Thursday, August 31, 2006

On your marks,get set,DOWNLOAD!!

Google announced that you can now download classic books from it`s controversial e-book search site. The project is in its beginings but it`s a really nice way to get free books. There already exists a site that allows you to do this(Project Guttenberg) but...this is Google. Happy reading!

Monday, August 28, 2006

Google Apps

Google Apps for Your Domain lets you offer our communication and collaboration tools to your entire organization — customizable with your branding, color scheme and content through the administrative control panel, and with no hardware or software to install or maintain.
You can add Gmail/Gtalk/Google calendar and you can even use the Google Page Creator in order to create the site. Sounds really cool. Check it out!

Google Tools

Google released a new website especially for webmasters. The services are not new but it`s a nice thing to have all the tools in one place. A good page to bookmark. Happy Surfing!

Saturday, August 26, 2006

Blogging

If you are a blogger and you are using WordPress...and don`t like the admin pages,here is a really nice alternative.
Features
• New WP logo design
• New Login/Register page
• Spotlight-styled header image
• New main and sub menus
• Font and color changes in menus, titles and texts
• Removing box styles in the WP News
• New forms and fancy buttons
• CSS support for other popular plugins

Quite a nice addition to the blogging platform. Happy Blogging!

Thursday, August 24, 2006

ClickOnce

If you have a Visual Basic 6.0/.net application and wish to install and update it automatically using the ClckOnce functionality,Microsoft has a verry good 2 parts article that handles this.
ClickOnce is a really nice way to deploy applications and this functionality could prove really usefull.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnvs05/html/atupvb6ap2.asp
http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/dnvs05/html/AutoUpdatVB6apps.asp

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Free Stuff for your website

And as promised here is a list of free website content providers.

First of all…a small list of free article providers:
http://www.isnare.com/
http://www.freesticky.com/stickyweb/
http://www.articlecity.com/
http://www.ezinearticles.com/
http://www.websitegoodies.com/articles.php
http://www.sitepoint.com/

And now other free content that you can use. NEVER put only free content on your website!!
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/lookup.htm#searchbox
http://www.miniclip.com/games/en/webmaster-games.php
http://www.freegamesforyourwebsite.com/
http://www.kewlbox.com/games/code.cfm
http://www.flyordie.com/add/free-games.html

There are a lot more content providers out there...just google free website content.
Happy Blogging!

Dream Mouse...

What would an average use want from a mouse...
-To have as few buttons and as well positioned as possible...
-To have a good precision that insures a good handling
-To have a good mouse wheel that is accompanied by a good software that makes the mouse wheel a real helper

And now...Microsoft and Razer will release a dream mouse for the gamers saying that it is not for noobs...Is it really that complex?...we shall see...

-Interchangeable Side Button Panels provide gamers with two options for different hand sizes or preferences .
-2,000 DPI Laser Engine, Powered by Razer Precision™, delivers super-fast response time.
-On-the-fly DPI lets players adjust DPI for controlled sensitivity, adjustable from 400, 800, 1600 to 2000 DPI with the toggle buttons.
-Always-On™ Mode Pioneered by Razer gives gamers virtually no latency.
-High-speed motion detection lets gamers get their speed on with movement of up to 45 inches per second and 20G acceleration.
-Seven programmable buttons with Hyperesponse™ allow gamers to program their button functions; Razer’s Hyperesponse technology reduces latency.
-On-board profile memory enables gamers to store up to five game control profiles on the mouse.
-Custom design features GlowPipe™ side rails and large, ultra-slick Teflon® buttons provide smooth and quiet gliding.
-Ergonomic Design - A right handed comfort design allows slip-resistant grip with rubber-coated buttons for improved comfort for long hours of gaming.
-Thin, flexible wire provides gamers with the speed of a wired mouse with the feel of a wireless device.

...Now that`s what I call MOUSE..

Information was taken from the official site

Free website contet - Why,when,where

Well...as you already know nothing is really free...there is something that you shoud do in order to get that Free something...and when talking about free website content what you give is usually a link to the site that provided the "free content"..In other cases you povide even a banner but..it`s deffinatly not free..Big sites pay for this kind of publicity this sites get it for free...from you...
Why would you ever use free content...well...because you are not always able to write good new articles every day and your visitors get bored when seeing the same article on the front page day after day...so this is a really good alternative. Also an article provides real content to your page that will be indexed by the search engines and also you may be able to put more ads on your site...though adsense for example will notice that the same article is located on more than one website and the ads revenue will be a lot smaller...But there is a solution to this too: ad your own comments after/before the article.
On the next posts I will add some free content and will also provide the links to websites that provide them. Happy blogging!

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Writely

This is a blog entry published through the Writely word processing service form Google. It`s a really nitfty tool and can really help when you don`t have Microsoft Word arround, though it`t not a real competitor just like Google`s spreadsheet is not a real competitor for Excel. You can do most of the basic stuff you can do with Word and the best part is that you can colaborate over the net. Also blog posting works fine and it can handle a lot of blog hosts. Again google chalanges Office Live from Microsoft. And did quite a nice job too. The fun part is that this web application is built using ASP.net :) Happy blogging.

Blog day

Now this is a good one :)...they are tryin to add blog day to the calendar...good luck



need to relax?

While surfing I found this old sim city game that you can play freely online on the EA site. Oh the good old days....

Sunday, August 20, 2006

XNA anyone?

Now this looks like a nice toy to play with :)...too bad I`ll have to wait until September. The screenshots look nice anyway :P

IE7 addons

Searching the web I found this website that features very nice IE7 addons...many of them already exist for firefox but it was about time for them to appear in the IE scene. Happy surfing!

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Microsoft Windows Live Writer

Microsoft`s Windows Live Writer is the latest addition to the "Live" suite. It is a free downloadable WYSIWYG authoring program that helps you publish your blog posts easily...including...pictures...maps...It also contains a SDK in order for programmers to implement features that don`t already exist in the release. Quite a nice addition to the future possible "Office Live". Also it is a big improvement over the already existing feature from Office 2007. The bad part is that it cannot publish the photos(and maps) to blogger unless you have a ftp account Happy blogging!

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

IE 7.0 encoding bug?

I don`t really know if it`s a browser bug that concerns encoding...or just a badly written website but this is what got rendered with IE 7.0:

and here is the same page rendered with firefox 2.0 (firefox finds some errors too but manages to display a readable page):


and now the same page using Internet Explorer 7.0 with Eastern European encoding... and everyting looks nice now...


The site`s code doesn`t seem to be bad...so the only problem would be the browser....

Update:this are the 3 photos Photo 1 Photo 2 Photo 3

ASP.net to PDF document

I wanted to automatically create a PDF document the other day in order to print a sudoku grid that I built. That seemed quite a simple operation as there are a lot of open source implementations that allow you to do just that....but I was wrong...not all implementations were as good as I expected for what I wanted to create. The problem was that not all implementations allowed a good manipulation of tables inside PDF documents...some of them did not let me control the width of separate cells at all...some let me set the width value but the generated table did not take that into consideration....and finally...the one that I used was quite good but did not let me use vertical alignment although the setting is there...Weird..
Here are the libraries that I used:
iTextSharp - the one that I used
#pdf - the tutorials do not work with the beta release and some tables look weird
PDFsharp - did not have support for tables and is intended for charts