stumbleupon toolbar installed, there is a feature in the options which allows you to set up keyboard shortcuts. Shortcuts are already pre-programmed but you can do what I did and re-program them to the way you want them :
Just one more thing about Pidgin before I move onto other subjects for a while. I really like the buddy pounce feature where you can be notified when someone comes back online again. Unlike normal notification systems on IM programs, this buddy pounce program is tailor-made for one specific contact only and ignores everyone else. Which is perfect if you are waiting for a specific person to make an appearance online and you don’t want to sit there all day staring at your computer screen, drumming your fingers impatiently, muttering “come on, come on….”
A post I wrote for Make Use Of. A new Firefox shortcut tip - navigating between pages with your keyboard.
Last week I re-installed Firefox from the German version to the English version and suddenly all my file associations were gone. This was a big deal for me as I do a lot of networking and negotiations over instant messaging programs and this involves clicking on a lot of weblinks. Suddenly, whenever I clicked on a weblink sent to me via IM, Pidgin was coming out with the error message :
“FIREFOX DOESN’T KNOW HOW TO OPEN THIS ADDRESS BECAUSE THE PROTOCOL ISN’T ASSOCIATED WITH ANY PROGRAM”
So basically it was telling me that it didn’t know how to open a weblink because I hadn’t specified that Firefox was to be used to open URL’s.
This was a big problem that took me over a week to figure out and today I finally solved it. Which is just as well because I was about to blow a gasket. I wasn’t sure if it was Firefox’s fault (requiring a change to the “about:config” page), a problem with Pidgin or a problem with Windows. Since the problems started when I re-installed Firefox, I was inclined to think that it was Firefox causing the problems. But it seems now that the offender was Windows!
What you have to do to fix this issue is change the Windows registry to let it know what you want done with weblinks. So open up a text editor and type in the following :
REGEDIT4
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\http]
@=”URL:http Protocol”
“URL Protocol”=”"
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\http\shell]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\http\shell\open]
[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\http\shell\open\command]
@=”\”I:\\Programme\\Mozilla Firefox\\firefox.exe\” \”%1\”"
Save the file as protocol.reg to your desktop. But make sure that you first change the path to your browser. My Firefox browser is at “I:\\Programme\\Mozilla Firefox\\firefox.exe\ but yours may be somewhere totally different. You may also use a different browser altogether. So make sure that last line corresponds to where the default browser is located on your PC.
Once you have the “protocol.reg” file on your desktop, double-click on it, say yes to the boxes that pop up and the necessary changes will be made to your registry. You should now be able to open weblinks with Firefox.
The above script is also the one to use if you want to set a particular action with a particular program. So if you have a preferred program for opening photos for example, you would replace the http with say jpg and the last line would contain the path to your preferred program.
If you’re not entirely sure what you’re doing though, I strongly recommend you make a backup of the registry before changing anything. If you totally mess up your registry without a backup to save you then you’re totally screwed.
A post I wrote for Make Use Of. Find out how to flag words, track phrases and use automated bots to simplify your life. We will also take a look at some of the third party apps out there that remove the need for you to even use the Twitter website.
If you burn a lot of photos onto disks, it can be difficult to tell which photo is on which disk (especially if the photo name is RIMG0263.jpg). That’s where XP’s Thumbnails feature comes into play to save the day.
When you have the photos burned onto a disk, run the disk on your PC and when the pictures appear in Windows Explorer, go to “thumbnails” view in the “View” menu. You will then have thumbnails of each photo along with the photo name underneath. Then open up a screen capture program such as SnagIt or IrfanView , make a screen capture and print out the page.
Give the disk a reference number then write the reference number on the printed sheet of thumbnails. You now have a reference guide as to which photo is on which disk.
With Gmail’s easy-to-use Mail Fetcher feature and POP3 access, you can easily import all of your old emails to your new address. Although I personally think it is a lot easier to IMAP them all into Thunderbird and then re-upload them all into the new email address.
There are some bloggers out there who are just downright saviours. Whenever I have a big computer irritant, I can normally go online and find a blogger who knows the answer to my problem. Therein lies the beauty of bloggers or blogging. If you don’t know something, you can quickly find someone who does.
The How-To Geek is my latest hero.
I am a big fan of the Firefox extension, Greasemonkey, but I was getting extremely hacked off with the fact that if I wanted to edit a Greasemonkey script, it automatically opened in Microsoft Word. I am slowly going off MS Word as my preferred word processing app as it is slow, clunky and unwieldy. In fact I am seriously considering installing Open Office which gives you a good indicator of MS Word’s high positioning on my shit-list.
Anyway, I wanted to find a way to change Firefox’s default editing program for Greasemonkey scripts. I much prefer lighter faster programs such as MS Notepad but I had no idea until now that the solution lay in Firefox’s “about : config” options page. Thanks to the How-To Geek, I have now changed the default editing program and I am one happy chappie.
I strongly recommend you subscribe to the How-To Geek. I only wish we could get him to write for Make Use Of.
This isn’t a new app by any means but it’s only in the past few weeks that I have seriously begun to use it in a big way and it’s only now that I am beginning to realise its usefulness.
I explained the whole concept in an article for Geeks Are Sexy but the short version is that if you have internet access, you can use Google Talk to send direct messages to Twitter bots which will then update your Google Calendar for you. No more having to go to the Google Calendar page. You can update your page using Google Talk on your PC desktop and have your daily schedule emailed to you each morning.
But a comment by one of the GAS readers made me realise something else - if you’re out on the road with no internet access and you need to update your Google Calendar, just send a SMS to Twitter with your mobile phone. I’ve just tried it and it works perfectly. It costs the same as a regular SMS to the United Kingdom.
All you have to do is add GCal to your Twitter watch list (so a bit of pre-planning is required). Then authorize GCal to access your Google Calendar.
When everything is set up, send a SMS to Twitter at +44 7624 801423 (add the number to your mobile phone book so you don’t forget it).
The SMS message should start with d gcal (the “d” stands for “direct”). Adding this to the start of the message ensures the text goes directly to GCal and not to the public Twitter page for all to see.
So if you want to add your appointment with a Playboy bunny for Friday at 7pm, just type in the SMS :
d gcal meeting with Playboy bunny on Friday at 7pm
If you then check your Google Calendar (it may take up to a minute for it to appear), you’ll see your calendar duly updated!
The only snag (to the best of my knowledge) is that you can’t alter existing calendar entries by SMS’ing Twitter (if say for example an appointment time is changed). If I am wrong and this is indeed possible, please let me know!
UPDATE :
I did some digging around and discovered the SMS phone numbers for the US and Canada :
Twitter Canada: 21212
Twitter USA: 40404
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