Book Review: Al Jaffee's Mad Life: A Biography

Al Jaffee is a tireless satirist, inventor of the MAD magazine “fold-in” & my all-time favorite cartoonist. At 89, he is MAD magazine’s oldest & most prolific artist, having actively contributed to it for over five decades. His biography titled Al Jaffee's Mad Life tells the tragic story of this creator of incredibly funny cartoons and how this “master adapter” has surmounted overwhelming odds.His childhood was short-lived as he had...

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HOW TO sarcastically tell someone to google for their answer

Before Google became popular, it was common to see the expression RTFM (or in polite terms, Read The Fine Manual) used in internet forums if a poster asked a question without doing any homework. These days it is more common to see messages directing such users to Google or Bing instead of the manual.LMGTFY.com (the word LMGTFY represents the initial letters of "let me google that for you") is one among a bunch of sites that sarcastically explains how to use Google. It lets a responder create a shortened...

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How Tynt Insight works

If you are looking for tips on a range of useful topics, head to Dummies.com (never mind the name). It is the website for the For Dummies series of plain English reference books. The site features interesting topics from it's books on varied & complex subjects.If you copy & paste any content from there, it will add a link of the URL from where it was copied, at the end of the pasted content. This is...

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HOW TO make Gmail Labels act like Hotmail Folders

If you apply a Label to an email in Gmail, it will appear under both the Inbox & the Label category chosen. This is unlike in Hotmail where an email can appear only under one Folder category. To address this issue, Gmail introduced a "Move to" option that will place an email under a single Label or category. This option can help in maintaining a clutter-free, cleaner Gmail Inbox but requires manual intervention. A poster on...

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Hotmail tip - Move, Delete, Find emails originating from a specific sender with a single click

Did you know, a context menu will pop-up after two seconds if you place your mouse on any email within HotmailWith just one click on the context menu, you can then ...reply to that email without explicitly opening itfind all emails which have originated from the same email address as that of the selected emailmove all emails from the same sender to a specified folderdelete all emails which have originated from the same...

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Free eBook: The Insider's Guide to Mobile

If you are involved or interested in Mobile development, check out Tomi T Ahonen's free eBook - The Insider's Guide to Mobile. It has 11 case studies, 7 essays & exposes 8 myths.Also read Peter-Paul Koch's assessment of the Smartphone Browser Landsca...

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Track the most visited websites worldwide & by country

Google's DoubleClick Ad Planner maintains a list of the 1000 most visited websites worldwide & the top 100 websites in 20+ countries. This list is based on estimates & updated monthly.It combines information from a variety of sources including anonymized, aggregated Google Toolbar data from users who have opted in to enhanced features,  publisher opt-in anonymous Google Analytics data, opt-in external consumer panel data, and other third-party market research.For each site on the list, you'll be able to see:The site categoryUnique...

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Find meanings of a bunch of words at once with Google Spreadsheet

A relative recently asked me if there was a quick way to find the meanings of a list of words all at once. I use & recommend WordWeb to look up difficult words but it takes one word/phrase a time.I knew about the nifty GoogleLookup function in Google Spreadsheet that fetches "straightforward facts about specific things", but it does not fetch definitions from Google Dictionary as I had imagined. So, I turned to the ImportXML function...

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HOW TO find readability level of search results & books

Google's “Instant Preview” lets you visually preview a search result page before you actually visit a page. A new advanced search filter called Readability level now lets you predetermine whether the result pages you want to see Basic, Intermediate or Advanced. I could not find details on what methodology Google uses to judge the readability level.Amazon.com has been carrying a Text Stats feature in the "Inside This Book" section of most book-detail...

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Manipulate PDF files for free with PDFRider

PDFRider (currently in version 0.5) is an open source project on Codeplex. This utility provides a GUI for the command-line program Pdftk. It can perform the following operations on PDF files -Merge PDF documents Insert pages from PDF file to another Extract pages from a PDF document to a new document Delete pages Rotate pages Crypt and Decrypt a PDF file Burst or split a single, input PDF document into individual pagesI used it to extract summaries of chapters from a PDF eBook & then...

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HOW TO use IIS 7.5 on Windows XP, Vista with Visual Studio 2010

The free download IIS Express brings the IIS 7.x feature-set to Windows XP SP2+ (which comes with IIS 5) & Windows Vista (which hosts IIS 7). With the upcoming Visual Studio 2010 SP1 (a beta is now available), enabling integration with IIS Express will be easy. IIS Express will bring the best of both existing web server options in Visual Studio - ASP.NET Development Server & the native IIS.The advantages of IIS Express paraphrased from Scott Guthrie's post -IIS Express will work with VS 2010 and Visual Web Developer 2010 Express, will run...

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Do you live on the web?

We lived in farms, then we lived in cities, and now we're gonna live on the internet! - Sean Parker/The Social NetworkGoogle has announced that the Chrome operating system which was supposed to come out in the fourth quarter of 2010 will now be available through netbooks in the first half of next year.On the elegant but minimalist Chrome OS website, it says Chrome OS is for people who live on the web. To check if you are a native of the web, take...

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Google Custom Search can let your prioritize results

You can use the site: operator to make Google restrict the search results to only websites originating from a specified domain. However, there may be times when you want Google to prioritize results so that those from your favorite websites will automatically appear before results from other sites (which then appear below).Google's personalized search feature of star-ring results requires manual intervention but Custom Search can automate the process of always moving results from your favorite sites to the top.Also see:Google Gu...

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The Stack Exchange network of Q&A sites is growing

The Internet is a great place to find answers provided you know where to ask. Search engines can only go so far. The Stack Exchange network of Q&A sites is unique because the user community votes up or down answers & therefore the best answers float to the top of the list. People who provide good answers get “reputation points”, which gives an additional indication of the value of an answer.It all started with the site Stack Overflow...

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More HTML5 Games

There were quite a few games built with HTML5 in the 10K Apart contest. The grand prize winner's submission was a game built using just canvas and JavaScript, measuring only 6.9KB.HTML5 is indeed making it easy to develop games for standard web browsers while also providing a way for developers to reach mobiles and tablets with a single code base.The Google sponsored HTML5 Game Jam has also produced some nifty games. Check the winning entries and also look out for Mozilla's Game On competit...

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Chrome silently auto-updates itself, integrated Adobe Flash Player & PDF viewer

Google's advertises Chrome features pretty well in its “20 Things I Learned about Browsers and the Web” guide. I didn't know about these till I read them up in that guide -In Chrome, for example, sync saves all bookmarks, extensions, preferences and themes to your Google Account. Use any other Internet-connected computer, and all you need to do is fire up Chrome and log in to your Google Account through the browser’s sync feature. Voila! All your...

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HOW TO implement alphabetic paging on dynamic data with jQuery

A few weeks ago, I discovered how jQuery plugins make it easy to implement numeric paging & rating of dynamic data. Amazingly, there are jQuery plugins that can almost mimic any server-side slicing & dicing of dynamic data.Continuing my experiments with the jQuery Template plugin, I implemented alphabetic paging on dynamic data fetched in JSON format using the Geonames.org webservice.Check the sample showing cities of India...

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Rate your SEO skills with these Quizzes

Did you know, for high-volume search phrases, the Search Engines usually will NOT differentiate between singular and plural versions of a term? Check it for yourself by seeing the search results on these phrases - cell phone vs. cell phones. I was under the impression, until I took the SEOmoz quiz, that this was a case of stemming & there should be differentiation.Here is my compilation of all the interesting SEO Quizzes I have found (work in progress) -SEO Expert Quiz - the 75 questions there will take about 30 minutes. The answers...

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Story behind “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog” cartoon

In an interview with New Yorker magazine cartoonist Peter Steiner, CartoonBank blog (dead link; I picked this content from their feed) asked him: Your cartoon, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog,” is one of the best-selling New Yorker cartoons of all time – and, since it was published in the early days of the Internet (1993), it is considered a prescient sign of changing times. Can you tell us the back story of this cartoon? At the...

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Exaggerated tech terms

"If you can’t dazzle them with your wit, bamboozle them with your bullshit." - AnonymousMy favorites from ComputerWorld's10 most exaggerated tech terms -Valued Partner: Except when that partner decides not to renew its licensing agreements, and then the vendor treats that valued partner the way Michael Corleone treated his valued brother Fredo.Don't Be Evil: How 'bout just a teensy, weensy bit evil when we feel like it, because we have good intentions?Facebook Privacy: FB's privacy policies (automatic opt-in!) seem to change as often as Zuckerberg's...

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How the Internet thing works

“20 Things I Learned about Browsers and the Web”  is an online illustrated guide from Google aimed at casual users. You can browse though it to catch up on the buzz-words or pass it to friends & relatives who want to know about the Internet thing. It is also available in PDF format for offline reading.It covers the following topics in a lighthearted, non-techincal way -What is the Internet?Cloud ComputingWeb AppsHTML, JavaScript,...

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HOW TO move items between Lists with jQuery

Moving items between list-boxes is a common UI pattern in Windows applications.To simulate that in web applications with jQuery, check my no-frills code sample which uses an Unordered List instead of list-boxes. When items are moved back to the original List, the sequential order is maintained. This sample can be extended to have multiple Child Lists whose items can be moved to a single Master List.When an item is moved from the parent List, it is...

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Debug JavaScript with Firebug & IE Dev Tools Console commands

Instead of debugging client-side code with the JavaScript alert command, using the Firefox Firebug extension & Internet Explorer Developer Tools' (F12 keyboard shortcut) Console commands makes debugging less distracting & simpler.The following Console commands work in both IE & Firebug -console.logconsole.infoconsole.warnconsole.errorconsole.assertTo use either of these in place of an alert in your JS code, make sure you...

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Using the jQuery Star Rating & Template plugin with dynamic data

With some help from the StackOverflow forum, I recently integrated the Star Rating jQuery Plugin on Github with jQuery Template plugin to make them work with dynamically generated data. Check out my code sample that's based on Stephen Walther's sample.Among the jQuery Rating  plugins I tried, I found Chris Richards' Star Rating jQuery Plugin to be the most elegant.Talking of Github, I share @themaninblue's sentiment about...

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Prevent identity theft with HTTPS browsing

The grave risk of Internet users unwittingly letting out their private & sometimes confidential details while using unencrypted networks has been brought to focus by at least two startling incidents.Back in May, Google candidly admitted that its Street View data collection cars inadvertently collected and stored "payload data from unencrypted WiFi networks, but not from networks that were encrypted". More recently a Firefox extension...

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Competition drives Search Engine innovation

The hot pursuit to get the most relevant results faster & in an appealing way is evident from the way competing search engines are building on each other's strong points.Before I buy a book, I like looking up Amazon to see not just how many stars it has got but how many people rated it (popular books have a large number of reviews) and also what some of the folks who gave it the highest & lowest rating have to say about it. This kind of opinion...

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Buying a laptop? Check tips from Microsoft

As with other consumer products, there are plenty of options when it comes to laptops. Zeroing in on the one  that's right for you can take a little planning & research.Is a matte finish better than glossy? How to compare processors? What are the VGA, DVI, HDMI ports for?Microsoft's has some useful tips, answers & facts on laptops that can help you make a good purchase.If you are a power user constantly...

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HOW TO view size of files in Google Docs

Google Docs has some amazing features but there is one small detail thats conspicuous by its absence. File sizes are not shown in the summary view. If you are running out of space, there is no easy way to know which are the bulky files in case you wanted to remove some of them.Thankfully, there is at least a roundabout way that a nice person on the forums has identified & shared -Create a folder for the files whose size you want to...

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Free MS Press ebook: Understanding Microsoft Virtualization Solutions: From the Desktop to the Datacenter

Do you feel left out & tongue-tied when your colleagues talk about Hyper-V, Private clouds & other virtualization jargon? If you always wanted to know about Virtualization but didn't know whom to ask,  the MS Press book, Understanding Microsoft Virtualization Solutions: From the Desktop to the Datacenter is for you.The freely downloadable ebook (10.6MB) has 450+ pages & the following six chapters -Chapter...

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5 reasons why Windows Phone 7 is hot

According to Scoble, here are the reasons why WP7 will be successful -1. It’s a sexy new OS that gives app developers more capabilities.2. Developing for it is easy and consistent across the devices that it runs on3. There are a ton of bored developers who are familiar with .NET4. Almost every developer I’ve met lately has been approached by Microsoft’s evangelists5. The hooks with Microsoft Xbox have developers intrig...

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Client-side paging of dynamically generated records with jQuery Template & Pagination Plugins

I'm amazed at the sheer number of jQuery plugins that developers worldwide painstakingly build & voluntarily share. There is a vibrant, responsive jQuery community online that offers feedback & support to those seeking it. This community is one big reason which makes jQuery special when compared to other JavaScript libraries.To display dynamically generated records with client-side paging, I recently tried out Microsoft's...

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jQuery videos for ASP.NET developers

As a convert to jQuery, I'm glad to see the support that Microsoft is lending it. Today, I went through possibly the first video tutorial exclusively on jQuery on the official ASP.NET website's training video series. Video content is sometimes easier to absorb than flipping through books or reading online articles. I plan to list all the good jQuery videos I find -How Do I: Make Ajax Calls Using jQuery? - this 21 minute video by Chris Pels covers the $.ajax() method & its many options.jQuery for the ASP.NET Developer...

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Find a bug on Google Web Apps, win up to $3,133.7

Based on the success of their vulnerability reward program for Chromium open source project, Google has now announced a discretionary (Google Security Team decides if a bug is eligible), experimental (can be cancelled at any time) new vulnerability reward program that applies to Google web properties like -*.google.com*.youtube.com*.blogger.com*.orkut.comMore info in the FAQAlso see:Crowdsource your supplemental learning with Stack Overf...

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Microsoft PDC 2010 highlights

There were a lot of announcements at the MS Professional Developer’s Conference yesterday. Some interesting facts from PDC from Twitter & a live blog -10 million downloads for IE9 beta - Ballmer .. Biggest beta ever.500,000 downloads of the #WP7 dev tools already - @scottgu  #azure has more than 200,000 subscriptions to date  Over 1000 apps and games already uploaded to the marketplace.DataMart is Windows Azure MarketPlaceThe WP7...

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Hotmail lets you download attachments as a zip file

Did you know, you can download attachments faster in Hotmail as it packs individual files into a single zip?If the attachments are images, there is an option to view them as a slideshow without having to download those images locally. The slideshow runs using a Silverlight viewer that can also present the images in a full-screen format. Pretty cool!In its last make-over, Hotmail also introduced the Conversation threading...

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Why YQL?

Christian Heilmann who is quitting his job as a full-time developer evangelist at Yahoo has made available a demo chapter from a prospective book on YQL.In case, you haven't heard of YQL, its "a technology that turns the web into a database and allows you to mix and match and filter before writing your first line of code. It also allows you to release an API without any infrastructure, knowledge of authentication and access control. In essence you can use Yahoo’s server infrastructure and processing power...

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Windows 7 is 1 year old, Windows platform soon to be 25

Having sold 240 million copies so far, Windows 7 is Microsoft's fastest selling OS. The Windows platform will be completing 25 years next month. To look back at Windows history, check the Windows 1.0 artifacts that Ray Ozzie has shared at docs.com, which now provides “browser-based PDF reading” through a Silverlight-based PDF viewer.In other OS news, Google is readying its Chrome OS for the fourth quarter of 2010. Some points from the Chromium OS FAQ -Google Chrome OS is to Chromium OS what Google Chrome browser is to Chromium....

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Adding new Search Provider easiest with Opera

If you search for items frequently on popular sites (like Amazon), it may be easier to use that site's native search right from the browser. All popular browsers allow adding new Search Providers to the search box but it is fastest to do this in Opera, followed by Chrome.IE8 & Firefox require an add-on to be installed for each search provider which internally uses a standard XML-based OpenSearch Description File. In contrast, Opera...

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Search from browser address bar in IE, Firefox, Opera

I found out by accident that its not just Chrome that has the combined search and address bar (Omnibox) feature - the address bar in IE8, Firefox 3.0 & Opera 9.6 (the version numbers are the ones I've tested on) can also double up as a search box. You can type your search term in the address bar of any of these browsers and press the Enter key to see results from your default search engine. This doesn't work in Safari (version 4.0 on Windows) though.Its good to see browser features getting consistent across the board.Also see:Keyboard...

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Impact of online reputation on job recruitments

Did you know, while only 7% of U.S. consumers surveyed believed information about them online affected their job search, 70% of responding recruiters and HR professionals have rejected candidates based on information they found online.  86% of human resources professionals surveyed stated that a positive online reputation influences hiring. (Microsoft Online Reputation Research, 2010)A Microsoft Privacy & Safety blog post offers...

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When to use Sleep & Hibernate

Sleep & Hibernate are power-saving options in operating systems like Windows Vista & 7. Sleep preserves whatever you were doing in memory while Hibernate writes your settings and the content of memory to the hard disk (to a hidden system file called Hiberfil.sys located in the root folder of the drive where the operating system is installed) and then completely powers down the system. The size of the Hiberfil.sys file is approximately equal to how much random access memory (RAM) is installed on the computer.Hibernation is more power saving...

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Google Labs Script Converter Bookmarklet

Script Converter is a Google Labs product that allows the user to read a web page in a script of their choice (currently 11 Indian languages, English, Greek, Nepali, Persian, Russian, Serbian are supported). For example, if the user can understand spoken Tamil but cannot read the script, they will be able to view Tamil web pages in English (Roman) script or one of the other supported languages. The online tool does not translate any content but transforms the words on the page to its phonetic equivalent in the desired script. It also supports the...

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Can NoSQL replace SQL Server?

Twitter, Facebook, Digg, and Rackspace are notable sites using various types of NoSQL implementations.Michael Otey explains why NoSQL isn’t really a viable replacement for SQL Server -The term “NoSQL” was coined back in 1998, and it originally stood for Not Only SQL. So the name NoSQL is a bit of a misnomer.NoSQL databases aren’t relational at all. Today’s NoSQL databases are distributed data stores that are designed for very large-scale data access requirements. Probably the most popular NoSQL database is the Cassandra open source project. Cassandra...

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SharePoint in Pictures

The SharePoint Developer Documentation Team has launched a new blog called SharePoint in Pictures with the intention of  providing visual SharePoint developer content on a weekly basis. Illustrations & diagrams make information sticky. This is a great idea that should be extended to other MS products as well.This diagram from that blog neatly summarizes features present in the different editions of Sharepoint 2...

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Words that leave Google Instant speechless

2600 Magazine has compiled a list of objectionable words that Google Instant has blacklisted. Several volunteers have submitted blacklisted words or phrases and the current count of such entries stands at 445. If you run a website that allows user submissions, you may face the possibility of visitors posting swear words and content that is not family-friendly. To censor user comments, you can take advantage of the above mentioned compilation of black-listed words to validate against. This kind of filtering is a work perpetually in progress.While...

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Inside: Google on National Geographic channel

Trivia from the "Inside: Google" program that I got to see last week on National Geographic channel in my part of the world (India) -Google has plans for taking the cloud to the sea. It has a patent for a "water-based data center"Their offices have whiteboards everywhere & a lot of note-taking is done electronicallyGooglers don't just get free food at office but also services like free laundry & haircutsMany of the popular Google products like Google Earth, Docs (Writely), YouTube, Blogger are acquired...

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Thrilled to be renewed as a ASP.NET MVP again

I thank everyone who made it possible for me to win the Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) award in the ASP / ASP.NET category again for my community contributions. As I mentioned earlier, the best part of the award is that you get to hobnob with folks passionate about Microsoft technologies - authors, speakers and other technical community leaders. I was among 1014 MVPs worldwide who were re-awarded...

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