kaputnik

Just about a week ago, I decided to conduct a major overhaul of my website. I was not tired with the look & feel of the site as such, nor of the layout or of the numerous modules that PHP-Nuke offered. I knew from my experience with PHP-Nuke that I wanted a CMS that would run on PHP and with a MySQL backend since these were optimal for my requirements. So my first stop was at OpenSourceCMS.com. The website is a boon to content managers and to new webmasters. It provides a listing of Opensource CMS available, provides a description as well as reviews, it has a list that is based on user votes, reviews and downloads and of course has a very good forum from which to get the best insights from users of various CMS. The most crucial factor in settling upon a CMS is to first test it, and this is the purpose of OpenSourceCMS.com. The site allows a visitor to log on as admin using any of the CMS it has on store and fiddle around with all the available features, and looking at the results. After spending a good 3 days running through every single CMS available, I finally settled on Dragonfly. As I understand from the dragonfly website, the Dragonfly CMS is a further developed version of CPG-Nuke CMS, which itself was developed from HP-Nuke 6.5. Now, pedigree apart, having tested the CMS out thoroughly on OpenSourceCMS.com beforehand, I felt confident that this is the CMS I want to have on my site. The final test before absolutely taking the plunge was to download the CMS package and to try it out on my own system. Since I'm currently on a Windows based system, I use PhpTriad on which to test the Dragonfly CMS install. Thoroughly excited with the success of making a complete installon my own system without any hitches, and having added a few extra modules and blocks, I finally decided to upload to my site. Since the entire package is a rather small upload - just about 5 MB (and that's because I retained all the original files <against the 20 MB that PHP-Nuke gets in because of all the un-necessary files like extra language packs in each module>), I managed to have the basic site up and running inside of an hour. Then came a painful but thoroughly satisfying 4-5 hours of testing each module. For a while the Downloads module didn't work quite well since the module requires shifting of files inside the 'YOUR_THEME' folder to the theme that one's using. My upload automatically created a folder called YOUR_THEME. as soon as that was figured out, everything else fell into place as it should have, if I'd remembered to remember everything the readme files said (the readme files are every simple and easy to understand). Some of the features that come standard with the Dragonfly install include a forum and photogallery other than the normally present News module on most CMS. One can aditionally add content, blog, calendar, a professional feel downloads section, IRC Chat amongst a host of other modules that one may feel the need for. The best thing about these modules is that, as soon as you activate them in the admin area, they automatically add themselves to the Menu and you can fiddle around with the edit feature to re-name the modules under contents as well as move the blocks for each one around to best fit your page. Now, the only tricky parts that required a bit of thinking were: 1. Getting the blocks to appear on the right hand side of the page. >>> In the blocks admin, select the blocks you want on the right hand side of the page. Next, go to the modules section, click to edit the 'News' (Or whichever module you have set as 'home') and select it to appear on "BOTH sides". This will enable blocks to appear on the right side of the page. 2. In the coppermine gallery, the home view of the gallery has a forcd "EXAMPLE" advertisement. To remove this, you need to go to the coppermine settings in the Admin area and remove the 'Ad' section from the 'display on home' area. That being done, Dragonfly seems to be the fastest CMS I have tested to date, and seems to be great on the admin front too.

A good CMS would ideally contain 'news', 'content', 'blog', 'forum', a 'gallery', a 'downloads' section, a 'shout box', some sort of 'calendar'/ 'adgenda' and a 'survey' (not just a simple polling system but a full fledged survey with multiple polls, which accomodates branching). Each module should automatically add links to itself in the munu as soon as it is activated. Also, of vital importance is to enable some sort of ranking system for all modules that is centralized to the cms, as well as visitor and user comments. Of course a central user registeration and management system is mandatory. A successful CMS is one that has less code, is well tested for bugs, and provides the simplest of administeration systems. I used PHP-Nuke for about 2 years and have just shifted to Dragonfly, which I must say is absolutely fantastic. Will write more about dragonfly seperately.

wow, now that's some really uncool stuff.. stuff like that reeks.. I guess the hacker was not all that very intellegent - or else really needed the cash bad.. I mean like, if someone were to contact me and ask me to download say an MP3 and then send it to them via e-mail, I'd be pretty curious about it right. Downloading directly from the internet - or from your e-mail host would both account to downloading from the internet onto one's personal computer right. So, anyone asking another person to download something - and then e-mail it to them, would just be better off (in terms of time and energy spent) to download the file/s themselves. So, I guess the lesson learnt - for the world in general, is that, should someone ask you to do something that vaguely sounds illegal, don't do it. And if the person really really wants you to, write them an e-mail - or point out how easily any sort of material is available through P2P, IRC.. The thing about the government is that, whereever it is, transversing countries and borders, the mentality is very low (as in scraping at the bottom of the barrel). Most perple may join the government with good intentions, but those get really easily wiped off the slate. Actually persuing a person to actively participate in a crime is as low as it gets. The cops should get down to - first curbing physical violence, then to booking people at the top end of the organized crime scenario, then get down to tackling corruption, in administration and politics and finally enforce goodwill law when all the more important (bad) stuff has been sorted out.

Okay, here's what you want to do...Your website would have a template package.. within that package/ module - there would be a folder full of images. Now, the images in this folder would be used to create the specific areas of the output HTM file that is sent to the browser. So the simplest way to go about getting the template psd image to get onto your website is to splice the PSD into little bits - bits that corrospond to the images in the template module folder. You'll have cornor images, BG images & pixels, you'll have block side and header images etc... Open up a new layer in your PSD and import the images from your template folder. Overlay these on your seperate layer in the sections of your new template and splice the image into parts that corrospond to the images from your website template. PM me should you require more help.

Well this news has been around for a bit and its really very exciting. Apple is taking a bold step into its future as far as the marketability of it's computers is concerned. The thing about having an Intel chip included in the computer is that Intel ususlly requires the maker of a computer utilizing any of thei chips to carry their logo in a visible place on the box of the machine. A lot of Intel's goodwillbuilt over time will also rub off on to Apple on the medium and long term. The effect of this that users who have ideally bought systems having Intel chips (usually identifying these systems vrom visual displays at shops and retail establishments) will also recognize the novelty of owning an Apple system with the security they feel with having an "Intel inside" (this catch line has now changed with Intel's brand makeover. All together a good deal I think.

My take is that - since a majority of computer users - at some point graviate towards purchasing their own computer or laptop, it becomes easier for them to access e-mail through POP with a client like Outlook or Thunderbird. Now, since a large chunk of users are already utilizing the POP access to their g-mail accounts, a lot of them may not be archiving their e-mails on the gmail servers. If this is the case then Gmail woud be handling only a few hundred TB of data at any given point of time. However, all mail content including attachments would require to be compressed and stored in servers that are dedicated to 'old' mail - stuff that folks would usually forget about in time. Now, if a text outline of all the e-mail content is extracted and dumped into a text file; utilizing a key-work technology that associates the location of each word appearing in the text file, you'd have a relatively simple way to get to the e-mails once they are searched for. But, if all e-mails passing through Gmail servers are actually being stored infefinately, then other than the fact that there is going to be a huge demand for cheap and efficient storege; there would also be the bemand for indestructable storage. Quantum computing and quantum storage was being researched into as early as 1956 by one of the co-makers of the first atomic weapon - a man named Richard Fynmann. Now, looking at the pace at which hardware research develops into actual functional products; my personal opinion would be that Google has somehow managed to develop/purchase the technology to harness the power of quantum computing. This would result in blistering speeds where processing and computing speeds are concerned and nearly infinate storage.

Yup - this is the most likely reason... however if you have an original 'key' then you have some sort problem with your OS. Now if you go to the Microsoft Windows Update Service Page, the service will automatically check your computer through HTTP for your installed components, automatically configure an update package that your computer requires, allow you to download the package (after you select any parts to the package that you do not want) and help you install the update. All in all, unless you have a decent broadband connection, this process will take you between 15 minutes and a good hour; but you can be assured of the latest updates as released by Microsoft during it's monthly updates. Also, if you're running a pritated 'key' Windows OS on your system, the service will tell you that the key is unauthorized for automatic update. So, that will get you through the update and let you know if your version of windows plus the CD key is authentic. All the best.

Frankly, at these write speeds, it would take eons to actually complete writing a disk full of data. That woud be on a lot of people's minds before they went out to purchase the Blue-Ray Drive. But for the IT world in general and the security world it's wuite a boon. This is because, in a lot of fields, there's this huge requirement to constantly make and maintain multiple forms of backup of data. Even if a firm chocks up 50-100 Gb of data in a day through all employees worldwide, they'd still be able to record all the information onto a handful of disks on a daily basis, at multiple locations. Also, on the security front, it's going to be a windfall. Most survellance security systems utilize DVD recorders for recording live feeds from multiple channels. The problem here is that with the 4 Gb odd space available currently, DVD's tend to fill up at a rapud pace - especially if the recording is from more than 6-8 different cameras at a time. So special DVD writers have to be utilized that automatically shift writing to a different drive while changing DVDs. Now however, utilizing much the sam system except for the type of DVD writer and the DVDs that are written on, here'd be much more space to write on - resulting in longer periods between DVD changes or writing o disk at a higher resolution - something that would make identification of criminals (and of course the invasion of privacy) a lot more simpler.

hummm, did that.. it's changed on the desktop - so that's cool. Although it still shows up as My Documents under C:>Documents & Settings > My Documents Still as far as the look of the desktop goes, it works out well to change the name of My documents to a shorter 'Docs' - aesthetics gos a long way

Well, I tend to use MSCONFIG to turn off non essential programs at windows start, but I normally leave out system files since selectively turning on and off these files tends to be a bit of a headache. However, turning off applications that auto-start on boot (and especially those that do not allow you to select optionsthat disallow auto-run at boot) does speed up boot times by quite a bit by clearing out stuff youonly use once in a while, and also programs that tend to run in the background and use up CPU and memory. Frees up a lot of RAM too, so all in all it's a pretty good thing - as long as you don't fiddle around with the system centric auto-run applications that get used really often.

Ah... this is something I might try out at the office and see if anyone gets confused. Unfortunately, for most of my collegues - doubt if any one has ever emptied out the recyclebin to date... still worth the new year joke.... On a more serious note - is the same procedure applicable to the My Documens folder too? If so I would actually like to go about changing the name to the 'My Documents' folder on my computer..

Google like every organization has grown. It's also grown very profitable - and large chunks of profit mean more money to play around with. Now, as soon as Google went public, it resulted in a requirement to grow further, grow more profitable so that the investing public may reap the benefits. The only way to do that is to either invent completely new technologies, or to take over areas that have always exhisted. That's the way the market economy works. Now, just as long as Google remains essentially free to the basic user, I do believe that people will keep using the services; as soon as they move over to paid services, peolpe'll move to whatever else there is - and make that 'whatever else the next big thing'. Hummmm... when we talk big brother - we need to look at our governments, our religions etc... anything designed to manage humans.

That's a really neat start to your 3D work. I've got this guy called Vijay who works part time at our office who's just in his first year of art (including graphics and 3d) and he does all our set designs, including 3d walk throughs of entire stadiums, custom decorated C&B halls and the likes - and we're all enthralled - fantastic line.. keep up the excellent effort.. !!

This is an interesting bit of information here... actually it's more than interesting.. you see, re-branding a logo/brand image, jingle, colour - any thing to do with re-branding is actually a massive exercize.. it involves a whole lot of communication - mass media, and the all new and important - reaching out to each and everyone who comes across a new face to a brand in a dictinct and individual way. Since I'm in the below the line advertising field, this is an interesting new development - and as soon as I'm off my new-year holiday - I'll be knocking at Intel's doors for a chunk of BTL business - reaching the masses - individually - in a unique way.. Really exciting - thanks for the link...!!

Hey there.. what you're looking out for is called GIMP and it's available here (for windows<<also available for linux>>). GIMP is a very versatile piece of software and I'd highly reccomend it - first, since it's completely free.. :-); and of course, because it offers a lot (or more likely - most) features that full blown paid for software offer - the likes of Photoshop, Corel Draw and the likes of those.. Here's what you want to do.. First of all, (if you're installing in a Windows system) you meed to install GTK - get hold of the latest version - download it from the Gimp download site on Sourceforge and install it. It's the Runtime software to support GIMP on the Windows platform (for Linux - it's a different procedure - uncompress the package you download and install as normal under Linux - instructions in the Readme files).. Once you've installed GTK, you can also run other software like GAIM (multi - IM). Now tha fun part.. You need to down load GIMP and run the exe file - this will install GIMP on your system. Simple... okay - lets make things a bit trickier.. You need to download the animation package next (available on the same download page (get the latest version as always.. always go for the latest features...) once you're done with the download - double click the file to install... Also, just incase you need them, it's always a good idea to download and install the HELP files too - all these packages are available as seperate downloads to make it simpler to download - and so that you only need to download what you require - as and when.. Right - so you're all done with downloading and installing - next... your GIF.. Open your all new version of GIMP (you'll most likely find it in your start menu).. the first time you run it - the program will install additional files into the system tat it will draw upon from time to time. Finish with the procedure - as simply as clicking OK OK OK.. Got to FILE > OPEN (open the image you want) You've got the image open in it's full size - First now, resize your image (so you'll have space for the arrow - like in the image you've got set as an example) This is done by clicking on the resize button on the main dialogues GUI (hover your pointer over the buttons for the tool tips - will help you learn what the buttons do). Next click on the image - this will instantly open up a resize dialogue - ignore it and click on the ends of the image and pull and tug at the ends to get the image to the size you want - click on the resize button on the resize dialogue. Next - click on the "T" button on the main GUI (with all the buttons) - and click on the picture type out your text as you want it - resize, change font, colour etc on the main buttons GUI before you close the text dialogue. each time you click on the image while the 'T" button is pressed will let you open a new 'text' layer - each time you write into the 'text' dialogue - you will create a new layer... Orger the layers in the way you wish them to appear in your GIF - by dragging the layers up and down in the layers GUI and you're nearly ready for the final bit... On the Image screen got to FILE> Save As > write in your file name (dot) GIF Screen will ask you >>Save GIF as an animation or flattened image - select animation > Next/OK > Final save screen will ask you for the duration - select continous - or give the number of times you want the GIF to repeat... click OK/SAVE - and you're done Your saved image will be an animated GIF.. Note: before you save your final work as a GIF, save your layers in a format that accepts layers - such as ABCD.psd (photoshop file) - this will allow you to go back to the file and fiddle around with it later incase you want changes... All the best.. my site has a GIF logo thus created on GIMP... do have a look-see..!!

It sure will work, just as long as it's already compressed in a .avi format. For a small clip of say 5-10 minutes, the rendering time using XvID and converting from .mpg is about 50% time of that tof the length of the movie. So, it's really not too much of a struggle. However, one does require a moderately decent CPU and adequet ram, without too many processess running simaltanously. A full length movie, taken as a direct stream from DVD and raw converted to .avi, would be about 4.5 GB; and would take between 12 and 16 hours to re-compress (and that with a 1.5 GHz processor with 500mb RAM at least).

On VirualDub, it's a fairly simple process. First of all you need to download VirtualDub. This is a very versatile video editor that lets you compress and recompress video files. It also allows you to fiddle around with various features of the video and the audio stream that goes along with the video. After you've downloaded the application (VirtualDub), you will need some video codecs with which to compress your video files into. I would reccomend the various codecs commonly available, amongst which would be DivX and XvID. Install these codecs onto your system. You will also require an assortment of audio codecs (for the purpose of this message, we'll stick to what's already available). An assortment of audio and video codecs are available here. Now, to get down to what you require - brightening up the video. Open VirtualDub. FILE> OPEN (your video file - let it finish loading) VIDEO> COMPRESSION> (Select DivX - assuming you've installed DixV, you can play around with the codec settings later when you're more comfortable with VirtualDub)> OK AUDIO> FULL PROCESSING MODE AUDIO> COMPRESSION> (Select MPEG LAYER-3, and select a suitable bitrate - say 64 kbps @ 32 khz stereo)> OK VIDEO> FILTERS> ADD> (Select Brightness/Contrast)> OK> (Increase the brightness a few notches and the contrast as well - you'll have to experiment through saving the file a few times - so I suggest you save only the first few seconds - or try it out on a small video file the first few times)> OK > (Filters) OK FILE> SAVE AS AVI..> (Give a file name, Select your folder)> SAVE There you go, after a while, when the compression has completed, you should be able to go and view your file. If during compression, you do not like the output brightness as seen in the preview pane (right screen) then, cancel the render and go back to the brightness control and start over from there. All the best..!!!

I actually hace used Thunderbird, and I started off on it.. I actually still use it.. but I can't configure it to save attachments from a specific account automatically either.. Then I tried Outlook.. and nope.. couldn't get that to work out the way I want it to either..

Ah yes m^e... looks to me like you're searching for an FTP based system that analyzes raw weblogs live. I did come across such a software once, although I'm presently unable to locate it - will give it a good shot though. (Most likely on SourceForge) There was also another one I'd come across that installed a cookie on the accessee's computer and logged page visits directly. Resourceindex has a bunch of scripts on offer that track visitors live (refreshing browser - so probably not what you want). There are another bunch of apps available here. Will try and research them after office. Would actually love to have an app like this myself so hunt is on.

I frequently use various video codecs to squeeze size, and to enhance video. But, that's while re-compressing from an already digitized source.. If you're talking about professional video editing; then, after dumping your DV onto your computer, you're best off editing first in the raw format (as dumped from your camera/ other video source) and when you compress, you'd want to try out Apple's quicktime (.mov format). The file sizes are massive - even after compression, but the quality is impressive (saving as PAL format tends to bring down the quality a notch in my personal opinion). There all professional video editing software supports exporting of raw DV to .mov. However, if you're bound by monitary restrictions, then you'd want to use DivX, XvID or other codecs available that will do a very good job on the quality front with about a fifth of the space utilized. A great software to use for converting and compressing video is an opensource source software called VirtualDub.

A link to your site would really sit well, so we can have a look around. First steps like a whole lot of other suggestions on this page would be to hit HTML on the run, hand held with an HTML editor (If you're using office then MS Frontpage/ or some opensource editor). HTML is relatively simple and it about a week of practice, you'd get the hang of it. I first started off with a completely HTML website on Geocities, which I managed to upgrade to JavaScript and XML supproted site. Xisto became a great next step moving on to using a database and PHP (which is a lot more complex and so far it's been taking a while finding my feet). Yes, on the PHP with MySQL platform, you'll find a bunch of ready to go, right out of the box opensource freeware like PHPNuke, Mambo and XOOPS... which would help you get a website off the ground in mere minutes, as soon as you figure out how to configure it all (easy as reading the Readme files provided and utilizing the numerous forums available).

mmm.. that's the who's who of the world's best companies.. it's little wonder that they were the first to get online and make a presence for themselves on the internet way back in '85. I for sure didn't know much about computing back then, and most definately had no clue about what the internet was at all. At that time.. I was busy learning Basic and fiddling around with BBC Micro computers, which were great to learn basic on and make silly little games like snake and the rudimentry first person shooter games; becides being able to do some serious math. It's actually very fascinating that the internet was quite so alive back then and even more increadible that so few were online. If it's anything, the net is the world's biggest revolution after the industrial age and may just be the binding factor to make the world's people more aware of each other.

I've spent a good hour and a half playing around with all sorts of combinations, but nothing seems to be working out for me.. HEre's what I'm trying to do.. Am trying to automatically (by setting a rule or other way) save attachments sent to me through a perticular account (and with a perticular username) to a designated folderWhile I'm asking, before I started fiddeling around with my outlook, I also wanted to automatically save only those files that were under 350 kb. And, if possible automatically scan the files for viruses.. I guess that's asking for a bit.Also, if anyone knows any other Mail S/W that can handle rules like this, I'd really like to hear about it. Thanks....

I think it's a jolly good idea for Google to scan e-mails for viruses during upload / download. If specialists want to get hold of a virus to evaluate it, they'd just as easily search it down through a P2P network; lols, infact, all it takes now-a-days to attract viruses is to just leave a computer online without a firewall - and kawablammm... you're hosting a computer well and truely infected. Gmail, is doing the general populance a really good deed by not allowing e-mail attachments with viruses that it detects. This would also really draw potential users to rely more and more, since they'd be able to trust them to tranfer all e-mails without any malacious attachments.

The Google Space thing seems like a bit of a good idea, because the mind learns best when it's not defending itself from the constant barrage of information - something visitors to the Google Space will not be expecting, nor will they receieve any learning in the Google space area as unwanted and put up a mental block. Since Google is already so very popular as a brand, visitors will experience natural curisoty while venturing into Google Space and be more receptive to inputs at the site than normally so. Thus far, Google's model of providing its users with a free service, while placing keyword specific advertisement has worked well for both the users of Google as well as Google's commercial customers - the advertisers... On the information front, let's look at an example - progress is defined mainly by the amount of information available to a civilization and it's ability to utilize it. Also, progress is directly linked to the amount of information that brings to light specific material that is sought at any given point in time. When man first created fire, the amount of knowledge required to be passed on from one generation to the next was limited to creating fire, hunting, cooking, gathering, and possibly some defence against nature and animals.. however, by the time humans hit the middle ages, we'd already gone onto recording information in a cohesive manner through printed and written mediums so as to enable ayone searching for specific material to have it available. This accelerated progress, and mental development, since, it is easier to develop at a faster pace if one does not have to invent fire from scratch and carry on from there on; if someone;s already discovered/ invented something, it is always best to take on from there - unless one's creating an entirely new technology - even then, in the modern world, there's enough information freely and commercially available to build apon and create something absolutely new. The availability, accessability and structured seeking methods to gain information is in my view absolutely essential in the path of our development as a species. Especially since, in our modern (or maybe not so modern any more) day of computers and mobile communication, everyone is constantly creating information; which if structured pproperly, may be utilized by anyone at all - for the greater benefit.