Search for a word that is at the tip of your tongue

How often have you realized that there is a word that is at the tip of your tongue, but just isn't coming out? While similar to writers block, this can be just as deleterious. But fear not, there is an online web app that can now help you find the word that you are searching for.

Instead of having searching the word database like you would in a conventional dictionary, you can now search on on other factors like "Sounds like", "word meaning" and the letters the word contains. The app is called Tip of My Tongue, and I guarantee you that if you are a blogger or a writer, you'll be using this online web program more than once.

Of course, it's not perfect yet, but it's just a matter of time before it becomes more robust, or a web engine like Google picks up the idea. Typing in say 'eek' and using the sounds like box to refine the search actually yields several results, even those that are distant from the pronunciation of the word 'gawk', and to narrow it down, you'll have to give the app more input.

The app uses several online dictionaries, mostly wordnet apparently, and a host of other websites. However, in my brief inspection of the site, I've noticed that some words, especially those associated with idioms and containing other meanings are not present when you use the 'Word Meaning' feature, and the results from the letters features can be quite overwhelming. Nevertheless, while the app is no substitute for a proper dictionary or a thesaurus, it will sure help you find the word that you already know and is on the tip of your tongue.

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Use Problem Recorder to Write Tutorials For Windows 7

Windows 7 has a great new feature called ‘Problem Steps Recorder’. It’s main purpose was, of course, to record the steps taken by the user to reproduce the problem so that someone else could see what the user is doing and help them out, especially through the get help from a friend feature.

However, another use for the feature is that one can use the ‘Record Steps to Reproduce a problem’ feature to record steps to make a tutorial! This is because what windows essentially does is makes note of everything the user clicks on as well as takes a screenshot of the desktop and places it in the HTML file as shown below. So it is somewhat better than a plain text tutorial and almost as good as a screencast.

So, all you need to do is replace the words ‘Problem’ in the file with a blank (a simple Find and Replace in the HTML should take care of that) and get rid of the timestamp and additional information that the problem recorder tool adds. Plus, if you have multiple desktops, you’re probably going to want to turn off the extended desktop, or else Windows will take a screenshot of that too like it did on my desktop.

To start using problem recorder simply search in the start menu for ‘Record steps to’ and you should see an entry to open problem recorder. Alternatively, you can also search for Problem Recorder/Problem Steps Recorder and click on the ‘Record steps to reproduce a problem’ when it opens.

Finally, just click Start Recording to start recording all the steps and the screenshots.

I can’t wait to use this new feature to record the steps to extremely cool (or at least I”m hoping I can do something extremely cool in Windows 7) things in Windows 7!

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Windows 7: Get Help From a Friend Feature

If there is one feature in Windows 7 that makes me scared, the ‘Get Help From a Friend’ feature would probably be it. In fact, this feature, so prominently displayed in the Control Panel should scare every techie and semi-techie (if there is such a thing). Imagine the frantic calls you’ll get from someone who doesn’t have a clue about what they are doing… who expect you to use this feature to save their computer. I can only say that the future does not look so bright if Windows 7 starts throwing a tantrum.

Worst case scenarios aside, I actually see a tool that might just help all those who don’t understand what is happening to their computers. I can already see several demographics, especially the baby boomers using this tool to call their grandchildren (and dare I say great grand children) for help.

How to use Get Help from a Friend Feature

To access this tool, however, you’ll first have to go to Start (a.k.a. Orb) > Control Panel > Troubleshooting > Additional Information. At least, this takes out the possibility of those who don’t know how to use the control panel to contact you for help. However, if they do, or just call you for help, you can be sure to direct them to this feature. Just tell them to Open Control Panel and search for Get Help from a Friend. Then click on ‘Invite someone to help you’ and choose from one of the three options that most techies prefer – e-mail, e-mail or ‘Easy Connect’.

Then, through the wonders of Remote Desktop and the Interwebs, you can easily fix their computer, provided you know what you are doing.

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Readable - A web app that makes it easier for you to read webpages

Let's face it... Although we've come a long way from the first webpage on the internet the most used method of communication on the web is text. Yes, we have videos, images and other interesting content (ex: ytmnd) out there on the interwebs, but just like I'm communication with you right now, text is essential.

So, what do you do when you can' t read the text clearly because there is a picture of a jumping rhino on the background that doesn't provide contrast or the web designer though it was cool to have a really small 7px font size?

Or to be more true to life, let's say you stumble onto a website like CNN that's littered with ads all over the place, and it makes it really hard for you to find your content. What do you do then? Until now, you'd either have to download it to tweak the html or use a text only browser to view only the text and get rid of everything else.

However, now there is a cooler web app in town called Readable that is going to be your best friend. It uses javascript to extract the text out of a page, and display it in an overlay that you can customize to your liking. For example, all you can make the size of the text bigger, have a grey background with black text, and get rid of annoying ads on web pages. Take a look at how a post in beyond teck displays:

Plus, all you have to do is click a bookmarklet in your bookmarks toolbar, and Readable will do the rest. If it has problems finding the text on the webpage, it'll ask you to click on the text, and then take care of the rest.

Here's a little demo from the creator of the app:

So if you tend to use the internet a lot, especially to read news and other blogs, Readable might soon become your best friend.

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Make opening new windows and tabs in Safari faster

Is it just me or has anyone else noticed the fact that opening new tabs and windows in Safari takes way longer that it used to? Especially when you are running a lot of other applications on your mac, or are using battery power? I for one think that Safari is not the fastest browser, to open or to use anymore, and sometimes FireFox even seems faster than it. I remember using the older version of Safari (version 3) and remarking how fast it opened on a Mac compared to Firefox. However, the newer version just seems a whole lot slower.

I think I have stumbled upon the main culprit – Top Sites. It seems as though Apple has tried to imitate the look and feel of Google Chrome and/or Opera. In fact, the beta versions of Safari 4 reminded me of Google Chrome, given the tabs at the top and the top sites feature that popped up when you opened a new window. Unfortunately, in imitating the most visited websites (or as Opera calls it... Speed dial) Apple has slowed down the speed of Safari. Of course, copying ideas is always good, because that means more competition. However, Apple has sacrificed speed for aesthetics, and turned the browser into a resource hog with its almost useless zooming effects and reflections. What I do find cool is the coverflow history pane. Now that is something beautiful and efficient.

However, luckily, there is a way to get rid of the beach ball of death that comes up whenever you open a new window or tab... disable Top Sites. I for one have found that Safari's speed has improved tenfold, and opening a million new tabs doesn't slow it down anymore. Of course, if you don't feel like disabling Top Sites has caused an improvement in speed, you can always switch it back. What I plan to do, as soon as I get some more time is to create a HTML page which you can use as the 'top sites' features. However, you'll have to pick and choose your 15 - 20 sites before hand and hard code it into the html. Nevertheless, that way you can have the top sites feature, and make sure that you wont be getting the spinning rainbow coloured ball as your cursor.

How to disable Top Sites in Safari for new windows and new tabs

Thankfully, disabling this feature is really simple.

1. Open Safari and Click on Safari in the menubar
2. Then click on Preferences...
3. Under the General tab, change 'New windows open with:' to Empty Pages using the drop down menu and do the same for 'New tabs open with:'
4. Close the Preferences window
   

That's all there is to it. Plus, if you still want to use top sites,you can! All you need to do is click on the top sites button in the bookmark toolbar (shown below in the red box with the arrow pointing to it), and top sites will open up in the current tab.

Now Safari should run faster and you'll still be able to use top sites!

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Useful key combinations to use Gmail on the Web

Turns out, merely muting a conversation in Gmail isn't the only thing you can by pressing keyboard keys in Gmail. There's a whole list of other things that you can do. If you're like me and use a bazillion operating systems, you'll find using a e-mail client a bit cumbersome. Although I still use it because I don't have to check my bazillion accounts every minute or so. Nevertheless, the preferred way for me, still, is using a simple web interface to write my e-mails.

So without further ado here are some shortcuts you can use to navigate through g-mail. I've also created a printable list so you can print it out, and stick it next to your computer, or you can write it on a sticky and keep it around as a reference.

First though, make sure you have Keyboard Shortcuts enabled in Gmail. To do this, go to Settings > Under General tab you can set keyboard shortcuts to be turned on. Beware however, if you accidently press a key, you might trigger the function of the shortcut and accidentally mute an important conversation.

List of basic Gmail Shortcuts and their functions (or rather symptoms, if you accidentally pressed the shortcut)

(Source: Stolen from Google's Documentation and improved to suit my needs, visit documentation for full list).
To save this shortcut list (it's a png file) onto your computer simply right click and save as. Also, feel free to hotlink to it. I think the simpler version is going to encourage me to use the keys more...

Gmail Shortcut Cheatsheet

To download the shortcut cheat sheet, head on over to Evan William's Website, and download the cheat sheet. Here a hotlink to the cheat-sheet, on which you can right click and click Save As.. or Save Link As.. etc.

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Muting and unmuting emails (conversations) in Gmail

I was browsing through my gmail archives and I came across an e-mail that had "muted" written beside it to the left of the subject line. Unbeknownst to me I had accidentally muted the e-mails chain (called a conversation by Google, since it involved sending e-mails back and forth, kinda like instant messaging with e-mail) so every subsequent message that was sent to me directly went to my archive without even showing up in my e-mail inbox on Evolution

Yes, I know, I'm using Evolution on Ubuntu for now. However I'll most likely be switching to something more robust like Thunderbird soon, but evolution seems to fit the bill quite nicely for now. But I digress. Luckily, the conversation was unimportant, and it was kinda good that it actually went unnoticed, since it would have just been an extra boring e-mail for me to read anyway.

Turns, out, that you can mute a conversation just by pressing a key combination and then to unmute it you have to click a button. Weird. Anyway, if someone else is wondering why an e-mail they were supposed to receive is not in their e-mail client's inbox... check if you accidentally muted the conversation from Gmail's web interface.

How to check for muted e-mail in Gmail

Luckily, checking for muted e-mail is easy. Just search for is:muted using gmail's search box and gmail will show all the conversations that are muted.

How to unmute muted conversations in Gmail

To unmute conversations, you must open up the muted gmail conversation first, and then move the conversation back to your inbox. Doing so, for now, seems to be the only way to unmute a gmail conversation.

How to mute a gmail conversation

This is the part I dont like (sorta) because it makes it really easy for anyone to accidentally press the combination that is going to mute the conversation. How do you mute it? Press the M key, and the conversation will be automatically muted. Although Gmail will give you a message that the conversation was muted in its classic yellow "information" bar above the message area, I'm sure most people wont understand what just happened (including me!). I fear this might become a problem like the Firefox cursor blinking continuously, except the symptoms will be far less noticeable.

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Mac Tip: Use Nocturne or a shortcut to make your screen dark

Here's a great little mac tip that'll help you if you feel that having a screaming white background for all windows on your screen is a bit too overpowering for your eyes. Instead of having a white background, that hurts your eyes and perhaps is not as conducive to your creativity (citation needed...) why not turn the background black and the text white! May be, you'll even save a attowatt of power in the process too (again, citation needed...).

Anyway, here are two tips that you can use to turn down the brighteness of the screen by inverting the colours of your screen to get a much darker background.

Method 1 - Use a shortcut to invert the screen colours on mac

For the first method simply press Command (the key with the apple logo) + Control + Alt + 8 to invert the colour of your screen. It'll make all the white colours black, and all the blue colours orange. However, if you'd like to invert the colours on your screen a bit more gracefully, I'd like to recommend Nocturne. Nevertheless, here's what you get for using the default "accessibility" option provided on your mac without downloading anything: (note: image was similated using Photoshop.. so that you can get an idea of how it looks)

Method 2 - Download Nocturne and Switch to Night

Nocturne

(Free, Mac Only) is a little app that you can use to gracefully invert the colours on the screen to get a much darker background. When I say gracefully, I mean that Nocturne wont just invert all the colours on your screen, but only the desired ones. For example, blues will remain blue and wont be inverted to orange. The same goes for other dark colours like green and so on. You can also do other things like switch the screen to grayscale and pretend like you are using a computer with a monochrome monitor from the past, except its a million times faster. Likewise, you can tint colours to suit your liking and use the light sensors on your Macbook/Macbook Pro to trigger nocturne, and hopefully reduce the stress on your eyes.

Although you might not need it all the time, nocturne is a great little app that is worth the download. Plus, it barely hogs any memory so its great to have it sitting around on the menubar in times of need. It's quite a big step forward from the default inversion tool, and its FREE!

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The plan for summer

So summer has started, at least it has for most students in North America. This summer is different. I can almost feel it (interestingly enough there is a heat alert today in Toronto, and I can reacall that there was a snow storm warning only a couple of weeks ago). This year I don't want to waste my time watching movies, horsing around and wasting time on social networking websites. Instead, I want to do something productive with my time. So, I've decided to start a new "initiative" as it were to improve my knowledge and to share it with everybody (well everybody who can afford electricity, computers and an internet connection).

This summer I'll try to post 10 1-2 posts each day, with varying number of posts in each topic. Although there are no guarantees, I will also consider the post ideas given to me by other readers. So if you have any ideas please e-mail them to beyondteck@gmail.com. My main focus areas as usual will be computers, cars, cell phones and anything thing tech. But already it seems like getting posts only in these categories might be a bit too much (because I'll still have to blog about something worthwhile, unlike most other bloggers =), even for a tech addict like me.

Additionally, I wanted to mention that I'm finally planning to open up NetNewsWire and subscribe to some blogs. So if you too have a blog (preferably related to technology, as I really have no idea about basket weaving)... send me a link or post it here, and I'll be sure to subscribe. Interestingly enough, I have 1990 new posts to take care of right about now, which shows my lack of knowledge regarding what is happening in the tech world right now. So, while you browse through the new category page (built by hand sadly, since blogger's labels widget really sucked) on this blog, I shall go read something.

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(k)Ubuntu with compiz has lines on screen after rebooting from hibernation or suspending

Interestingly enough, I ran into another problem while using Ubuntu yesterday. I was using my laptop for a while, without the power cord, and I got a message from Ubuntu saying that my battery was about to die out. So, I promptly decided to hibernate my computer for the night and then plug it back into the power cord once I found it in the morning.

Finally, I woke up today morning, found the power cord, plugged it in and started Ubuntu. Sure enough, everything worked great. Ubuntu read the 'waking up the computer' message while it was booting and once if finished booting, it asked me for my password (although I have automatic login turned on, I guess it doesn't apply to login after wake up from hibernation or suspension) and after typing it in ... Ubuntu opened my desktop, just as I had left it the night earlier.

However, the first thing I noticed after booting in was the lines or I suppose you can call them artifacts that appeared around the screen where the "compiz reflections" were supposed to be. So even when I opened a tool tip, all I'd get were lines. As shown below:

click picture to enlarge it and see the lines around the windows, desktop and tooltip.

I'm guessing that this is a video card problem or a compiz coding problem. It might also happen after you wake up your computer after suspending it. Although I realise that suspend might not be the same as hibernate, and even after repeatedly trying to reproduce the problem, it might occur after suspension. Nevertheless, I'm going to include the possibility and mention it in this post, in case someone else out there is experiencing the same problem.

Anyway, fixing the problem is simple. Restart compiz. Once you restart compiz, your screen will flutter for a second and then fix the lines that occur without changing anything else on your computer.

How to restart Compiz

Update/Tip: Turns out you can also do this by pressing Alt + F2 and typing in compiz. Then just click run and compiz should restart...

1. Press Alt + F2
2. Type in: gnome-terminal
3. Type in compiz in terminal
4. Wait for a second and let compiz restart
5. Quit terminal

Once you restart compiz, you can then go back to playing with the wobbly windows without the weird lines.

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Video Player Quickly Closes, Crashes or flickers for video in Ubuntu?

After a fresh install of Ubuntu on my laptop (it's a 3 year old Dell Inspiron 6400 w/ ATI Mobility Radeon x1400 video card), I tried opening a video of Freedom Fry after downloading it to my desktop. To my surprise, and this is definitely the first time it has happened to me as I recall, the player quit!

I tried double clicking on the video again! Movie Player opened for a couple of seconds, opened and then quit again. I repeated the processes a couple of times, in vain of course. Then I remembered that I might have missed some codec (well, the Stephen Fry's video was in .ogv format, that was supposed to be supported right out of the box) so I added Gstreamer codec packs onto Ubuntu.

In case someone out there is curious this is how you Add GStreamer Codecs to play MP3s and MPEG and MOV files on Ubuntu's default Movie Player... First click on Applications > Add or Remove > Search for GStreamer > Check the checkbox beside the plugins you think you might need > Click the Apply Changes button below > Follow instructions.

However, doing so didn't fix the problem. So I repeated the same process above to go to the Add or Remove window and download VLC. VLC is one player that can play virtually ALL video files out there. Then I double clicked on the video.......... VLC opens..... closes in 0.5 seconds! Still no luck.

Then, I remembered that I had come across a similar problem a while ago, except the problem lead to the video fluttering and flickering when it was played. The solution was to use the X11 form of video output in VLC. And I came across this helpful post in the Ubuntu forums as well where the video player immediately crashed for some other people as well.

So in case you don't know how to change the output format to X11 in VLC, here's how you can do so. Of course, you'll need to get VLC first. Unfortunately, I don't think it's possible to change the output format in the default movie player in Ubuntu, but if someone else knows about how one can do so, please post in comments below.

Changing output format in VLC to prevent it from crashing or flickering when opening video

1. Go to Applications > Sound & Video > VLC media player
   
2. Click Tools > Preferences
3. Choose Video from the left hand 'pile-on list'
4. Beside output choose 'X11 video output' like so:

Then just click Save and try opening the file again.

Everything should work flawlessly now!

Why does this problem occur?

The flickering problem in my opinion is some by-product of bad ATI drivers and Compiz code. Some times, if you turn off all compiz effects and switch you appearance settings to minimal, you can get rid of the rapid flickering. I doubt it has anything to do with the codecs or the player as there is no degradation in the audio.

As for the video automatically closing/crashing the player problem, its most likely the graphics card driver. Since the drivers for graphic cards are proprietary (especially if you're using Compiz, you have to switch to the ATI proprietary drivers...) it's likely that there is some 'broken telephone' going on between the OS and the drivers and the hardware causing the problem.

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OpenBlu - a presentation theme for OpenOffice Impress/IBM Symphony

The great thing about open source is that it motivates everyone who uses the software to give back to the community. In fact, I this is the very reason I'm giving away my latest theme designed for OpenOffice Impress entirely using Open Source software (Ubuntu + Gimp + Impress) - OpenBlu.

What is OpenBlu all about?

OpenBlu is a theme that was designed to rival that of themes available for other software in the market, namely Microsoft PowerPoint and Apple Keynote. Now, with OpenBlu you don't have to feel that by using OpenOffice Impress (free and open source software - learn more here) you have to use themes that aren't as pretty and functional as themes that come with paid software.

For more themes like this (but not designed by me), you might want to see this post.

Download OpenBlu

OpenBlu can be downloaded from dropbox:

Click here to Download OpenBlu

Also, I've included the .png background files as well as the GIMP .xcf files so feel free to modify the theme. If you do modify it though, please do let me know if possible... I'd like to see what other are doing with OpenBlu.

How can I use OpenBlu?

Simple:

1. Download the .zip file from the link above
2. Unzip the contents of the .zip file
3. Double click on Blu.odp and use it like the template presentation to form your presentation
4. Edit/Add/Modify etc.
5. Save the file as your own presentation.
6. Optional: Share it with others and encourage them to use OpenOffice as well.
   

Note: To use OpenBlu you'll need either OpenOffice or IBM Symphony.

License

OpenBlu is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License. This means that you can download it, share it and modify it. In fact, I encourage you to download it, share it and modify it to suit your own needs. However, you can't sell it for monetary value (this is mainly to keep the spirit of free and OpenSource alive).

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How to search the web faster with Inquisitor

Have you ever wondered if there was an easier way to get to your search results without having to actually see the search results page? If you ask me... there is! It's free, download-able for Windows and Mac (and iPhone!) and it's called Inquisitor.

Originally, in order to search the web, you'd have to go to a search engine first. Like Google, Yahoo or MSN for example. Then you'd have to type in a query, and hit enter, and search the best results from a list of 6 billion search results (although you see them 10 at a time, there are a LOT of search results). Then you'd click the 3rd or 4th or may be even 1st link to go to the website.

Then came the advent of toolbars and inbuilt search bars, from where you could search the web without having to go the search engine website first. Plus, with the search query features you didn't even have to type in the full "thing" that you would have liked to search for.

Now there is a better way to search the web faster:

Instead of going to the website, inquisitor (sponsored by Yahoo I must say) takes the place of the normal search tool in your browser (currently it only supports Safari, Firefox and IE). However, the most important feature that inquisitor has is - it displays the SEARCH RESULTS of top 6 results from search results page right in the drop down menu! So, you don't even have to visit the search results page in most cases. You can directly go to the search results page without ever having to visit tie middle man. Plus, it also finishes your queries for you if you want, and gives you the option of searching similar queries in different search engines. Plus, it tells you the websites you've already visited, so if you're searching for the same website again, you can go to it instantly!

So the next time you want to search, you'll not only be saving time, but you'll also be saving some mouse clicks.

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How to play tetris on your Mac with Terminal

Today, I noticed that it's the 25th anniversary of Tetris, through a Google doodle (you can learn some amazing things from a Google logo as it seems). So I figured, that it was only fair that I download tetris and play it since the last time I played it was ages ago. Turns out, if you use a mac, you don't have to download tetris.

Did you know that your Mac has another game besides chess that comes pre-installed with every Mac? Yes, your mac also has tetris, as it turns out. Although its not as easy to access as chess, and you'll admin privileges to do so, it still is a great time waster as TUAW (although the instructions on TUAW are kinda wrong.. they say tetrix instead of tetris... ) puts is.

So here's how you can start playing tetris on your mac. It's harder than normal tetris though, because it doesn't really give you a lot of options, but nevertheless, it's free.. and you don't have to download anything.

So heres what you do to open it:

1. Open Terminal (Finder > Applications > Utilities > Terminal or Alt + Space , then type in "Terminal" and press enter)
2. Then type in:
emacs
3. Then press the enter key, and after emacs loads, press the Escape key
4. Then type in:
x
5. Your cursor will start blinking beside the blue text, after which you should type in tetris and press enter!

To control the game: Use the up and down arrow key to change the block configuration, and obviously use left right keys to change the location of block. And press the spacebar to let the blocks come down quickly. Press the p key to pause.

Pretty cool huh?

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