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1) Frequent Crashes

Since installing this version of Firefox, the Mozilla Crash Reporter has become my best friend. Its been coming up almost daily to meet me. I know that i’ve installed Beta plugins like Ubiquity and this kind of behaviour is expected. So, this is not my main complaint. But still this kind of crash-on-a-daily-basis is too much for a browser like Firefox. I don’t know why i enter my email address there every time. Though i send a crash report every 24 hours, i do not get any kind of response. Firefox is free software and i know that shouldn’t be complaining about lack of support.

2) Memory Leak

My 2GB RAM Windows 7 system becomes god-damn slow with just Firefox, foobar2000 and Twhirl running. Guess who’s the culprit, it is the people’s (include me) favourite browser Firefox. And i’ve not been crash-testing it with 100 tabs open, 150 addons installed etc. I have about 10-20 tabs open at a time. I have 13 addons installed out of which 5 are disabled, to see if they are the culprit. Others are just very popular ones like Google toolbar, SU toolbar etc. which i’ve been using since Firefox 0.1 (not really).

So how much memory does my firefox use ? The answer is God only knows. It changes every time though i have the same tabs open. When i open Firefox with 10 tabs, the memory usage remains at ~120MB. If i just leave my system idle and go out, i’ll return after few hours to find that Firefox is using ~500MB. Two more hours and it would be ~800MB.

I’ve been resisting myself from writing such a post about Firefox. I did some search and research on the top to see if something specific is causing this or Firefox itself. When i did a google search on the topic i seem to get relevant results for a memory leak as high as 1GB (300MB, 400MB, 500MB, 600MB, 700MB, 800MB, 900MB). But most of them are complaint posts like this or unreplied forum topics. The point is that there is no specific solution. Most commonly suggested troubleshooting step is to check out the list of Problematic Extension. I went through the list in and out and concluded that the none of the memory-leaking extension is on my list.

There are other possible steps like trying to run Firefox in safe mode, reinstalling Firefox etc. But, as a customer i wouldn’t want to go through all this hassle to find out what’s wrong. I’m deeply in love with Firefox, so i’m still clinging onto it. But an average FF user will make the switch to the supposed-to-be-faster Chrome or the faster-in-reality Opera.

Last year when i made a post about a copyright breach, i received immediate response from a Mozilla Staff Member. I hope they’ll pay little attention to this post as well.

PS : If you’re a fan of Firefox, i might have hurt you. I am sorry. Don’t take me wrong. I’m a fan of FF too. In this condition, i wouldn’t be recommending FF to anyone. So, i really hope i find a solution to this.

Related posts:

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Now, on to the list. All the links (except Twitlet) are actual bookmarklets. You can drag them to your bookmarks bar.

1. kwout (my favorite) – it is an excellent way to "quote" parts of the web. Simply put, you can take screenshots of parts of the webpages with this bookmarklet. kwout website.
2. Stumble – this is not the "stumble" button from its toolbar, but rather the "i like it" button, which bloggers will be using mostly.
3. del.icio.us – really the best social bookmarking site out there.
4. digg – who doesn’t digg nowadays ? Its really a great source of traffic. That makes it a point to have a digg bookmarklet on your browser.
5. Twitlet (link to the website) – you’ve got to visit the site to generate your own bookmarklet link. Very easy to use twitter client for Chrome. (my second favorite).
6. Pagerank – simple Google Pagerank checker. Opens a tiny pop up with the pagerank meter. It contains a huge ad in that. But, I don’t mind it. Let me know if any ad-free one is available.
7. Translate – translates the current page into English, using the Google Translator. With some minor changes, can be used for other languages too.
8. Linkify – at first I thought this one wouldn’t be helpful. But, I was wrong. I wonder at the number of pages that just has the url without an actual link. This bookmarklet saves only few seconds per link. But sure they’d add up to atleast a day or two per year.
9. Tumblr – this will be useful for you based on whether you use Tumblr or not. Most bloggers do, I suppose. For me, it sure is useful.
10. Snipshot – how often would you come across a picture on the web that you want to crop or rotate ? You probably open up Photoshop/GIMP to do that. That sure takes a lot of time. You can do it with ease, on the web, with Snipshot.

Now, these are the ones that I use on my Chrome, which recently became my primary browser. What about you ? Which ones do you use often ? Have I missed out anything here ?

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Why did I create this ?

The main reason is that there is ad rotation script out there which is good both at the front end and the back end. (Atleast upto my knowledge). People may argue that there is OpenX (formerly called OpenAds (formerly called phpAdsNew)). But, the thing is that its back end is damn confusing for a lot of people out there (I am included, of course).

Rotatee just simplifies the process. It uses familiar terms like "campaigns", "banners" etc.. And doesn’t include anything more than what people want. With this simplicity, I’ve not compromised for its features.

Don’t just take my word for it. Take a look at the examples to see what Rotatee can do for you. Also, you can check out a live demo of the back end. If you like the script, do let me know. Also the other way, if you have any suggestions, let me know so that I can improve it. Report the bugs in the Bug tracker.

I use it here. Check it out.

Of course, as a developer, I use it here on GotChance. Check out the "popular posts" on the header. The links there are rotated using Rotatee. Also, I’ll be using Rotatee for 125 x 125 ads on the sidebar and also for the "Blogs I Read" list on the footer.

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Its true that majority of people still don’t know what are desktop blog editors. Just like how you use Outlook to send mails from desktop, just like how you post to Twitter from desktop, you can also post to your blogs right from your desktop. From a poll conducted by Lifehacker 2 years back, over 60% of the bloggers just use an online editor.

But, that was the situation 2 years ago. Now, with the availability of Windows Live Writer (WLW), many bloggers have switched to it. Still, I’m convinced that atleast 50% of the crowd still use online editors.

Why People don’t use Desktop Editors :

When we look at the reasons why people still don’t use Desktop editors, the first reason is that they don’t have the knowledge about the availability of one. When I started blogging 2 years ago, I just used Wordpress’s inbuilt online editor, adjusting myself to the features available. But, after I came to know about WLW, I hop over to Wordpress Dashboard only for things like comment moderation, plugin installation etc..

Why use a Desktop Editor ?

When you insist people to switch to Desktop Editors, you need to give them reasons, don’t you ? There are a lot of reasons to make the switch :

1. Manage more than just 1 blog. Almost every desktop editor gives you the ability to add many blogs. You can post to these different blogs from 1 place.

2. You can write offline. When you get a new idea for a post, but unfortunately, you’ve been disconnected from the internet. During such situations, you can still open your desktop editor, write down your post and save for publishing later.

3. You get more formatting options. Most online editors have limited formatting options. But, there are richer in desktop editors. Especially, I love the “Web layout” feature in WLW, which gives the look of frontend of your blog whilst you still write the post.

4. Enhanced Image Support. WLW lets you apply a number of effects to your photos like Drop Shadow, Sepia tone, Black and White, Watermark, Emboss etc…

5. Tagging Support… Most desktop editors come with either inbuilt tagging support or with the help of external plugins, for technorati, delicious and the like.

These are not the only features available in desktop editors. Its not just about listing down the advantages. Its the entire feel that you get when you use a desktop editor. The simplicity, the ease.. You don’t find these in online editors.

Now, if you are in look out for a desktop editor, I strongly recommend Windows Live Writer. But, if you want to look out for alternatives, I suggest that you take a look at this post.

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Blog

Wordpress was primarily developed to be a blogging platform and that is what it is being used for, widely. Almost every other blog that you come across today is powered by Wordpress (includes my own blog). Also, Wordpress.com hosts about 4,562,469 blogs (when I started writing this post) 4,562,720 blogs (when I finished writing this post) that are powered by Wordpress.

Static Website

If you are not going to blog and you simple wish to have a static website, Wordpress can still help you with it. Also, you can just have the static website or have a blog attached with it. You can do it without any external plugin. This feature comes packed with Wordpress. You can check out this post and this for more knowledge.

Magazine

Are you a print magazine publisher ? Or, do you want to write a magazine online ? You can create your own E-Zine with wordpress. There’s a huge pile of magazine themes available for Wordpress. In my previous post, I dealt with using magazine themes. There are some very popular e-zines out there, powered by Wordpress.

Social Network

All of you would have probably heard of Facebook, Bebo or MySpace. They are what we call today as “Social Networks”. The cool thing is that you can create your own Social Network with Wordpress. Either you can do it manually by editing WP’s code. Or, you can simple install BuddyPress over an installation of Wordpress MU. Also, check out this live social network which uses Wordpress.

Email Newsletter Manager : WordBurner

Most of the Newsletter Managing softwares out there are very expensive. But, luckily FeedBurner offers Emails Subscriptions for RSS Feeds for free. Combining that with a Wordpress installation, you can create your own email newsletter manager for free. NetTuts has an extensive tutorial on how to create this software called “WordBurner” ;)

Gallery

“A Picture says more than a Thousand Words”.

Wordpress has inbuilt Gallery support using the shortcode. But, there are numerous plugins available to convert Wordpress into a cool gallery. You can check out the whole list, but NextGEN gallery is my favorite.

Forum

Though softwares like vBulletin, phpBB and SMF rule the world of online forums, Wordpress has its own solution called bbPress. bbPress is plain and simple forum software, plain and simple. It’s easy to use, easy to administrate, fast and clean. It is also highly customizable just like how Wordpress is.

Feed Aggregator

Simply put, A Feed Aggregator is one which gets the content from various sources and puts them all at one place. A very powerful plugin called WP-o-Matic is available to serve this purpose. The plugin converts your Wordpress into a personalized feed aggregator. But, such plugins are also being used to STEAL content from other blogs.

MicroBlogging

Does that word seem unfamiliar to you ? But, I bet you’d have heard about Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, Tumblr etc.. They are nothing but the so-called MicroBlogging platforms. Using Wordpress, you can create your own MicroBlogging site, with the help of the Prologue theme. And, the good news is that, it comes right from the Wordpress team themselves. You can also check out the demo.

Membeship Directory

Do you want to create a moderated membership directory that showcases your member’s information? Do you want it to be flexible, be very little work after initial setup, and use a world-class open source platform that you are already familiar with?

Check out this detailed tutorial on how to create your own Membership directory using Wordpress.

Do you use Wordpress for any other purpose ? Or, do you know anyone that does it ? Have any new idea on how else Wordpress can be used ? Share your views in the comments…

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• Got Banners – My First Wordpress Plugin
• 11 Ways To Help Your Visitors Promote YOU
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I prefer Web Apps for various reasons. Like, they don’t occupy any space in your hard drive. They are much more simpler to use than desktop apps and you can access your data from all over the world.

Recently, I began to use Twitter a lot and so I was searching for a desktop client. But, most of the popular ones were Adobe Air apps and I didn’t wanna install Air. So, I decided to use a web app. Since, I needed simplicity, I went around looking for “twitter for iphone” and found this website. I simple opened it in Chrome and created an application shortcut. Now, it sits there on my desktop as a simple Twitter client. Similarly, I have created the shortcuts for Gmail, Google Reader and Remember the Milk, all with Gears support. Also, I have LiteSum for quick Wikipedia look up. With the upcoming Greasemonkey support for Chrome, this Application shortcut feature will become much more useful.

Similarly, I’m looking for more simple apps to add, preferably iPhone version of sites, because they have simpler interface. Do you know any ? Do you have any such Web Apps on your Desktop ?

Check out a screenshot of my desktop running these web apps. (Click to enlarge) :

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1) ColorPic

This is perhaps the most popular color picking software. It is just 501kb and runs on all Windows systems. It has a magnifier attached. Using it, you can grab palettes of up to 16 colors at once and use four advanced color mixers to select a spectrum of possibilities.

• Colors shown in hex and decimal
• Adjust Hue, Saturation, Value, Red, Green and Blue values
• Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black percentages shown
• Resizable magnification area
• Overlay a grid for quick colorpicker alignment
• Use arrow keys to nudge mouse pointer
• Save multiple palettes of colors automatically
• Snap to nearest WebSafe color
• Point sample, 3×3 or 5×5 pixel color sampling
• Adjust color with four advanced color mixers
• Edit colorpicker values after selection easily

2) Instant Eyedropper

Instant Eyedropper is my choice of color picker. I use it, because of its extreme simplicity. Instant Eyedropper will identify and automatically paste to the clipboard the HTML color code of any pixel on the screen with just a single mouse click. Its just 375kb and works on all Windows machines.

Picking a color is a simple 3-step process :

1. Move the mouse pointer to the Instant Eyedropper icon in the system tray.
2. Press and hold the left mouse button and move the mouse pointer to the pixel whose color you want to identify.
3. Release the mouse button and your clipboard now contains the color code.

3) Absolute Color Picker

Either of the above two tools mostly suit anyone. I just included Absolute Color Picker to round of the list to 3. This also works on all Windows machines.

• History of selected colors – up to 12 slots to save the color in
• Screen eye-dropper – pick any color directly from screen
• HTML color conversion
• Customizable color selection dialogs: select only hose color models that are convenient for you
• Many predefined color palettes
• Compare current and previous color
• Customize brightness, hue, saturation and other parameters separately to match your exact selection

Do you know any other better color picker that is free ? If so, share it in the comments.

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After a long time, I’ve finally put up my home page at GotChance.com. The basic color scheme I took from my previous website NitrogenDesigns.com which I am closing down. In this post, I’ll list down the scripts and softwares that I used in the process of making of GotChance.com

Desktop Apps :

• PSPad Text Editor – all the coding work
• Adobe Photoshop – all the design work
• Mozilla Firefox – just testing (primary)
• Google Chrome – testing, but secondary
• Internet Explorer – testing, also secondary
• EasyPHP – to run the php scripts on my local pc
• TweakPNG – to fix the IE-PNG bug
• foobar2000 – just to ease my ears while I worked :P

Others :

• Prototype framework
• Lightbox gone wild
• SimplePie RSS Parser
• PHP, XHTML, CSS

If you wanna know how I did something, feel free to ask in comments. I’d be glad to make a write up.

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The page that appears next is pretty self explanatory. You just need to choose the colors for form text, form background, textarea color, textarea background. And, when you press OK, the required code will be displayed. To test out this without logging in, go here (note: it doesn’t give you any valid code unless you are logged into your account).

Check this out :

I’ll be implementing more features soon. Let me know what features would you like to see in Kontactr…

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• Back into Action
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1. Create a campaign
2. Add the ad codes that you wish to rotate and assign them a weight
3. Just place the one-line code, that Rotatee gives, on your website

For more details, check out the site Rotatee.com. The site is in closed beta. But, as the readers of GotChance, you can get a taste of our service before others do. Just enter “gotchance” as the invite code to Sign up. (This is not like the testing mentioned in my previous post. All data will still be there even after the site opens to the public). Hurry, it is only available for first 100 sign ups.

Looking forward to hearing your comments and suggestions…

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I’ve not yet launched the site publicly. Before public launch, i’d like to give the readers of this blog to try it out. I expect to discover and iron out some bugs during this test. So, if you’re interested in testing it out, just make a comment on this post and I’ll set you up with an account. This is a private beta and I’ll erase all data before launch. But, don’t worry, I’ll let the testers know before doing so.

So, if you’re interested, just leave a comment. Also, feel free to give your comments and suggestions…

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Official Tools :

Many of these social bookmarking sites have their own official tool to be used on blogs and websites.

1. Digg : One of the most popular tools out there. They integrate like a charm into your website.
2. Del.icio.us & Tagometer :Launched just towards the end of 2006, the Tagometer has gained a lot of popularity.
3. Reddit : Cool buttons from the most popular Digg-alike.
4. Facebook : The recently most-hyped social network’s “Share” buttons.
5. StumbleUpon : Let your posts get discovered. I would call SU as the best source of “Instant Traffic”.

UnOfficial Tools :

These tools, thought unofficial, allows users a wide range of options to share and also saves a lot of space.

1. MadKast : One of the easiest tools out there. But, i would call this a bit Intrusive, since they occupy the space near the post title.
2. AddThis : The easiest and the most popular out there. Especially because of the fact that it can be used on Non-blog sites too with ease.
3. Social Bookmark Link Creator : A very flexible plugin that allows you to generate the links for these bookmarking sites.
4. Sociable : Very popular wordpress plugin, mainly due its very cool look.
5. Share This : Probably The most popular Social Bookmarking plugin out there for Wordpress. I use this too.

Bonus (Err.. Not Really)

NetScape Widget : I have separated this from the rest of the list due to the fact that NetScape might get closed down. Otherwise, a great tool to use for NetScape. Though unofficial, it competes with the official ones of Digg and Reddit. Kudos ! ! !

Hope you enjoyed the list and feel free to add to the list, if you know any more.

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I was amazed by the simplicity of the site. You just have to enter the URL of the RSS feed that i want to display and some formatting options. Then, you get 2 types of code.

1. A Line of JavaScript code
2. 6 Lines of code for use on a Media Wiki page, eg Million Dollar Wiki.

They even allow you to use your own Stylesheet of the feed, which is very nice. Here’s an example :

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Montastic

Montastic is the first thing that i would recommend when it comes to Website Status Monitoring. Its completely free. It is really “The free website monitoring service that doesn’t suck”. I have been using them for few days now and really nice. I like their RSS feature and the “No unreasonable limit on the number of websites monitored”.

SiteUptime

SiteUptime is the next best one out there. They have three different plans : Free, Premium and Advanced. The free plan is too basic with just one monitor and 30/60 minute checks.

Free Web Monitoring

Free Web Monitoring is the first service that i used and i continue to use it even today. They have 60 minute checking time too, but, they allow multiple sites in a single account.

upPanel

upPanel was the second service that i started using. They have 3 plans too. I had the Free plan which had 30 minute lowest interval. Their Basic and Pro accounts have very nice features like AIM Alerts, SMS Alerts, Skype Alerts and Phone Alerts.

FreeSiteStatus

I read about this service over here. The features are not very clear. I think, signing up is free. But, you have to pay to start monitoring websites. The pricing depends on the number of URLs to be monitored, the time interval etc.. which can be calculated from here. This isn’t something i would recommend.


So, i suggest that you take a look at the above services and get the most out these by signing up for multiple ones. I suggest signing up for Montastic, upPanel and Free Web Monitoring.

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So, might this be a consequence of the never-ending MS-Apple war ? Who is to be accused for this ? Lol.

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So, what does AideRSS do ?

AideRSS uses a unique scoring system called PostRankâ„¢ (ranging from 0 to 10) to categorize posts from a certain blogs into Best posts, Great Posts and Good posts. It takes into account the number of comments, del.icio.us bookmarks, Technorati links, Bloglines conversations, Diggs and Icerocket conversations and compares them with other posts from the same blog and assigns the relative score called PostRankâ„¢.

Your post need not have thousands of links and Diggs to have a PostRankâ„¢ of 10. It is relative. If a post on your blog receives 5 comments on an average and if a particular post receives 15, it ranks higher. It doesn’t matter even if 100s of comments are made on blogs like TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb etc… So every blog has its own best posts. Thats very logical.

There is also another service available for Filtering feeds called FeedRinse. AideRSS allows you to read what is good and what everyone likes. FeedRinse is completely different from AideRSS. It lets you choose what you want to read. I’ll write about it in my next post.

Related posts:

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The screenshot shows the same website (CNN), but the folds are different due to the factors mentioned above.

Installing FoldSpy is very simple. It just involves one line of code. Though the site shows a demo video, it doesn’t provide a live demo. So here, i have added it to GotChance so that you guys can test drive it. Here : GotChance.com/#foldspy.

The basic service is free for everyone. However, they have an optional PRO account option for $6/year. I didn’t try it, but here is what they say.

Foldspy Pro has everything in Free but also records stats from your site, giving you data on the unique profile of your visitors.

I had actually planned to write a post on Choosing best Ad placements. But, i completely forgot about it. Now, you can expect in a day or two.

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