This beta project helps you to build an online presentation. It’s fast and elegant. The fonctionnalites are quite complete, and far enough to play with it for a while.

That I liked too, is that the “offline” application -based on Adobe Air – is exactly the same as the one online.

I’m impressed!

The explanations of John McWade are brief and clear. It’s 15 minutes worth to spend!

On this Google doc, they gathered and presented the best of all stuffs we can see or do with the Web. It was just unimaginable, just a few years ago.

You have to use an HTML 5 compatible browser such as the latest Google Chrome. Or if you prefer a reinforced anonymity, I suggest you to use ChromePlus instead.

Enjoy!

So, one extra plug-in has been developed for this ultra mandatory feature .

Firstly download the ‘foo_wlm‘ plug-in. The installation is a piece of cake.

1. Just press CTRL-P to pop-up the ‘Preferences’ panel, and click on ‘Components’.

2. Click the ‘Install…’ button and browse to the previously downloaded foo_wlm.zip file.

3. Once opened, apply the changes

4. You ‘ll be prompted to restart your foobar2000 application

5. Once restarted, a new menu ‘Tools/WLM’ appear in the ‘Preferences’ screen.

6. Check you have ‘Enable Now Playing’ ticked. And what’s all!

You’ll find on this site tons of differents projects, such as a mini camera, or a robot, or a 100% “free” notebook. If you’re stuck on this site, I’m not responsible for all your sleepless nights

They are good sources of information, if like me, you want to have some privacy, or by-pass some bandwidth restriction from your ISP, you must have a look at the following.

The first one is vpnblog (French only), it describes some (quite few) VPN services. But It details which protocol is supported/delivered by the VPN provider.

The second one is start-vpn, it’s far more complete and based upon real users experience.

The funny part of the story, is I just selected my VPN provider in a totally fortuity way! . I just read a VPN provider name within an endless post comment thread on a news site, and I pick it up. Then, and only then, I google for more complete reviews, and discover that this VPN provider was ranked 1st and 2nd on these two blogs sites!

As I prefer to use OpenVPN as client, my choice was very very lucky. The winner is: VPNTunnel.se. I’ll write a more detailed post about it.

The targeted sites are all streaming sites such as YouTube, DailyMotion, and the common direct download sites (MegaUpload, RapidShare, HotFile, FileServe, etc). The filtering consist in cutting down the bandwidth allowed for theses sites.

During the night, it remains possible to download at full speed; i.e. about 1Mo/s for a good ASDL line. But during the day, don’t think you’ll have more than 100ko/s (200ko/s if you’re a lucky guy).

In order to demonstrate this bandwidth filtering. I use the famous jDownloader tool and proceed to some tests, using hotfile.com and fileserve.com.

The result is final! Transfering the same files, without VPN, stall to 100ko/s. In fact, it’s even 60ko/s on the evening. Whereas using a VPN, I’m at full speed! What’s mean I got my 1Mo/s over the 1Mo/s allocated for jDownloader.

Of course, I did the experience several times, at different moment, with different DDL sites, but with the same result.

I noticed that some QoS is applied on the IP traffic. Probably to advantage the TV stream which need a guaranteed bandwidth to properly function. But I don’t belong to the TV addicted generation.

He developed and put online many graphical and physics experimental tools. Some of them, like the ‘flame‘ application are truly usable for a quick making or quick shot.

Actually, visit his tools page, and play a bit with all of them. It’s just, pure fun! You’ll be surprised to play as an artist!

This theme, is not only elegant, but easy to use. Associated with the TPB plugin, it allows any users to add and manage personnal photos at breaze.

I pulled up my socks and made changes within the code to adapt theme to my wishes. Here are all the changes I’ve made through.

Code fixing

• Open short tag replaced
• All open short tag have been replaced with full tag (standard form)
  <? xxx ?> –> <?php xxx; ?>
  <?=xxxx?>  –> <?php echo xxx; ?>
• Reorder SQL statements
  Mostly for readability purposes, and maintenance.
• Rewrite <a href> dynamic clauses
  To have a proper formatting under (php) text editor, the delimiter “, initially within ‘if blocks’, has moved outside.
• blog.js, browser.js: bug fixing on panels srolling, code improvements.
• Code reorganization (new directory structure)
  All Ajax stubs are put together.
  CSS is splitted, and match the page hierarchy.
  global code reorganization.
• Archives.php
  Add the get_header() standard call.
  Image overflow bug corrected (conflict with browse-load.gif).
• Header.php
  Javascript object initialization (occured for blog.js and browser.js).
• page.php “templated” for all usage.
• Support of WordPress 2.9.2, Mootools-Core 1.2.4 and Mootools-More 1.2.4.4
• Tested on WampServer 2.0i
• Code correction to pass the HTML Validator!

Features changed

• Change Overlay panels usage (on both Home and Single pages)
  The change occurs inside index.php, I like to activate the scrollable panels upon both home and single pages.

New Features

• Keyboard support
  You can navigate with keys, open or close panels and advance or return to shots. See ‘About’ page for all keys.
• Dynamic comments content
  Comments are loaded thru AJAX, and displayed as a scollable panel. Like notes and exif panels.
• Optional Register and Login pages (Activation through the theme admin page)
  You can add to the upper menu, a link for Register and a direct link for login. Usefull if you want to open your blog for registration, and if you often change you blog configuration.
• Add tags and Taxinomy Categories. With the admin theme panel, you can select the following combination:
  → Year
  → Year + Tag
  → Year + Categories
  → Year + Tag + Categories
• Keep track of selected page, append a bold underline segment under page title (CSS+index.php).
• Footer
  The footer now details all sub-components and their release. It includes both post and comments feeds, and include the new copyright URL field.

So, you can download the modified theme here: Reflection Theme Extended (285), and see it in action there.

No wait, here the list:

SEO

• All in one SEO: Just the best plugin for all SEO purposes. Everybody use it!
• Google Analyticator: Interconnect with your Google Analytics account. It suits perfect to track your site with this Google service.
• Google XML Sitemaps with qTranslate support: Help the google robot by indexing the site. I use a qTranslate modified version of the Google XML Sitemaps.
• Enforce www. Preference: Are you www.yourdomain.com, or yourdomain.com? I’ve chosen (2). www. prefix is no more relevant nowadays.

Optimizing

• Cleanup WordPress: A very useful plugin to strip the database. It can remove all old post revisions, that are completly unusefull for a personal blog. Can help to save space on the database.

Performance

• WP Super Cache: Very fast caching plugin for WordPress.
• WP Minify: combine and compress JS and CSS files to improve page load time. Does not work on all theme; but when it does, it’s amazing!

Backuping

• WP-DBDatabase: Manages your WordPress database. Allows you to optimize database, repair database, backup database, restore database, delete backup database , drop/empty tables and run selected queries. Supports automatic scheduling of backing up and optimizing of database.

Survey

• StatPress reloaded: No, Neo is not here . Improved real time stats for your blog. Simple and synthetic.
• WassUp: WordPress plugin to analyze your visitors traffic with real time stats, chart and a lot of chronological informations. It has sidebar Widget support to show current online visitors and other statistics.

Multilingual

• qTranslate: Adds userfriendly multilingual content support into WordPress. I think the best approach for multilingual blog.

I use many other plugins, including two of mine . But I don’t consider them as essential!

The translation is available NeoRouter - Français (268), the complete installation procedure is stored within archive.

I have bought this nice laptop about two years ago. And when Windows 7 came to a finalized state, I wished to replace my anemia Vista by this new system from Redmond. The installation ran like a charm; and everything seemed to work properly; till i try the function keys. I realized that absolutly no function keys were working. And for a laptop, it’s deadly to not be able to adjust sound level and, even worse, the screen brightness. So it became a ‘sticky’ laptop for a while on my desktop, untill i found a way to install all proper drivers and all necessary Samsung software to return my laptop to a travel usage. Samsung dedicated software I looked for any software compatible Windows 7 on the Samsung support web site. Of course, there are not! My model is too old (at least for marketing) to get some upgrade. So, I turned to other new models supporting Windows 7, and selected the Q320 (the higher Qxxx model available to this date). I selected some Samsung software that I need (I zapped others as they have actually minor interest to me).

• Easy Battery Manager 4.0.0.3
• Easy Display Manager 3.0.3.5
• Easy Network Manager 4.0.2.5

As these new package are dedicated to Windows 7, you don’t have to use the famous “Vista SP2 compatibility on setup.exe” tip to make it run properlly. So, once installed, and one reboot later; I was pleased to see the sound, network functions keys perfectly working. All but brightness . What’s the heck with this function? Damn, It was too easy. Then, I tried to check the Intel VGA driver, and install the latest release…for nothing . I’ve tried several minors release without success. I spent many times on searching thru blogs and documentations untill i read this:

The ACPI layer

Windows supports two ways to integrate brightness control: Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) miniport device driver interfaces (DDIs) and Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) firmware control methods. ACPI control methods are the preferred implementation solution for new platforms.

The ACPI layer is a new to Windows 7. Hum…maybe the new Intel VGA driver use the ACPI protocol, and no more the WDDM? I have to look backward for a previous branch release of the video driver.

The Intel VGA Driver masked avanger!

So, the last issue is to find the right driver compatible with my motherboard AND the samsung EDM. Unfortunatly, the 8.15 branch release of VGA driver doesn’t work support WDDM anymore on this motherboard? I gave a try to the the v7.14 branch. I’ve downloaded and installed the higher version of the 7.14 branch.

• Intel VGA v7.14.10.1409

One reboot later (see below for details), Bingo !!!. It finally works, at the end . NOTE: I had difficulties to remove the v8.15 video driver release. To do so, firstly, I’ve uninstalled the driver first, but not rebooted yet! Secondly, I’ve installed the v7.14 release before rebooting. And that way, I made it!

Buy me a coffe

Ok, you think “Yet Another One Online Storage”. I say yes, but firstly the user interface is really nice. And it’s fun to play with the timeline, or browse your personal memories in spiral mode.

The caveat is you can only have 1 Go to save all. That’s not much, and you have to carefully select that your best memories; but it’s 100% free.

It worth a try.

The new Windows 7 menu bar is good, but not enough to launch my favorites games apps. So, i’ve found – within forum comments – a very small (380KB), but nice application: the SE-TrayMenu.

This software add a small icon in the tray menu. You just have to roll over the icon and a menu pop-up, allowing you to click on the desired application to run. Everything is customizable, the layout, the theme, and of course the shortcuts.

So i searched for an alternative to this excellent software. I finally stumble upon Lingoes. And, it rocks! 95% of Babylon functionalities, contextual translation, etc…and free!

You have to be fast, and greedy on your movement to max score on the game. For me, finding a solution is already hard enough

Click here to view the embedded video.

Exemple:

• Targeted computer name SweetHome
• User name on this host Daddy

So, the complete login name to type in is SweetHome\Daddy

In action:

Logmein under Windows Vista
Logmein under Windows Seven

It’s nearly like the usual Tefal pan (the famous non-stick one)… but much much better for the health: no more Teflon but only ceramic!

No more reason to not do cooking, isnt’it ?

Those Western Digital disks are my favorites. Their hability to stop the spinning after 10 minutes of inactivity is perfect as a solution for a cheap server.

Of course, The USB 2 connectivity is not really fast! Therefore a complete backup between the two 1 To USB disk take around 48h !!!