Technology and Money

Mutiny Blog Now Published as a Print Magazine

Jacob Joseph launched Mutiny as a personal blog some five years ago but it soon acquired the shape of a community blog with dozens of contributors (they call themselves mutineers) who all have day-jobs but still contribute religiously to Mutiny.

Now what this team has done is even more interesting – they have launched a print magazine based on their blog. This is probably the first blog that is available for reading both inside news-readers and on news-stands.

The motivation for launching a blog as a print magazine was simple – they want to reach more people as only a minuscule minority is reading blogs online at least in India.

My initial reaction to Mutiny’s blog magazine is exactly the same as Amit Varma - "It takes gumption and commitment to take a bold step like that, and I wish them all the best."

The first issue is available online as well.

Mutiny Blog Now Published as a Print Magazine - Digital Inspiration

Google Blog Search - Not So Fresh

This is a snapshot of four stories that are currently ranked at the top on Google Blog Search as of now (October 6, 2008).

In case the fonts in the above screenshot appear small, let me give a quick summary – the stories are about Nokia’s new touch-screen phone, Steve Jobs’ heart attack, Sony’s new e-book reader and some commercial tool for converting video to audio.

Now compare the time when the same stories hit Techmeme home page.

• Nokia 5800 XpressMusic hands-on  (published October 2)
• Apple Denies Steve Jobs Heart Attack Report (published October 1)
• Sony’s PRS-700 Reader Adds Touchscreen (published October 2)
• The fourth story obviously didn’t make it to Techmeme.

The Google Blog says that this new home page of Google BlogSearch lets you "browse and discover the most interesting stories in the blogosphere". That may be the ultimate goal but frankly, the product is nowhere close yet.

Another point: Google BlogSearch doesn’t offer RSS feeds and the site is written in some complex JavaScript so you no option but to visit the page manually.

Google Blog Search - Not So Fresh - Digital Inspiration

Find Spelling Mistakes on Web Pages with Spellist

Nothing looks more unprofessional than a couple of spelling mistakes on your site so here’s an online tool that will help you quickly spell check an entire web page though it wont’ fix these errors for you.

Called Spellist, this online spell checker for websites uses the Google API to search for spelling mistakes. You just type the URL and it will quickly point out the potential spelling mistakes that may be in the text or even the meta description of the page.

Spell check your website like a Word document

There are no advanced features like scheduled spell checks, RSS, alerts or support for adding new words to the dictionary but as a quick and simple tool, Spellist does the job.  Thanks KillerStartups.

Find Spelling Mistakes on Web Pages with Spellist - Digital Inspiration

Take Automated Screenshots of Web Pages from Command Line

If you like to capture screenshots of multiple web pages in one go, the regular screen capture utilities (like SnagIt) can do the job but they require way too much effort.

You’ll have to open each site manually, then wait for the web page to load and finally hit the print screen key. Now imagine repeating this process for 10 different websites every morning. Impossible, right?

What you really need here is a command line screen capture utility like CutyCapt or IECapt – both are similar in execution but differ slightly in the way they render web pages because the former use WebKit engine (same as Google Chrome or Safari) while the latter will save screenshots as if you are viewing the page in Internet Explorer.

Screen Capture Web Pages from Command Prompt

Now to capture a screenshot of Google homepage from DOS, you write a simple like this:

IECapt --url=http://www.google.com/ --out=google.png

You have complete control over the output image format and the page dimensions.

To screen capture multiple web pages, you can write a simple DOS batch file and then configure it run at regular intervals using Windows Task Scheduler. The trick may used to create a time lapse video of web pages as this Techmeme video.

CutyCapt offers some extra options like you can turn off JavaScript and browser plug-ins so web pages may render a little faster.

Also see: Archive Web Pages at Regular Intervals with Iterasi

Take Automated Screenshots of Web Pages from Command Line - Digital Inspiration

Block Certain Words From Appearing On Web Sites with FoxReplace

FoxReplace is a nice little Firefox add-on that you may use to substitute certain words on web pages with something else. It’s as simple as instructing the browser to replace all instances of word "xxx" with "yyy" like in Notepad.

And in case you like to completely hide a word from appearing on web pages, just use a blank instead of specifying a replacement string.

To understand the usage, let’s take this real-world example: Comments written on Digg and YouTube can sometimes leave a normal person depressed because of their language but here’s how FoxReplace can help you.

First create a new rule that applies to all URLs from digg or youtube.com. We use *.youtube.com instead of youtube.com to take care of country specific domains.

Now in the Substitutions panel, choose the "Regular Expression" option and add multiple ‘find & replace’ entries as show in this screenshot.

If you are new to regular expressions, a.*hole will match all words or phrases like a**hole, a**-hole, a** hole, etc. and they will automatically get replaced with the word "awesome". 

This is just one example. You may even use Fox Replace to turn Firefox into a slightly more kid-safe browser by specifying a list of stop-words that never appear on web pages.

Or you can use the add-on to edit web pages before capturing not-so-original screenshots.

Block Certain Words From Appearing On Web Sites with FoxReplace - Digital Inspiration

Xplorer2 – This File Browser Is Better Than Your Windows Explorer

Xplorer² is a Windows Explorer like desktop file manager with some very unique features. Here are five quick reasons why you would love to use xplorer2 -

• Dual Pane - Great for moving or copying files from one pane to another.
• Tabs - Useful to have 10 different folders open at once (see image).
• Instant Preview - Preview most text, graphics, audio/video, and html & office documents.
• Visual Filter - View files which match a certain pattern (*.txt) in a folder.
• Find Text in files - Highlight files which contain certain text in them.

 

You can download the lite version of xplorer2 – it is free for private and academic use. A portable version of xplorer2 is also available – the unofficial version is free while the official one is note.

Also see: Find Files in Windows Vista via Explorer

Xplorer2 – This File Browser Is Better Than Your Windows Explorer - Digital Inspiration