1. You need a Google Voice Invite, there are only two ways to get this, either you get someone who already has a Google Voice to invite you or apply for an invitation to Google Voice service here https://services.google.com/fb/forms/googlevoiceinvite
2. Hotspot shield, to access the google voice service you need use a US Proxy Address, otherwise you’ll see a message saying “Thanks for visiting Google Voice. We are not yet open for users outside the US.” so get http://www.hotspotshield.com/ or any other proxy service whose IP address belongs to the US.
3. A SIP Client, the workaround involves you getting a US number for which you need a SIP client. I suggest X-lite Download it from here http://www.counterpath.com/x-lite-download.html ( Note: download X-lite Beta 4 if you are using a Mac OSX since I had no luck configuring X-lite 3.0 on the Mac)

Getting A Free US Number

• Register for a free account at iptel.org http://serweb.iptel.org/user/reg/index.php
• Using the the info from iptel.org register an account at register for a free USA DID with Ipkall here http://phone.ipkall.com/ setting are given below.
  1. Choose your account type: SIP
  2. Choose Area Code for your IPKall Number: Choose Any Number
  3. SIP Phone number: Your iptel.org User ID
  4. SIP Proxy: sip.iptel.org
  5. Email Address: Your Email address
  6. Password: Enter a Password
  7. # of Seconds to ring before hanging up: 120
• You’ll get a email with a US Number note this down.

Setting For Your SIP Client ( x-lite ) Using iptel.org

After downloading X-lite 3.0 or 4.0 Beta you need to set it up with your iptel.org the setting are given below

1. Display Name: Whatever you want
2. User Name: Your iptel.org user ID example: clazh
3. Password: Your iptel.org Password
4. Authorization User Name: Your Iptel.org User ID@iptel.org example: clazh@iptel.org
5. Domain: iptel.org

If you have entered your SIP settings correctly then you should be able to see Ready/available on your X-lite Screen depending on which version you are using.

Xlite iptel.org Settings

Activating The Google Voice Service Outside The US

Make sure your X-lite client is running and SIP account is active before you try to activate your Google Voice Service

Run HotSpot Shield or whatever US proxy number you are using and log on to http://www.google.com/voice

1. The frist screen show you an option to choose any Google Voice US number of your choice. (You can’t change the number later so choose carefully)

Choose A Google Voice Number

2. You’ll be asked to choose a PIN to access your voice mail

Choose A Google Voice PIN

3. You need to enter the US Phone number that IPKALL provided for you.

Enter A Forwarding Number (IPKall Number)

4. The last step requires you to verify your IPKALL Number, make sure you have x-lite configured and running, now just click Call Me Now

Verify Google Voice

5. If you have configured your x-lite correctly it should now ring just enter the two digit number show into the dial pad.

Thats it you are done. You don’t need to use HotSpot Shield any more just log into Google Voice and dial any US number always make sure X-lite is running, since it acts as a proxy number, X-lite will ring just pick up the call and start talking.

You can find a full list of SIP Clients here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_SIP_software

if you are using the iPhone or android you can use Nimbuzz

Credit http://www.how-to-hide-ip.info/ for the Google Voice activation images.

Related posts:

1. Facebook Hack : Switch Or Turn Off Facebook Lite To Default
2. Myspace Hack : Profile url And MySpace Email
3. 10 Free Web Design Icons For Download, Used On This Web Site
4. Goog and Live 411
5. Get 6 Paid Mac OS X Applications For Free

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2010. | Permalink | One comment | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Featured, Google, Tutorial Tags: Calls, Free

Unlocked iPhone 3GS

This post is for all iPhone lovers, if you are like me and totally frustrated by the locked iPhones that Apple sells the good news is Apple sells Official Factory Unlocked iPhones 3GS. Unlike the US there are some countries that have sane laws about locking the phone that a Mobile service provider gives you. I own an iPhone 3GS which I brought for the full price contract free from AT&T, straight off from Cupertino, California, US when I was there a few months back. Using the iPhone 3GS was a great experience while I was in the US. Once I came back to India I had no other option but to hack the iPhone 3GS or Jailbreak it as its called, once the iPhone is Jailbroken you can Unlock it to make it work with your local Service Provider.

The jailbreaking was not an issue, the iPhone worked great after unlocking it, but I get frustrated when I think about how I brought such an expensive gadget with my money and was not being allowed to use it in the way I wanted to, also the ethical factor bothered me a lot. And every time there is a firmware update I have to wait for the unlock to come out.

I am a great Apple fan. I work on a 15″ Mac Book pro and all my design and development work is done on it, Apple is great at churning out really cool products that just simply work out of the box, the User Experience, right from the packaging, Design, Hardware and Software is extremely streamlined. But they have one big drawback they lock you down into their system whether its Hardware or Software.

So I began my quest for an Official unlocked iPhone. First I started by looking on eBay and was horrified by the prices at which the 3GS was selling. Now by cheap I don’t literally mean cheap but you can get it for the exact full price that Apple sells it for, without the need for buying it off from eBay for $$$ and then when you get it you realise it’s badly scratched or doesn’t work properly or is truly locked.

The Cheapest Place to buy An Unlocked iPhone 3GS

The Cheapest Place to buy An official factory Unlocked iPhone 3GS now is Hong Kong. Hong Kong is one of the few countries where its illegal to lock a Phone down to a Mobile service provider, hence Apple sells it unlocked. check out the iPhone Prices on the Hong Kong Apple Store

Here is what it states on the Apple iPhone Page.

iPhone 3G & iPhone 3GS purchased at the Apple Online Store can be activated with any wireless carrier. Simply insert the SIM from your current phone into iPhone 3G or iPhone 3GS and connect to
iTunes 8.2 to complete activation.2 Purchase limitations may apply.

Price Listing for an unlocked iPhone 3GS in Hong Kong.

• iPhone 3GS 16GB is 5388 Hong Kong dollars = 696 U.S. dollars
• iPhone 3GS 32GB is 6288 Hong Kong dollars = 812 U.S. dollars

Official Unlocked iPhone 3GS Hong Kong Prices

The Other places to buy unlocked iPhones but not so cheap prices are

Australia iPhone 3GS Apple Store Prices

• iPhone 3GS 16GB is 879 Australian dollars = 820 U.S. dollars
• iPhone 3GS 32GB is 1040 Australian dollars = 970 U.S. dollars

New Zealand iPhone 3GS Apple Store Prices

• iPhone 3GS 16GB is 1149 New Zealand dollars = 853 U.S. dollars
• iPhone 3GS 32GB is 1349 New Zealand dollars = 1002 U.S. dollars

The List of Places where you Can buy an unlocked iPhone are list below. the data might be a little old. But you can check for an Updated list on the Apple Website itself which lists all the places in the World where the iPhone is sold and also which Wireless provider sells Unlocked iPhones

• Belgium – Mobistar 16GB: 575 EUR32GB: 675 EUR
• Czech Republic – O2, T-Mobile, Vodafone 16GB: 15 777 CZK32GB: 18 377 CZK
• Greece – Vodafone, Cosmote16GB: 569.00 EUR32GB: 668.99 EUR
• Hong Kong – 316GB: HK$ 5,38832GB: HK$ 6,288
• Italy – TIM, Vodafone16GB: 619 EUR32GB: 719 EUR
• Luxemburg – Vox Mobile, LUXGSM
• Macau – 3
• Malaysia – Maxis16GB: RM249032GB: RM2990
• New Zealand – Vodafone16GB: 1,179 NZD32GB: 1,379 NZD
• Russia – MegaFon, MTS, Beeline
• Saudi Arabia – Mobily
• Singapore – SingTel
• Slovakia – Orange
• South Africa – Vodacom16GB: R750032GB: R8500
• Taiwan – Chunghwa Telecom
• Thailand – TrueMove
• Turkey – TurkCell
• United Arab Emirates – Etisalat

Source my google search turned up hackint0sh.org/

Related posts:

1. Apple Numbers
2. Good Bye Apple You Suck Really Bad
3. Confirmed iPhone To be Launched on June 29
4. Microsoft We Screwed Up Windows Mobile, iPhone Competitor Silverlight Mobile 2010
5. iPhone Nano Can It Be True ? Naaa

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2009. | Permalink | 7 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Apple, Featured, Technology, iPhone Tags: Buying Guide, Gadget, Mac OSX

Updated: Got rid of the Custom Metadata, used the modified date and the created date of the post to check if its a new post or an old one. Now you don’t have to worry about updating your old posts.

Updated: To Make the title text more Twitter friendly.

I been trying to cut down on the number of Plugins used. Firstly to make maintained easier, secondly to simplify and reduce to the bare minimum without using Plugins, thirdly to hone up my WordPress skills. The latest plugin I got rid of was the WP to Twitter Plugin. Initially I started off trying to modify how I wanted it to work. Basically I wanted to cut off Bit.ly as a URL shortner and use my own blog as a URL shortner to send people directly to my site and keep the traffic on my site without the need for a middle man. I figured this out after I saw how Amit Aggarwal was tweeting his links to his site.

Short URLs in WordPress without Bit.ly or URL Shortners

We all know that WordPress generates long Permalinks for your site, it automatically converts your titles into those long URLs called permalinks that you see. Example http://www.clazh.com/this_is_some_random_post, If you switch off Permalinks in WordPress you’ll see that links to your posts will be of the form http://www.clazh.com/?p=401 if you look at it you’ll notice the last bit has a number attached to it, each post has a unique ID associated to it. The trick is to make use of this ID to and create a URL for our posts, so when people click on this shortned link they’ll be automatically taken to the Permalink associated with that post its as simple as that.

A Simple WordPress To Twitter Function.

First we’ll write a really simple function that uses CURL to post to the Twitter API. Just copy paste it into your functions.php file in your WordPress theme directory. In case you don’t see the file in yours themes folder just create one and paste the code inside it. To check if CURL is enabled on your server you can paste this function into a blank PHP file and call the function like this twitterUpdate("some random post", "http://clazh.com", true); with some random inputs. Make sure you uncomment the last few lines where it says to uncomment to test for CURL support.

Note: In the rare case your host does not support CURL you can always make use of fsockopen for PHP 4 or the much easier stream_context_creat for PHP5

function twitterUpdate($postTitle, $postLink, $isNew)
{
	// Enter Your Twitter ID Here
	$username = 'Twitter_ID';
	// Enter Your Twitter Password Here
	$password = 'Password';

        # text into a twitter friendly text
	$code_entities_match = array('--','"','!','@','#','$','%','^','&','*','(',')','_','+','{','}','|',':','"','<','>','?','[',']','\\',';',"'",',','.','/','*','+','~','`','=');
	$code_entities_replace = array('-','','','','','','','','','','','','','','','','','','','','','','','','');
	$postTitle = str_replace($code_entities_match, $code_entities_replace, $postTitle);

	// Check if New or Updated Post
	if($isNew)
		$postTitle = 'New Post: ' . $postTitle;
	else
		$postTitle = 'Updated Post: ' . $postTitle;

	// Calculate Twitter Msg and keep it under 140 Chars
        if(strlen ($postTitle) > (140 - strlen ($postLink)))
		$postTitle 		= substr_replace($postTitle, '...', (140 - 3 - strlen ($postLink)));

	$message = $postTitle . $postLink;

	// The twitter API address
	$url = 'http://twitter.com/statuses/update.xml';
	$curl_handle = curl_init();
	curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_URL, "$url");
	curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 2);
	curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
	curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
	curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, "status=$message");
	curl_setopt($curl_handle, CURLOPT_USERPWD, "$username:$password");
	$buffer = curl_exec($curl_handle);
	curl_close($curl_handle);

	// Uncomment the lines below to check if
	// CURL is enabled on your Web Server
	// check for success or failure
	/*
	if (empty($buffer))
		echo 'message';
	else
		echo 'success';
	*/
}

WordPress Function that Triggers Post To Twitter

Next we’ll write a simple wordpress function that triggers whenever you update or publish a post, we will also added a custom metadata to the post check if its a new or old post. Copy paste this code below the twitterUpdate function in your functions.php themes file.

function postToTwitter($post_ID)
{
	// Create your Short URL replace with your blog url
	$postLink = ' http://clazh.com/?p=' . $post_ID;
	// encode the URL to fix Post to Twitter issues
        $postLink = urlencode  ( $postLink ) ;
	// Get the Post Object
	$get_post_info 	= get_post( $post_ID );
	// Get the Post Title
	$postTitle = $get_post_info->post_title;
        // Get the Post date
	$postDate 		= date('U', strtotime($get_post_info->post_date));
	// Get the post Modified date
	$postModified 	= date('U', strtotime($get_post_info->post_modified));

	// Check if the post is new or modified
	if($postModified == $postDate)
	{
		twitterUpdate($postTitle, $postLink, true);
	}
	/*  If You want to fire everytime You update
	      a post remove these comments around the else.
	else
	{
		twitterUpdate($postTitle, $postLink, false);
	}
	*/
}

// Post to twitter when you publish or update a post
add_action('publish_post', 'postToTwitter');

So thats about it, just paste these two blocks of code into your functions.php and change the required parameter, you can play around with the code and modify it to change the message being posted to twitter.

Related posts:

1. Guest Bloggers Required, SandBox Wordpress Theme Suggestions
2. Wordpress Plugin Better Comments Manager Update
3. Wordpress Security Alert Adsense Deluxe Plugin Vulnerable
4. Who Sees Ads 1.0 Wordpress Plugin Released
5. FeedSmith The Official FeedBurner Wordpress Plugin

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2009. | Permalink | 15 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Featured, Tutorial, Web-Design, Wordpress Tags:

Here are 9 + 1 Icon sets and collections that I used on this site and 1 bonus icon collection that I contemplated using for the design.

Social Network Icon Pack

Social Network Icon Pack By Komodo Media. These icons are really quite popular and have become common place. Designed by the awesome Rogie King. It contain a extensive list of icons in 16px and 32px for the most popular social networking sites on the internet. These 16px Icons are really crisp and sharp.

Social Networking Icons

Download the Social Network Icon pack

The Oxygen icon theme

An Open Source Icon Them, the Oxygen icon theme was initially started by David Vignoni, then a number of other designer joined in to create an Icon Theme for the KDE Desktop. The icons are a collection of different works from different designer. While there is no official download package you can download it from the Ubuntu repository.

Oxygen Icon Theme

Download the Oxgen Icon Them Note: Download the Deb Package and use 7-zip to unzip and extract the contents.

iPhone style sidebar icons

These pretty Icons were created by Susumu Yoshida. I found it while hunting around for 16px Icons.

iPhone Toolbar Icons

Download the iPhone Style Sidebar Icons

The Crystal icon theme

Another Open source Icon theme created by Everaldo and a list of few other designers designed exclusively for Linux. These icons are very Popular and have been ported to Windows and the Mac too.

Crystal Icon Theme

Download the Crystal icon theme

Danish Royalty Free Icons

Create by the famous now retired Icon designer, Jonas Rask of Denmark, these are a list of Icons designed exclusively for the Web and for use in web applications.

Danish Royalty Free Icons

Download Danish Royalty Free Icons

Web Injection Icons

Web Injection Icons Designed by Jonatan Castro from Galicia, Spain. A small collections of web icons.

Web Injection Icons

Download the Web Injection Icons

Toolbar Icons Starter Kit

A small set of web Toolbar Icons, created by Kombine, contains about 45 Icons in the set.

Kombine Toolbar Icons Kit

Download the Toolbar Icons Starter Kit

Glyphish Icons for iPhone Applications

A collection of 130 icons for iPhone applications. Created by Joseph Wain. Has been used in a large number of popular iPhone Applications.

Glyphish iPhone Icons

Download the Glyphish Icons for iPhone Applications

DelliPack 1 & 2 Icons

A small set of generic web Icons created by Dellustrations.

Dellipack Icons

Download the Dellipack 1 & 2 Icons

MinIcons Set

Though I didn’t use any of these Icons to round of the number to 10 I included MinIcons Set by Asher Abbasi.

Mini Icons

Download the MinIcons Set

Related posts:

1. "Crystal" Superb Beautiful Open Source Icons
2. Get 6 Paid Mac OS X Applications For Free
3. How To: Conjure Your Own Site Design
4. My Web Design Got Ripped
5. Unlimited Free International Calls & SMS After Activating Google Voice Outside US

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2009. | Permalink | 2 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Downloads, Featured, Web-Design Tags: Download, Free, Icons, UX, Web-Design, Web-Development

1. Avast or AVG (Get the Free Versions)
2. AdAware (Get the free Version)
3. CCleaner
4. AutoRuns
5. ProcessExplorer
6. FireFox

Update Window

The first step is to make sure your windows is updated with the latest security patches and fixes. If you are running Windows XP make sure you have installed Service Pack 2. Once you are done installing service pack 2 you should run Windows update and get the latest patches. Another alternative is to use AutoPatcher this is a utility which will download all the required patches and security fixes from Microsoft and store it in a folder on your system which you can later reuse to apply to other computers that you need to update.

Run A Full Scan Using AntiVirus and AntiSpyware Softwares.

There are a number of free AntiVirus software I have for now listed two of them. Virus can do all sorts of weird things to your computer. For example on my laptop the virus disabled the “View Hidden Files” option, even though I checked the option it would reset it back, it also set a number of scheduled tasks in my Task Scheduler to call a number of different copies of the Virus. Run a full scan of the system. Next run a Anti-SpyWare software I highly recommend AdAware.

A Virus Infected Tasks list

AVG Virus Scan With Detected Viruses

Clean Up Your Start Up Items.

Most SpyWare and Virus configure your start up items to run the Virus when you boot up or log into your system. Use the MsConfig tool in windows to check which items are being loaded at start up. If you see any suspicious looking entries uncheck them also identify which file is being called and manually delete it. Sometime this might not work like in my case I had to log into widows using safe mode (When Windows is booting up press F8 you will see an option to load windows under safe mode) and delete the offending file. Use the process explorer tool to see if the processing running on your system are all legitimate. Also use AutoRuns to delete any entries that look suspicious especially DLL that are unsigned and have random looking names.

Clean Up And Optimise Your System.

There are a number of tools that can clean your system of unwanted and unused temporary files and registry entries. One of the best tools that I have found so far is CCleaner which provides a number of advanced options to clean up your system. Try to keep the number of items that start up when you boot the system to a minimum.

Prevention Is Better Than Cure.

Better safe than sorry. Ditch IE period and get FireFox. Run an Anti-Virus software and do a full scan periodically. Also do a full Anti-SpyWare scan periodically. Also scan external drives like thumb drives and external hard disk when you connect it to the computer.

Related posts:

1. Free Online Virus Scan Using Multiple Anti-Virus Tools
2. How to Hide or Remove A Installed Program from Add Remove
3. Windows 7 Activation Key Crack By Hackers, Chew WGA & RemoveWGA
4. Clean Wordpress Theme Updated To Version 0.6
5. How to Hack or Crack a Windows XP Administrator Password

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2008. | Permalink | 13 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Featured, Technology, Tutorial Tags: Anti-Virus, How To, Repair, SpyWare

Plugins for Comment Spam.

Simple Spam Filter for WordPress.

Get Simple Spam Filter from here. Most of the spam caught by Akismet is pretty obvious spam i.e.

• Contains 5 or more links to external sites
• Contains nothing but links
• Contains [url=http://www.example.com]example[/url] style links (my blog does not support bbcode style links)
• Contains a word that matches a short list of common spam words (for example, viagra or cialis). See the plugin’s source for the full list.

Simple Spam Filter helps you combat this kind of obvious spam. Its has a setting page where you can tweak it to suit your likings.

WordPress Comment Spam Stopper.

This a very simple Plugin that asks a very simple question that bots are too stupid to answer. I have found it even more effective if you change the default question. Get this plugin from here.

Comment-Policy WordPress Plugin

This is a alternative to Comment Spam Stopper. Instead of asking the users to enter an answer, you ask the user to agree to your comment policy by having a required field CheckBox. Since its JavaScript based most bots won’t see it. Get the plugin from here.

Plugins for Trackback Spam.

Extended Comments Options for WordPress.

While most of the plugins above will take care of comment spam. I found that I was getting tons of Trackback spam, since Trackbacks are not validated by WordPress. Using this plugin you can disable TrackBacks or Comments for your older posts. I have disabled trackbacks for posts older than a month. You can get this plugin here.

Simple Trackback Validation Plugin.

If you don’t like the idea of disabling trackbacks for your older posts you can use this plugin to validate trackbacks.

1. checks if the IP address of the trackback sender is equal to the IP address of the webserver the trackback URL is referring to.
   This reveals almost every spam trackback (more than 99%) since spammers do usually use bots which are not running on the machine of their customers.
2. retrieves the web page located at the URL included in the trackback. If the page doesn’t a link to your blog, the trackback is considered to be spam. Since most trackback spammers do not set up custom web pages linking to the blogs they attack, this simple test will quickly reveal illegitimate trackbacks. Also, bloggers can be stopped abusing trackback by sending trackbacks with their blog software or webservices without having a link to the post.

You can get the plugin from here.

Antispam Collateral Condolences.

The last plugin does not combat spam but notifies a commenter in case his/her comment is caught in the spam queue or moderation. I highly recommend this plugin get it from here.  

Related posts:

1. The Best Way To Kill Blog Spam Forever
2. Wordpress Plugin Better Comments Manager Update
3. Better Comments Manager Wordpress Plugin
4. Wordpress 2.2 Has Been Released
5. Copy Feed Wordpress Plugin Translated To English

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2008. | Permalink | 15 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Featured, Wordpress Tags: Download, Free, Plugins, Wordpress

There are two ways you can access content on Experts Exchange without the need to register and and pay for membership to view the content. The first two methods are the the easiest way.

Just Scroll Down.

You might be wondering how scrolling down can help. Experts Exchange were smart enough to figure out that internet surfers have very short attention spans and rarely scroll down beyond a given point. They in fact convince the users they need to register to view the content by showing a large number of dummy comments with text that says

All comments and solutions are available to Premium Service Members only. Sign-up to view the solution to this question.

So the user assumes that the content is only viewable if he/she registers when in fact all the comments and solutions are viewable if you scroll down to the bottom of the page.

Use Google Cache.

This is a no brainer. When you search on Google if you see a link to Experts Exchange instead of clicking on the link directly click on the link below where it says Cache.

User Agent Switcher FireFox Extension.

If you constantly land up on experts exchange or you are tired of scrolling down so much. Use the User Agent Switcher FireFox Extension to spoof your User Agent and make Experts Exchange believe that you are a Google Search Bot. Download a list of User Agents from here and import it using the user agent switcher extension.

Related posts:

1. Better Comments Manager Wordpress Plugin
2. The Best Free Blogging Tools for Power Bloggers
3. Unblock Blocked Websites like Myspace, Bebo and Orkut

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | 16 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Featured, Tutorial Tags: FireFox, Free, Unblock

Multi Columns

Currently when you create a multi columned layout i.e 2 column or 3 column layout you need to specify individual and separate DIV HTML elements to achieve the desired effect. But in CSS 3.0 you can achieve this with a single CSS declaration like this

DIV {width: 400px;column-count: 4;
column-width: 100px;
column-gap: 10px;column-rule: none;
}

This is actually possible in FireFox but it is not Standard CSS 3.0 you’ll need to use FireFox Specify code in your CSS to achieve the effect. Example is given below.

-moz-column-count: 3;
-moz-column-gap: 1em;
-webkit-column-count: 3;
-webkit-column-gap: 1em;


Multi-Background

Currently it is not possible to put multiple background Images to the same HTML element but in CSS 3.0 you can easily do this.

background: url('http://www.clazh.com/images/body-top.gif')
top left no-repeat,
url('http://www.clazh.com/images/banner_fresco.jpg')
top 11px no-repeat,
url('http://www.clazh.com/images/body-bottom.gif')
bottom left no-repeat,
url('http://www.clazh.com/images/body-middle.gif')
left repeat-y;


Zebra Tables

You can easily do zebra table without the need for JavaScript or putting CSS Classes on individual Table Rows to give alternate colours.

tr:nth-child(2n+1) /* represents every odd row of a HTML table */;
tr:nth-child(odd) /* same */
tr:nth-child(2n) /* represents every even row of a HTML table */
tr:nth-child(even) /* same *//* Alternate paragraph colours in CSS */
p:nth-child(4n+1) { color: navy; }
p:nth-child(4n+2) { color: green; }
p:nth-child(4n+3) { color: maroon; }
p:nth-child(4n+4) { color: purple; }


Rounded Corners

How about the ability to render the ever popular and so called Web 2.0 rounded Corners for a box(html Element) with just a single line of CSS.

-webkit-border-radius: 5px;
-moz-border-radius: 5px;
-khtml-border-radius: 5px;
border-radius: 5px;


Opacity

Currently almost all browsers support their own version and syntax for opacity. Here is the CSS 3.0 Standard code for opacity

/* IE 8 */
-ms-filter: "progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Alpha(Opacity=50)";
/* IE 5-7 */
filter: alpha(opacity=50);
/* Netscape */
-moz-opacity: 0.5;
/* Safari 1.x */
-khtml-opacity: 0.5;
/* Good browsers */
opacity: 0.5;


Resize

Ability to resize a HTML Element automatically

div.resize {width: 100px;
height: 100px;
border: 1px solid;
resize: both;
overflow: auto;
}


Text Effects

Text effects like drop shadow and Text Overflow.

color: #fff;background-color: #fff;
text-shadow: 2px 2px 2px #000;
text-overflow: ellipsis-word;


Related posts:

1. Download Internet Explorer 8 Beta, New Features In IE8
2. Cool Hidden Features In Wordpress 2.1 Editor

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | 16 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Featured, Web-Design Tags: Web-Design, Web-Development, Web-Standards

Here are a few tips that I have learnt over the past few months that I been blogging. I think these steps are important for maintaining and keeping the momentum going new blogs.

1. Drafts.

Make drafts of your future posts, collect data and information related to the post and keep working on them. One of the reasons most blogs fail or lose an audience is that they fail to to post consistently. Having a bunch drafts helps you when you run out of ideas and keeps you organized.

2. Become A Feed Ninja.

Read more post less. While you might not be Scoble and have the ability to read 600+ RSS feeds in a few hours, try to keep track of news around your niche and interests, blogs catch up on news faster than news sites. Reading will also help to give you more ideas for your next post. Practice makes you perfect.

3. Engage Users And Build Relationships

I have subscribed to every reader who has left a meaningful comment on my blog this helps me get to know my readers better and what they expect from my blog. Use Services like cocomments etc to keep track of comments.

4. Be Available And Accessible.

One of the key things of building relationships is to be easily accessible. I have added most of my regular reader on Gtalk and chat with some of the frequently (you can add me ajacob[at]clazh.com). I’ve helped some of them out when they ask me for help or advice.

5. Break News, Write Pillar Posts.

If you follow point 1 and 2 you’ll realize there are two types of post you can do. Break news or write Pillar post. Breaking news is hard you’ll need to watch your Rss feeds like a hawk, it has a few advantages, if its important news it will get picked up easily by other blogger. Writing Pillar post will make your article sticky, most of the traffic that I get are from my pillar posts.

What Are Pillar Posts? Source DailyBlogTips

Characteristics of pillar articles:

• they are longer posts
• usually above 750 words
• they offer a clear value to the reader
• their content is timeless
• their content is original and unique
• they outline the expertise of the writer around a specific topic
• they attract links from other bloggers

Related posts:

1. The Best Free Blogging Tools for Power Bloggers
2. 7 Reasons Why Your Blog Sucks And Digger Hate You
3. 3+1 Things Bloggers Should Never Ever Do.
4. How To Get Instant Traffic For Your Blog Or Website
5. The Best Of The Blog Project Three Contest

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | 10 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Blogging, Featured, Internet, Tutorial Tags: How To, Tips

The Best Offline Blog Editor

Windows Live Writer

This is the best blog editor out there. I have used more than 7 different blog editors and I can tell you this is the only one I really liked. One reason why I like it so much is that you can manage your drafts and synchronize them very easily. You can also copy paste html while stripping it off all junk code, use tags, link glossary lots of inbuilt support for WordPress.

FireFox Blogging Tools and Extensions.

Well the first thing you need to do is download FireFox, if you are a opera, or IE 7 user (Don’t tell me your still using IE 6) your missing out on a lot of tools and extensions that enhance your productivity.

ScribeFire

ScribeFire needs no introduction it was previously called Performancing for Firefox. This is a full-featured blog editor that integrates with your browser and lets you easily post to your blog.

Screen Grab

Screengrab! is an extension for FireFox that makes it easy to save a web-page as an image. With it, you can save anything that you can see in a browser window – from a small selection, to a complete page.

FireFox Universal Uploader

As the name says, this FireFox extension allows you to upload/download files from any website using a friendly interface. Upload files/photos/videos to Flickr, Picasa, Youtube, Box.net(1GB of free space), Facebook, Webshots and OmniDrive in this version. Next versions would support other websites like Google Videos etc. You can add multiple files to the queue at a time. Extension will take care of uploading them for you.

AutoFill Forms

Tired of Filling the the same details while commenting on different blogs? Autofill Forms enables you to fill out web forms with one click or a keyboard shortcut. A set of customizable rules is used to determine the input for each form element. You are able to edit, remove, enable/disable the provided rules and to add your own ones. You can configure the order in which the rules are to be applied and define site specific rules.

FireFTP

FireFTP is a free, secure, cross-platform FTP client for Mozilla FireFox which provides easy and intuitive access to FTP servers.

Free Screen Capture and Photo Editing Tool

Gadwin PrintScreen

A Free simple yet powerful screen grabbing utility. (there are two version Free and Paid)

Image Resizer Widows XP Power Toy

This PowerToy enables you to resize one or many image files with a right-click. You can even resize multiple files in one go.

Google Picasa Photo Manager

Resize crop, alter, refine make a collage etc all can be down with this simple but powerful picture manager from Google.

Best RSS Readers

Google Reader
The best Web based Rss reader, some people prefer netvibes or pageflakes.

RSS Bandit
The best Free Offline Desktop Reader. I like the Inbuilt support for Wordpress comments without the need for going to the post to read comment, unfortunately it works only for Wordpress blogs.

Miscellaneous tools

YotoPhoto

Yotophoto is indexs well over a quarter million Creative Commons, Public Domain, GNU FDL, and various other ‘copyleft’ images.

Stuff a Blog Bmash

A useful tool just type in your keywords get related Picture, Tags, links, News and amazon products.

Related posts:

1. ScribeFire 1.4.1 Released
2. Flock The Web 2.0 Social Browser To Be Forever In Beta?
3. Guest Bloggers Required, SandBox Wordpress Theme Suggestions
4. Best Free Blog Editor – Windows Live Writer
5. Top Firefox Extensions and Plugins you should Know.

© Arpit Jacob for Clazh, 2007. | Permalink | 14 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Catergories: Blogging, Featured, Software, Wordpress Tags: FireFox, Tools