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Top 5 How-To Sites That You Must Bookmark
Dreamhost Controller : Dreamhost App for your Desktop
Has Google crashed Flickr’s Picnik?
11 Useful Microsoft Word 2007 Tips Everyone Should Know
Customizing Windows Command Prompt

Top 5 How-To Sites That You Must Bookmark

Posted: 03 Mar 2010 12:57 PM PST

How-To Websites, these are the websites that are making you job quite easier. After the evolution of these Web services, our work became easier by just simply sitting in-front of our computer and simply search for what we want to know without any hesitation, rather than roaming to others for asking about it.

They were providing information on various aspects like Tutorials, Online Education, General Services, Health Care, Fashion, Photography, Hardware Guidance and many more. These services were serving us by providing the information from simple works like “How to Fold a T-Shirt like a Pro” to mighty tutorials.

Thus these Websites are becoming a part of our life, which are helping us to meet our requirements. I have created a list of “Top 5 How-To Site”. Check all of them. They might useful to you at any time in your life.

eHow
How To Do Things.com
WonderHow-To
How Stuff Works
Instructables
Bonus : How-To Geek

eHow : You can know about how-to do everything at eHow which provides step-step instructions. Expert village is another Online tutorial website with over 1,30,000 video tutorials is merged with eHow now. You will find various How-To tips on Arts & Entertainment, Business, Computers, Travel, Child, Health, Education, Internet, Holidays etc. What not it gives you the information about everything and anything.

How-To Do Things.com : You can learn how-to do about almost anything. You will find thousands of how-to helpful articles. To have additional benefits and enjoy those services you should register. This site will provide you various how-to’s on Automotive, Business, Careers, Computers&Internet, Hobbies, Holidays, Travel, Health Care Tips and many more.

Wonder How-To : You can find how-to videos that helps you to meet your requirements. This is one of the best service available. It is not only a simple website, it is a search-engine and directory for how-to websites. You can also share your own How-to videos here. You are always welcome to share. You will find various How-To tips on Arts & Crafts, Alcohol, Beauty&Style, Computer&Programming, Dating Tips, Food, Gambling and lot more.

How Stuff Works : It is a colorful illustration website that which deals with the information related to earth science, engine workshops, many more technology devices workshop. This is the world of heaven for engineers, students etc. This is simply a device workshop. You can find information about Automotive, Engine, Gadgets, Hardware. But this website also provides you the information related to general categories.

Instructables : It is the biggest how-to and DIY community where users make and share inspiring information, tutorials, projects etc. It is a user created and sharing how-to website where you can upload or share various projects.

(Bonus)How-To Geek : This is the ultimate Tech how-to website. You will find many Windows, Linux, Mac, PC troubleshooting, Internet tips and many more.

So share your how to site which you recommend for every one?

This Post Top 5 How-To Sites That You Must Bookmark is Published on Devils Workshop .

Dreamhost Controller : Dreamhost App for your Desktop

Posted: 03 Mar 2010 10:46 AM PST

Dreamhost is one of the top service in the Webhosting industry. We at Devils’ Workshop made use of Dreamhost hosting services back in 2007. High uptime of their servers and Dedicated support staff make them one of the top notch in the industry!
Dreamhost controller is an Adobe AIR application that makes use of Dreamhost APIs, bringing almost all the functionality of the APIs to your desktop. It is available for Windows, Mac and Linux operating systems. If you are hosting your website on Dreamhost servers, then this app can help you easily manage your hosting right from your desktop.

The various functionalities that can be performed with the app are-

Rebooting private servers
Adding DNS records
Viewing announcement lists
Viewing domains list
Viewing users
Viewing PS Server Usage
Graphs on PS Server

Here are a few screenshots of the Desktop app-

Landing screen-

Check Load on the server-

Install the Desktop app-

To run the app on your system, you need to install Adobe AIR on your system first.
Download Dreamhost Controller from Webdigi website.
Developed by a London based Web Development company, source code for Webdigi Dreamhost Controller project is publically on google Code. If you are a developer, you can contribute to Dreamhost Controller Project here.

You can use Dreamhost Discount Coupon March 2010 to get maximum discount at Dreamhost.

This Post Dreamhost Controller : Dreamhost App for your Desktop is Published on Devils Workshop .

Has Google crashed Flickr’s Picnik?

Posted: 03 Mar 2010 03:43 AM PST

Google recently announced that they are taking over Picnik a website which allows online editing and formatting of images. The first reaction was why does Google want to do this when they already have Picassa. Picassa is actually not a online image editor but installed on the computer. I thought I would look at Picnik and share with readers what I liked about it.

Picassa web albums is a Google product and its main competitor is Flickr. I am sure many amongst you must have used Flickr a lot more than Picassa web albums.

One key factor for Flickr being a hit amongst people uploading pictures online is there is no need for installing any application on the computer for editing the images.
If you have decent internet speed; one would be tempted to just upload images and edit them with a good editor available online.
That is what Picnik is for Flickr. It is the image editor for Flickr. I wonder what will Google do with Picnik as now it owns the image editing service for Yahoo’s Flickr.

About Picnik

Picnik is a pretty good image editor and it is quite handy if you want to do some basic editing of images.
There is no need for registering or signing-up. You can directly edit images from Flickr, Picassa, Facebook, MySpace, Photobucket and more.
I could also edit an image directly from my hard drive of which I took a screen shot for giving you a better idea of its features.
It supports Resizing, Cropping, Rotate, setting exposure of a image, colors and sharpening images. It’s Red-Eye correction tool is also very satisfactory which is a must for any online photo storage service.
I liked the speed with which it worked and that is something I guess a very strong selling point for Picnik.

Screenshot of using Picnik Editor…

So do you think but taking over Picnik, Google has threatened Yahoo’s Flickr? Will Google’s Picassa web albums get better integration than Flickr is getting with Picnik? I think with this buy, Google is tying up loose ends for Chromium OS. If ever we have a Chromium Netbook; services like Picnik will be quite vital. What do you think? Do drop in your comments.

This Post Has Google crashed Flickr’s Picnik? is Published on Devils Workshop .

11 Useful Microsoft Word 2007 Tips Everyone Should Know

Posted: 03 Mar 2010 01:42 AM PST

While in college, I had to prepare a lot of project reports and assignments using Word. During that time I found many handy tips which helped me a lot in my work. I am sharing some of those through this post as I think it will be useful to everyone.

Note that though I used all these tricks in Word 2007, they might also work in Word 2003/Word2010.

1) Hidden Text in Document: During your childhood you must have played with invisible ink. Well you can do something of that sort with Word as well. Word provides a similar functionality of hiding text. And it is very simple to do. Highlight the text you want to hide. Then right click -> font. In the Effects section, look for Hidden and select it. Lo!! Your text is gone.

To again show the hidden text select entire document by Ctrl +A , right click->font and uncheck the `Hidden' option.

Where it is useful: Suppose you want to get two printouts of a document you created, but in one copy you don't want a particular section. Then you can use this option to get the printout. Or if you want to hide a section for now but preserve it for future reference then instead of making two copies you can use this method. Note however that if you are sending the doc file as a soft copy then anyone knowing about this feature can unhide and see what all text was hidden.

2) Check for Sensitive Information: Because of the last line mentioned in the above point, you should always check your document for any hidden text and other sensitive information(which may include names of people who worked on the document, name of the person who most recently saved the document, date when a document was created etc) that you might inadvertently send. Doing this is pretty simple. Go to Office Button at the top left corner; go to Prepare->Inspect Document.

3) Change Default White Background Color: Make your document stand out of the crowd by changing its default background color. Go to Page Layout tab in the ribbon. Go to Page Background group. Click on the arrow next to Page Color command. From here you can choose the color of your choice. Word also changes the text font color based on the background you choose.

4) Add Drop-Cap: For some more customization to your document you can add Drop Cap in your document. Drop Cap is a large capital letter at the beginning of a document. To do so, go to Insert ribbon, in the Text group select Drop Cap command.

5) Save as PDF: You prepare a document, apply all those formats and styles to make it look different and send it through e-mail to your prof/boss. But what if he has a different version of office installed? Some of your settings might not show properly then. To avoid this it is always better to use pdf version. Though you can always use free pdf convertors to convert your document to pdf, you can also download Microsoft's free Save As PDF Add-In. Once you install this you can save your document as pdf by going to Save As option and choosing "PDF or XPS" format.

6) Default Setting for Save as Other Format: When you save a document in Word 2007 it gets saved as docx extension by default, which is not compatible with Word 2003. So if you are among those who save file with doc extension by going to Save-As option every time, there is an easy option. You can change the default "save as type" option. For this, go to Office button ->Word Option (it is at the bottom right) -> Save. There you can set the default format in which to save the file.

7) Office Compatibility Pack: If you are still using Word 2003, you should install Office Compatibility Pack to view Office 2007 documents (those saved with docx extension) in Office 2003. Without this installed, you cannot view documents created with Office 2007, because MS-Office provides only forward compatibility but no backward compatibility. You can get the compatibility pack for free from Microsoft website.

Change Default Location To Save File: You can change the default location where your file gets saved. By default it is My Documents. I prefer to save files on a separate drive so that when I format Windows the files don't get deleted accidently. To do this go to Office button ->Word Option -> Save. There you can set the default location to save the file.

9) Auto Correct Options: Some Auto Correct Options that you can use in your document:

a) It is better to add a line between two sections of a document rather than leaving a space between them. To add a simple line that runs from left margin to the right margin of the page, type three minus sign on a new line and press enter. For a double line type three equal to sign on a new line and press enter. Using three tildes (~) will result in a wavy line. Try out with #, * and _ for other line types.

b) Using two minus sign (-) followed by greater than sign (>) will result in rightwards pointing arrow. Similarly you can obtain leftwards pointing arrow.

10) Customize Quick Access Toolbar: By default you see save, redo and undo commands displayed next to office button (known as quick access toolbar). You can add more frequently used commands there by clicking small downwards pointing arrow present there and selecting the command you want.

11) Select Text With Similar Formatting: You create a 100 page report and being over-enthusiastic you used bold and italics liberally in it. But your professor wants you to change everything in italics to normal. Now instead of looking for each and every italicized word, select the first italicized word you find, right-click on it, go to Styles ->Select Text With Similar Formatting. All the words in italics are now selected and you can easily change them to desired format.

I hope you will find these tips and tricks useful when you work with Word. If you use any such tricks, do share it with us.

This Post 11 Useful Microsoft Word 2007 Tips Everyone Should Know is Published on Devils Workshop .

Customizing Windows Command Prompt

Posted: 03 Mar 2010 01:37 AM PST

Command Prompt is used to interact with your operating system. Being a non-graphical interface, it doesn’t have user friendly features and looks, but with a bit of customization you can make it slightly better.

1) Enable Copy Paste Option:

a) Open command prompt and left click on the top corner of the dialog box that opened.

b) Go to Properties.

c) You will see four tabs in the window that opens. In the Options tab under Edit Options select Quick Edit Mode. Now you can copy the text from command prompt window by left click of the mouse (just select the text using your mouse, it will automatically get copied) and paste it in some other location in the command prompt or notepad just by the right click of the mouse.

2) Seeing the list of commands you typed: One way of toggling between the commands you typed is through up/down arrow key. If you press F7, you are presented with a list of commands you have used. Use the arrow key to go to the command that you want to use and press enter.

3) Change the background color: Don't like the black color of command prompt? No problem, changing the background color is a piece of cake. Go to Properties (as mentioned in first point) and there go to Colors tab. Here you can change the color of the screen and text from 16 colors present there. I changed the color of my command prompt to green as you can see below.