In Windows 8 you need to go to ‘Charms bar’ and then settings and then shutdown button. This would take some seconds and more importantly rambling around the window screen. Also if you are downloading something and want to shutdown after certain time, you can automate or schedule the shutdown of your windows system with this simple trick. No extra software to install, just follow the instructions below.
1. Right click – New – Shortcut 2. Set location/path: shutdown /s /t 3600
(3600 for 60 minutes. Give 0 for immediate shutdown) 3. Name the file, change icon(if you prefer to) and place it in a safe place – I prefer to have it on my desktop.
Whenever you want to shutdown your system, you can simply click this executable file.
I usually use command prompt to set the shutdown timing of my computer, while I’ve set the system to download something in the background.
Hope this would be a helpful tip.
This is a guest post by Nathan Strauss. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guest post guidelines.
Magneto is an open source web technology that facilitates the development of intuitive and user friendly websites that perform. With increasing popularity of Magento in the web development space today, several companies have emerged, offering professional Magento development, configuration, implementation, and integration services that facilitates developing websites that perform and generates revenues on the long term. Magneto e-commerce features high flexibility and advanced set of features and functionalities that are particularly designed to offer extendibility and versatility. With Magento, professional developers help you build the best online shopping cart that specifically suits your business objectives.
However, this blog addresses the common mistakes or complaints pertaining to installing extensions to Magento. There are several Magento extensions offered by different companies, and installing these may come up with errors or other common mistakes. Fortunately, there are solutions to cope with the errors in installing extensions to Magento. At the same time, beware of the common Magento compilations, which are the source of possible errors and issues in extension installation.
The Errors
Two common errors that you face at the time of installing extensions to Magento via the auto-load mechanism are:
Fatal error: Class ‘Activo_Adwordsconversion_Helper_Data’ not found in /home//public_html/app/Mage.php on line 516
PHP Fatal error: Call to a member function toOptionArray() on a non-object in /var/www/includes/src/Mage_Adminhtml_Block_System_Config_Form.php on line 421
It is important to note here that both the errors may occur after you have successfully installed the extension via Magento Connect Manager and trying to access the System>Configuration area. It is also noted that both the errors highlight the same symptoms, i.e. the classes are not found properly via the Magento Autoloader. These two are the most common errors that may arise during installing extensions to Magento e-commerce website development tool. The problem is with Magento compilation, and it is important to beware of it every time you install a new extension to your Magento component.
The Solution
Mostly, such errors in Magento extension installation arises when websites are hosted in small environments, perhaps a semi-dedicated shared or VMs environment. This results into poor performance, which leads to Magento compilation. This will not occur if the sites are hosted in a nice environment, with Alternative PHP Caching or other Opt Code Caching mechanism for PHP. The best way to resolve the errors and issues with Magento compilation is to recompile.
Recompile Magento
The ideal way to cope up with the errors in extension installation is to recompile Magento. Since the major problem stems out of Magento compilation, the best way to resolve it is to recompile.
There are two different ways to achieve Magento recompilation. The first way is to go through admin panel> System> Tools> Compilation, and then hit ‘Run Compilation Process’ button.
Another way to go via the command line, as mention herewith:
It goes without saying that you have to undergo several SSH access permissions to run and execute PHP, but at the end, it facilitates Magento recompilation, helping to avoid errors in extension installation.
Author Bio:
This post is contributed by Nathan Strauss, who is the marketing head in a magento development company providing magento development services and facilitates clients to hire magento developers as per their requirement.
This is a guest post by Neil Davidson. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guest post guidelines.
This is a basic guide to editing in Pinnacle Studio on the Apple iPad. If you are new to editing, you will find it useful to familiarise yourself with some of the terms used. But luckily for you, many of them are self-explanatory e.g. a ‘splice’ is literally a cut in a video clip. A ‘transition’ is a visual effect that takes your from one clip to another in a particular way. Also, if you are used to Apple touch screen products, you will find Pinnacle very intuitive.
Pinnacle can be downloaded for free for the App Store (for a limited time only).
1) Starting a new project and giving it a name
To start a new project you need to click the ‘+’ button. This will make a panel appear in which you need to name your project. You will then be taken to your workspace.
The layout of your workspace
You will see from the image below that your workspace is laid out quite efficiently. It consists of:
– a function window (top left): allows you to switch between different functions e.g. transitions, music files on your device, video & other media (e.g. photo) files on your device and title templates.
– source/project window (top right): will display videos that you select to view before you touch, hold and drag them into your timeline or storyboard. It is also your project window as this is where your work in progress will play back.
– the storyboard (mid-portion of your screen): this is where you will see each element of your timeline in smaller chunks.
– the timeline: this is where you will be working from (this is divided into one video track and multiple audio tracks).
2) Rebuilding your video library
You will see in the video window in the top left panel that I have been given the option to ‘rebuild’ my video library. This means that all of the video I have on my iPad is not currently accessible via Pinnacle. If I click to rebuild, it will bring any new media (video/photos) into this window so that I can use it in my project.
Tap your media to preview: When you tap a video or image in the video window (left), it will display it in the project window (right). You can select the play button to play the video.
Touch and hold your media to drag it to the Storyboard or Timeline. See image below. You can adjust the scale of the timeline using the two finger expand/shrink technology that you will be familiar with from using the iPad or an iPhone. This is helpful in terms of giving you more control over where to make cuts/splices and where to place transitions etc.
Highlight a clip by touching it. Tools appear highlighted (they are grayed out when you have no media selected) – see the centre of the screen – just above the story board. – the microphone – allows you to record voiceover
– the razor blade – allows you to splice the clip where the yellow marker is lying
– the trash can – allows you to delete a clip
3) Making a splice
– Touch and slide your media to adjust its position on the timeline – so that the yellow marker is lying on the bit of the video clip where you would like to make the splice.
– Tap the ‘video’ button that appears. This makes the splice.
– See image below – you may want to delete one part of the clip. You have two options. Either touch the clip to highlight it and click the trash can button above the timeline. Or, double tap the clip you want to delete and a panel will appear as shown below. You can also use the trash can function from this panel.
4) Adding transitions
Once you have cut your videos and are happy with the footage you have, you can add transitions to make the cuts smoother and easier on the viewers eyes. Pinnacle has a a few basic transition functions for you to use. They are divided into three sections: basics, pushes and slides. Click on the lightening bolt in the function window (top left) to reveal your transition options.
I have use a few different ones in my final video so that you can see the difference.
To add a transition to your project, you simply need to touch, hold and drag the chosen transition to the point on the timeline where you would like it. You can move them to a different place on the timeline in the same way if you put them in the wrong place. You will see that they are displayed as purple items on the timeline.
You can also edit the duration/length of a transition. The default is one second. To change the duration, touch the transition and two extra yellow markers will appear around the edge of the transition. You can then touch the yellow markers (boxes with small arrows) at the bottom of the timeline to stretch or shorten the transition.
5) Sound
a) Adjusting the volume of your clips
By double tapping a clip in the timeline you will bring up a function panel (as mentioned earlier). You can see from the image above that this allows you to control the volume of this particular clip and also the fade of the sound as it comes in and out.
b) Adding narration
You can see from the image below that if you click the microphone, a function appears for you to record some narration directly into Pinnacle – where you want it on the timeline. Once it has been recorded, the recording will appear as a chunk on the audio track of your timeline, just like the video clips on the video track, and it can be moved about in the same way (i.e. touch, hold, drag).
c) Adding music
By selecting the musical note in the function window in the top left, you can access any music stored on your iPad and use it in your video project. It functions in the same way as the visual media.
6) Titles
A finishing touch to your video are titles. The title templates available on Pinnacle are in two categories; motion titles and standard titles. In my video project, I have use a motion title to open and a standard title to close – to demonstrate the variety.
The titles function like the other elements. Select the ‘T’ option on the left of the function panel. You will then see the title options available to you. Touch, hold and drag a title template to your chosen spot on the timeline. Tap ‘Your Text Here’ in the project window in the right and a keyboard will appear so that you can add your own text. You can also drag the text box to place the title in your chosen spot on the screen.
7) Rendering
Pinnacle will tell you when you need to render your project so that you can watch a smooth preview of your video. Click the two cogs, next to the undo button (back arrow), to render.
8) Exporting
Click the top right icon (box with forward arrow) to export your video. Pinnacle allows you to export/share your video to a few different platforms, or simply as a video file on your iPad.
This was a basic introduction to Pinnacle Studio. Pinnacle has other functions that aren’t covered in this article such as the montage feature. It is also possible to record video directly into Pinnacle. Pinnacle is available as a free app for a limited time only.
Author Bio:
Neil Davidson is the Founder of My Web Presenters, who are a leading web video production company specialising in video spokesperson videos. They work with businesses of all sizes to create and market compelling and emotive videos. They also write a video marketing blog regularly so please check it out.
This is a guest post by John Lewis. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guest post guidelines.
So your fun little cover band decided to give it a shot and record an original album in your basement. While creating the cover art, you got stuck. You just could not find the right lighting effect, and the first album HAS to look cool!
Rather than scouring the internet, why not just create your own effects with the tools Photoshop already has? It really is a quite easy, and learning to manipulate the tools in Photoshop is always to your advantage.
Step 1:
Create a new new document , and select the Custom Abstract Brush. Set the size to 2500 X 2500px set to Grayscale with a 300 px/in resolution. Double-Check your settings below:
Step 2:
Use the Ellipse tool to draw a black circle at the center of the canvas. Right click on the circle layer, go to Layer Style and select Blending Options. First reduce the opacity to 0%, then add an inner shadow with the following setting:
Now go to Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and enter anywhere from 1.5 to 2.5px for the radius.
Step 3:
Add a layer mask by using a large soft black brush with the hardness set at 0% to remove the top left portion of the circle.
Duplicate this layer until the area on the bottom right darkens to your satisfaction.
Step 4:
Make a new layer below the circle, grab that large soft black brush again, and click once on the center of the canvas. Reduce the opacity to 20%, and now the circle should like this:
Press Ctrl+G to group all the circle layers.
Step 5:
Make a layer above the circles and fill it black with the Paint Bucket. Grab a soft white brush and make one spot on the center.
Now to have fun, go to Filter > Distort > Wave and have with the effects until you’ve distorted the circle to your liking. Apply the filter twice more by pressing Ctrl+F when you are finished.
Step 6:
Invert the colors in the image by pressing Ctrl+L, and setting the Layer Blend Mode to Multiply.
Add a layer mask and remove any unwanted areas with a large soft brush. Repeat this technique until you have the desired amount of this effect.
Step 7:
Make another layer, and use the Lasso tool , set the feather to 30px and follow the example:
Make sure at this point you have the foreground color set to white and background to black, go to Filter > Render > Clouds, and hit Ctrl+D.
Push Ctrl+L, and in the levels window increase the contrasts. Use the following settings;
Set the layer to Multiply, create a layer mask, and again remove unwanted areas.
Step 8:
Now for some more fun! Make a new layer with black as the foreground. Grab a round brush around the size 25px with a hardness of 100%. Go to Window > Brushes and use the following:
Paint over the canvas as you wish. When finished, go to Filter > Blur > Radial Blur and apply a radial blur with an amount of 2px.
Step 9:
Open this photo. Press Ctrl+L, invert the colors and set the Layer Blend Mode to Multiply. Press Ctrl+L again once at the levels window, follow the example below:
Go to Edit > Define Brush Preset. You can now name your lighting brush!
Step 10:
Make a new layer and use that shiny new brush to click once over the canvas, anywhere you’d like. You can move it quite easily.
Step 11:
Create a new group, switch the Blend Mode to Color Dodge and create a layer. Use a soft white brush to paint on any of the areas you’d like to enhance and reduce the opacity as wanted.
Look at that! You’re going to have an all-star album cover! Your band is sure to make the Top 40! Well, maybe the local college radio station? You have to start somewhere, after all. Enjoy your new brush and the light effects. Rock on!
This post is written by John Lewis and he works at PriceCollate as a writer.
Hope you know about the latest buzz in the WordPress world!! They have released the stable version of bbpress WordPress plugin to the general public and it is called bbpress 2.0
The main advantage is, you do not have to worry about the WordPress integration anymore, because it’s now an extension of WordPress and it integrates with WordPress seamlessly.
What if you were using stand-alone versions of bbpress so far and now want to switch to the latest bbpress plugin without losing your valuable content.
There is a easy way to do this.
Goto WordPress Plugin Directory, download bbpress plugin and install it, as you install any other normal plugin.
Now inside your WordPress dashboard, under Tools, click on Import.
Now click on bbPress Standalone(Import your bbPress standalone board.)
Make sure to backup everything before proceeding further.
Now give the path to bb-config.php file of your old installation. and hit proceed.
Once the process is completed, you can check it by renaming the old forum installation folder to something else and check working of new forum by visiting yourdomainname.com/forums/
For people who comment on other blogs:-
Its a simple thing for some advance internet users, but I am sure that most of the people are not yet sure about how to get a pic or gravatar next to their comments on some WordPress(which allows showing gravatar ofcourse!) blogs.
Here is the simplest way, which will take just 2 or 3 minutes(depending on your internet connection speed 🙂 ).
Goto Gravatar.com(acquired by automattic), Click on SignUp. You will just need a valid email ID, as you will receive a confirmation email including a link that will activate your account and allow you to set your password. After activating your account, login and goto “Add an Image“, now you will be presented with some options to upload a photo to your account. Upload an image that you want to show beside your comment. People who want to create their brand awareness, will use their website logo. And some others who want to show their photo beside the comment can upload their photo.
You can even use the same account(therefore the same images) to multiple email IDs. Just click on “Add an Email Address” link and you can add another email ID.
Now while commenting on blogs which show gravatar next to the comments, use the email ID that you used to signup with Gravatar.com. You can use any of the email ID’s that you have added to your Gravatar.com account, this will automatically show your uploaded image beside your comments. WordPress will automatically retrieve the photo and show it on the blog.
For blog owners:-
If your theme does not have gravatar enabled by default, then here is a simple trick using which you can integrate it. Add below code in comment.php file
to show the gravatar wherever you want to show them. You can use styling by adding some css class.
Plugin for blog owners:-
If you don’t want to go through the hurdle, just use WP-Gravatar plugin upload and activate it and you will be ready with the gravatar enabled comment section instantly 🙂
There are many other services and methods to show gravatar, but this one is the best and the widely used one.
Please share your knowledge in the comment section. Do you know any tips, tricks, hacks or anything regarding gravatar ?
During the early days of this blog, we had some problem in showing adsense ads of 125×125 format on our sidebar. We wanted to have four 125×125 ad banners(as shown in below image), but we were unable to align it properly. After some research and getting help from online friends we could overcome this problem. Now we are sharing this, in order to save some of your time, who may also be facing the same problem.
Its easy to show image ads(direct advertisers ad banner) in the side bar. But if we want to show ads using some adnetwork(Ex:- Adsense, Adbrite, Bidvertiser, BuySellAds etc), its bit difficult to properly align the ads(as shown in above image).
First the simple one. If you want to show some ad banners(which does not use JavaScript or any other scripts). You can use the following code:
But the same can’t be applied when you want to show some JavaScript enabled ads(Ex:- Adsense, Adbrite, Bidvertiser, BuySellAds etc) in above mentioned style.
To do that, add below code to your style.css
That’s it, you are done. You can play with above coding to customize it further to blend with your blog design.
Hope it helps, atleast for some of you.
Today’s post is dedicated to all those people using blogger.com. Its a great service which offers free web hosting. I wonder how much bandwidth blogger would provide!
Before trying any of the below mentioned tips/tricks, backup your theme — Goto “Layout” -> “Edit HTML” and click on “Download Full Template”..
Today’s post is dedicated to all those people using blogger.com. Its a great service which offers free web hosting. I wonder how much bandwidth blogger would provide!
Before trying any of the below mentioned tips/tricks, backup your theme — Goto “Layout” -> “Edit HTML” and click on “Download Full Template”..
This article is only for education purpose and I am not an expert in coding blogger templates, so try at your own risk. By changing the default behavior of the blogger blogs, you may be violating their policy. So we make it clear that, this article is only for education/learning purpose.
1. To insert Meta tags:-
Place
<meta NAME='description' expr:content='data:blog.pageTitle + ",Put in your common description tags here "'/>
in between <head> </head> tags.
In the above code expr:content= ‘data:blog.pageTitle’ gets replaced by the title of your current page. So when combined with the common description tags, the description tag becomes unique for each page. Also do not forget to replace “Put in your common description tags here” with some description of your website(this will be common for all pages of your website.)
2. Read more option (show only post Excerpt in the home page):-
Login to your account and click on the “Layout” tab. Then select “Edit HTML”. Check ” Expand Widget Templates”.
Now search for </b:skin> and paste the below code between </b:skin> and </head>
<!-- Style to implement "Read more.." link in all the posts (Start) -->
<style>
<b :if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'>
span.fullpost {display:inline;}
<b :else/>
span.fullpost {display:none;}
</b>
</style>
<!-- Style to implement "Read more.." link in all the posts (End) -->
Now search for <data:post.body/> in the template HTML and paste the following piece of code after <data:post.body/>
<!-- Code to show "Read more.." Link (Begin) -->
<b :if cond='data:blog.pageType != "item"'>
<span>
<a expr:href='data:post.url'
style='color:#0000FF;
text-align:right;
font-weight:bold;
text-decoration:none' >
Read more..
</a>
</span>
</b>
<!-- Code to show "Read more.." Link (End) -->
Save it. That’s all about coding part of the theme. To show only post excerpts on the homepage, you need to insert <span class="fullpost"> post excerpt.Remaining article will be shown after clicking on "Read more.." link.</span> . Now your articles and blog will look more professional.
3. Hide the Blogger navbar:-
Add this line #navbar-iframe {display: none !important;} before /* Variable definitions
or
Paste below code inbetween <style> </style> , before </head> .
<!--Code to remove blogger navbar-->
#b-navbar {
height:0px;
visibility:hidden;
display:none
}
<!--End of code to remove blogger navbar-->
4. Post articles from email:-
Goto “Settings”, click on “Email” option. And set the email ID, and start posting articles from your email ID.
Its interesting to note that, you can post upto 10MB of images directly from your email.
5. Bulk image uploader(for firefox users only):-
Use “Drag Drop Uploader” FireFox Addon and upload as many images as you want.
6. Change the default favicon and put your favicon, great for branding purpose:-
Upload your favicon(an image of 16 x 16 pixels or 32 x 32 pixels with .png, .gif, or .ico extension. Use either 8-bit or 24-bit colours.)
Now paste below code between <head> </head> tags.
Book mark this article, as there is more to come, as we investigate and play with Blogger.
We thought of making this a serious post, but it would annoy visitors as they need to navigate to different pages to get what they want. So we decided to keep all things at one place. Hope this article is of some use for some of you. If this article helps you in anyway, then please share this story with as many people as possible.Thanks
Goto 
You will just need a valid email ID, as you will receive a confirmation email including a link that will activate your account and allow you to set your password. After activating your account, login and goto “Add an Image“, now you will be presented with some options to upload a photo to your account. Upload an image that you want to show beside your comment. People who want to create their brand awareness, will use their website logo. And some others who want to show their photo beside the comment can upload their photo.
