Grupenet

One of my biggest gripes with iTunes is that it is only capable of syncing with the iPod. This doesn’t come as much of a surprise since Apple doesn’t want you to buy any other MP3 player other than the iPod. I’ve run into several people who love using iTunes to manage their music library, but would rather use a different brand MP3 player. Up until this point there hasn’t been a solution to achieve this, at least on the Windows side of things.

Thanks to Binary Fortress Software, syncing your MP3 player with iTunes is now possible with iTunes Sync. This application is only available for Windows. If you’re a Mac OS X user, check out SyncTunes.

To date, iTunes Sync will work with most players by Cowon, Creative Labs, Dell, iRiver, JVC, Samsung, and Sandisk. A full list of known working MP3 players can be found here. Sorry Zune owners. The developer says it will be next to impossible to add support for the Zune.

People who use Windows daily know that launching applications isn’t always the easiest thing to do. Instead of filling up half of your taskbar with Quick Launch icons, why not try something else? In this article I’m going to focus on a couple of my favorite freeware application launchers, which include Launchy and RocketDock.

Launchy

Launchy is my personal favorite application launcher out of the bunch. The basic idea behind Launchy is to use your keyboard to access your applications instead of your mouse. Using Launchy is as easy as typing the first few letters of the application you’d like to launch and pressing Enter. Launchy is not just limited to applications either. It is capable of finding files and even performing search queries on Google for you.

RocketDock

RocketDock is an application launcher which is very reminiscent of the dock in Mac OS X. Instead of using keyboard access, RocketDock allows you to launch applications in just a single click and in a visually appealing manner at that. Surprisingly, you can also choose to minimize your programs to RocketDock, eliminating the need to manage your open applications using the Windows taskbar.

There are many other application launchers available for Windows besides the two I’ve mentioned. A couple others I’d recommend are Enso Launcher($19.95) and ObjectDock(free).

Are you already using an application launcher? If so, which one are you using and why?

Yesterday Apple released a Safari 3 Public Beta for Windows. After installing it, I am greeted with a browser that displays absolutely no text.

I quickly find that I am not the only one with this problem. The problem happens if you have a large amount of fonts installed on Windows. After hours of digging through comments on blogs of people having the same problem with no solution, I decided to try my hand at fixing it myself. Eventually I found a way to fix the issue, so here’s how to do it.

First, navigate to the following directory. You should see a file named Fonts.plist, though it may not exist in every case.

• C:\Documents and Settings\%USERNAME%\Local Settings\Application Data\Apple Computer\Safari (Windows XP)
• C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Apple Computer\Safari (Windows Vista)

Download this Fonts.plist and replace your old one with the one you just downloaded. Now, open the Properties for the Fonts.plist file and set it to “Read-only”.

If some fonts still don’t show up correctly, open your Fonts.plist in Wordpad (uncheck Read-only in the properties first) and edit the locations of the fonts to match the location of the fonts on your computer. Make sure to set the file to “Read-only” when you’re finished editing, otherwise Safari will overwrite it the next time you launch it.

If you followed this tutorial closely and edited everything correctly, Safari should look something like this.

If you’re still having problems with fonts showing, navigate to C:\Program Files\Safari\Safari.resources and make sure there are two fonts files named Lucida Grande.ttf and Lucida Grande Bold.ttf. If they do not exist, download this ZIP of the fonts and place them in the Safari.resources directory.

Update (06/14/2007):
If you have updated Safari to version 3.0.1 you may need to replace your Fonts.plist file again and set it to read-only.

Update (06/22/2007):
Apple has just released Safari version 3.0.2 which fixes the font issues. Please make sure the read-only option on your Fonts.plist file is unset. Go download the new version!

This is my second WordPress plugin. It automatically adds the GreyBox lightbox to your blog. I have chosen GreyBox over Lightbox 2.0 because GreyBox has much more functionality. It allows you to have lightboxes for images, as well as web pages and even videos. This plugin will also automatically group all the images in a single post into a gallery.

Update:
I am no longer updating this plugin! I am now focusing my efforts on my new WP-Lytebox plugin.

Download v1.1.1 (only tested on WordPress 2.2 and above)

Installation instructions

• Unzip the file and upload the contents to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory on your web server.
• Activate the plugin from your WordPress admin panel.
• That’s all there is to it! Now GreyBox will be enabled on every thumbnail in your posts that is linked to the full-size version.

Changelog

• 1.1.1 - further CSS optimization as well as other code optimization
• 1.1 - optimization to CSS, updated plugin description
• 1.0 - initial release

I’ve just finished version 0.71 of my ASO Donate plugin for WordPress. It let’s you easily add your web hosting donation link from A Small Orange to your WordPress blog. You need to have a hosting account with ASO before you can get a donation link. With this plugin, all you have to do is enter your donation ID and the text you want to link to the donation form. I am currently working on adding a feature to allow for using an image instead of text for the donation link.

You can see this plugin in action in the sidebar on this blog.

Download v0.8

Installation instructions

• Unzip the file and upload the contents to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory on your web server.
• From your WordPress admin panel, activate the ASO Donate plugin.
• Now you can enter your donation ID and link text from the ASO Donate page(which is under the Plugins tab).

Changelog

• 0.8 - updated plugin link
• 0.71 - initial release