How to Put Twitter Feeds Into Blogger

Twitter is the new thing that everyone online seems to be getting into. Its heaps of fun, free to sign up and you can communicate with a lot of people with very little effort which is always attractive with our busy lives. You can get your Twitter updates through your mobile phone and, as I discovered tonight you can install a live feed in your Blogger platform very easily.

Whenever I want to customize my blogs I always start with Amanda Fazani's Blogger Buster as her instructions are very clear and simple and you don't need a lot of tech knowledge to follow them. Amanda has written a Twitter Widget that self installs your Twitter updates into your blog - its really easy and customizable! (See the sidebar here for an example.)

Create a Twitter account
Open this page on Blogger Buster
Scroll about halfway down the page to the heading "Add a Twitter Widget using this Widget Installer"
Enter your Twitter user name into the "Create Your Stylized Twitter Widget" box.
Click "Customize"
Click "Add to Blog"

Once it has been added to your blog you can drag it where you want it from within the Layout Page Elements area. Remember to save.

If you want to add a link such as "Follow Me on Twitter" you can just open it by clicking on edit, and then just copy and paste the following at the bottom of the text code:

[a href=http://twitter.com/USERNAME" target="0">Follow Me on Twitter]

Replace USERNAME with your Twitter user name.
Change the [] brackets on each end to < > (respectively).
Then save.

If you want to remove the picture that comes with the widget then open the widget as above and delete the following from the code:

style="background: url(http://bloggerbuster.com/images/twitter-icon.gif)
top left no-repeat;

Then click save. Happy Twittering!

Power-up your mouse's scroll wheel

WizMouse is a tiny freeware utility that has a single, simple, function - if you hover your mouse over an inactive window, and use the mouse scroll wheel, it will scroll that window while keeping it inactive. This can be a boon for anyone copying text manually from an inactive window to an active one, or who needs to see data in one window (perhaps one partially obscured) while reading or working in another. It even scrolls applications that don't offer mousewheel support by converting the wheel to clicks on the scroll bars. In other words, if you spin the wheel down, WizMouse will virtually click the "down arrow" for you. WizMouse has a very simple interface. Most of the time, it sits in your system tray as an icon; if you click on it, you get a small dialog with a handful of basic options. I found the default settings to be perfect.

Improving the YouTube experience

YouTube Cinema is a new Firefox extension that will automatically display any YouTube video with all the other page elements removed. It even goes so far as to let you choose from one of six background colors.
In addition to dimming the lights, the extension also has a few tricks up its sleeve, like a toggle between the 4:3 player and the newer 16:9 version. You can also have it default to the high-quality stream if it's available.
One important thing to note: the extension does not work with content that cannot be embedded elsewhere. Attempting to play these videos will simply give you an error screen. This is because the extension does all its handy work by playing the video as an embed in its own special browser tab. To keep this from being a problem, you can simply turn off the feature that automatically opens up new YouTube videos in cinema mode.
Once installed, YouTube Cinema plays YouTube videos with the rest of the screen blacked out, and gives you options to control things like the player size, video quality, and background coloring.

Opening ".docx" files

One of the hassles of Microsoft Word 2007 is that it creates documents in a new proprietary format which has the file extension "docx". Word 2003 can't open these documents, and neither can most other word processors (although I believe the latest release of OpenOffice.org can). A similar problem occurs with other products in the Office stable, eg Excel and PowerPoint. If you are using Word 2007, and sending documents to others who may not have the latest edition, I suggest doing a "Save as", in Word 2003 format. If you are faced with trying to open a .docx file and only have an earlier version, you can download a free compatibility pack from Microsoft which will add that ability to your system.

Playing videos

Apparently YouTube is trying to block software that allows you to download videos from their site. I can report that the Firefox extension DownloadHelper still works okay as of today. Who knows for how long? but you can guarantee that our tireless geeks will eventually circumvent anything YouTube can put in place.
Of course, when you have successfully downloaded a video, you still have to find something to play it on. Windows Media Player doesn't do it. But a little freebie called FLV Player is just the trick. It has a VERY basic interface, but it works well. Miro is another free player with more bells and whistles, which can handle just about video format you can throw at it (but I prefer FLV for its simplicity).

Scam alert

Con artists have a thousand ways to fleece you of your money or your identity (which to them is as good as money). You probably have not fallen for the constant enticements of Nigerian nationals to load their bank accounts (although you would be amazed just how many Kiwis have been sucked in), but how much do you know of the other dirty tricks? Here are nine of them, not necessarily internet or email based.

The Essential Skill of Typing

Back when I was at school typing was one of those subjects you took if you were 'not academic.' Being somewhat academic I, like many of my peers, sneered at students who went off to typing while we took Russian with the other 'brainy kids'.

Fast-forward to my entrance to University; on discovering that every single 5,000 word essay I was expected to hand in had to be typed, I was starting to realise what an essential skill typing really is and began, strangely enough, questioning the relevance of my clumsy high-school Russian skills.

Several large assignments into my degree, I realised that my two-fingered typing had to be addressed; it was so slow and sitting in the computer labs watching those who could type flying through their essays, their hands a blur and not even looking at the keyboard! I was determined that I was going to learn to type.

The law school had helpfully installed Mavis Beacon onto all their student computers and through it I learned that my two-fingered speed was around 25-30 words per minute. I began trying to do half an hour every day and I committed myself to never again type incorrectly. To begin with it was painstakingly slow and unbelievably difficult, especially the first time I made myself type an entire assignment correctly. However, in just two weeks of using Mavis Beacon I went from my painful 11 words a minute to almost doubling my two-fingered speed and comfortably being able to type 50 words per minute, accurately and without looking at the screen!

Mavis Beacon made it really easy as it forced your eyes to the center of the screen, so you couldn't easily look at your fingers and the hands on the screen showed you exactly where each finger should sit. It broke up the lessons with speed trials and typing games and was very user friendly.
About two years ago I was interested in a particular line of work that called for a minimum typing speed of 70 words per minute. I dusted off my own copy of Mavis Beacon, worked on it most days for about half an hour and got my speed up to just under 80 words per minute, again in just two weeks.

So if you find yourself in our computerised world having never learned to type properly and frustrated at your two-fingered speed, consider teaching yourself to type. It is not as hard as it initially appears.

Mavis Beacon can be found pretty much everywhere software is sold; I picked my copy up for $10NZ and you can download a free trial here (there are many other good programs too). Of course, if you google you can find hundreds of free, online typing tutorial programs with a wide array of styles - just pick one that appeals. Finally, if you simply just want to test your typing speed you could always try Te Awamutu online; type one sentence and it will tell you your speed and accuracy.

Bagpipes beats the boy racers

My son moved at the weekend. He and his mates were vacating a house in Fitzgerald Ave, which is one of the seats of boy racer territory in Christchurch. While I was helping, he told me of an incident some time ago, when a group boy racers pulled up about 2.30 in the morning, with car stereos blasting. So house occupants dragged their reasonably formidable stereo system to a front room window, and responded with a rousing rendition of bagpipe music. The boy racers ratcheted the level up a notch. So did the house. The boy racers revved it up another notch. So did the house. At which point the boy racers had to concede defeat (the house had a few more decibels in reserve). The cars moved on, and have never stopped there again.

Another whoops!

I had not actually tried Irfanview's panorama feature before recommending it in a post last week. I tried it today. Ummm ... not good. Apologies. A sad blot on an otherwise remarkable bit of software. I did retry Autostitch, and that seems to be the best bet of the free programs.