Useful Tools »

I’ve had a number of people email me this past week and ask how I got code to show up so nicely in my post about a Fisheye Menu Script. The standard way is to use the <code> HTML tags. Unfortunately, even if you don’t use a WYSIWYG HTML editor, Wordpress still tries to clean up your code and seems to ignore the <code> tags. So how can you get around this?

There is an easy way. After looking for 30 minutes one day on the best way to effectivly publish code on my blog, here it is. And it’s actually remarkably simple.

First, download a plugin called “Preserve Code Formatting” by coffe2code here. Refer to the…

Tech News, Useful Tools »

Gmail is hands down the best web based email client, but it isn’t perfect. That’s why many have found Better Gmail to be a great improvement on the basic Gmail framework. Better Gmail is a collection of Greasemonkey scripts that improves Gmail. How? It is a plugin for FireFox that extends your Gmail page to have more functionality.

To install, simply visit the download page while in FireFox and click on “Download”. The script should install itself into your FireFox plugins and have your restart your browser. There are numerous options that you can configure such as changing the skin of Gmail, and my favorite, integrated Google Feeds directly into your inbox. You can also have Gmail set…

Useful Tools »

Every so often the need arises to show somebody how to do something on their computer without actually being there to show them. Wink, by DebugMode, is an free software that you can use to create your own video tutorials. It’s actually a good piece of software, too.

They describe it as the following:

Wink is a Tutorial and Presentation creation software, primarily aimed at creating tutorials on how to use software (like a tutor for MS-Word/Excel etc). Using Wink you can capture screenshots, add explanations boxes, buttons, titles etc and generate a highly effective tutorial for your users.

Wink has tons of features to keep your occupied for a while. It also has a semi-active forum…

Reviews »

A few months ago I was looking for an easy way to handle my form submissions for a non-CMS based website. After some searching I found JotForm, so called the “first web based WYSIWYG form builder.”

I was actually so impressed with JotForm that I used it for a good while. What is JotForm, exactly? JotForm is a way to visually build your forms online. All you do is simply drag and drop your fields where you want them, and you are done. JotForm has support for many different type of input boxes such as: checkbox/radio buttons, text, file uploads, and SPAM protection, to name a few. JotFrom also lets you accept payments from PayPal, Google Checkout,…

Reviews »

Have you ever had your computer crash and lost all your files? Even less extreme, have you ever had trouble merging your old files onto your new computer? If you answered yes, Tilana would have saved you.

What is Tilana? Tilana lets you:

continuously protect files off site, as you work. Sync files between your PCs; at work, at home, or on a laptop. Get any current or previous version of a file in seconds - from your protected computers, or via the Web. Upload and download your files from anywhere, using easy secure Tilana Reserve Web access.

I haven’t used Tilana myself, but it seems fairly ingenious. You download a program that will keep track of any folders…

Tech News »

Just got this in my email. Looks like QuickInsert has made some changes to their new content management service. The email highlighted the two following changes:

We have consolidated the QuickInsert solution into one line of code! The previous setup required QuickInsert members to paste two lines of Javascript onto their website, one for the login form and one for the content. We have also enhanced the user control panel. The control panel now hosts the login form. It appears in the center of the user screen and follows the user as he/she scrolls on the page.

I don’t personally use QuickInsert, but it does look like an interesting service. I reviewed on Site Scrutiny (since merged with…