Addons replacing the bookmarks toolbar.

You’ve heard me talk and talk about how great the bookmarks toolbar is, and how I think it might be one of the best feature a browser can have, and that with the help of Multirowbookmarks I have 15+ feeds etc etc. Well that changed today. The main reason I use my bookmarks toolbar is for WordPress, so I can get to WordPress quickly, for my email, so I can get to my email quickly, for a folder or two, the odd bookmark, and for my feeds, mainly. Today I was at Fashion your Firefox, which has some categorys, such as Finder and seeker, Social butterfly, Executive Assistant, to name a few. Once I click on a category it opens and shows me four or five addons that would belong to that category, and if I check the checkbox beside the addon, I can install it. Through this site I found these addons:
ThumbStrips. ThumbStrips is an addon that show me my history at the bottom of my Firefox window as in a strip of film, to make it easier to go through and find something in my History.
Fast Dial. Fast Dial is an addon that acts like Opera’s Speed Dial, which show thumbnails of pages I decide on, which will allow me to get to pages faster. I like Google’ Chrome version of this feature a little better. Chrome’s version of this tool shows the thumbnails of pages based on how often you visit them.
Wizz RSS News Reader. Wizz RSS News Read is an RSS reader that I will definitely use. Wizz takes my RSS feeds, and does nothing special to them, but keeps them out of my bookmarks bar, and easy to access.
Read It Later. Read It Later is an addon that keps me from having to bookmark all of the pages that I want to read later. With Read It Later I just click a checkmark in my address bar, and the page is saved to my Reading List. When I want to read the webpage later, I just click the Reading List button, which opens a menu, with the website(s) name, so that I can go back to it. Another cool feature of this addon is that it if when I click the Reading List button, I can click the Read Offline button, which saves a copy of the page(s) so that I don’t need an internet connection to read the pages. All I have to do is set Firefox to the Offline Mode, and then I can view the page(s). The only drawback to this is that it saves only the (X)HTML, and not the CSS or in some cases, the JaveScript, so the page doesn’t necessairily have any formatting, but that’s okay, because you can still read the pages.
I hope you like these Add-Ons!

Installing Linux

Yesterday I started a download that would ultimately last for about 9-11 hours. The download was the Kubuntu ISO file. For those of you who don’t know, an ISO file is the type of file Operating Systems, such as Ubuntu and other versions of Linux, can be downloaded in. I have some expierence with different versions of Linux, Ubuntu, Knoppix, and now Kubuntu, so this process was nothing new to me. I started the download yesterday, and this morning when I woke up, it was finished, so I went to burn my Kubuntu to a disk. Now I will guide you through the full process of burning and running a version of Linux. First, you need a version of Linux. Now I would personally recommend Ubuntu, because it’s very easy to use, and because the other versions of Linux that I’ve tried either didn’t work, or were to complicated. For this guide I’m going to use Ubuntu as an example, which you can download by going to This website, checking the correct checkbox (the one that says Latest Version), and clicking the Begin Download button. This download will take anywhere from 5-15 hours, depending on your connection. Generally the ISO file is around 699MB. For convienence, have the download location of the ISO file be on your Desktop. Second you need two programs, ISO Recorder PowerToy, which you can download by going to Alex Feinman’s website, Here, or by clicking Here to download the file from Download.com for Windows XP 32 bit, and OSL 2000. OSL 2000 is a boot manager for Windows XP. With OSL 2000 every time you reboot your computer, even from only Hibernate mode, OSL 2000 will pop up, and ask you what you want to do. There are about six or so options in that screen, and to move to the different options use your arrow keys, and the enter button once you’ve selected the option you want. Once you’ve downloaded those two programs, and the ISO file is finished downloading to your computer, go to your Desktop and right-click on the ISO file. You should see an option that says Copy image to CD, click that option and follow the screen prompts. Now your disk is ready to be run. If you used the first method mentioned skip this next part.
Alternate Method for burning the ISO image to your CD.
Open My Computer, ususally by clicking Start, then clicking the My Computer button on the right side of your start menu. Next look for your CD drive, normally this drive will say CD Drive (D:). Right-click your CD drive, and then click on the option that says Copy image to CD. When a wizard pops up locate the ISO file on your desktop, or wherever you downloaded it to, and then follow the remaining prompts.

Here’s a great guide on how to write ISO file to a CD.
How to write ISO files to a CD

Edit the Send To option.

Whenever you click on a file or folder you will see a bunch of options, one of which is the Send To option. If you mouse over this option you will get a list of places you can send this file or folder to, such as your Desktop. Have you ever wanted to add another option to that menu? or never use a particular option on that menu so you would like to get rid of it? well here’s how to change that menu.
1. First you need to show all of your files and folders. to do this open My Computer (any folder will work but we will need to be at My Computer later) and click Tools. Now click Folder options… Once the Folder Options window is open click the tab named View. Now scroll down to the section Hidden files and folders. Next make sure the radio button beside Show hidden files and folders is checked, then click Apply and OK.
2. Double click the Local Disk (C:) icon.
3. Open the Documents and Settings folder.
4. Open the folder with your username on it.
5.  Double click the folder names SendTo.
Now you will see shortcuts that will take you to places such as your My Documents folder. To add or take away options from the Send To Menu just take away or add a Shortcut to a application or folder.

In case you need to know, this is how to create a shortcut to a folder. Applications I wouldn’t mess with, if you try to send a file or folder to an application that doesn’t know how to handle that kind of task you could have problems.
So to create a shortcut to a file or folder just browse to the file in Windows Explorer, or if the file or folder is on your desktop then ignore this step. Once you’ve found the file/folder right-click it and the scroll down to the option Create Shortcut and click it. Now you will have a shortcut to that file/folder to put in the Send To menu, or maybe the startup folder in All Programs, or for anything else.

Evernote replaces windows Print Scrn feature.

I’ve been using Evernote after hearing about it on a TechMonkey podcast. Now you might be thinking “ya a note taking program, who needs them?” and that’s exactly what I said when I frist heard about Evernote, but I changed my mind once I had been using it for awhile. I use Evernote when I have Lego practice, so that I can take notes on things I need to remember, and especially during my Web Design classes that I take through The Potters School (TPS as we students call it). So during my tutoring session my teacher was giving today I had my handy Evernote program open, and was taking notes. At the end of the tutoring session I wanted to get some screen shots of his screen (which I was viewing) so that I could more easily remember what he was talking about, but I didn’t think I had a lot of time, so I decided to just you the Print Scrn button to take a screen shot of my whole screen, and then edit out the parts I didn’t want it paint. Now before I go on for those of you that don’t know the Print Scrn button take a snaphot of everything currently displaying on your screen, and saves the image to the clipboard. Now when I hit the Print Scrn button I was surprised to see the Evernote Clipper pop up, ready for me to select where to take a snapshot from. Now this is pretty major, I went from using the Print Scrn button, which takes a snapshot of everything on both of my screens, then copies it to the clipboard, to being able to decide what gets clipper, and then having it saved to a file. Now that, it pretty sweet. Now unfortunately Evernote Clipper has to be open for this to work, otherwise when you hit the Print Scrn button you will get everyting that’s displaying on your screen(s) copied to your clipboard. Now here’s how to take care of this problem.
Method #1.
1.Once you have Evernote installed n your computer, open your start menu and click My Computer.
2. Double click the Local Disk (C: ) icon.
3. Open the Program Files Folder.
4. Browse to the Evernote folder and open it.
5. Now when I did that I was next confronted with yet another folder that was names Evernote3, so if you see the folder Evernote3 the open it, if not, start looking for a file called EvernoteTray Application icon then move on to step 6, but disregard the first sentence.
6. Now start looking for a file called EvernoteTray Application icon. Once you’ve found it right-click the icon move to the Create Shortcut option, and click it.
7.Click and drag the newly created shortcut over your Start Button until your start menu opens.
8. Drag the file over the All Programs menu, and wait for it to open.
9. Once the All Programs menu is open move to the folder called Startup. Once at the folder names Startup drag the file into the folder and drop it.
Now whenever you start your computer the Evernote Clipper program will load, and will replace your default Print Scrn function.
Pretty cool huh?

Quick Tip:

If you want a program to start at the startup, just create a shortcut to the program, then drag the shortcut into the Startup folder in your All Programs menu under the Start Menu. Now that program will start every time you start or reboot your computer.

What I would do if I owned the company…

If I were Bill Gates this is what I would do.

I would make the Microsoft OS’ code available to the public.
I would make the Aero interface available to the public. What’s the Aero Interface?
Make IE7′ code available to the public.
Team up with Apple and Mozilla.

If I were the guy that owns Apple this is what I would do.

I would make all of Apple’ code for their OS’ available to the public.
Make Safari’ code available to the public.
Team up with Microsoft and Mozilla.

If I were Mike Shaver this is what I would do.

I would make Mozilla Firefox’ code available to the public.
Team up with Apple and Microsoft.

Imagine what would happen if you had almost the whole world building OS’! It would be like having the world as your company. And to have all the OS’ codes at your disposal would be awesome. And for those of us who aren’t so tech savvy there would be a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get see a picture of the the WordPress WYSIWYG editor Here) editor like there is here on WordPress. Everything would be separated into, maybe columns, or maybe sections, or maybe pages. So if you want to change the way you see your icons you would go to the column/section/page and then add or take away something according to the instructions that come with the WYSIWYG editor or the code you downloaded to your desktop. You would be able to combine Leopard, XP, Vista and make a huge great OS. Anyone would be able to build their own OS. And with being able to make your own Laptops (another thing I would change, being able to build your own laptop) You would be able to 1.Build your own Laptop and or Desktop. 2. Then build your own OS to go with your new laptop or desktop (and add the Aero interface if you wanted to). 3. Build your own browser
Sure you can kinda do this with Linux but it’s the fact the you would have the code from XP, Vista, Leopard, Mozilla Firefox and IE7 at your fingertips without having to write any code yet. Yeah you would have to work with the code a little but it would would be nicely separated like I said earlier so it would be as easy as finding the place marked “How your OS’ name here will start up” and the you could ad a picture of your dog so every time you start your computer up you’ll see a picture of your dog. Or you will go to the place saying “Users” and change one of your users to run on basic Leopard, one to run on basic XP etc.