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Archive for the ‘Software Review’ Category
  1. A liitle while ago, I made a sponsored post on this website about something called Webfetti. For one reason or another, it generated a huge amount of traffic. This lead me to look at what some people thought of the toolbar and how it was working for them.

    Although it seems to have generated a serious amount of buzz, it doesn’t all seem to be positive. As a matter of fact, most of the incoming visitors were looking to uninstall webfetti.

    As you might have guessed, I didn’t test the software myself. I didn’t really see a need to as I have no problem customizing my profiles manually. For others it isn’t that simple. I would definitely recommend doing a little research before installing software to customize your myspace. There are hundreds of online Myspace profile editors that will do it for you. As I mentioned in the other post, most of these sites will try to nab a backlink out of you for supplying the code to edit your profile. If this is the case, I have a quickfix for you below.

    How to uninstall WebFetti

    Some programs provide an uninstall; The ones that don’t can be uninstalled by going to:
    Start Menu>
    Control Panel>
    Add/Remove Programs>
    Wait for the program list to load and select the one to remove.

    Then hopefully most of the program is removed, but the registry can sometimes contain leftovers.
    Start>
    All Programs>
    Accessories>
    System Tools>
    Restore>

    Restore to as recent a date as possible before you installed the program causing the problems. You may still need to reset some of your IE or Firefox options as this is a toolbar (and they ARE usually naughty like that).

    Another option is to run REGEDIT and look for anything suspicious that starts when Windows starts.

    Removing Links from your recently edited profile

    Most Myspace profile editors will supply you with a large and confusing code. It will usually start with a tag that looks like this:< style type= “text/css” >< /style >
    This is the part you need to keep your profile looking as it did in the editor. In order to remove the the link to the profile editor website, all you have to do is find the tag that looks like this: < a href=”http://www.pimpmyprofile.com” > Of coarse the text in between the quotations is going to be whatever site you got the script from, but you get the idea. What you need to do is highlight from the beginning tag < a href=”sitename” > to the end tag, which will look like < /a >. It may be a capitol or lowercase a, but these are anchor tags, which are what makes links.

    So now you have a safer way to edit your profiles, without installing any spyware or malware carrying toolbars. A good place to start is with Thomas’ Myspace Editor. Very simple to use and can be found with a simple Google search.

  2. googleword

    I was talking to some friends about how we all hate that the school uses Microsoft Word. After trying to find a Microsoft Word compatible word processor, many of them had given in and made the jump to actually buy microsoft software to use at home.

    “WHAT?!?!” I replied in horror. I couldn’t wrap my head around it.

    Some students use a free alternative to MS Word called Open Office. OpenOffice does everything you can do with MS Word and then some. It is probably the best open source word processor. However theres still the matter of physically transferring the document by email, usb key or whatever mobile device and then hoping it will look the same when it is printed out at school (cuz you know you don’t have any ink at home and you might as well use the school’s ink for all the college tuition your paying).

    I prefer to work on and store my files in the same place with Google Docs. That way I always know I can access them on any computer anywhere. I don’t have to open my text files in any other program to read and print the documents, but if I wanted to Google exports in several useful formats such as PDF, .txt file, Word, OpenOffice format and even HTML.
    I’ve also used Docs and Spreadsheets to work on group projects because we don’t have to be in the same place or even working at the same time and we can communicate and collaborate.

    Apart from the collaborative features and optimum accessibility offered from Docs is the fact that you will save space on your PC and you can create and edit different types of documents all in one place. MS Word is part of Microsoft Office, a suite that installs several programs to do different types of things. Powerpoint for presentations, Word for word processing,   Outlook for emailing, Excel, Access,  and so on and so on. These are all things you can do from your Google account, most of them right inside Docs and you don’t need to install any software to do it.

    If you haven’t tried Google Docs and Spreadsheets for yourself you don’t know what you’re missing. You can save yourself dozens of headaches and all you need is a Google Account.

  3. In light of the recent contest announcement, in which the prize I am looking to give away to one lucky reader is a 1 year subscription to a MyBlogLog pro account, I thought I would take a minute to discuss the benefits of ‘going pro’.

    Essentially, what is affected by making the pro upgrade is, first and foremost, your stats tracking. MyBlogLog has a very interesting stats page that allows you to see where readers came from (reffering site), what readers viewed (pagesviews), and what readers clicked (clickthroughs). These are probably the three most important things any blogger needs to know about their readers.

    With the free version of MyBlogLog you are able to see the last ten of each statistic on a given day. You are only able to view the stats for the previous day that you are looking. Yesterday. If you want to see the stats for today. That is, if you want to see your stats updated in real time, you need to have a pro account. Also, if you want to see more than the latest ten stats for the day you are looking, you also need a pro account.

    Now that you know what you are getting, and are able to see the value in this prize. Don’t you feel its worth linking to this site for a chance at the free MBL pro account? Its’ valued at $25 but all it will cost you is the time it takes to post a link to Needless Productions. Even if your name isn’t drawn at the end of the contest (October 26th) you will still see the benefits of a free backlink for everyone who enters in the wrap-up post.  Check out the contest details here.

  4. Flash animation began as a convenient and quick loading way of putting rich content into your site. In its’ glory days, many a band websites could be found in entirely flash versions that loaded slick, moving graphics and lots of cool slides, fades and other transitions.

    Recently, Flash has become the topic of scrutiny for many web development experts. Some still say it is useful when done tastefully, others just plain hate it. Flash animations, especially lengthy loading intros, are fast becoming recognized as a visitor turn off. Especially with things like AJAX taking over in the department of page flashiness i.e. - dynamic animations without reloading the page. But since the advent of megasites like YouTube and other sites utilizing .FLA or .FLV players, many developers have taken a second look.

    Flash is easily one of the best ways to deliver movies and music without offering direct download. The old fashioned way was to embed with Media Player or Quicktime, or even link direct to the files themselves, which would cause quicktime to fill the entire browser window. Now website owners can embed a player of their own design right into the pages of their site, with a relatively certain idea of what the end-user is going to see.

    The video gallery right here at Needless Productions uses a flash player that loads movies quickly and easily. The funny thing about Flash is that what began as something that over saturated the web with entire flash websites that took days to load for some, seems to have found a home in the world of Audio Visual delivery online.

    A great example of how accessible this technology has become is the Riva encoder and player. Riva encodes your video files to the FLV format, and comes with a player that you can embed on your site. I chose to store the Riva player singularly and dynamically embed each video as it is called by the browser using PHP, but it is primarily available as a stand alone player, or to be individually embedded into HTML pages.

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