Photo Tip of the Day

It's 2008, so practically everyone has a digital camera (Grandma, check) or a phone with a camera in it. So now the trick becomes showing your photos off. You can always have them printed, but that's a tip for another time. The quickest and cheapest way is to post them online for the world and your friends to see.

Here are some sites that offer free photo hosting that I'd recommend looking into. They serve different needs so just find the one that you like the best.

• Flickr.com - owned by Yahoo!, is very popular but you can max out the free storage they offer quickly, after that, you'll have to pay for more space.
• Picasa Web Albums - owned by Google, so you can use your same login as your Gmail. Picasa is also a desktop program to organize the all your photos on your computer.
• Facebook - Has a fairly good photo album feature. Plus your "friends" on Facebook will be notified when you post new pictures of them. It is easy to limit access as to who can actually see your picture, but if you use that feature your friends have to sign up for Facebook too.
  

There are many many more out there, but its a good start.

Facebook Video Tip of the Day

Wish Facebook Video had a little bit of code where you could easily embed the clip on another site? Well for some reason they don't want to be cool like YouTube. But be frustrated no longer. If you have Firefox you can install an addon that will give you the handy embed code.



You can get the addon from userscripts.org. Then just scroll down to "Firefox Addon" (since only web geeks use Greasemonkey, you can skip all that stuff)

Quicker Website Tip of the Day

Is your new big-fancy-website just taking too long to load? Try tacking on PHP Speedy. It will get all the files from the server to the user's computer more efficiently. And can very easily cut the load times in half!

What is RSS Update of the Weekend

RSS, maybe you've heard of it, maybe not. To put it simply, RSS allows you to check one website and see all the updated blog enteries from your friends and new articles from sites you already check every day, in one place.

RSS is a topic we've covered here before, but times change and new handy videos come out to help explain what RSS is and how to use it.

Find Tip of the Day

Internet browsers have a feature that allow you to find a word on the page. You go to the Edit Menu -> Find on this Page or Ctrl+F on your keyboard. (Sorry, don't know the Mac shortcut - my guess is Command+F). Anyway, it will search through the page to find the word and by clicking next, you can see all the occurrences on that page.

This may be an obvious tip for some, but I didn't learn it until a couple years ago and it is quite helpful.

Bonus tip that I learned from The Office: You can use the Find and Replace (also Edit Menu) in Word Processing programs. Every time you have a word, you can change it to another word. In the show, Michael (aka Detective Michael Scarn) replaced "Dwight" with "Samuel L. Chang" (idiot sidekick).

iTunes Tip of the Day

Ticketmaster will give you credit for five free songs of your choice on iTunes, just for joining their Facebook group! The code for the free credits appear after you join, the offer ends in mid November. While most of Tip O Da Day staff hates Ticketmaster, most of the staff also love free iTunes credits.

Thanks Ars Technica

Quote Tip of the Weekend

The type geeks out there, know there is a difference between different quote marks, such as ", “ and ”. The latter two are proper typographically, the first is just what they invented for the type writer. Word and other programs will automatically use their “smart quote” feature to convert a boring quote into open or closed quotes. But what if the program your using isn't smart enough. On a Mac just his Option-[ for open double quotes, and Option-Shift-[ for close double quotes. Use Option-] and Option-Sift-] for single quotes. To do it in HTML use ‘ ’ “ and ” for ‘ ’ “ ” respectfully. On Windows, it is Alt+0145, Alt+0146, Alt+0147 and Alt+0148.

Thanks to P22's Tip of the Month, Mountain Dragon's HTML Entities Examples, Tip sheet on special characters Dave M. and Citizen Grim.

CSS Tip of the Weekend

For those who care, I learned a valuable bit of CSS glory from a competing media firm under my own roof. Thanks, Fowler!

When working with background images and colors within a DIV, you may want to have a DIV contain a background image that does not repeat, and then a background color to the remaining area where content overflows the image area. I had always had some issues doing this, so Fowler clarified it all for me. There are two ways you can do it properly, and then an incorrect way (which I had been using.)

Proper Way #1

background: #fff url(img/myimage.jpg);

Proper Way #2

background-color: #fff;
background-image: url(image.jpg);

Improper Way

background-color: #fff;
background: url(image.jpg);

Anti-SPAM Tip of the Day

Just got an email from what appeared to be an online greeting card company. They have me click on a link to view the card, and then when I get there, they claim "We are currently testing a new browser feature. If you are not able to view this ecard, please click here" Well that link is to an .exe file. Hum, fishy. This message is SPAM which is trying to install a some sort of malware on my computer. Here are some signs that gave it away:

• It said "Your class mate has sent you a greeting ecard". "Classmate" should we one word. Also it never gives the person's name who supposedly sent me this card.
• It says the email is from "greet2k.Com", but the actual email address is vcp@muenster.de
• It links to http://24.173.200.210, which is just a random IP address, a real card company would have you link to their actual website address.
• It wants me to download an ".exe" which in the Windows world is a program. Programs can do all sorts of nasty stuff if they're designed too

Luckily, I'm on a Mac, so even if I downloaded an ".exe" it wouldn't do anything!

File Name Tip of the Day

Depending on what operating system you're using the maximum number of characters allowed on a file name is around 250. So when sending someone a zip you can send them an email message or a flirty correspondence in the file name. Be creative.

iPod Tip of the Day

So yea have an iPod, and there is always the struggle on how to listen to it in your car. The iTrip and other FM transmitters are a popular "solution". As with many other in-quote solutions out there, it doesn't always work. The biggest trick is to find an empty station, that is surrounded by other empty stations. That gives you something to do on a boring Sunday, but its not exactly fun.

Belkin has come to the rescue with their new web tool
my best FM stations. Just punch in your zip and you've got a great starting point to finding a clear station!

Mo Money Mo Problems Tip of the Day

Looking to save a little more money when eating out? Get gift certificates here for 50% off.

Update: For none Lexington, KY readers, check HalfOffDeals.com

You can save when eating in, too. Couponmom.com has all sorts of suggestions. You don't even have to be a mom to follow them. Here's a strategy: use an online 50%-off coupon to buy gift certificates from a [participating] website where they are already 50% off, and you could turn a $40 meal into a $10 one!


BONUS ETIQUETTE TIP: Please remember to tip your waiter according to the regular value of your meal!

Web Development Tip of the Day

If you've got a job making websites and have out grown the likes of Dreamweaver, and you've got a Mac. Give Coda a try. Its like the Web Development 2.0. That has what you need and not what you don't. Its a text editor, CSS editor, FTP app, Terminal and reference guide all in one window.

Family Tip of the Day

Family is important. Its sad to think that for many of us, we don't know who our grandparents' grandparents were. I was super excited when I heard about Geni a few weeks ago. Its a Web 2.0 kind of way to quickly and easily add to your family tree, invite your family members to help you out and add their family. One of the coolest things about it, is that it doesn't limit your family tree to just your grandparents on down. Your in-laws can fill in their family tree, and their in-laws can too and it can just keep going and going. The biggest family tree on there has over 3,300 people! And they are working on ways to export and print your tree, cause I doubt our grandkids will still be using this website.

P.S. If you're in my family, and want me to invite you, let me know. I've already got 73 people on there.

MP3 Tip of the Day

"It's coming back again! MP-Thursdays from Pepsi and O-ROCK 105.9!" Well you might say "105.9, that used to be WVRB here in Wilmore, but who's O-Rock?" Well O-Rock is an Orlando "New Rock" station and thanks to the power of the internet and the suggestion of a brother living down there we're able to take advantage of this free MP3 situation! Visit O-Rock's site to download this week's free songs.

Last year when they ran this promo it lasted every week for a month and they ended up having some pretty good songs. I got stuff from Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Strokes, The Vines, Linkin Park, Evanescence, and they also introduced me to Yellowcard! Ahh, thanks to O-Rock Ocean Avenue is one of my favorite songs! Now I'm not promising the next Coldplay here, but its free and I'll even listen to "It's A Small World" once.

Now as an extra bonus geeky tip: After you download these tracks you'll notice that there's a little "This is O-Rock 105.9" promo at the beginning of each track. If your using iTunes you can set it to skip that opening every-time you listen to those tracks. To do that select the song and go to "File" : "Get Info", click on the "Options" Tab and where it says "Start Time:" type in 0:04 since the O-Rock promo happens to be four seconds long. Do this to every song and from now on when you place those songs it'll skip the O-Rock promo. Hey, I warned you it was geeky.

iChat Tip of the Day

This little tip is for the few out there who are Mac users (not just eater) and are also using iChat. As you might have noticed, some of your other iChat using friends having cool things come up under their name in the buddy list. You've got iTunes cranking all day, and you know you have the best selection of music ever. Of course you want to tell the world this. Well you can show what song your listening to that second right under you name. The most popular program to accomplish this and other nifty tricks is called iChatStatus. As a double bonus, extra geeky tip: once you get that downloaded and installed if you don't want it announcing that you currently have iTunes "Paused" here's an add on script you can install

Pranking Tip Of The Day

It's Monday. 9:22 am. You're already bored to the max, and it's only the first day of your work week. You need a solution. FAST. I got it for you.

Ingredients: Scotch Tape

Directions: Pick your target to prank. Usually an unsuspecting nincompoop works best. Sneak to their office when they're not around, and tape down their "ALT" key on their keyboard, so it's constantly depressed. Whenever they try to click or type, they will get really strange pop-ups and things. It will take them HOURS to figure out what is going on.

Now, word to the wise. Don't try this on your boss like I did. She happened to come in late and needed to do something IMMEDIATELY and called because "the internet wasn't working." At which point, I had to coyly remove the tape from her poor keyboard, but if my boss didn't understand my prankish ways, I could've lost my job over a piece of tape.

Poultry Tip of the Day

Don't Put all your Eggs in one basket.

For example, if you are running a web site that calls for daily updates, it is probably best if your entire crack web team isn't based on one Internet connection. Jay and I lost our DSL connection the other night; luckily we're a couple of smart fellows and had already hired professional editors to bring our tips to the next level. So when the basket dropped, only half of the already-cracked-writing staff were cracked more than usual. The rest of the team, only cracked to their normal extent, were able to pick up the slack and kept you all from being sorely disappointed Tuesday morning. I've heard this also applies owning stocks and socks.

Blogger Tip of the Day

Some blogs, unlike Pete & Jay's Tip O Da Day, don't allow people to post anonymous comments. I can't argue with that, as there is something scary with letting anyone in the world comment on your blog, because this world has some crazy anyones. When you try to sign up for an account with Blogger, it looks like you have to start a blog too, but that is not the case. For those of you who aren't ready to commit to new ways of wasting your time, you can simply stop the sign-up process after the first screen! Yep, fill out the easy first page of info., click on the button for the next step, and then just close the window. Then you're signed up with a Blogger screen-name. Now you'll be able to log in and post comments with your name attached!