Editing HTML On Blogger Beta

Today Blogger Buzz update one more feature on Blogger beta that we can now edit HTML code in template, probably that's a second breaking news since their announcement on Blogger in beta. But be cautious before you open the template. You should learn first what is new in it.

One quick warning before you all dive in, though: The new template language is completely different from the old one. So even if you're used to working with classic templates, you'll need to learn some new tricks to directly edit the new templates for Layouts-enabled blogs.

Make youself well-known at Web2logo

Oops! my logo really stands out from the crowd! Logo is playing essential role to the success of the product or website. It means a lot because logo is brand. How people remember you and think about you. Some folks are insanely addicted to famous brand. But oh my God! you see how ugly my logo is, hopeless! Because I'm not good at design and lack of creativity so let be it, I can't help. This one is the best I can make of, hah.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say here is about Web2logo.com. It compiled the famous websites in order by tag and logo. You can digg, delicious and rate any website you like as usual, again phenomenon of web2.0, huh?

Web2logo via : Lifehacker

foobar2000 - the best freeware audio player

In quest of music player that can play all sort of audio files for my PC and it have to be light weight that consume less memory, so far Foobar2000 is the best I can find.

I have already installed a couple of bulky software. My roommate bought iPod and I have to keep iTunes for him to synchronize with his Nanno. Window media player automatically came with window XP installation. Real media and quick time are also installed, as my browser beg for me to download so that it can play media files associated with such players. Since I don't want to mess up with my friend's iTunes music library, I need another good player for my own use and Winamp have long been my favorite for that purpose. Now I switch to Foobar2000.

What's so special?

foobar2000 is an absolutely freeware audio player for Windows. You do not need to ( or have to ) upgrade to pro because there is only one available that is free version! foobar200 do not have fancy skins like Winamp, but hey.. it's still cool for me. I prefer much simpler and more powerful playlist. It produce high-quality audio output. I don't need AOL or SHOUTcast, Pandora is the best for me as far as on line radio are concerned.

One feature that lack in foobar2000 is that it doesn't support playing video file. Why bother? I don't need a bloated software just to play the songs I like. And I seldom watch a movie. After all those are the fact that make foobar2000 incredibly light.

Check out the quick look on their system requirement:

foobar2000 >> Windows 2000, XP / 32 MB RAM / 200 MHz, AMD K5 or Pentium or equivalent (500MHz Athlon or Pentium III recommended) / 5 MB Hard Disk Space

Winamp >> Windows 2000, XP / 128 MB RAM / 1.5 GHz Pentium IV or comparable / 30MB Hard Disk Space

If you still love Winamp and hesitate to get rid of it then you'd better not installed foobar200. They aren't mean to stay together in the same system. Even after you've set up foobar2000 as the default player for your audio files, Winamp is still fighting for his place in the background.

Features of foobar2000

• Audio formats supported: MP1, MP2, MP3, MP4, MPC, AAC, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC / Ogg FLAC, WavPack, WAV, AIFF, AU, SND, CDDA, WMA.Full
• Unicode support.Advanced
• tagging capabilities.Support
• for transcoding all supported audio formats using the Converter component (requires external commandline encoder executable for different output formats).
• ReplayGain support - both playback and calculation.
• Customizable keyboard shortcuts.
• Open component architecture allowing third-party developers to extend functionality of the player.

foobar2000 : http://www.foobar2000.org/

reference : foobar2000 on ryanspicks

Myanmar, 2006 Champion of Merdeka Cup

Seems like South East Asia sleeping giant is coming back again, though it's still early to judge. Last night in Merdeka cup final, Myanmar defeat 2-1 over Indonesia. Under the coach U San Win, Myanmar is placed as the lowest team in the four nation tournament. But FIFA rankings has nothing to do with the actual outcome. Kyaw Thu Ya took the lead on 61st minutes. Then the header from the capatain Soe Myat Min on 85th minutes was enough to add the 2006 Merdeka Cup to their name as a four times champion. The last time they won the title was in 1971 as Burma. Congratulation!

Learn French for Free Online.

Wanna learn French for free? Not just French, there are German, Chinese and spanish as well. Foreign Service Institute (FSI) offer several language courses freely available in an electronic format. Choose the language you want to learn.

My recommendation is to download all texts and tapes to your machine first, then study them later at your free time. Because all contents are cramed into one page which make loading really slow, not wise to go over and over again to download unit after unit.

[ Tip ] Use Firefox extension DownThemAll! for the mass download in one click.

Give me a name of your iPod.

Oddly enough, some dudes, come up with the strange idea, have recently launched the web site iPodNames on which people who own iPod can register for $ 1 per year to name their things.

In return, you will be able to:

Show the world your iPod's Name
Contact other iPod users (if they have set that option)
Obtain exclusive "iPodNames.com" rights to that name in the directory
Show the world what you have on your iPod.

Is this one another web2.0 social site? I don't get a slightly thought on what they will be up to, as the site is in very beta. However they are somewhat entrepreneurial and they choose the right brand, iPod.

iPodNames.Com : [ via Gizmondo ]

Firefox Extension I like, I install

I once posted some useful Firefox extension which I liked so that I installed in my browser. Since then more and more good extensions I came across are being added. The list are out of date now. And I've noticed I don't really like some that I mentioned back then. They are Googlepedia , Fasterfox and Performancing . In fact that three extensions are quite good and most of the folks find them useful. Fasterfox is still top of the three the most download extension. As for me I no longer need them. As my Firefox browser is quite fast already. I seldom find the same search in both Google and Wikipedia. I prefer Writely and Wridea over Performancing for blogging purpose.

I think It's time to update them. It's also a good idea to have them collected together on line so that I don't need to worry the lost of extension due to the browser accidentally uninstalled. Now I have a back up of them in my blog! If you haven't installed Firefox yet, and you want to download it, please click the button "Get Firefox with Google Toolbar for better browsing" on the side bar lower right corner. Trust me it's really far more better than Internet Explorer. And downloading it this way helps support this blog. Thank you.

Add Bookmark Here
A convenient way to add bookmarks.

Blogger Web Comments
Post and read comments on any webpage

coComment
clear conversation in the blogosphere

ColorZilla
Advanced Eyedropper, ColorPicker, Page Zoomer and other colorful goodies.

Copy Plain Text
Copies text without formatting

DownThemAll!
The mass downloader for Firefox.

Download Statusbar
View and manage downloads from a tidy statusbar

FootieFox
Soccer scores, live and almost instantly.

FoxyTunes
Control any media player from Firefox and more.....

Google Toolbar for Firefox
Take the power of Google whith you anywhere on the Web!

Greasemonkey
A User Script Manager for Firefox
( For advanced users only, if you are not so sure don't touch it )
Read more about Greasemonkey .

ImageShack right-click
Upload to ImageShack via right-click menu.

Linkification
Converts text links into genuine, clickable links.

Menu Editor
Costomize application menus

ScrapBook
Helps you to save Web pages and organize the collection.

Tab Mix Plus
Tab browsing with an added boost.

VideoDownloader
Download videos from Youtube, Google, Metacafe, iFilm, Dailymotion...

Converting Photo to Sketch

Converting photo to sketch? That would be fun especially for those who fancy playing with photos of famous celebrities :o If you are that kinda person or you just want to convert family photos to amuse your kids, download the Photo to Sketch . It's a free and easy to use software but available for Windows only.

Well how about converting sketch to photo? You still can do so, if you are really serious about graphic design and possess some Photoshop skills. Read this post to find how it can be done!

Google Account Banned in Myanmar

Bloggers from Myanmar are unhappy about the recent ban on Google account by country rulers. Since Google integration of its account to Blogger beta, access to Blogger signon box has been denied as shown in photo. It looks funny, it might be. But imagine when we are excited about Google announcement on new service that have been added, some people from my country are completely devastated. It's sad but true.

Frustrated but not surprised, I'm used to suffer this experience pretty much before. If I'm not wrong, Yahoo! account have long been banned since the Internet access is available in Myanmar about six years ago. No warning, without a reason, no official announcement, this kinda things always happen. We just noted that some stupid political mind might involve behind the forbiddance.

Geroge W. Bush is a failure according to Google search

Type the word "failure" in Google search to see who is on top of the result lol!



Found via : Photographic Diary

[ update ] Google Blog explains why this happen :

In this case, a number of webmasters use the phrases [failure] and [miserable failure] to describe and link to President Bush's website, thus pushing it to the top of searches for those phrases.

Very Funny Ads

Check out the VeryFunnyAds.com, YouTube like online flash video site, featuring very funny TV commercials around the world lol.

Chelsea face Barca again in CL Group Stage

The draw for the Champion League (CL) group stage announces Today. Since then the controversial match between the CL Champion Barcelona against English Premier League (EPL) Champion Chelsea have been covered most of the major sport news sites. Chelsea, under the couch Jose Mourinho, face Barca 3 years in a row now. They have been kicked out of the tournament by each other in the past two years. So their early match up in the group stage again seems juicy news for the journalists and sport fans alike.



Champions League Draw for 2006

Group A : Barcelona, Chelsea, Werder Bremen, Levski Sofia
Group B : Inter Milan, Bayern Munich, Sporting Lisbon, Spartak Moscow
Group C : Liverpool, PSV Eindhoven, Bordeaux, Galatasaray
Group D : Valencia, Roma, Olympiakos, Shakhtar Donetsk
Group E : Real Madrid, Lyon, Steaua Bucharest, Dynamo Kiev
Group F : Manchester United, Celtic, Benfica, FC Copenhagen
Group G : Arsenal,Porto, CSKA Moscow, Hamburg
Group H : AC Milan, Lille, AEK Athens, Anderlecht

Cats Me If You Can

Some cats are funny, some cats are strange and some cats are cute. There are mad cat, fat cat, pink cat, drunk cat, evil cat, tiny cat, angel cat, and dinning cat, screaming cat, blaming cat whatever cat. Cats Me If You Can, a collection of pictures on cats, is a cool blog. You will like it, if you are a cat lover.

See what music is popular among Google Talk users

Google recently Launched a new service, Google Music Trends. Interesting, huh?

Pandora music discovery service

I've been listening to Pandora quite a while now. Among so many broadcast , and podcast service on air and online, Pandora is different, outstanding and innovative. You create your own station and Pandora will play songs base on the data you put into the system.

We take your input (artists, songs) and feedback ("I like this", "I don't like this") and use the Music Genome Project to create stations that play songs that are musically similar to what you've told us. That's it; only the music counts. We don't care how popular the artist is, who's backing them, and we don't care which genre bin they usually belong in. Only the music matters.

What is so special?

It's totally free of charge, songs quality is amazing, streaming is smooth compared to other online radio, no ads between the tracks and it's you who control the play back, not that stupid DJ who always talk nonsense! There are still some others.

If you are looking for good music that is not so popular, Pandora is the place to hang out, especially best suited for those, some of our great singers, who like to find the fantastic songs to substitute Burmese lyrics! Aha.. just kidding ;)

listening to Pandora is pretty straight forward, no download and no installation are needed. Just go to Pandora.com, and Enjoy!

Useful tips for interview

Is there anyone of you preparing for the job interview? If you are serious about getting the particular job, you have to be well prepared, probably you will need a help from a professional who can point out the right answers. Let's say the interviewer ask you this nasty questions, " What kind of salary do you need? ". How will you hit him back?

Bhuvana Sundaramoorthy have listed useful 50 common interview questions & answers for you to think.

Sansa e280 rival of iPod Nanno ?

We have seen a couple of mp3 players come and go, naming themselves iPod rival or iPod killer. Still Apple's iPod series are the king, holding majority of the market share. Here comes a new one, Sansa e280 from SanDisk. Can this little thing make a significant impact on the giant brand? It obviously has some potential like the same price as iPod Nanno has but more storage offer that is eight gigabytes of flash memory, and the features like memory expansion slot, FM radio tuner and voice recording are somethings iPod Nanno lack of. Moreover Sansa e280 has reportedly a longer battery life than iPod. Well, I'm watching!

Found via : Slashdot and CBC News.

Zero Topic - 5 month old

[ Tombstone Generator ] [ Warning Sign Generator ]

No One Cares Blog T-shirt

No one seems to give a second look to your blog! Don't worry, check out 10 Reasons Why I Don't Like Your Blog to find some points that you haven't noticed. ProBlogger Darren Rowse also writes persuasive blogging about getting the readers attention. Or the last thing you can do is buying no one cares blog T-shirt for $ 25 to show anyone around you how disappointed you are for that!

Blogger comment feed tips

New comment feed per post is good especially for the visitors come to the site, by subscribing it they are notified when someone reply to their comments. That's a big blow for the service like coComment! To subscribe, you've got to go individual post entry, at the end of the page you'll see the link as Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom).

But I'm expecting overall comment feed, like Haloscan do, so that I know instantly even comments are from old post from archive which are not so obvious to be noticed. Alternatively Blogger sent e-mail notification. But you have to enable it, to do this go to Dashboard >> Settings >> Comments, and scroll down the page till you see the Comment Notification Address box at the bottom, then type in your address and save the settings. You've done!

Tips [ update ] : Use Gmail with Gtalk or Gmail Notifier so that as soon as someone comment on your blog, you'll get noticed, even more faster.

Technorati Tags: blogger comment tips

Switching to Blogger beta

Well, I've switched to a new layout. Needless to say, I'm in love with the excellent new features Labels. Combination of blog archive and previous post entry under single click pull down menu style is fantastic. Now my sidebar is simpler than before, neat and clean. It's easy to customize the link list which means you don't need to change the template anymore, like in old Blogger just to add a friend's blog. Using third party tool like Google Reader to add your favorite posts or reading lists is simply unnecessary with this easy to edit layout. Publishing the new post is extremely fast now because the process of republishing the entire blog have been left out.

But still I don't see the feed icons in the Firefox browser address bar so as to add feed as live bookmark. I've also noticed that it seems my old Blogger Atom and Rss feed is gone with the old template. The feed url for beta version is completely different, you know. Do I need to burn a new Feedburner feed as well? And I also am still finding a way how to implement the Google Adsense and some other codes, since Blogger beta hasn't allowed to edit raw HTML in a template yet.

Apart from that I'm enjoying with my blog in a new look, hooray!

Technorati Tags: Blogger beta

Beta version of Blogger

When you log in to the Blogger to post, you may notice the sentence, just above the Username and Password bar, stating "Sign in with your Blogger or Google Account". So I've tried with my Google account. I've been given a choice whether to create a blog or to switch from an old account. Because I've already a Blogger user, I've tried to switch. But make sure you read three things before you switch it, which are stated clearly by Blogger.

You’ll need a Google Account
After you sign in with your Blogger account, you can create a Google Account or link to your existing one.
We’re still adding features
Some features aren’t part of the beta yet, but will be in an upcoming release. See what’s missing
You can’t “undo”
Your blogs and profile will stay the same — but you can’t go back to the old Blogger application.

However for me, I could not move to a new blogger. It said;

Thanks for your interest in the new Blogger in beta! For now, we are only switching a limited number of users to this new version. We can't switch your account at this time, but hope to be able to do so soon. Please check back through your dashboard for when you'll be able to try switching again.

Blogger in beta? Google is moving another closer step to take a full control over Blogger blogspot.com. In the near future, you might need to register with Google account to use a Blogger service. Techcrunch think that's a cheap move of Google, saying;

One thing that’s clear so far is that Google appears to intend that only readers with Google Accounts logins will be allowed to accept permission to read private blogs.

Whatever it is, I love Google for giving us a lot of fantastic free stuffs, Blogger is just one of the good example of them. What's more you can expect, now they are launching this new version, giving us ways to do more with Blogger. So what is new in it?

New ways to customize your template
Drag and drop page elements and easily change your template's font and color scheme.
Private blogs
Create a blog visible to just your friends and family, not the whole world.
Labels
Give your posts a category label so that you and your readers can easily sort by topic.

They are the most obvious one, of course there are many more take the tour or read a post about what's new in Blogger for more information.

With Labels, Blogger's new feature, we no longer need to go around delicious or any hacks to appear category in blog, though I have a vision of myself, painfully going through the process of adding labels and republishing all of my 60 over old posts, which is what might happen to me after having a switch!

Who is guilty?

Wife is dreaming in the middle of the night and suddenly shouts:
"Up!! Quick! My husband is back."

Man gets up, jumps out of the window, hurts his leg, and then realizes:

"Damn, I'm the husband!"

Who is guilty in this situation???

PS: I've got this story from one of the forwarded e-mail to me.

Playing with a Blogger Template.

Well, I 've happened upon some good Blogger hacks to tweak your template a bit. Some of them might be old and well known for some of you, but they still are worth to repeat here. All the tricks I'll mention are already tested by myself and I found no problems using it. However, your browser must be Java Script enable to see them working. So if you've installed Firefox extension "NoScript", disable it first. Ok, here we go!

The first one called Peek-a-boo comments from Blogger Help are explained here. This hack is particularly suitable for those who earn just a few comments on their posts, say maximum 3, 4 hits on every 5 posts, like me! Because double clicking the comment link make them appear just below that post which is on main page, without having to go to the post page. So it's not a good idea to use this script for those probloggers who usually get around 25 comments on popular post!

Now you can edit your comments on Blogger's commenting system. Though it's not an official announcement from Blogger. Fast and easy way to do this is visiting to this page. It's copy and past only! Or else you can also add simple code to your template next to this <$BlogCommentDeleteIcon$> code by using A Consuming Experience's third method.



What we bloggers normally do when we are making a new post is to include links from old posts as many as possible, correct? But they should be related to each other, huh? Well you still can cleverly put a link from the previous post in the top of your blog. Check this hack at Blogger templates.

Related Posts:
Cool scripts,
Blogger Comment and TrackBack Trick

Sleeping Well

Take a note of this necessary rule and make sure you follow it. Remember the best things in life are available for free. So don't worry this and that, try to sleep well.

* Sleep only as much as you need to feel refreshed the next day.
* Get up at the same time, 7 days a week.
* Exercise regularly.
* Make sure your bedroom is comfortable and free of disturbing light and noise.
* Make sure that your bedroom is at a comfortable temperature during the night.
* Eat regular meals and do not go to bed hungry.
* Avoid excessive fluids in the evening. Cut down on caffeine products.
* Avoid alcohol, especially in the evening.
* Smoking may disturb sleep.
* Don't take your problems to bed.
* Train yourself to use the bedroom only for sleeping and sexual activity.
* Do not TRY to fall asleep.
* Put the clock under the bed or turn it so that you cannot see it.
* Avoid taking naps.

Link found via Boing Boing

Google's latest product

Still in beta, but it looks promising! Check it out here.

Virtual iPod

Wanna learn what podcasting is all about by using iPod? Not really a real one, it's a virtual iPod indeed. The idea is cool and so clever.



Technorati Tags: virtual iPod

Don't judge too quickly.

I'm Her Daddy



I killed him



Oops!

Fort Minor - Remember the Name

"Fort Minor-Remember the Name" has been top of the most popular list on cnet's music.download.com for several weeks. It's a good song and available for free download as a mp3 format on that website. Check it out, there are piles of free mp3! My second favourite is "Dead On Arrival" by Fall Out Boy.

Technorati Tags: Fort Minor