LetMeType is an open source application that suggests words and phrases as-you-type. The clever little application builds an index of words that you type and pops up with auto-complete suggestions of words as you are typing. LetMeType is built into the OS and so it works in all applications. Like PureText, a plain text copy tool, this is a small little app and it doesn’t take much time to get used to, but can give you great productivity boost.
Since I haven’t posted for over a month, I figured I could at least share this useless Javascript hack. Actually it may have some use but the ethics may be questionable… Anyway, it’s quite fun! On any Web page, enter the following in your browser’s address bar and hit enter. You can then delete and edit the Web page contents.
javascript: document.body.contentEditable = "true"; document.designMode= "on"; void 0
For example, I went to Google and did a search for the “best blog ever”. Needless to say Da Vinci Planet wasn’t number 1 (or 2, or 3…), but then after pasting the text above into the address bar I was able to edit the Web page and voilà I’m number 1!
In a previous post on the best Web analytics solutions I mentioned that in my view Omniture is the clear leader in enterprise Web analytics and that Google Analytics is the best free solution. Omniture has spoilt me and I often wish I could get a little more out of GA (which I use on Da Vinci Planet). After some digging around I found a few hacks that enable valuable reports in Google Analytics, including full referrer URLs, file downloads, and custom segmentation. More »
Most people know that I am a portable app fan and that I would almost exclusively try to use portable applications or Web applications rather than “installs”. The problem with regular, non-portable applications is that they rely on the Windows registry and that they are typically distributed in many folders. So when you need to reinstall Window all your settings are lost and you need to completely reinstall the applications. In this post I would like to describe the reasons why I prefer portable apps and how you can manage them better. More »
Here’s a useful guide for everything related to Web caching. Webmasters inevitably have cache related issues at some point in time. The author describes different types of caches and how to control them.
1. Go to google.com.
2. Click on Maps.
3. Click on Get Directions.
4. From: New York, New York.
5. To: Paris, France.
(Or go directly to the link here)
6. Then, read line #23.
7. Laugh.
Over the last couple of weeks I tested various note-taking applications. I was looking for software to help me to better organize my typical daily notes, memos, ideas, to-do lists and to clean up the myriads of text files that I have used for the purpose. KeePass is perfect for saving and organizing passwords, but there are many other important snippets of text that didn’t have a good home. The criterion is that I wanted a free, light-weight and portable note-taking application to help me be more productive. There are hundreds of on-line tools, but I prefer off-line tools for this purpose and I also discovered dozens of sticky note applications which I find generally messy. Wherever I looked, EverNote showed up and it turned out to be my favorite, but other applications that I reviewed include TiddlyWiki, NeoMem and wikidPad. More »
If you own, manage or are in some way involved in a Web site then chances are that you want to know what kind of demographic you are attracting. Are they male or female, young or old? It’s especially interesting when you’re considering paid keywords to attract users. For instance, you may have been trying to target the hippies from the 60′s using the keyword flower power; meanwhile you are attracting young women in their twenties and early thirties! Microsoft adCenter Labs, the R&D team for paid search at Microsoft, offers surprisingly cool paid search researching tools. Their analysis is based on MSN Search data which represents a significant sample group, even if they’re small compared to Google. Their Demographics Prediction tool returns this interesting and visually pleasing result for flower power:More »
John Chow has a fascinating post (and blog for that matter) on how he is making money from blogging. He decided to monetize his blog as an experiment to see if he could make money for himself from the Internet. John, like most Web professionals, has experience in telling others how to run their Web sites, but he wondered if he could make money himself… like most Web professionals do! Turns out he is doing very well – good enough to make it a full time job, but he also shows that it takes dedication and hard work. More »
WordWeb is a free English dictionary and thesaurus application, and can be used to look up words in just one click. This is a very handy productivity tool and it’s really fast. I found their “for free use” licensing agreement quite amusing (though I fail on both accounts!):
You may use the program free of charge indefinitely only if
* You take at most 4 flights (2 return flights) in any 12 month period
* AND you do not own or regularly drive an SUV (sports utility vehicle).
I also like that it can be installed as a portable USB application (under Advanced Options during install).
You finally caved and got the first season of 24 or Lost on DVD. Now you’re hooked and you would use every opportunity to watch it. Then you realize: “Hey, my iPod! It’s perfect for traveling and for the gym, but how can I copy my DVDs to my iPod?!� . So you do some Googling, but you discover that there are hundreds of solutions out there and, worse, that copying DVDs has become a money making scheme! Besides that, nobody tells you that there are two big technical problems with copying or converting DVDs:
1) Most commercial DVDs are encrypted for copy protection;
2) There are many encoding variables (bitrates, aspect ratios etc.).
It isn’t publicized, but commercial DVDs are normally copy protected with encryption technology (including region codes) and most commercial DVD copy software does not allow users to copy protected DVDs. Without going into the legalities suggested in #1 above or the complexities suggested in #2 above, here is a free solution to copy DVD to iPod. It’s really very easy, but the first time will take a few minutes longer. More »
A couple of months ago I changed the way that this blog’s browser titles are constructed, by placing the keywords first and the blog name last. I explained it in detail as well as the initial results in a post titled How Do HTML Title Tags Affect SEO?. For about two months I saw a negative change in my page rankings, but suddenly my rankings returned and improved. This chart shows the change over time.
So I am pleased to say that all three keywords traced rank better now. What I also learned in the process is that Google seriously penalizes certain changes to pages and that it can take a few weeks to months for the rankings to return.
As a portable application addict, I have become rather resistant to installing applications. But then again, quite frequently, I want to try out new applications that typically seem to require installation. For example, applications that can be downloaded as Windows Installer (.msi) packages appear to need to be “installed”. However, quite often developers simply package their applications that way to make it easier for their users to install, yet the applications don’t really need to be installed and can run as portable applications. The Universal Extractor was designed as an easy, convenient way to extract files from installation packages. The Universal Extractor is itself available as an portable app (look for the UniExtract Binary Archive download link). Using this app you can extract the files of a .msi or .exe installation file, extract it to a folder and test if if works without installation. Note that this is not a hack to get larger, more complex applications to run as portable apps.
There is so much hype around Web 2.0, yet very few people seem to really know what it is. I recently heard about someone suggesting that they were going to redesign their site this year to “make it Web 2.0â€?; and next year to “Web 3.0â€?. I thought that Web 2.0 was a stretch for many companies and few understood it, never mind Web 3.0! What is Web 3.0 anyway?! I figured this was just big talk, but decided to look into it because Web 2.0 is very real and I guess eventually a newer generation Web will follow Web 2.0. More »
A picture says a thousand words and so I guess a video says a thousand pictures This video plays with words and really does explain Web 2.0 faster than words or pictures can do alone. It’s a mini lecture on social computing: The evolution of the Web into Web 2.0 and how Web 2.0, the “Machine”, is us and how it is using us to grow. It demonstrates how user generated content, tagging, blogs, and wikis have revolutionized the Web and that we need to rethink how we do things. The video moves very fast, but it’s worth watching twice.
In a previous post on the 
Over the last couple of weeks I tested various note-taking applications. I was looking for software to help me to better organize my typical daily notes, memos, ideas, to-do lists and to clean up the myriads of text files that I have used for the purpose. 
