An Alternate Way to Write Long Tweets on Twitter

 

 

 

 

An Alternate Way to Write Long Tweets on Twitter

via Digital Inspiration Technology Blog by Amit on 8/10/11

If you are to ever write a tweet that’s longer than 140 characters, you have a couple of options. You can either split the message into multiple tweets or you can use a service like post.ly that not only lets you compose essay-style messages but you may also attach documents, pictures and other files to your tweets.

I wish to share one more idea here.

Twitter has recently rolled out the picture uploads feature to all accounts worldwide. What that means is you can include an image with your tweet and your followers, or anyone else who sees that tweet, can view the content of that picture inline without having to leave the Twitter website. See this tweet for an example.

The idea is that if you can convert your “long text” into a 317x317 image, people can read your message inside Twitter itself like in the following screenshot. And this works on mobile phones too.

Almost any photo editing tool – even Paint – can be used to create a text based images but remember to use the PNG or GIF image formats while saving these images.

Send A Self-Destructing Online Message With QuickForget

 

 

 

 

Send A Self-Destructing Online Message With QuickForget

via MakeUseOf by Danny Stieben on 7/16/11

For whatever reason, you may have the need to send a secret message. Whether it’s for simply playing around, a message you don’t want to be saved forever, or sending the next secret tip to the CIA, there will eventually be a reason why you might want to do that. No need to worry, as we have the perfect solution right here. You won’t even need to get into all that fancy encryption stuff either.

About QuickForget

May I introduce you to QuickForget, an extremely simple way of sending nothing more than a secret message. The site is so simple in fact, that there is absolutely nothing else that you can do. You can’t even create an account, as there is no reason for you to do so. Instead making an account would remove the ability to be anonymous.

The Great Explanation

Simply put, you enter your secret message in the gray box and then include when the message should be deleted. You can choose how many views it can have and how many hours it should be kept, and the message will be deleted when one of the two is reached first. The self destructing message you enter can include whatever you want, including usernames and passwords. When you’re done, just hit “Save my secret” and you’ll be given a link that you can send to your recipient to retrieve the secret message.

When the recipient looks at the message, they will see the secret message. Towards the bottom of the page will be a nice notifier as to how much longer and for how many more views the secret will be saved. For example, once the secret has been viewed as many times as was allowed, the viewer will see something like this.

Looking for the “detailed” explanation? Sorry, there is none.

Privacy

If you’re concerned about your privacy while using the website, no need to fear, as the site will protect your privacy and security to the best of its abilities. Note from the screenshot containing a sample URL that the site also uses HTTPS. If you want to get a little paranoid, you can actually combine encryption with this service. Just encrypt the message to random characters and then send it via the site.

The site also has a privacy policy that isn’t self-imposed but rather a general rule of thumb for good security practices. The site writes it in “plain English” and is well-written enough to be copied, partly for its information and partly for its humor.

We will not set any cookies, and we save no identifiable information. Once your secret has expired we purge it from our database and keep no archives.

We do not guarantee the security of your information, and, when it comes to transmitting secure information, you should never put all of your eggs in one basket. We recommend that you send part of your secure information through another form, such as email, SMS, telephone, smoke signals, or carrier pigeon.

Conclusion

QuickForget is a great site to use, whether playfully or to actually send some messages, such as the latest tactic you thought of that you need to tell your teammates to successfully “pwn” everyone in your first person shooter. Enjoy using it, and remember to keep it secret.

Android App Saves your Text Messages to Gmail as they Arrive!

 

 

 

 

Android App Saves your Text Messages to Gmail as they Arrive!

via Digital Inspiration Technology Blog by Amit on 7/14/11

If your mobile phone has limited capacity for storing SMS text messages or if you are looking to delete all the old text conversations from the phone but still preserve them somewhere, here’s something for you to consider.

SMS Backup, as the name suggests, is a free app for Android mobile phones that can copy all SMS messages from the phone to your Gmail account with a click. It can save both your incoming and outgoing messages to Gmail.

To get started, first enable IMAP in your Gmail account available under Gmail Settings –> Forwarding and POP/IMAP –> Enable IMAP. Next launch the SMS backup app on your phone, enter your Google account credentials and the will immediately copy all existing text messages to a new folder /label in your Gmail account.

The best part is that as new text messages arrive, or you send one, the app will automatically save them to Gmail in the background without you having to do anything. This is much like a Dropbox style backup system for your SMS messages. As new files texts arrive in the Dropbox messaging folder, they are instantly sent to the cloud, which in this case is Gmail.

 

 

 

 

Firefox AutoCopy, Copy Text Automatically To The Clipboard

 

 

 

Firefox AutoCopy, Copy Text Automatically To The Clipboard

via gHacks Technology News | Latest Tech News, Software And Tutorials by Martin Brinkmann on 5/27/11

When I want to copy text in Firefox I usually highlight it with the mouse and use the shortcut Ctr-c to copy it. Sometimes I right-click on the highlighted text instead and select Copy from the context menu. Both operations take time to complete. It takes three mouse-clicks for instance to copy text only with the mouse, or one mouse-click and two keys on the keyboard to copy text with a mouse keyboard combination.

AutoCopy for the Firefox web browser optimizes the process so that it only takes one click to copy text to the clipboard.

So how does it work in detail? You can copy any text in the Firefox web browser by holding down the left-mouse button after you have highlighted the text you want to copy. The extension displays the letter C next to the highlighted text when the text has been copied to the clipboard. You can then let go of the mouse button. The highlighted text has been automatically copied to the clipboard, without having to use the keyboard or the context menu to copy it.

Even better, the extension maps the paste command to the middle-mouse button. When you want to paste the highlighted text you can do so in Firefox by pressing the middle-mouse button.

It is also possible to copy text by double-clicking it and holding down the mouse button until the copy icon appears on the screen of the browser.

The Autocopy add-on places an icon in the Firefox status bar that you can use to enable or disable the add-on temporarily. This is also the location where you can access the add-on’s settings.

Here it is possible to remove the icon from the statusbar, disable the autocopy or autopaste functionality or change the time it takes to automatically copy the highlighted text while holding down the mouse button.

Firefox users can install AutoCopy from the official Mozilla add-on repository. The add-on is compatible with all versions of the Firefox web browser from 3 on.

Would You Like to Try Android Apps Before Buying?

 

 

 

 

Would You Like to Try Android Apps Before Buying?

via Digital Inspiration Technology Blog by Amit on 5/23/11

Google’s online Android Market is huge with more than 200,000 apps for your Android mobile phone. A lot of these Android Apps are available as free downloads while the paid apps can cost anywhere between 99¢ and $200.

Amazon runs a parallel online store for Android Apps and one good thing about Amazon’s store is that it lets you test and play around with certain apps before you actually buy them. Here is a complete list of Android Apps that you can “try before buying” but unfortunately, the feature is only available to Android users located in the United States.

Android Apps – Try before your Buy

Say you have found an interesting app in Google’s Android Market that you are quite willing to buy but as the app price is a bit on the expensive side, you would like to use the app and test the various features before loosening your purse strings.

Google doesn’t offer “try before you buy” apps but there’s an easy workaround that will help you test any paid app before buying it – you buy an app from the Android market, use it for about 10-12 minutes and then refund the app. The app will be uninstalled from your mobile phone and your account won’t be charged.

How to Refund an Android App

It take a few easy steps to refund an app to the Android Market:

Step 1: Visit the Google Android Market, either on your desktop or your mobile phone, and buy any of the 'paid' apps.

Step 2: The app is now installed on your mobile phone. Launch the app and you can test it for the next 10-12 minutes.

Step 3. Go back to the Android Market app on your mobile phone and under "My Apps," tap the app name that you are trying to refund. Hit the "Refund" button and the app will automatically uninstall from your mobile phone.

Step 4. Once the App has been uninstalled, it may ask you to specify a reason for removing the app. You can check "I'd rather not say" here and the app amount will be refunded. You’ll also get an email from Google saying:

You have uninstalled the application from your phone. We have cancelled your order and you have not been charged.

The refund process is quite easy and 10 minutes are often enough for you to get a good idea about an app. I tried this with at least two different paid apps and the whole thing worked without a hitch. There are however two things regarding Google’s refund policy that you should know:

1. You only have 15 minutes to return an app to the Android Market from the time of download after which the “refund” option will disappear from the app.

2. You can return an app only once; if you refund an app and purchase it again, you won’t be able to refund it to the Android Market.

Also see: How to Get Refunds from iTunes' App Store

How To Create Your Own Basic WordPress Widgets

 

 

How To Create Your Own Basic WordPress Widgets

via MakeUseOf by James Bruce on 5/20/11

Many bloggers will search high and low for the perfect WordPress widget that will do exactly what they want, but with a little programming experience you may find it’s easier to write your custom widget.

This week I’d like to show how to do exactly that, and the widget we will be writing is a simple one that picks out a single random post from your site, pulls the featured image, and displays it on the sidebar – a visual “check this out” widget that will help users to find more content on your site.

This is also an extension of a continuing series in which I show you how easy it is to customize your WordPress template.

You may also be pleased to know that we’ve added a new WordPress Tutorials category to MakeUseOf, so be sure to check that out for an ever growing archive of up to date tips and guides to the world’s favourite blogging platform.

Key Concepts: WordPress Queries and the Loop

Each page on your blog consists of a query to your database of posts. Depending on the page you are viewing, the query will change. Your blog homepage for instance, may use the query “get the latest 10 blog posts“. When you view the category archives, the query may change to “get the latest 20 posts for the category family photos only, order the results by date published“. Each query will return a set of results, and depending on the page template being used, each result will be run through the main “loop” of the template.

Each page can in fact consist of more than one query though, and you can even create your own queries to add functionality to various places in your template. You can see an example of this in use at the bottom of this article – we have a few additional queries that run on every page that aim to show you related articles you may be interested in, or articles which are trending this week.

To make our custom widget though, we will simply need to create an additional query that grabs X number of random posts plus their images, and displays them in some way on the sidebar. I already showed you last week the code to grab the featured image, so we really just need to know how to make a new WordPress widget and place it on the sidebar.

Basic Widget Code

Start by creating a new .php file in your wp-content/plugins directory. You could also follow the tutorial offline then upload it using the WordPress interface, but I find it’s easier to write as we go along in case you need to debug. Call your file whatever you like, but I’m going with random-post-widget.php

Paste the following into the file and save. Feel free to change the section at the top with my name in it, but don’t adjust the rest of the code yet. This is basically a skeleton empty widget, and you can see where it says //WIDGET CODE GOES HERE is where we will add our functionality in later.

<?php /* Plugin Name: Random Post Widget Plugin URI: http://jamesbruce.me/ Description: Random Post Widget grabs a random post and the associated thumbnail to display on your sidebar Author: James Bruce Version: 1 Author URI: http://jamesbruce.me/ */     class RandomPostWidget extends WP_Widget { function RandomPostWidget() { $widget_ops = array('classname' => 'RandomPostWidget', 'description' => 'Displays a random post with thumbnail' ); $this->WP_Widget('RandomPostWidget', 'Random Post and Thumbnail', $widget_ops); }   function form($instance) { $instance = wp_parse_args( (array) $instance, array( 'title' => '' ) ); $title = $instance['title']; ?> <p><label for="<?php echo $this->get_field_id('title'); ?>">Title: <input class="widefat" id="<?php echo $this->get_field_id('title'); ?>" name="<?php echo $this->get_field_name('title'); ?>" type="text" value="<?php echo attribute_escape($title); ?>" /></label></p> <?php }   function update($new_instance, $old_instance) { $instance = $old_instance; $instance['title'] = $new_instance['title']; return $instance; }   function widget($args, $instance) { extract($args, EXTR_SKIP);   echo $before_widget; $title = empty($instance['title']) ? ' ' : apply_filters('widget_title', $instance['title']);   if (!empty($title)) echo $before_title . $title . $after_title;;   // WIDGET CODE GOES HERE echo "<h1>This is my new widget!</h1>";   echo $after_widget; }   } add_action( 'widgets_init', create_function('', 'return register_widget("RandomPostWidget");') );?>

As it is, the plugin doesn’t do much apart from print out a large title with the words “This is my new widget!“.

It does however give you the option to change the title, which is kind of essential for any widget. Adding in other options is a bit beyond the scope of this article today, so for now let’s move on to give it a real purpose.

A New Query & The Loop

To make a new query to your blog database, you need to use the query_posts() function along with a few parameters, then run through the output using a while loop. Let’s try this – a very basic query and loop to demonstrate. Replace the line of code that says:

<h1>This is my new widget!</h1>

with the following:

// WIDGET CODE GOES HERE query_posts('');         if (have_posts()) :         while (have_posts()) : the_post();                 the_title();                 endwhile; endif; wp_reset_query();

This is an absolutely basic query using default options and zero formatting of the output. Depending on how your blog is set up, the default will most likely be to grab the 10 latest posts – then all the above code does is to output the title of each post. It’s pretty ugly, but it works:

We can make it a little better right away just by adding some HTML formatting to the output with the ECHO command, and creating a link to the post using get_the_permalink() function:

  query_posts(''); if (have_posts()) :         echo "<ul>";         while (have_posts()) : the_post();                 echo "<li>".get_the_title()."</li>";           endwhile;         echo "</ul>"; endif; wp_reset_query();

Already, it’s looking much better. But we only want one post, picked at random. To do this, we specify some parameters in the query:

  query_posts('posts_per_page=1&orderby=rand');

Of course, you could change it to any number of posts – in fact, there’s a whole range of extra bits you can pass into the query in order to restrict, expand, or change the order of the results, but let’s stick with that for now. If you refresh, you should see just one post which is randomized each time you refresh.

Now for the featured thumbnail. Replace the code with this, hopefully you can see where we are grabbing the thumbnail and displaying it:

query_posts('posts_per_page=1&orderby=rand'); if (have_posts()) :         echo "<ul>";         while (have_posts()) : the_post();                 echo "<li>".get_the_title();                 echo the_post_thumbnail(array(220,200));                 echo "</li>";                   endwhile;         echo "</ul>"; endif; wp_reset_query();

You can see the finished results again on my development blog Self Sufficiency Guide, though I might have moved things around by the time you read this.

Conclusion:

See how easy it is to make your own custom widget that can do exactly what you want? Even if you don’t understand 90% of the code I’ve shown you today, you should still be able to customise it somewhat by just changing variables or outputting different HTML. We wrote a whole widget today, but you could easily use just the new query and loop code on any of your page templates.

 

 

 

 

10+ New & Free Portfolio WordPress Themes For 2011

 

 

 

10+ New & Free Portfolio WordPress Themes For 2011

via MakeUseOf by Nancy Messieh on 5/21/11

We’ve said it before, but it’s worth saying again. One of WordPress‘ greatest strengths is its flexibility. The blogging platform can be pretty much anything you choose to make it. So it’s no surprise that it’s an extremely popular platform amongst photographers and designers.

The flexible appearance combined with an easy-to-use backend, and plugins to add just about any feature you can think of, WordPress offers photographers a great way to put together a portfolio. If you’ve been looking for a theme, and aren’t sure where to start, check out this list of some of the latest, professional looking portfolios available for download for free. Also be sure to check out our previous posts featuring some great free WordPress portfolio themes.

Revolt Theme

Ideal for graphic or web designers, Revolt is a fun and quirky theme which allows you to showcase your best work. If you use the theme on your website, you can also get yourself featured in the community section of the website.

View the demo or download the theme.

Imbalance

Imbalance is a clean, grid-like theme which puts all of the focus on the images. If you want to accompany your photos with some text, it is displayed when you hover the cursor over the images. Imbalance is suitable for anyone looking for a fresh theme to showcase their work.

View the demo or download the theme.

Portfolium

From the same designers as Imbalance comes Portfolium, another clean, grid-like theme, but this time with a darker background. Portfolium is suitable for photographers, designers and artists.

View the Demo or download the theme.

Mansion

Graph Paper Press is a great source for impressive themes for free. Mansion is another grid-based theme, which takes up all of the screen real estate with your photos. Mansion also makes it easier to manage a photoblog with a great backend where you can upload, resize, and crop your images all in one place.

View the demo or download the theme.

Big Square

Big Square is the ideal theme if you want to feature a set of photos in each post. This can be a great tool for featuring series of photos or all the photos from one specific shoot.

View the demo or download the theme.

Fotofolio

From the same designer as Big Square, comes Fotofolio, a great theme for photographers or designers who are using their site as a means of attracting new clients. The theme has a professional landing page, space for a portfolio, blog and testimonials.

View the demo or download the theme.

Pure II

Pure II is a good theme for a photographer or designer who finds blogging just as important. The theme which focuses primarily on the blogging side of things also comes with a custom page template for a portfolio.

View the demo or download the theme.

Praseodymiumic

Praseodymiumic is a free theme with a small slideshow, space for a testimonial and grid-based portfolio all on the homepage. The theme makes it easy to throw together a professional looking site in no time.

View the demo or download the theme.

Video

If you’re looking for a free WordPress portfolio theme to showcase videos, look no further than Templatic’s succinctly named Video. The homepage features a video slideshow, as well as thumbnails of various video categories.

View the demo or download the theme.

Dessign

Design have several impressive free themes for the typography buff, but they are all quite similar, making it even harder to choose which one you might use. The slight variations between each theme include colours, background and various ways of putting the grid-based theme to good use.

Modern is a minimalist black and white, grid-based theme with a sidebar.

View the demo or download the theme.

Contemporary brings in a dash of yellow the theme, along with a graph-paper like background.

View the demo or download the theme.

Studio is less traditional and more quirky in its layout. The black and white theme is great for the innovative and creative designer.

View the demo or download the theme.

Minimal, the last of Dessign’s theme, is also black and white theme which lives up to its name. The theme comes with a custom page template for a portfolio, a blog, and a homepage with incorporates both.

View the demo or download the theme.