If you’ve noticed the NY Times or other online publications have now started using a slide out tool and thought it was pretty fancy – then you may be pleased to know (as I was) that there’s a helpful, free plugin that allows you to achieve the same effect on your WordPress blog.
Worryingly, Facebook have added an automatic photo tagging system now which suggests photos that you appear in, based on photo recognition, as opposed to relying on individuals physically tagging you in them. If you don’t want to have this feature active – which, incidentally, is enabled by default – follow these simple steps:
- Go to Account >> Privacy Settings
- Scroll down the page and click on Customise Settings
- Scroll down to the section that says “Things others share”
- Click on Edit Settings next to “Suggest Photos of Me to Friends”
- Click on the button on the right and hit “Disable”
It’s as simple as that!
There’s a relatively easy way of making sure your WordPress site or blog is readily accessible from the growing number of smartphones and mobile devices out there, whilst still retaining much of the functionality and style that you’ve worked so hard to create with your site.
WP Touch is a handy, free plugin that will simply reformat your WordPress site if it detects that is being viewed on a mobile browser. It doesn’t change the viewing experience in a traditional browser on a desktop or laptop, but works behind the scenes to make your site that much easier to view and navigate on a mobile device.
I just had to post something about Admiral Multicar insurance after they’ve managed to nearly halve my insurance quote this year! And this is at a time when the press are regularly stating that insurance premiums are going up across the board too. My renewal quote from previous insurer, 1st Central, came in at more than £200 higher than the previous year, despite having an extra year’s No Claims Bonus as well. I had the distinct impression they were trying to price me out of their business… so maybe it’s a business tactic of theirs?!
Anyway, I spoke to a really nice and helpful guy at Admiral called Maurice and he helped process my order. The customer service was first class, but that’s really secondary to the policy stuff, which was really outstanding. Not only can I have my renewal on the date that I want (end of April), but as the other car policy isn’t due to renew until the start of August, I can let that existing policy finish before adding it to my multicar policy. When it does join in August, it’ll be a pro-rata payment to bring it in line with the first car policy. It really couldn’t be easier!
http://www.admiral.com/multicar/aboutMulticar.php
Or get a quote now by clicking here: http://www.admiral.com/splash/multicarQuote.php
The cheapest quote I had from either Monesupermarket.com, Confused.com or Beatthatquote.com – was more than £400 more expensive than the multicar policy and all of them had higher excesses too!
I came across this picture resize tool the other day and thought I’d share it, since it’s actually quite handy. Not everyone fancies setting up Batch processes in Photoshop to resize multiple images, so this should certainly help in that instance.
Amazon and Play.com are two high profile sites that have addressed the ‘long tail of search’ and have built their operating model predominantly around selling high volume at low price, where small margins will collectively add up to large profits – and it’s something that seems to be working really well for them. For the regular customer, the two sites provide a first class online retail experience, often undercutting the high street and even other online retailers. However, the prices quoted on Amazon and Play.com aren’t necessarily the best prices.
As long as you’re willing to accept second hand products, then the Amazon Used and New feature and Play.com’s Playtrade offer the same familiar interfaces of these well regarded sites, but the products here are second hand. All listings include an explanation regarding the condition of the products and it’s not unusual to find used products for half the retail price, or even less!
Temporary email addresses are free services available online that allow you to set up and use a temporary email address. They’re all pretty easy to use, but one of the ones I’ve used and would recommend is 10 Minute Mail (link here: http://10minutemail.com).
Why use a temporary email address? – Well, for one thing, it can be really handy when signing up to some web sites or forums that insist on you registering before accessing all the content, or submitting any of your own questions. It’s also great at avoiding spam – because if your temporary email address has expired, there’s nowhere for the email to go!
Signing up with 10 minute mail gives you a temporary email address for 10 minutes (you can keep extending the 10 minute window though, but only so long as you are on the site). The interesting part of this disposable email service though, is that it allows you to receive, read and respond to any emails received whilst your address is currently live. This means you can sign up to web services or forums, for example, and click on the confirmation email request as and when it comes through.
It’s definitely going to be added to my favourites, and will certainly be a tool I’ll use again.
Following on from my earlier post about “Automated free news for Kindle using Calibre” (link HERE), nickredding over at Mobileread.com suggested a much simpler approach. Rather than using a separate wake up timer application to wake my PC up, ready to run Calibre – I should use the one built into Windows.
Windows Task Scheduler allows you to schedule your PC to wake up and run a specific application at a specific time.
Calibre will have to be set up the same, in terms of scheduling the download of news from specific sites at specific times, so as to coincide with the task scheduler, but it just means you don’t have to download the separate wake timer.
I’ve been reading around the topic and I’m still struggling to understand just how to install Calibre on my web server. I want to be able to run Calibre 24/7 on my server so that I can serve up news according to my pre-determined schedule, as opposed to using the process described in my other post: Automated free news for Kindle using Calibre.
However, I have come across three resources that I think might help.
There’s an article on the BBC web site today (HERE) commenting on how O2 have condemned the fact that lawyers are targeting alleged file-shrers. Apparently, thousands of controversial letters are being sent to alleged illegal file-shared in the UK. Many online sources are particularly concerned that the letters represent little more than apparent legal bullying, although the firm ACS: Law denies this.