Recent Posts hack for Blogger

Friday, June 29, 2007

As a Blogger on BlogSpot, you may wish to add a 'Recent Posts' tab in your navigation bar. But, the new Blogger doesn't provide any widgets for this. Don't worry, there's a hack for this. All you need to do is add your own feed to your blog.

Here are the steps:

1. Open your Blog's Template(Layout) page.
2. Click on 'Add a Page Element' and select the 'Feed' widget.
3. Your Blog's feed URL will be:
   http://[yourblog].blogspot.com/atom.xml
   (Make sure your blog feeds have been activated under the 'Settings' tab).
4. Rename the tile as 'Recent Posts' and customize the number of feed elements you wish to add.
5. Save the template changes and you're done.

You can experience the outcome of the hack on the right navigation panel of my blog. Just look for the heading 'Recent Posts'.

Enjoy this 'Recent Posts' hack in Blogger and do leave a comment if you like this hack.

Happy Blogging!!!

Microsoft Silverlight: Light Up the Web

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Microsoft Silverlight is a new plug-in for next generation media experiences and interactive web applications. It integrates multimedia, graphics, animations and interactivity into a single runtime providing a rich user-experience.

Silverlight intends to compete with Adobe Flash offering a plethora of Rich Media Applications Tools for its .NET developer community. Silverlight applications are not language specific and can be programmed using AJAX, C#, VB, Python, Ruby and many others. It can be easily integrated with existing web-applications.

Silverlight SDK is available for the developers and can be downloaded from the Silverlight website. Silverlight media interfaces can be designed using Microsoft Expression Studio, which incorporates some great designing tools. The forthcoming version of Visual Studio codenamed "Orcas" supports development of Silverlight applications.

Unlike Flash, Silverlight applications are not pre-compiled before distribution. These are rather represented as XAML (eXtensible Application Markup Lanhuage). This makes these searchable and indexable by the search engines, overcoming a major obstruction for webmasters refraining to use flash in their webpages.

Currently in Beta, Silverlight is only supported on Windows and MacOS. It is cross-browser compatible and renders equally well on all browsers (support for Opera coming soon).

Check out the silverlight official website, here.

Get connected with the Silverlight developer community, here.

Lock Folders without using a Software

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Here's an interesting trick to bluff people about the contents of a folder. Just try this out:

1. Type the following text in a new text document:
ren Printers.{2227A280-3AEA-1069-A2DE-08002B30309D} <original folder>
2. Save this as a .bat file in the destination of the original folder.
3. Execute this file.

Your will change into the folder named Printers with the printer folder icon. When you'll open this folder the Printers System Folder would be opened instead of your original folder. So, you successfully locked the folder without any hint of a folder being hidden inside it.

Seems interesting, isn't it? But, now how to unlock this folder. Again, just follow these simple steps:

1. Type the following text in a new text document (different from above):
ren <original folder> Printers.{2227A280-3AEA-1069-A2DE-08002B30309D}
2. Save this as a .bat file in the destination of the original folder.
3. Execute this file and get back your original folder with all its contents.

You may use this trick with different Windows System Folders. Just replace the Printers.{2227A280-3AEA-1069-A2DE-08002B30309D} with the following:
Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}
History.{FF393560-C2A7-11CF-bff4-444553540000}
Network Connections.{992CFFA0-F557-101A-88EC-00DD010CCC48}

Though these locks are not as secure as your password protected locks, but still its a quick and easy way to hide your files from the eyes of others.