Cheers!

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http://www.google.com/dictionary

Enjoy!

PS: I prefer LEO, Cambridge Dictionaries Online, Merrian-Webster and Urbandictionary over Google’s somewhat yet limited dictionary.

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1. How to enable the New Google Search!
2. Improve your search results with Google’s new Caffeine Sandbox!
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How to enable it:

1. Go to google.com
2. Copy/Paste this into your web browser address field and hit enter:

   javascript:void(document.cookie="PREF=ID=20b6e4c2f44943bb:U=4bf292d46faad806:TM=1249677602:LM=1257919388:S=odm0Ys-53ZueXfZG;path=/;  domain=.google.com");

3. Reload google.com

Bear in mind, I have no idea how to revert this change. Still I like it this way much more!

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1. Improve your search results with Google’s new Caffeine Sandbox!
2. Google launches its own dictionary!
3. Force Firefox Add-ons to work with Firefox 3.6 betas!

In its raw form, WordPress provides everything one needs to start blogging immediately. That’s the biggest plus! I’ve tested a few blog and CMSs and a lot of them were either very bloated or had almost no customization available.

Check out the 22 plugins I’m using…

Add to Any: Share/Bookmark/Email Button (download):

Social media becomes increasingly popular and readers like to share what they read with their friends. To make it convenient for the reader, Add to Any provides a button with many popular social media sites. Sharing was never easier.

After The Deadline (download):

After The Deadline is an integrated spell/grammar/style-checker which operates externally. It uses a database with thousand of users linked to it. Think cloud and spell/grammar/style-checking.

All in One SEO Pack (download):

Optimizes your blog for Search Engines.

Configurable Tag Cloud (download):

The standard tag cloud provided by WordPress.org was not satisfactory and I was too lazy fiddling in the  PHP files to style and configure it to my liking. Configurable Tag Cloud is what I wanted. A customizable widget!

Contact Form 7 (download):

A highly customizable contact form. Check “contact” in the navigation bar to see it in action!

Cute Profiles (download):

I ran out of space when I was linking my social profiles in the navigation bar. Cute Profiles adds all your Social Profile icons vertically on left or right side of your pages, which will remain visible all the time though the page is scrolled and without consuming the sidebar space.

FancyBox for WordPress (download):

A fancy way to display images on your blog. Using jQuery it enables you to use animations for resized images. From thumbnail to full-image and back to thumbnail.

Fast Tube (download):

A fast and very easy way to embed YouTube videos into your blog.

GD Star Rating (download):

Giving the reader the ability to rate your posts, pages and/or comments via a very complex star-rating system. It takes some time to properly configure it. But default settings are good and ready to go.

Google XML Sitemaps (download):

Having XML Sitemaps is a must if you want your blog to be SOE friendly. Though the add-on says Google XML, it actually creates the XML Sitemaps for Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com

Ozh’ Admin Drop Down Menu (download):

I didn’t like how all the admin menu links were left in a bar, so I got this one. The admin menu links are organized in a neat horizontal CSS driven drop down menu this way.

Quotes Collection (download):

A widget displaying your collected/favourite quotes.

Revision Control (download):

By default WordPress saves each post/page’s content each time you save as a revision, so you can go back to a specific revision. I don’t need it since I use external editors for that. Besides that it’s a waste of database space.

Search Everything (download):

WordPress default search is very limited, and I wanted to be able to search a lot more. Search Everything provides just that. I can search posts, tags, links, pages, comments, drafts, category names, and a lot more.

TinyMCE Advanced (download):

WordPress’ default editor has too few options for me, and I often had to manually enter my desired HTML-tag via the “HTML” editor. TinyMCE Advanced take care of that by providing you more options.

WordPress.com Stats (download):

Statistics, statistics and more statistics. If you want a lot of statistics, this is the plug-in for you. Though there are better statistics tools, like Piwik.

WP-DBManager (download):

Manage your WordPress database. Optimize, repair, back-up and more.

WP-PageNavi (download):

A fancier way to display page navigation. See at the bottom of the blog. Highly customizable via CSS.

WP-PostViews (download):

Providing a way to show the count of post-views. You can exclude bots, and restrict the counting to everybody, registered users, or guests only.

WP-SpamFree (download):

Comment-Spam is a problem! And WP-SpamFree takes care of that, I mean REALLY takes care of that!

WP Security Scan (download):

Scans your WordPress installation for security vulnerabilities and suggests corrective actions.

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (download):

I wanted to be able to link my posts to other related posts. This plug-in uses, in my opinion, a very good algorithm linking related posts and showing them at the end of each post. Algorithm is to some extend customizable by allowing, excluding, adding extras, considering with extra weight, etc.

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Over time it’s get filled up with unnecessary and old info if you want, and there’s a simple method to ditch those useless info and speed up your Firefox considerably, or like most of the guides say to “vacuum” it.

Use it once in a while, I’ve seen an improvement on my Firefox since I used it.

1. Go to “Tools” -> “Error Console”
2. Paste this in the “Code” text box:

   Components.classes["@mozilla.org/browser/nav-history-service;1"].getService(Components.interfaces.nsPIPlacesDatabase).DBConnection.executeSimpleSQL("VACUUM");

3. Press enter or click “evaluate”
4. Your Firefox will freeze for a short time, just wait
5. Enjoy your speed up Firefox!

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1. 5 easy-to-do tweaks to make your Firefox faster!
2. Firefox 3.5 Add-Ons Round-up!
3. How to fix the video lag in Firefox!

Yet deep down it DOES work differently and it most certainly delivers the promised improved search speed and better search results.

What does better mean? Well that’s up to everybodys point of view, for me at least the newly structured search results are in fact way better structured  than the old ones.

So without further ado, go on and test the new infrastructure: http://www2.sandbox.google.com

PS: Since it’s in beta testing stage expect the new search engine to be down occasionally!

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1. How to enable the New Google Search!
2. Google launches its own dictionary!
3. How to share your email publicly and avoiding spam bots!

Firefox 3.5 is out already a few days! Get if folks! Ditch your Opera, IE, Chrome and Safari!

I thought I’d share my Add-Ons I pretty much use on daily basis.

Adblock Plus:
Ads, oh how I loathe them. This addons takes care of every ad I came across until today. I’m 100% ad-free! Of course websites who rely on their only income, ads, will suffer from this.

So remember, if you have a favorite site you frequently visit and it relies on ad revenue to keep alive, un-block and support it!

Fasterfox Lite:
Remember the 5 tweaks I posted way back then? Well this Add-On takes care of it automatically. Except this LITE version, which is the only one functioning for 3.5, doesn’t have prefetching.

If you don’t like to do these manual tweaks this is the Add-On for you.

Edit 25.09.2009: Fasterfox has been updated to run with 3.5 since August 26th 2009. Not the Lite, the normal one!

Flagfox:
Since I sometime need to know about the location of a website or its server, Flagfox gives me their IP, location and ask whois detailed information, if needed to be.

Gmail Notifier:
If you own a single GMail account this is small addon to notify you if you got new mails in the inbox. There’s a GMail Manager for those with multiple accounts.

NoScript:
Perhaps the most important Add-On for Firefox. It is, assumed it’s correctly configured, what makes Firefox and in turn your computer so resilient to scripts, Keyloggers and viruses.

I can pretty much click any link I come across without fear of somehow installing malicious software, keyloggers or viruses.

This Add-On is constantly being updated to keep up against scripts, keyloggers and viruses who try to circumvent NoScript. 3 cheers to open-source!

PDF Download:
I think the name explains it all. It allows you to choose between downloading a PDF file or opening it up

Skipscreen:
With 1-click-hosters such as Rapidshare, Netload, Megaupload, etc. becoming widely popular this Add-On is pretty much a must have if you want to skip all the unnecessary pages to go directly to download.

Saved me a lot of time, this diamond!

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1. How to fix the video lag in Firefox!
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Identi.ca because I can link my Twitter account to Identi.ca and post only on Identi.ca to make my notices (identi.ca) also apear as tweets on Twitter.

The question, when I heard about such microblogging services, I asked myself was when should I be using it.

Then I looked at my blog and thought about it. It ain’t that bad if you think about it.

I use Twitter and Identi.ca for distributing interesting links I stumble across while surfing  and the occasional, unsubstantial notice/tweet.

So why would I waste a whole lot of blog space when I can put the links in 140 characters. Sure I can collect the links and present them in weekly or daily blog posts, but then it’ll be lacking something only the microblogging services offer: immediateness (huh, that’s some strange word I came up with).

You see microblogging services, unlike personal blogs, are available and know to millions of people. While I have to promote my blog to gain users, on Twitter and Identi.ca there already are millions of users ready to read.

When I share a link it becomes, on Identi.ca at least, visible to everybody right the second I posted it. (On Twitter you have to be registered and following me in order to immediately get the tweet I just posted!).

Microblogging services, they are great, ain’t they? What say you, dear reader?

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Anyway while surfing yesterday I stumbled on http://scr.im . A service which allows you to hide your email address until the person who wants to know it personally verifies  a given code. This way Spam Bots are closed out!

All you have to do is enter your email address and choose your own URL like http://scr.im/WHATEVER ! Then share it. The person who clicks http://scr.im/WHATEVER will get a code and has to match from 8 random, and 1 exact match given.

http://mailhide.recaptcha.net is a similar service, expect you have to manually enter a given captcha.

Now we can carry on debating whether such services are useful or not. I say to each his/her own! No more stupid  nocando(at)whateverservice dot com !

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1. Stop Spam, use temporary and disposable mail inboxes!
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When I prank my friends and don’t want them to get alerted by the URL I send them, then I use so called url shortener. I came across aplenty of them. Some bad ones, some very good ones.

I also often use URL shortener when I want to share some eBay auctions. They do have some ridiculous long URLs. There are way to many reasons to list as to why you could or should use an URL shortening service.

Now my favourite of all url shortening services is http://shuurl.com because you get a screenshoted “preview” of what the linked web site looks like. You also get security stats compiled by the SHUURL community (Folks who, eventually, visit and security-rate the site). It helps if you are one of the more paranoid ones (like me).[SHUURL Don Salva's Blog , SHUURL Don Salva's Gallery]

Then there are http://bit.ly, http://tinyarro.ws, http://tinyurl.com, http://is.gd and http://snipr.com who do just that, URL shortening. And many more who I probably forgot to mention.

http://1link.in and http://linkbun.ch on the other hand are special. They allow you to shorten multiple URLs into 1 tiny URL.

http://tr.im and http://burnurl.com also are special. Tr.im shortens your URL and updates your Twitter or Identi.ca status. This service also tracks stats and allows commenting on your URLs. BurnURL however allows stats and social sharing beyond Twitter.

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1. How to share your email publicly and avoiding spam bots!
2. Mircoblogging, it ain’t so bad! Or is it?
3. Using Firefox 3.x? Speed it up by vacuuming its SQLite database!