John Hesch

Quick list of Google Calendar tips.

I’m probably late on this but I just found this Firefox extension that enables you to send SMS text messages. I have been using the Google webpage feature for sending SMS but just found the extension.

If you use the GIMP as your image editor here is a free download of a set of 50 brushes created from assorted cursors. This site also has a bunch of tutorials on using the GIMP. Including:

Making Selections

• rectangles + ellipses
• hand-drawn
• fuzzy select
• select by color
• paths and trickiness
• selection options

Transparency

• when image is created
• for one color
• all but a selection
• layered opacity

Using Text

• basic text tool
• freetype plugin
• Xtns>Logos

Misc

• image rotation
• drop shadows
• controlling contrast
• limit colors 1

MyFoxyWeb

MyFoxyWeb2 is a Firefox extension that downloads your bookmarks from Yahoo! My Web 2.0 and stores them locally.

Digg dugg up this website with an ordered list of 195 free online programming books. If you look in the author’s list of comments there are lots of other sources for free programming books as well.

Good site to bookmark.

Quickmail is a PHP script that reads email from a mail server and outputs it in RSS format.

A Whole Lotta Nothing points to a JavaScript demo on how forms should treat tab key presses within a textarea field.

FORTUNE’s annual ranking of companies that rate high with employees.

This is a handy web based tool for checking how many of your web pages are indexed and how many back links to your site are listed. The tool searches Google, Yahoo, Msn, alltheweb, altavista and sympatico. You can input lists of domain names and download check report free.

Mozilla issued an update to the Thunderbird email client yesterday. This takes it to version 1.5.0.2. And while your updating, check out this article about using Thunderbird like a pro. The article discloses some ‘hidden’ features not covered in the online help that can significantly improve your emailing habits. And since Thunderbird’s functionality can be expanded via extensions, you can add some clever features to it too.

Last November I reported that Microsoft was releasing free Visual Studio one year licenses. Today Microsoft announced that all Visual Studio 2005 Express Editions including Visual Basic, Visual C#, Visual J#, Visual C++, and Visual Web Developer Express will be free permanently!

Since November over 5 million copies of Express have been downloaded.

Feedburner recently introduced a FeedBurner Email service which delivers your RSS feed via email. Many people are more comfortable receiving site updates and news via email as opposed to using a feed reader. Feedburner provides FeedBurner Email free of charge and the only branding that goes into the email is a short sentence at the bottom of the email that says “Email Delivery powered by FeedBurner.”

To activate this service, log into your FeedBurner account and make your way to the “Publicize” tab.

In FireFox under Tools, Options, Privacy, Passwords, and View Saved Passwords all of your web passwords are stored. This is a management console for you to delete username and passwords from storage. But, there is also a Remove-All button next to the Remove button. If you ever accidentally clicked Remove-All you would lose all of your stored usernames and passwords. There is no "Are you sure?" warning.

This hack by Chris to the userChrome.css file will remove the Remove-All button from the console.

userChrome.css is not created by default. You will need to locate the userChrome-example.css file in your FireFox profile directory. Rename the file to userChrome.css and add the following line to the end of the file:

I added the following to mine so I can keep track of why I made the change and where the source came from:

Save the file (remember to save it as userChrome.css) and restart FireFox. The Remove-All button is now gone and safe from accidental use.

Internet users in the United States conducted 6.4 bln online searches in March 2006 and 2.7 bln of those search queries were made on Google sites according to ZDNet Research. What's amazing to me is that Google continues to gain market share for the eighth consecutive month.

I remember when Google first started out and the funny thing is their search page looked just like it does now. There have been a few links added, but I remember a very simple page with lots of white space and a search box in the center. I think one of the ways Google continues to dominate the search industry is their ability to generate 99% of their revenue from search, and then use that revenue to build very cool web and computer based applications to give away for free. How can you not love someone that gives you something very cool? And for free!

Digg dug up a list of the Top 50 Linux Apps which turns out to be a pretty good list. Categories include games and entertainment, multimedia authoring, media players (audio and video), word processing and publishing, and basic productivity.