Grupenet

Ever visit a site which automatically resizes your browser window? This may be a big no-no in web design, but some people still do it regardless of what may be good and right in webdev rulebook. There’s an easy way to stop sites from doing this, assuming you’re using Firefox (which you should be).

In Firefox, go to “Options” under the “Tools” menu. Find your way to the “Content” section in the Options. Next to the “Enable Javascript” option you will see an Advanced button. Click on that and in the dialog that pops up uncheck the Move or resize existing windows option.

Once you save all your changes, Firefox will not be bothered by those nasty window resize scripts. There is also a more involved method of configuring the same option by using about:config, but I won’t get into that since the above method is much easier to do and follow.

In an effort to get my butt off the chair a bit more this summer, I’ve decided to limit my time surfing the web a bit more. There are a lot of great applications that can count how many minutes you are on your computer, but they do not count the time you’ve spent just surfing the web.

After doing a bit of searching around, I found an extension for Firefox called TimeTracker. It’s a simple addon which counts how long the Firefox window is in focus. So every time you go on to do something else in another application, it will stop counting. This really helps you get an idea of how much time you waste every day just surfing the web.

Give it a try and see how much time you’re consuming browsing the web. How much of your day is spent surfing?

Update (07/04/2007):
I just found out you can also add a filter list to TimeTracker in the options so it will pause the timer on certain sites, e.g., grupenet.com is on my filter list.

Have you ever found yourself adjusting the volume frequently when you set your MP3 player to shuffle your songs? I’ll show you how to normalize the volume on your music library so you don’t have to reach for that volume button every couple minutes. The application I will be using is MP3Gain.

After you’ve installed MP3Gain, open it. Click the Add Folder button and point it to the folder which contains all your music. MP3Gain will then proceed to scan for all your music.

Once it’s finished scanning all your music, press the Track Analysis button. MP3Gain will now analyze the volume levels of each track. Any tracks that are highlighted in red have a volume level that is too high and may cause distortion when you try to use the equalizer on your MP3 player.

After that’s done, click on Track Gain. The DB of all your songs will be altered to the value in the “Normal Volume” field. Any changes made in MP3Gain can be reversed. To do this, select Undo Gain changes from the “Modify Gain” menu.

That’s all there is to it! Now all your tracks will have a consistent volume level.

Windows Vista has a really cool disk caching feature called ReadyBoost which, when enabled, can use almost any USB 2.0 flash memory to cache system tasks. Unfortunately, ReadyBoost will only use USB sticks it considers fast enough. The upside of this is that ReadyBoost can easily be tricked into thinking your slower USB stick is in fact lightning fast.

If you haven’t already, plug in your USB stick. Open your Start menu and click “Computer”. From here you should be able to see your USB stick.

Next right-click on your USB stick and select “Properties”. Go to the “ReadyBoost” tab and make sure “Stop testing this device” is checked. If there is no checkbox, your USB stick already works with ReadyBoost and you shouldn’t even be reading this tutorial. Click “OK” and unplug your USB stick.

Now comes the fun part where you have to dig around in the Windows registry. Open your Start menu, type regedit in the search field, and press enter. After accepting the UAC dialog, the Registry Editor should open up.

Using the left folder pane, navigate your way to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SOFTWARE > Microsoft > Windows NT > CurrentVersion > EMDMgmt. In the left pane you should now see a list of USB devices that Vista has tested. Find the one for the USB stick you’re using and click on it. A list of values concerning your USB stick will be displayed.

Double-click the DeviceStatus entry, change the value to 2, and click OK. Use the same method for the entries ReadSpeedKBs and WriteSpeedKBs, but change their values to 1000. Go ahead and close the Registry Editor. Phew! You’ve made it through the toughest part!

Pop in your USB stick, go to the Start menu, and click Computer. Open up the Properties for your USB stick once again and click the ReadyBoost tab. Select “Use this device” and adjust the amount of reserved space for ReadyBoost to whatever you want. Click OK to save the changes.

That’s it! You’re done! Now Windows Vista will use your USB stick to run system tasks in the background.

There’s a new Web 2.0 startup by the name of Thoof. Many are describing it as a combination of Digg and Wikipedia, but there’s much more going on under the hood. Thoof is currently in beta, so the only way you’re getting in is with an invitation(see below). Thoof is now open to the public. I had the privilege to interview the founder of Thoof and ask him a few questions.

Before I get into the interview I’d like to let you know that I’ve got beta invitations to Thoof. If you’d like one, comment on this post saying you’d like an invite. An invite will be sent to your email address promptly. Now on to the interview!

(more…)