AVINASH 2.0

Streamy WebRunner Profile

Recently, I’ve noticed that my one and only favorite Web based feed reader Streamy started puncturing my browser when I’ve 9+ Firefox tabs open. Every Firefox power user should be aware of the Firefox memory leak problem. In my case, Firefox disturbs me too much when I’m running more than 4 heavy web apps simultaneously.

Streamy used to behave nicely about a month ago (when I started using it as a beta tester) but it seems like after the recent platform update, it has become a bit too heavy. Whenever I use it longer than 2hrs, Firefox becomes damn slow. Because of these troubles, I decided to create a WebRunner profile for Streamy.

For those of you who don’t know what the heck is WebRunner:

WebRunner is a simple XULRunner based browser that hosts web applications without the normal web browser user interface. WebRunner is based on a concept called Site Specific Browsers (SSB). An SSB is an application with an embedded browser designed to work exclusively with a single web application. It�s doesn�t have the menus, toolbars and accoutrement’s of a normal web browser. Some people have called it a “distraction free browser” because none of the typical browser chrome is used. An SSB also has a tighter integration with the OS and desktop than a typical web application running through a web browser.

With the Streamy WebRunner profile, I can easily spend hours using Streamy without troubling my normal browser session.

If you’re gonna try this technique to run Streamy, please note that I’ve just created a basic profile. I’m currently testing a few features with this profile and will post about the next release when it’s ready. If you’re geeky and would like to build your own WebRunner profile for Streamy, spend sometime reading the WebRunner docs.

To run Streamy as a separate desktop-like application, you’ll first need to download and install WebRunner. When you’ve installed WebRunner on your machine, download this Streamy WebRunner profile:
[download#3#nohits]

Double-click the streamy.webapp file to launch the application.

Snitter – An Adobe AIR Powered Application For Twittering

Jonathan Snook has developed an Adobe AIR-powered application for twittering. He calls it Snitter!

Features

• auto-updates tweet list every 5 minutes
• highlights messages sent to you via @ syntax (and makes a chirp)
• clear current list of tweets
• refresh list of tweets
• displays last time it tried to request an update (so you know if it crashed for some reason)
• view 20 most recent items in your timeline
• view 20 most recent replies
• view 20 most recent direct messages
• view and filter friends list by name and screen name (there is a current bug in the Twitter API that may result in missing friends if you have more than 100)
• view and filter followers
• links to easily @reply and Direct message users
• keyboard shortcuts to access each panel (t=tweets, a=archives, r=replies, d=direct messages, f=friends, o=followers, u=updates)

The application is cool but remember that it’s currently in the alpha stage so you’re bound to encounter a few bugs. I installed it on my workstation and currently using it to send new Twitter messages. Everything seems to be working perfectly except one minor bug. Whenever you try to access your Twitter followers/friends lists, the application pops up an Action Script error but as I’ve already written, Snitter is an alpha app so except a few minor bugs.

You can download Snitter from the official Snitter page.

Fun With Blogger Play

A few days ago, while travelling the blogosphere, I discovered a cool Blogger application called Blogger Play.

According to Blogger Help, “Blogger Play is a real-time slideshow of photos Blogger users have recently uploaded to their blogs. It’s a great snapshot of what people are thinking and posting about, right now!”. Trust me, if you’ve already been bitten by the photography bug, you’ll truly enjoy this cool little app.

Oh, there is a suggestion for some of you who have limited Internet access: Don’t forget to pause the slider when you’re not active in the “Blogger Play” browser tab/window because on a fast setting, Blogger Play can download as much as 200MB an hour.

CSSVista – Edit CSS Live in Both Internet Explorer and Firefox Simultaneously

The makers of Litmus – a compatibility testing service, which lets you see your site in different web browsers, have released CSSVista for Web developers.

CSSVista is a free Windows application which lets you edit your CSS code live in both Internet Explorer and Firefox simultaneously. According to the official CSSVista page, the application is currently in a very early stage so expect a few minor bugs.

CSSVista is available for download.

WordPress 2.3 Stable Released

… and is available for download.

Take a look at the major new feature additions:

1. Native Tagging Support – allows you to use tags in addition to categories on your post, if you so choose. Importers for the Ultimate Tag Warrior, Jerome�s Keywords, Simple Tags, and Bunny�s Technorati Tag plugins have also been included so if you�ve already been using a tagging plugin you can bring your data into the new system.
2. The new update notification feature lets you know when there is a new release of WordPress or when any of the plugins you use has an update available. It works by sending your blog URL, plugins, and version information to the new api.wordpress.org service which then compares it to the plugin database and tells you what the latest and greatest is you can use.
3. A new feature called canonical URLs is super cool. It enforces your no-www preference, redirect posts with changed slugs so a link never goes bad, redirect URLs that get cut off in emails on similar to the correct post, and much more. This helps your users, and it also helps your search engine optimization, as search engines like for each page to be available in one canonical location.
4. Pending Review feature – Cool for multi-author blogs. It allows authors to submit a post for review by an editor or administrator, where before they would just have to save a draft and hope someone noticed it.
5. There is new advanced WYSIWYG functionality that allows you to access some features of TinyMCE that were previously hidden.

And now something cool for developers:

1. Full and complete Atom 1.0 support, including the publishing protocol.
2. We�re using the new jQuery whis is �800% faster.�
3. Behind the user-facing tags system is a really kickass taxonomy system which, which adds a ton of flexibility. It�s probably the biggest schema upgrade since version 1.5.
4. The importers have been revamped to be more memory efficient, and you can now add an importer through a plugin.
5. Through hooks and filters you can now override the update system, the dashboard RSS feeds, the feed parser, and tons more than you could in 2.2.
6. The new $wpdb->prepare() way of doing SQL queries.
7. Finally there were over 351 tickets in Trac closed for this release, with over a hundred people contributing. This is the polish, the hundreds of tiny bug fixes and features that make WordPress what it is.

All I can say is that I’m pretty happy about the ‘Update Notification’ and ‘Canonical URLs’ features. You know, I’ve been eagerly waiting for this release. Since WP 2.3 stable is available now, I can upgrade my blog in a click using my DreamHost control panel. :)

What do YOU like about WordPress 2.3? What are the newly added features in this release that you’re happy about?

VIA: WordPress 2.3

Over 13,500 High Quality Icons For FREE!

The Icon Archive is a collection of desktop icon sets from various authors of over 13,500 high quality icons for Windows, Macintosh and Linux Systems. Windows Vista / Windows XP / Mac OS X / Linux PNG Icons are supported as well as classic icons.

AVINASH 2.0 Design & Social Media Stream

If you haven’t visited this blog in the past few weeks, check out the newly added “STREAM” section. It’s my personal aggregator but you may find it useful if you’re interested in design and social media related stuffs.

I’ve named it AVITRIX. Currently, the stream is a mixture of my 4 social bookmarking profiles + Twitter + Pownce so you can expect 100s of new design+social media related resources/week @ AVITRIX.

Yahoo! Mash Invites

So Yahoo! has its own social network now and after spending more than 3hrs in a row, I’ve to admit that it’s a really powerful social networking platform. I’ve been using Facebook for more than a year now but the default Facebook layout is not something that I’m happy about. Facebook doesn’t allow you to edit your profile layouts while many other social networking sites do and that’s why I’ve always liked VIRB.

If you’ve liked Facebook and VIRB, you’ll certainly like Y! Mash. Like Facebook Apps, Y! Mash has Mash mods that allow you to extend your profile. VIRB members and others will like the Advanced CSS editor.

This is my tweaked Yahoo! Mash profile:

A few cool things that I like about Y! Mash:

• Advanced CSS Editor
• Ability to edit your friend’s profile (including the profile layout)
• The cool Y! Mash mods (Twitter, RSS Feed, Last.fm, Profile Log, etc.)
• Use your existing Yahoo! ID to log into Mash.
• Clean URL (e.g. http://mash.yahoo.com/yourYahooID)

One thing that I didn’t like about Y! Mash:

• It allows your friends to steal your layout in a click, no matter how many hours you’ve spent writing custom CSS for your Y! Mash profile. This is not something that I’m happy about. A custom design is a design is a design. Dammit!

Anyway, if you wanna give it a try, just ask me for an invite. :)

p.s. Thanks, Muhammad, for the invite!

See Newly Installed Fonts Without Restarting Photoshop

There is a really great time saver Photoshop tip over at BittBox. If you use Photoshop and find yourself relaunching the application whenever you install new fonts, check out this post: Photoshop Quick Tip: See Newly Installed Fonts Without Relaunching

Original Design Gangsta (Design Rap!)

Yo! O.D.G. = Original Design Gangsta! CMYK!

VIA

WordPrexy – Cloned EVERY Single WordPress.com Hosted Blogs

UPDATE: There is nothing to worry about. Read the comments. It seems like my guess was correct. There wasn’t any security issue with the WordPress.com hosted blogs.

If your blog is hosted @ WordPress.com, an Automattic service, this is the time to wake up and ask the Automattic guys what is WordPrexy.

Amyth, who hosts his blog @ WordPress.com reported that there is a Turkish site, WordPrexy, that has cloned every WordPress.com hosted blogs and now showing Google AdSense ads on ‘em. Here is the original post:

While randomly blog-surfing I found this blog which said someone accidentally discovered �Wordprexy�. Basically ALL Wordpress blogs (Yes, Including yours if you blog on Wordpress) have a clone at Wordprexy. If you have a blog on Wordpress.Com, you can probably punch in your URL and see �your� clone as well!

I punched in http://talkingtails.wordprexy.com and was surprised to see my blog on Wordprexy with some sort of a Disclaimer at the footer written in Turkish! The only difference between my Wordpress blog and its clone on Wordprexy (sic!) is that the latter has Google Ads � Something I haven�t subscribed to. Basically, someone has exported ALL Wordpress.com blogs and has tweaked the script to add Google Ads.. Further, Googling for �Wordprexy� again brought up some queer Turkish pages. Searching on Wordpress� internal forums and FAQs didn�t yeild anything either!Are they a bunch of hackers making money out of other peoples� content??� I wonder!

If you�re reading this, please shed some light.. I�d be glad if you did!

After reading this post, I checked my old WordPress.com hosted blog that is in private mode and was shocked when WordPrexy redirected me to a login page. It just proved that every single blog has been copied, no matter if they’re private or public.

When I visited the WordPrexy.com site, I realized that everything that is hosted on WordPress.com has been copied, including the home page items. I tried to read the WordPrexy Terms of Service but the page wasn’t available. Then I went through WordPress.com ToS and Automattic Privacy Policy but there was no mention about WordPrexy.

As Amyth writes, every cloned blog is showing a Turkish disclaimer in the footer. If any AVINASH 2.0 reader is from Turkey, I’ll appreciate it if you translate this disclaimer found @ cloned TalkingTails blog:

Wordprexy.com: Disclaimer – Yasal
WordPrexy.com sadece WordPress.com’un icerigini yansilamaktadir. WordPrexy.com ve GreatFirewallofTurkey.com sitedeki icerikten sorumlu degildir. Bize ulasmak icin bu formu kullanabilirsiniz. Uygunsuz icerik barindiran veya hakkinda yasal olarak kapatilmasi icin bildirim yapilan adreslerin erisimi durdurulmaktadir.

As far as I can guess, the disclaimer has mentioned something about Turkey banning the whole WordPress.com site so the WordPrexy site may also be internally related to WordPress. I just want to suggest that before you start worrying about your data, please contact WordPress support to check if WordPrexy is a try to make the WordPress.com contents available to Turkish people.

If they don’t have any idea about WordPrexy, I’ll be amazed.