Quexim

Add a Google+ button to your site

Written on September 7, 2011 at 4:36 pm, posted by Al

You can add a Google+ button to your site really easily, with some pre-generated Google code. Visit http://www.google.com/webmasters/+1/button/ to customize your own. Offline developers beware: the button requires a live web environment to render, so won’t display offline.

If you want to remove the ‘Post to Google plus’ message, simply change

to

How to fly in minecraft

Written on September 7, 2011 at 4:02 pm, posted by Al

It took me a few minutes to work this one out, so I thought I’d post the link: http://www.xboxmb.com/forum/100-minecraft/27675-zombe-mod-installer-minecraft-flying-mod-installer-update-1-7-3-a.html

Simply download the installer and run it (make sure you run as an administrator on Vista & 7). Select your options and you’re done!

You’ll need to run Minecraft from the downloadable .exe file (available on the Minecraft website) rather than from your browser.

Don’t forget, this only works with 1.7.3!

Looping and good taste = beautiful music

Written on September 7, 2011 at 9:53 am, posted by Al

This girl’s awesome, came across this on teh’ interwebs, it needs sharing:

Simple, free shopping with OpenCart

Written on February 12, 2011 at 6:04 pm, posted by Al

Choosing an online shopping solution is often a tricky thing.  There are literally thousands of carts, stores, plugins and systems for e-commerce.

There are plenty of high-end systems ideal for large-scale e-commerce, but if you’re just starting, your budget is often limited or sometimes non-existent.

Cheap or Open Source systems have a reputation (not always unfairly) for being a little hard to use. Anyone who’s used ZenCart will be familiar with the feature overload when navigating the back end. When you’re setting up for the first time, the last thing you really need is to spend months trying to convince a system to do what you want it to.

OpenCart is a neat, efficient system. Whilst not overflowing with features, it’s a breeze to navigate, and does contain all the core features you’d look for when setting up a shop:

• Unlimited Categories
• Unlimited Products
• Unlimited Manufacturers
• Multi Currency
• Multi Language
• Product Reviews
• Product Ratings
• Open Source
• Free Documentation
• Templatable
• Automatic Image Resize
• 20+ Payment Gateways
• 8+ Shipping Methods

If you have Installatron or a similar set up on your server, you can install OpenCart with a click of a button.  OpenCart itself has a beautifully clean interface, meaning that you can start using it immediately without having to customise it to look clean or modern.

OpenCart plugs cleanly into PayPal and other commonly-used systems for instant payment setup.

You can have a play with OpenCart on the website’s demo area at: http://www.opencart.com/index.php?route=demonstration/demonstration

OpenCart is open source and free and you should download it from http://www.opencart.com

Firefox goes into overdrive

Written on February 12, 2011 at 10:26 am, posted by Al

Firefox 4 has just gone into beta 11, hopefully the last beta to be released before a release candidate.  This release, like the 4 before it is for bugs, as Firefox 4 has been feature complete since beta 6.

A recent draft of the continued development of Firefox has shown plans (still in the planning stages) for Firefox to release another 3 versions in 2011, taking it to version 7 before the end of the year.

These developments follow criticism that Mozilla was too slow in releasing new features through 2010, with version 3 only upgrading to 3.5 despite a wealth of new features that many argued would easily constitute a big enough improvement to merit version 4 status.

Each new browser release will contain major improvements, but focus on them in a more linear progression, so that one milestone can be achieved at a time, so that releases aren’t held back by trying to hit too many targets at once.

Google Chrome already follows a similar pattern, being on version 9 at time of writing, despite being younger than its Mozilla counterpart.

You can download the latest Firefox beta at: http://www.mozilla.com/en-GB/firefox/beta/

RocketDock – a Mac-like dock for Windows

Written on February 8, 2011 at 4:48 pm, posted by Al

A handly little doo-hickey for Windows users: RocketDock gives Windows desktops a dock, just like on OSX.

You can minimise Windows to it, as well as selecting themes.  On Windows, many program icons can tend to be a little ugly, but you can add new icons to RocketDock by adding PNGs to the ‘icons’ folder in your RocketDock folder in ‘Program Files’, usually on your C: drive.

Download RocketDock: http://rocketdock.com/

Google now sees inside you

Written on February 7, 2011 at 7:49 pm, posted by Al

What is Google Body?

Google Body, Google’s interactive 3D map of the human body is in beta and available to play with at: http://bodybrowser.googlelabs.com/

Google Body lets you strip down the layers of the body, peeling back (figuratively) layers of flesh, skin, muscle and bone, right back to the circulatory system.  This sort of technology is very exciting, as it potentially lets us do a lot of things.  Imagine if doctors could plot points on maps of our own bodies which are then accessible in the cloud? Scans and medical records can all be composited to form a complete interactive history of our bodies. This also makes it easier for us to remain in possession of our own medical data.

Look deeper…

One of the best features is the search box in the top right of the screen, simply type in what you’re looking for and it will instantly zoom in. Arteries, veins, muscles, the lot. Very nifty.

At the moment, you’ll need to have a browser with Open GL enabled which means either Firefox 4 beta (though mine doesn’t seem to want to play ball) or Google Chrome.

Adobe software hurts

Written on February 6, 2011 at 10:02 pm, posted by Al

Sigh. Adobe software is expensive. Adobe make Photoshop (the program so prolific it’s been verb-ified), Illustrator, InDesign, Flash, Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Premiere, Soundbooth and After Effects to name just the well-known ones.

I love Adobe

Before I go on, I should stress that I think Adobe’s software is fantastic, it’s the industry standard, they gobbled up Macromedia a few years ago, who represented their last serious competitor.  There’s open-source software, like The Gimp and Inkscape as well as more affordable software such as Corel Draw, but none of it can fully take Adobe’s place in the workflow. It has excellent features, far ahead of its competitors, but more importantly, when working with others, it’s too risky to use other software to access files.  Sending a 10,000 copy document to print using Inkscape is just plain foolish.

Adobe doesn’t seem so keen on me…

But Adobe’s programs are very, very expensive. There’s nothing wrong with this, good products should be priced according to their quality.  However, Photoshop alone is £595 on Amazon. Ouch.

I don’t have Adobes sales figures, but I guess relatively few Photoshop users have paid that price.  The majority of people seem to have an illegal download of Photoshop. That’s their problem (or their gain, however you see it) but Adobe doesn’t seem especially motivated to track these people down.

At the other end of the scale are people who have purchased it or been given a license as part of a company. These company workers don’t pay for it, their employer does, and they pay at a vastly reduced rate. Companies get software cheaper buy buying multiple licences, and often users will have a copy even after they’ve left their job or they have a friend-of-a-friend copy.  These people either get it bough for them (cheaply) or they buy a licence from their company at cost (cheaper).

After the big companies and the Torrenters…

This leaves small companies and freelancers. They don’t have the financial muscle to buy loads of licences and they can’t risk violating the law.  In small companies, there are fewer staff members and hence less speciality, everyone has to be able to do more than one job, you can’t just be an illustrator [and use Illustrator], you need to be able to do layout and photo work when the work is here. This means you need more than one program, possibly, the whole Master Collection or at least the Design Premium package.

Wouldn’t it be nice..

I’m not suggesting that small companies get special treatment, but I think there needs to be another kind of licence, beyond the student one (which only lets you install on one machine, is not to be used for profit and is not upgradable). I don’t want to illegally download the software, I want to be law-abiding and I realise that people stealing it drives up the price. I want to be part of the solution, but as I see it, Adobe are more a part of the problem with their current stance.

Log me in: free remote computer access

Written on February 5, 2011 at 3:36 pm, posted by Al

Log Me In lets you access your PC or Mac for free. Sign up at: https://secure.logmein.com/UK/

Having a tool like this is an essential must-have for any computer user, simply access their website and you gain access to your computer from anywhere in the world.

F.lux – save your eyes, feel happy

Written on February 5, 2011 at 8:13 am, posted by Al

F.lux does something very simple. It adjusts your screen throughout the day based on the time.  It gives you lots of blue light in the morning and warmer colours at night.  You no longer need to squint every time you look away from the screen. Best of all it runs on Windows, Macs and Linux-based systems!

You can deactivate it temporarily for colour-sensitive work, but for most other tasks, you won’t even notice it running.

There’s plenty more info on the F.lux website: http://www.stereopsis.com/flux/