TechCroon.com

I’m in the process of building a theme for this site (and shifting my house), so things are crazy as hell. You’re probably not going to be seeing any updates for a month or two.

I want to build a theme similar to that of engadget’s with the whole thumbnail post preview thingy. For the interested, I intend to deligiently chronicle it here, so stay tuned.

I also had to delve quite deeply into the whole domain/sub-domain/add-on domain thingy cause I moved domain hosts for both my personal webiste as well as this one. If you wish to host your own website at some point in life, some useful insightful posts coming your way.

Finally we changed our ISP provider as well and moved to a 512kbps connection. Utorrent wasn’t playing nice, so I tried to tweak it and managed to learn quite a lot in the process. More coming in that direction as well..

But for the time being the best thing to do is probably just subscribe to my RSS feed and sit tight.

Cheers

K

Hi there and welcome to TechCroon.com. My name is Kaushik and I’m the creator of this glog or as I like to call it “Geek Log”.

It was previously under the synonym glog.kaushikgopal.com, but if you notice now,  it always points to this site( Crazy shit aint it?). Doing it is actually unbelievably simple. How you ask? well that’s the primary purpose of this glog. Stay tuned for some useful posts! If you would like to subscribe to my RSS Feed. Click this icon

I recently undertook the gargantuan task of syncing my Gmail and iPhone contacts. NOT A PLEASANT process. But finally managed to do it yesterday and if you’ve been following me on twitter, you would also know that I got a new Fabrik 320 GB external HDD. Experience has taught me to backup at any and every given opportunity.

These are some of the softwares that made the task much easier. I usually prefer open-source(free) software wherever possible, but Microsoft-Excel is one software I have no qualms in shelling cash for.

For Syncing:
Allway Sync. This is probably one of the most brilliant softwares that I’ve managed to discover on the web. It does the job beautifully. At first glance the UI may appear slightly cluttered, but take your time with it and you’ll see why this is such a great software!

For Secure Partitioning:
If you’re paranoid about sharing personal/private docs with other people, Truecrypt is THE software for you. 100% free but requires some effort in setting up. (Buzz me if you need some help with this software). It essentially lets you keep your passport/license/salary-certificate…etc scanned copies conveniently on your office/home PC without ever worrying if anyone will gain access to them.

For File Renaming:
While backing up all my files, I decided to prune the filenames and rename them more sensibly. For this I solely used these tips and the software Renamer.

For editing my Contacts CSV files I simply couldn’t do without Microsoft excel. My brother recently converted me from 2003 to 2007 and despite my initial reaction I’m REALLY starting to like it.

Groovy Resources

• Antivirus/Protection Freebie Softwares

Here’s a quick tip for the fellow finicky few. I can’t stand those annoying folder expanding sounds in XP. When Alison Krauss is blissfully singing in Winamp, those teeth-grinding blackboard-screeching unable-to-reach-area-itching sounds (It’s been a long day) drive me nuts (Especially if you work in IT and you find the need to browse and maintain a 100 backups of every single file/folder you lay your hands on). If you feel me brother, proceed to Control Panel -> Sounds and Audio Devices -> under the Sounds tab -> Look for Start Navigation under Program Events and turn the damn thing off. You could optionally turn any other annoying sounds that windows burps out here.

As I go down to the river and pray…..studying about that good old way……

In continuation of my adherence to the web-karma and the Teach-Fishing theories, here’s how to create a Cusomized (Flickr)Search engine in Firefox.

I’m what you can call, a moderately-wannabe-over-enthusiastic techie. I choose to go the extra mile and do those things that seem trivial the non-trivial way. I wanted a quick customized search through my firefox quick search box. The “Get more Search engines” didn’t have too many interesting ones IMHO. There is the wimpy way as specified by eHow.com or the much cooler way by wikihow.com.

Choosing to do this the old-school-techunthiastic way, this is exactly how I approached my requirement:

• First, as always Google the topic. I got the two results mentioned above.
• I decided to work on the information given by wikihow.com.
• Wikihow assumes you to be a wimpy user who only uses the default profile of Firefox. They ask you to navigate to “C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\searchplugins”. If you actually navigate there, you’ll find only the default ones.
• What’s wrong with the default ones you ask? I want a nice icon of flickr next to my search engine. Also, I remember adding a basic flickr search engine through the wimpy way. I wish to use the same thumbnail (rather than keep a new copy of a 16X16 gif). So what do I do?
• I look into my personalized profile directory of Firefox which is at “D:\Documents and Settings\<user profile>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<wierd prefixed profile>\searchplugins” cause I know that Firefox allows multiple profiles and maintains customization there.
• I open the directory and voila, find all my search-engines.
• Simply copy paste an existing flickr xml.
• I noticed the variations in the url when doing multiple searches and formed the resultant url that I would need for my searches.
• I want my results displayed as thumbnails (faster to sift through), to search all text, search the “commons” pictures only. “http://www.flickr.com/search/commons/?q={searchTerms}&z=t&w=all&m=text” allows me to do this.
• Tinker with the xml and voila, you have your custom-flickr search.

For the lazy few, I have links to the xmls directly here (Simply copy and paste in your Firefox “searchplugins” directory):
• Flickr Commons Search (result as thumbnails)
• Flickr Creative Commons (result as thumbnails)

So I managed to muck something up again while meddling with my iPhone. The patch for converting Kuwait numbers to the new format on the iPhone no longer seemed to work from Bojacob’ den. I think I forgot the warning that said “Do not Re-install patch if already installed if something goes wrong, remove package and install again clean”. So no matter what I try now, the patch doesn’t seem to work.

As mentioned in a previous post, I made a backup of all my contacts in a CSV file. Exporting and Importing contacts in the iPhone is a piece of cake through iTunes. But since I removed bojacob’s patch, it reverted all my numbers to the old 7 digit format. This time I thought I’ll do it my way. So I made an excel file that neatly converts all your Kuwait numbers depending on the provider (even if it’s a lanline number). You can download it here. There’s one slight catch though, it only handles Kuwait numbers and Indian numbers with the correct prefix “+91″. If you add in any other number it kind of mucks things up. I guess I’ll modify this as well when I get the time.

Security and Protection

In a world plagued with spyware, trojans, viruses and other crappy-annoying pieces of code, being sufficiently protected is not just preferable, it’s a necessity.

For the cheapos like myself, the best FREE stuff out there (IMHO as on today):

• Firewall : Comodo
• Antivirus: AVG Free
• Anti-Spyware: Spyware Doctor(As part of Google Pack)
• Norton Security Scan (As part of Google Pack)

Caveats

• ID selectors have a higher precedence than attribute selectors.
• To get Information regarding Browser support for above selectors, Click here.

CSS Tips and Tricks

Condensing your CSS

Centering a Div

There are plenty of ways to do this. But not all methods conform to the required standards. What’s worse, you can expect different results on different browsers. Here’s the official way that almost all reputed websites recommend:

1. set the width for the element required to bypass a bug in certain browsers
2. set attribute position:relative;
3. set attribute margin-left:auto;
4. set attribute margin-left:auto;

Groovy Resources

• A list Apart - an online web magazine that’s considered the authority in web design;Check this story for practical tips and this one for recommendations in sizing CSS font.
• Mathew James Taylor- one of the coolest resources I have managed to scourge from the net for all types of layouts
• How To Build Websites.com - CSS Tutorials
• BlogHerald- CSS Tips and Tricks
• Lisa Explains it All - CSS Basics explained
• CSS Browser Support: Complete List ; Condensed site

This topic is probably hacked to the point of being hackneyed, but you know what…. my blog…my rules….. I can rant whatever the hell I want. [Daily visitors just dropped from 2 to 1. I'm one of my blog's daily visitors]

Let me tell you this. For the very first time, I didn’t close my eyes and jump on to the Google Bandwagon with Google Chrome. Something I did for Gmail, Google Analytics, Google Reader, Blogger! Here’s why I didn’t close my eyes and uninstall firefox:-

• An Internet browser is your stairway to the Internet. For me this is probably the most important piece of software after an OS. I simply cannot take the risk of removing something that’s already so good and replace it with something that “promises” to be good.
• Any new software is prone to bugs. The difference is how easy or difficult it is, to circumvent those bugs. If the bugs are unmanageable, I’m not changing my faith.

That being said:-

Why Firefox > Chrome:
• Firefox Extensions: The main reason why almost 90% of the tech-savvy population shifted to FF. There are no limits to the customization you can achieve with Firefox Extensions. Take a look at some of my recommended Firefox Addons here.
• I prefer the awesome bar to the omnibar, somehow I feel the results more relevant. Wait let me say this right, AWESOME BAR WHOoPS Omnibar’s a**. I know the omnibar has the cool zen like search integrated feature embedded, but in terms of relevancy in results, I find Firefox >>> Chrome in this aspect. I don’t like the mucky google results also showing up in my omni bar. That’s pointless, it barely saves me a second or two.
• The quick search/find-text option is also way more advanced in FF than in Chrome. I think this is classified as a bug under Chrome and will soon be fixed.
• Bookmark management. Firefox clearly kicks ass in this section. Chrome has tried to emulate much of the Firefoxian bookmark-outlook, but they have a long road to cover. For starters Chrome can’t export Bookmarks. (yeah i know wtf?)

Why Chrome > Firefox
• I obviously like the neat uber zen apple-like interface.
• The area where I feel Chrome has outright trumped FF is in stability. Firefox has restarted and crashed on me a gazillion times. To-date Chrome hasn’t crashed even once. Call me a fan-girl but that IS something. Stability may be only one of the things Chrome can boast markedly superior to FF. This one thing can make all the difference between a happy user-experience and a damn-it-crashed-on-my-ass-again experience.
• I don’t know if you’ve noticed but the caching in Chrome is bloody brilliant. If for e.g you’re a person like me who keeps re-editing his posts a 1000 times, with firefox the changes don’t reflect that easily. You would necessarily have to hit a Ctrl+Refresh and if even that doesn’t work a Ctrl+F5. This can be both annoying and tricky. Chrome beautifully updates the content seamlessly. Moreover I feel(can’t authoritative state anything) It does much more smart caching, as in even if I force a refresh, it reloads only the changed content.After toying repeatedly with browsers, I stand corrected. Chrome doesn’t take in a Ctrl+F5 Refresh which is shitty, but if you load your page a day later, it intelligently seems to pick up the new content. Firefox still displays the cached version of the page, but responds beautifully to a Forced Refresh.
• Speed: If you have a mind blowingly fast internet connection, you would hardly note the difference. But Clearly, Chrome seems to have an advantage with speed surfing. As a test, I choked my bandwidth by downloading stuff with Utorrent and then tried surfing a dozen pages. Chrome proved unabashedly faster.

Round 1 Winner: Firefox
Firefox is outright amazing. Chrome has to get REEaaaly good, if they want me to become a full convert. But Google’s got an amazing track-record in this department (the underdog-Beta to whoop-ass-complete version), so I’m going to sit tight and wait for round 2. If you’re trying to figure out why IE didn’t come up in this post, oh will you PLEASE wake the hell up!

If you’re as big a ringtone junkie as I am, this was probably one of the biggest reasons for not buying the iPhone. I was under the impression that you would need a sophisticated third party app like iFuntastic to achieve this. To those brave troopers who actually went the whole way and used iFuntastic, my kudos. Personally, I felt this was too big a hassle for something seemingly basic. Luckily I landed up spotting the Whispered shadows blogs. Apart from the really cool theme and blog title, this blog has some really cool reviews on killer iPhone apps. A must check for the iPhone jailbroken.

Adding custom ringtones to the iPhone is bizarrely simple(on the PC).

• Create the ringtone file in any popular audio format (mp3 recommended).
• Ensure ringtone < 30s. Trim your mp3 using an audio editor (I personally use Adobe Audition 3. Ridiculously high price aside, I find it has the perfect combination of Functionality and User-ease)
• Convert mp3 to m4a format. Lethann recommends Switch from NCH Software for the same. I concur.
• Simply rename from .m4a to .m4r (The iPhone ringtone format)
• Add to your iTunes ringtone library and synch up with your iPhone.

That’s it, all added ringtones would come under the header Custom ringtones now.