Shahid Online - Tech Corner

A whole year without a blog post! Now that I've changed job, I'm hoping that I can settle down and push more useful tips on my blog. So, to get back to form I have one about web browser productivity. Web browsers have come a long way since it's inception in the early days of the World Wide Web. But if you've just been using it to browse the Web, you are really missing out on a ton of stuff. Productivity is just the start of it. Let's take a look at some of the hidden gems that a browser has to offer. I will mostly be focusing on Chrome and Firefox, but a lot (if not all) the tips may apply to your favourite browser. Pin Tabs First up is the ability to pin a tab. You do this by right-clicking on a tab and selecting Pin Tab . Did you just see how it react? It resize and just shows the icon. If you have a lot of tabs this is a real space saver. Using Keywords Firefox has keyword bookmarking, which is an absolute essential for many. This allows you to call a...

Yeah. I'm not gonna leave you alone about this. I want to drive another point to you about social networking. After chatting to a few "savvy" Facebook users, I can't help but notice how much they don't realise that the social network has grown. Looking back in time, in 2012 Facebook announced they had a billion monthly active users. Fast forward to August 2015, they broke news that a billion people visited Facebook on a particular Monday. Then in September it was announced that the service averages over 1 billion users per day. While that paints a nice pretty picture there's more to it than posting onto your Facebook wall. They have made some pretty big and newsworthy acquisitions like WhatsApp , Oculus VR and Instagram . See where I'm going? It gets so addictive to make "friends" online. They may not be real friends you see and share life with everyday, but just someone you choose to bloat to about something. Sorry if I come across rud...

It has been waaayy too long without any sort of update and I did not want anyone to think that I left the world unexpectedly. But I just wanted to get something off of my chest... social networking. Okay, okay. I'm not trying to be a soothsayer and to get you to stop using social networking (like Facebook, MySpace, etc). There are indeed many uses where social networking helps businesses reach out to a wider audience and for individuals to regularly keep in contact with family around the world. However, if not used right it can turn your world upside down which is what this article is all about. The following article describes a number of factors to consider so that your safety and well-being are not compromised. Personal Safety You should pay particular attention to the public/private settings of your account. Keeping your whole profile public would leave you open to potential predators. Now these very naughty people disguise themselves under fake profiles so may realise it...

The much loved game on iOS was recently released on the Android platform. And, boy, did it take a long time. While waiting, I had to fill the missing gap with clones such as Jetpack Soldier and Run Run Bear (which for some reason is no longer available on the Market). Now I can enjoy the real deal. Though, there is one caveat. Amazon App Store , which has been restricted to the US for a while. Yesterday I received an email from Amazon to download the app and did not need to fiddle around to get it running. This is assuming that you are already downloading apps from outside of Google Play, where your device would be enabled to install from 'Unknown sources'. If not: On your device settings, tap Security . If you don't see that then tap Applications Confirm Unknown Sources is checked. If not, tap the Unknown Sources checkbox. Tap OK on the Attention alert that displays. Now you can install Android apps from outside of Google Play. Once you have downloaded Amazo...

A while back I mentioned about The GIMP being a worth open source alternative to Photoshop. Yes, it is very good and I have used it even for video production. There will be doubters who will still sing praises of Photoshop and not understand that they are encouraging software piracy. So on with the show of encouraging users to pick up free/open source alternatives. The one issue I have (which I consider a limitation) is native Mac OS support, or rather the lack of it. In order to use it you are required to install X11 to utilise this app. However, I did not find it stable and often it crashed out for me on my MacBook Pro quite regularly - a problem which I never faced when using on Linux or Windows. However, it has come to my attention that some Samaritans have saved the day for me and published McGIMP 2.8, which is GIMP 2.8 ported natively for Mac OS X. I have had the pleasure of playing around with it and using it in single window mode. Head over to Partha's Place ( www.pa...

Alright. Here's the deal. Who needs a feature bloated application when you know that you will not need it all and that it's possibly confusing? All hands shot up in my work place when it comes to project management. Some swear by using spreadsheets for everything including PM. Yet, there's the frustration with Microsoft Project. MS Project is an excellent tool but far too complicated for my liking. So I had to search around for project management tools and, as usual, open source was the keyword (especially Windows). Here's a list of notable ones that I found: Achievo ( www.achievo.org ) BORG Calende r ( borg-calendar.sourceforge.net ) - More of a PIM but it's got some nice project management features dotProject ( dotproject.net ) - While being ugly it uses a server backend for enterprise delivery making it a selling point for this package eHour ( www.ehour.nl ) - time management and project management with a slick interface, especially handy for consu...

Yes, you heard me. To celebrate this festive season, SoftMaker has made their excellent alternative to Microsoft Office freely available. On top of this they will donate to charity with every download. With such a commendable act, why not contribute towards a good cause and try out an Office alternative. So head over to Load and Help ( http://www.loadandhelp.de/home-en.html ).

As they did last year, once again Apple has released their "iTunes 12 Days of Christmas" app for users of iOS (iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad) to treat their customers with seasonal freebies. So expect free games, music, videos and more between 26th December and January 6th. There's already a nice freebie (for some) when you first download it. Just so you know that I'm not kidding, here's the link to the app: http://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/itunes-12-days-of-christmas/id406478317?mt=8&affId=1896249 Btw, the app itself is free...

I have been a keen user of Ubuntu for some time now, and have to admit that this distribution has improved by leaps and bounds. However, what I do honestly miss on windows is... Dreamweaver. Some will swear by it, some will swear at the mention of its name. But for me, it is a very powerful tool when used correctly. Such a very popular and powerful web design and development tool is available on Windows and Mac OS, but not Linux. If you would just consider, Adobe has already supported the platform with their Adobe Reader and Adobe Air. Why is Dreamweaver not available? It just seems that there's not such a huge call for it so they just don't see the need to put in an effort for another platform. One chap at Adobe suggested to use Dreameaver under wine , but it doesn't work so great. There is an alternative to wine which, according to a user on the forums, works flawlessly - Crossover . However, the former option is not free, so some may be dissuaded where they woul...

Yes. It is long overdue. So here's another for the bookmarks: bit.ly (http://bit.ly) An absolutely brilliant tool for shortening a URL. Particularly when sharing long links to websites in your blogs, tweets and emails. Need I say more?

After a long silence I'm back. Since I've landed my new lecturer role I have been busy creating Schemes of Work, Lesson Plans and researching ways to increase resources for students so they may have a better learning experience. In fact, it is the former of the items that this article relates to. The first obvious question is why? Well, the college that I am in provides tuition for international students, who have given up a lot to come here and study. Many of these students are struggling to find work to support themselves during their studies, so if they require resources "free" is a keyword. These type of resources, that I refer to here, are mostly concerned with software. So let's get started. OpenOffice.org Students will be using Writer for all their courses, Calc for subjects relating to maths, economics, accounting, etc, Impress for subjects that require students to present. There are a number of reasons for selecting this application: It is open sourc...

Recently it dawned upon me how much Twitter is actually used and how much people like to Tweet. Whether it's a notification of how often your friend likes to break gas or seeing what your local MP is doing (which is nearly updated every two months) it's something that everyone enjoys. In fact, I'm getting into the act and cannot resist the temptation of looking a tweets every day on my iPhone. I'm just a bit slow on updating it myself. There are a number of apps for mobile phones that allows you to Tweet on a regular basis. Here's some that I found: Seesmic (for Desktop, Blackberry and Android) Twitterific (for Mac, iPad and iPhone/iPod TweetDeck (for Desktop, iPad and iPhone) Echofon (for Mac, Firefox extension and iPhone) For some (who are enjoying the Android operating system or adding funk to the business life with the Blackberry) the choice is obvious. There's more out there for desktop and web-based services. For me, I'm settled with Twitterific ....

With all the fuss dying down about Adobe Creative Suite 4 and all the designers getting used to it, there is new furore about the upcoming release of CS5. Woah. The global launch will take place on Monday 18th April 2010 More info from cs5launch.adobe.com

Who would have thought that an independent contractor in the 1980s would have created the foundations of a revolutionary technology, which changes the way we live? It all began in the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN), in Switzerland, when Tim Berners-Lee proposed and built a database of people and software models that can be shared over the Internet using the HyperText. By the end of 1990s, he created the set of elements that build a web page and its access, HTTP and HTML. In fact he also created the first browser - WorldWideWeb. The rest, you can say, is history... with a large commercial undertaking and the growth of servers across academia then the world Now, there exists well over 80 million websites and a growing user base - hundreds of millions. So it's happy 21st birthday to the Web. Celebrate good times.

Most probably the best website you cannot go without is TechRadar ( http://www.techradar.com ) When it comes to latest gadgets, they are sure to have a review and an in-depth look at them, as well as latest news all tech. A brilliant website that should be among your bookmarks.

With the initial rumours of Apple contending against the Tablet market, and then the possible name, I did not feel much excitement as there were questions as to what innovations can take place in the market. Then the iPad was launched and it received a luke-warm reception, echoing Microsoft's ailment of Windows Vista. After looking at the reviews and in-depth reports I still remain unconvinced of the usefulness of this latest offering. Here are a number of reasons as to why: It does not run the full Mac OS, but the phone OS. The limitation: multi-tasking and you are restricted to the App Store for applications The lack of storage. The iPad comes in 16GB, 32GB and 64GB, which begs the question of future expansion. At the very moment I am using a Tablet PC with 64GB storage and am already struggling to store all my pictures and music. Lack of expansion. That's right, there's no USB ports, no Flash card support and no built-in webcam. There goes video conferencing. Accessoris...

A hectic start to the new year. People having problems with their routers, hacked accounts and miscellaneous computing tidbits has kept me busy. After reading an article on T3 about online banking , got me thinking about security. It is amazing that people still reuse old passwords everywhere, most of them fairly easy for a hacker to break. Not only are consumers facing such grief, many corporations who let people choose their own passwords are (in a way) prone to an attack of some sort. Because, when left to their own devices, their choice of passwords are not very strong. So it is in this vain that my choice of a recommended site is PC Tools' Password Generator . This tool is absolutely brilliant at generating strong passwords and also presents phonetics to the password in case of misreading. Check it out at: http://www.pctools.com/guides/password/ Happy securing.

In continuing the theme of useful websites that are worth revisiting again and again, my next pick is: recycle-more.co.uk ( http://www.recycle-more.co.uk/ ) A brilliant all-round website that is useful, not just for the home, but for businesses and schools. There is a lot of information on recycling different types of waste and a search facility to find the relevant recycling centre that is local to you. This website is truly a one-stop shop for all things recycling. So if you're looking at turning a new leaf for next year, let the environment be one of the items on your list.

There's so much usefulness to the World Wide Web, that I'm bursting to yell out my favourite website for this month: searchfreefonts ( www.searchfreefonts.com ) With an extensive search facility and categorisation of all those free fonts, you're bound to find the right font for your needs as there are well over 13,000. There are still references to commercial fonts, if you manage to not find anything.

While mocking up a design page for a colleague's website I came across a new browser behaviour in IE8. This was the first time I used IE8 as my main development browser, due to the fact that the PC was re-installed and high-priority updates were applied. Surprisingly Microsoft branded IE8 as a priority update. Anyway, back to what I was talking about, here's a sample: <a href="index.htm"><img src="logo2.jpg" alt="Logo" title="Logo" /></a> As you can tell, this is using an image for a link, where it behaves well in Chrome, Firefox and in the previous versions of IE (7 and older). But in IE8, this is not the case as the DOM does not treat the image as innerText, only as a child node. As a result, everytime I hover the mouse over this image, an extra gap would come from nowhere shifting any relatively positioned elements. To fix this I explicitly added a space (&nbsp;), so the line would look like: <a href="inde...