Google Docs has rolled out a major feature — you can now translate documents into 42 different languages, right inside Google Docs. That means no copy-paste into Google translate anymore.

To translate a document, just go to Tools » Translate Documents and choose the language of your choice. Google automatically detects the language the current document is written in.

Although translate technologies on the 'net are not reliable, this feature is a good one. This integration will certainly help people collaborate with non-english speaking world.

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Disqus, the popular comment engine that can be integrated to almost every web-page, has got a makeover. Disqus now offers two services — one for webmasters who own and maintain websites or blogs (called Comments), and one for those who post comments on blogs (called Profile). But the comment engine remains the same which means you don't have to reinstall JavaScript snippets.

The profile page is more organised now — it gives easy access to the replies to your comments, along with "Subscriptions".

The Comments (previously the Admin page) is more sane now. You can easily mark multiple comments as Approved or Spam. Also you can search comments.

It reminds me of almost-forgotten coComment, which was once very popular. coComment tracks your comments across the web, even in forums. Since more and more bloggers are switching to Disqus, it won't be too much to say that Disqus will track comments across the web.

It is raining URL shorteners these days. Tweetmeme has come up with a new URL shortener — Retwt.me, including an API. It shortens URLs — like any other URL shortener — but the advantage is its integration with Tweetmeme.

Unlike most URL shorteners, Retwt.me doesn't create yet another short code for any URL that has already been shortened. (See our tutorial on creating your own url shortener from scratch.) This significantly decreases pressure from database.

Taking a dig at tr.im which recently said they would close down, Nick Halstead, Tweetmeme founder said, "we pride ourselves at TweetMeme for the continued up-time and scalability of the service." This sums up why they are here in the URL shortening business.

Retwt.me offers almost all the features Bit.ly currently offers. Bit.ly is probably the better choice between these two since retwt.me has two more letters in it. Given the growth of micro-blogging experience, two letters will eventually make a lot of difference.

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Now that The Pirate Bay is sold and it is heading towards an unknown phase of its lifespan, an anonymous TPB user has created a massive 21.3GiB torrent file which contains 873671 torrent files uploaded to TPB till 13th Aug 2009. The torrent also contains a mock-up website which can be run on a local server. Simply put this torrent lets you create another The Pirate Bay.

The trackers for this torrent include OPENBITTORRENT.COM so that in case TPB closes down the torrent still works. Since the torrent contains all the files from TPB, you should expect a few virus and malware stuff.

Although TPB has long claimed that they are tracking more than 2 million torrents, the index file contains only 873671 torrents. The uploader reasoned,

I only got 873671 torrents, but according to the website the tracker tracks over 2 million torrents. The discrepancy is most likely due to many torrent files including the TPB tracker but has not been uploaded to the web site.

The good news is that BTARENA, previously a well-known torrent blog, has put up a copy of this torrent. You can browse, download and share torrents which are available in TPB through BTARENA. The site works perfectly except the search feature, which will be fixed as the admins claim.

Although the uploader posted the torrent anonymously, (s)he can be a TPB stuff. Only TPB admins have access to htdocs — files needed to run the site — through FTP.

KeePass is a freeware open-source utility to store and manage your passwords. It boasts of high security and a number of features, including a random password generator. You can even attach files to passwords.

Image by adria.richards via Flickr

Keepass creates 'database' of passwords which are accessible by master passwords. That is you need to set a password to create and access a database. Once you are done, start creating new entries in the database, containing passwords and usernames.

Keepass can be extended — there is a number of plugins available for Keepass. Among these, my favourite is KeeForm which "is designed to open and scan a web site for input fields and fill them accordingly with a user name and password."

It is lightweight and comes in two variants — a full installer and a portable version. The portable version is needs no installation and can be carried in a USB drive. This is useful if you use multiple computers.

Mozilla Labs has released Test Pilot, a new program "aimed at collecting structured user feedback from Firefox and other Mozilla Labs experiments". This new platform lets you test features which are planned or will be available in the next release. They are offering a Firefox add-on which checks for features which are meant to be tested through this program and shows a ticker when a new feature is available.

Team Mozilla claimed that they made this new platform to reach more people. In a blog post, they said,

Mozilla takes user privacy very seriously. Being a test pilot means that you will be the one to test the product, and it is not you that will be tested. We are only interested in your feedback on the product features, not information about you. Depending on the particular test, the Test Pilot extension may automatically collect some data about the product being tested, but you have control of deciding whether to submit this data.

Currently, there's no feature to test-pilot. But a survey is going on.

Eclipse is a powerful development platform written in Java. It comes in various flavors — as a Java Development tool, as a PHP application development platform, among many other variants. Eclipse offers syntax highlighting for source code. But the problem crops up when you use a unconventional file-type for a specific source code. The default syntax highlighting fails.

Let me give you an example. The PHP syntax in .php files in Eclipse PDT are highlighted by default. But some PHP frameworks use .thtml (or .ctp/.inc) files as PHP files. If you open these files in Eclipse PDT, the syntax highlighting fails.

Here is a workaround:

• Go to Windows » Preferences...
  
  
• Go to General » Content Type » Text » PHP Content Type.
  
  
• In the "File Associations" field, add a new file-association: *.ctp (or *.thtml, as your requirement.)
  
  
• Restart Eclipse.

Tags: Eclipse, Tips, Syntax highlighting

Mozilla Firefox team has released version 3.6 alpha 1 of the browser. It has a new javascript engine (called TraceMonkey), along with two new CSS features. The Firefox team claims the alpha is 15% faster than the earlier release of Firefox 3.5.

Firefox 3.6a1 introduces CSS linear- and radial-gradient property. This new feature helps you create gradient only with CSS. But the syntax looks awfully horrible. Also new in Firefox 3.6a1 is the CSS background-size property, which allows developers to specify the size of the background images.

This release is a big improvement of the JavaScript engine. But it is still far from Google Chrome's V8 JavaScript engine. Chrome has recently come up with a new beta which is even faster. Firefox 3.6, codenamed "Namoroka", will be released in 2010. So, we can always expect more improvements.

Although Windows has built-in search module, it sometimes behaves peculiarly — you are sure about a certain file and the default search shows no result. With Vista, Windows Search improved but it is painfully slow at times. Here are 7 freeware search applications that make searching files and folders easier — and they offer more options, too.

InSight Desktop Search

InSight search is more than a search utility — it can quick-launch upto "14 objects like weblinks, shortcuts to files/ folders, and short notes" and searches Wikipedia Articles. It shows you a list of possible results as you type. It offers previews of files from the search results. It can search for music files if you enter artist's name or album's name.

Snow Bird

Snow Bird is a lightweight Windows Search solution that needs no installation and can be carried along in a USB thumb-drive. Snow Bird has a built-in file-copy module that allows you to copy files faster ignoring errors while copying.

Locate32

Locate32 is another search utility. It creates index files containing information about all files and folders across drives. It can show search-results in thumbnails. You can even save search results into HTML files. Command-line users can search across drives with Locate32. Locate32 also offers an array of advanced settings.

Agent Ransack

Agent Ransack is the freeware and lightweight version of FileLocator Pro. Agent Ransack offers an advanced regular expression search, along with simple search options. Search results can be exported as text or CSV files. Agent Ransack also searches drives connected via network. It also offers command-line options.

Everything Search

Everything Search is a freeware search utility that is fast enought to show search results as you type. Its biggest drawback is that it searches only NTFS drives. (Read more about Everything Search.)

Windows Grep

Windows Grep is more for an advanced user than an average one. Windows Grep lets users search for files and folders based on a given regular expression. Along with regular search options, it features text-file searching (you can search program source code, batch files etc.), ZIP file searching (the contents of zip files can be searched). Since regular expressions are hard to build (for most of us), Windows Grep allows users to save searches for future purpose.

Search My Files

Search My Files is freeware utility that also searches for files and folders across drives but it offers a lot more options than any other utility. You can even search for files which are created on a certain date. It has a robust set of command-line options.

What's your choice?

Apple Leopard has a very attractive interface. Look closely and you'd find a slight shadow behind the texts on title-bar. This tutorial is aimed at mocking up that effect with CSS.
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View Demo Download Source

What the Font

Apple uses Lucida Grande font (among other fonts) for texts in Leopard interface. This font is used in various weights. In case, you don't have it installed on your system, download and install it.

Create the Layout

First, we create a simple html document and put the following code in it.

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<title>apple text effect</title>
<style type='text/css'>
body {
font-size: 14px;
line-height:1.3em;
text-align:center;
}

a, a:visited {
outline:none;
}

.clear {
clear:both;
}

#wrapper {
width:960px;
margin:0 auto;
text-align:left;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div id='wrapper'>

</div>
</body>
</html>

This is pretty simple. In case, you are wondering why I put text-align:center for body and then text-align:left for #wrapper, you can find out why.

Now, within the <div id='wrapper'> we put the following code:

<h1 class="drop-shadow">
 <div class="text">Apple Leopard Text Effect</div>
 <div class="shadow">Apple Leopard Text Effect</div>
</h1>

Here, we created two divs inside <h1> and the two divs contain the same text. The class-names of the divs explains it all — the first div contains the text and the second div will work as the shadow.

The CSS

Now that we have created the skeleton, let's start adding style. Within the <style> tag we add the following lines of CSS.

h1 {
 font-family: "Lucida Grande";
 font-size:1.5em;
 color: #444444;
}

div.text {
 color: #444444;
 display:block;
 height:1px;
 max-height:1px;
 position:relative;
 z-index:5;
 text-transform: uppercase;
}

div.shadow {
 color: #f4f4f4;
 display:block;
 position:relative;
 text-transform: uppercase;
 z-index:1;
}

First, we have styled the <h1> tag with simple properties — a simple color, font-family set to Lucida Grande and increased font-size. Next, we styled two divs. The positions for both the divs are set to relative. This is important. Also notice that the z-index for the first div is higher than the second one. This is because we want the first div to appear over the second one.

Compromising for Internet Explorer

Unfortunately, it looks ugly on Internet Explorer. (I could not find any fix for it. If you have one, please share in the comments.) So, we use some javascript to show this effect only in Firefox.

First, we change the html a little bit. Instead of having two divs inside the <h1> tag, we let go of both of them. That is we should have,

<h1 class='drop-shadow'>Apple Leopard Text Effect</h1>

Now, we add jQuery to our html file.

<script type='text/javascript' src='jquery.js'></script>

Next, we add this javascript snippet within <head> tag.

<script type='text/javascript'>
$(function() {
 if($.browser.mozilla) {
  $("h1.drop-shadow").each(function(){
  var text = $(this).html();
  $(this).html("<div class='text'>"+text+"</div><div class='shadow'>"+text+"</div>");
  });
 }
});
</script>

The snippet first checks whether the browser is firefox or not. (Note that $.browser has been deprecated since jQuery 1.3. Here I am using an earlier version.) If the browser is Firefox, the snippet then parses each <h1> tag with class-name drop-shadow and replaces the text with two divs.

That's all!

Hid.im is a web-application that lets you create images from .torrent files. It is an open-source project and the source code can be found in GitHub.
You can create images from torrents by uploading .torrent files to hid.im site. Hid.im also offers a Firefox add-on that lets you create images from torrents on the fly. You can decode images with a simple bookmarklet.
Hid.im is pretty useful. There are hundreds of sites that offer image hosting but fewer sites offer torrent hosting. With Hid.im you can easily share your torrent files through photo-hosting sites.

How to Create Images from Torrents In Windows

You can create images from torrent files in Windows without hid.im. Just put any image (in JPG format) and the torrent file in a folder, open command prompt, cd to that folder and enter the following:

copy /b image.jpg + torrent_file.torrent new_image.jpg

Now, just rename new_image.jpg to new_image.torrent and you have got it!

Google has released a new beta version of its browser, Google Chrome, with significant improvement in JavaScript performance, theming and some interface changes. The new version is available for download at the beta download center.

The new features include:

• Chrome now allows you to hide items from the New Tab Page. It also offers drag and drop support. You can even pin a thumbnail to a particular spot.
  
  
  
• The address-bar (called the Omnibox) got a new feature that allows you to quickly scan the results shown based on the icon.
  
  
  
• Chrome now supports theming. This is a long-awaited feature. Although earlier theming was possible, it was not officially supported. Google has released a gallery of 29 themes. None of the themes, however, looks as good as the default one.
  
  
  
• The already-blazing-fast Google chrome has got even more speed. The native V8 JavScript engine has been given a boost. It's now 30% faster.
• Google chrome now supports HTML5 <video> tag support.

This release is a significant improvement. Recently Firefox reached billionth download. If Google Chrome team continues adding such new features, it won't be long before Chrome becomes an essential replacement of Firefox.

Ever wanted to send a satellite of your own? Well, you are in luck. Interorbital Systems (IOS), a rocket and spacecraft manufacturing company, has introduced TubeSat Personal Satellite Kit which can be sent to orbit for only $8000. The satellite will be in the orbit for several weeks before it reaches earth's atmosphere and burns up.

The satellites will be launched from Tonga. Each satellite weighs only 0.75kg and "offers plenty of room for most experiments or functions". You can also opt for add-on experiments offered by IOS. These include:

• Private e-mail
• On-orbit advertising
• Tracking migratory animals from orbit
• Earth magnetic field measurement
• Earth-from-space video imaging among other add-ons

The programme will start from fourth quarter of 2010. In case, you are interested in it, here is the link to the site. You can book your mini-satellite by paying via PayPal.

Nero has introduced a freeware edition of its popular CD/DVD burning software. If you are looking for an application that only burns the CD/DVD, and doesn't provide features that a CD/DVD-burning application isn't supposed to provide, then this is the right piece of software for you.
All you have to do is to visit the download page and enter your email address. The download link will be sent to your email.

Although it provides "basic data burning and copying capabilities for your CDs and DVDs", its enormous file-size (55MiB is the set-up file and 130MiB is installed size) can be turn-off. Of course, you have options like CDBurnerXP and ImgBurn.

Clean CSS is a web-application that optimizes your CSS by eliminating unnecessary newlines and merging same selectors and properties. You can input your CSS two ways — either copy-paste it or input CSS by giving the URL of the CSS file. It also offers a number of options to customize the way you want to format CSS.

Clean CSS comes handy when you are working on a messed-up CSS file someone created years ago. Although it's a good choice to keep CSS files in shape, it doesn't have any option to validate CSS. You have to rely on W3C Validator.


Clean CSS is made on CSS Tidy, a very popular CSS formatter and optimizer. Clean CSS is developed by Go Media, the company behind Go Media Zine.

Canonical, the official sponsor of Ubuntu has released a new web-application called Ubuntu One. It is similar to Dropbox and offers a online storage of 2GiB for basic users. If you want to go pro, pay $10 monthly.

Ubuntu One offers to sync files between any two machines with Ubuntu installed in it. But there's a catch — you need Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) to use Ubuntu One. Also the application doesn't provide a web-interface unlike Dropbox.

Ubuntu One is currently in beta. But you can sign up without any invitation. Once you sign up, you can install the desktop client. Installation instructions are given on this page. In case you are having troubles with installation, you can install via terminal:

sudo apt-get install ubuntuone-client-gnome

Ever since Google unveiled its plans of a new OS, there have been lots of talk about cloud computing. It is not surprising to see Ubuntu, the most popular Linux distro coming with a cloud solution. But it is indeed surprising to see that Canonical has released it for only Ubuntu 9.04 whereas Ubuntu 8.04 LTS still surfaces. A proper web-interface would have made it much better as you can access your files from any computer. It looks like Canonical is simply forcing Ubuntu 9.04 on the users. What an irony that Ubuntu has a tag-line "Linux for human beings"!