Entries from April 2007 ↓

When you need to search the internet for something, Google and Yahoo! are the two places you will ever need to go. But why visit Yahoo! and Google separately to search for the same query when you can do so at the same time.

Try Releton. Releton returns results for your query from both Google and Yahoo! search engines. You can choose how much significance you want to give to the two search engines using the slider on the website. By default the silder is 50-50, giving equal importance to both engines.

Try it & save time.

By default Microsoft Windows Media Player 11 opens in the Library mode. This may be perfect for hardcore music listeners but some people still prefer the “Now Playing” mode to open by default.

But Microsoft has not given any option in the WMP11 preferences to do that. However you can set Windows Media Player 11 to automatically open in the “Now Playing” mode by using a simple tweak.

Just right click on the shortcut you use to launch WMP11 and select “Properties”. There you will see a “Target” field in the Properties dialog box. Add this line to the shortcut /Task:NowPlaying so that the target would look something like :

“C:\Program Files\Windows Media Player\wmplayer.exe” /Task:NowPlaying

This is assuming you have installed Windows XP in C: drive. Now open WMP11. It will open in “Now Playing” mode.

Did this trick work for you ?

Want to know if how much time your blog takes to load on a browser or to know which component in your blog is taking the longest time to load ? Try Octagate SiteTimer. This AJAX service analyzes a blog and displays how much time it takes for each component in your blog to load.

The mechanism is simple. You specify the URL of the blog you want to analyze. Then SiteTimer visits your site and downloads each and every frame, image and other web components. Finally SiteTimer displays in a AJAX interface how much time each and every component takes to download.

You can see the analysis of this blog below.

From the graph, you can analyze exactly why your blog is loading slow and which component is taking the longest time to load on your visitor’s browser. You can then optimize the loading time of your blog by moving that component to a faster server or reducing the size of the component or even removing it, if it is not of much use.

Visit SiteTimer

Thinking of ways you can spice up your blog design ? Using rounded corner images in a blog is a sure shot way to increase the visual impact and the aesthetic appeal of your blog.

But not everyone is a pro in Photoshop to create rounded images. RoundedCornr helps in doing just that. It does not require any knowledge of CSS, Javascript etc. All it requires is some parameters, to create the beautiful rounded images you require.

RoundedCornr provides four different kinds of services :

1. Basic RoundedCornr - This generates a basic box with rounded corners. It will create four image files and the necessary HTML and CSS code for you to put rounded corners around your content.
2. RoundedCornr with Gradient - This generates a box with rounded corners and a vertical color gradient. Similar to the header of the Kubrick wordpress theme.
3. RoundedCornr with Border - This generates a box with rounded corners and a border.
4. Single RoundedCornr Image - Generates a single GIF image of a box with rounded corners, border, gradient, and/or text. You can use this image as background for your buttons, tabs, text box, etc.

To demonstrate, what you can do with these tools the entire RoundedCornr site has been designed with images and code generated from the site itself.

No more image editing required, just go to RoundedCornr and create those jazzy rounded images for your blog. And don’t forget to show me what you have done.

Visit RoundedCornr

YouTube is a phenomenon nowadays and the ultimate place to find every kind of online video (copyrighted videos too ). Here are 3 useful sites / tools which will give you the ultimate YouTube experience.

1. SpeedBit Video Accelerator for YouTube

Tired of the YouTube videos getting stuck in the middle while playing them ? Use the SpeedBit Video Accelerator for YouTube, from the developers of DAP. SpeedBit Video Accelerator for YouTube makes your videos stream faster and play smoother by reducing buffering problems and video interruptions or “hiccups”.

The software also includes a nifty search feature for searching YouTube videos.

2. Download YouTube videos without any 3rd party tool

Want to download a YouTube video ? No need to fire up any software on your computer or go to a site to enter the YouTube video address. While watching the YouTube video, just go to the address bar and prepend kiss to the URL of the YouTube video you are watching. For example if the URL of the video you want to download is http://www.kissyoutube.com/watch?v=2ghtvYTdtJA, then go to the address bar and prepend kiss to make the URL to make it http://www.kissyoutube.com/watch?v=2ghtvYTdtJA. You will then get the link to download the file on the page that follows.

3. View Videos Deleted From YouTube

A copyrighted video being removed on YouTube.com is now a common sight. But did you know you can watch the videos even if YouTube has deleted them.
Try Delutube. It plays videos that have been deleted from YouTube.

This is possible because Youtube maintains a copy of the video on their servers even when the video has been removed from the main website. To retrieve the YouTube video just provide the video id on Delutube and it will play the video file provided it is on YouTube servers.