Internet, media and so on

MOZY Online backup

bl9k — Fri, 09 May 2008 17:03:42 +0000

One of online backup services. Sign up account, install app, do backup over internet. Free backup version with 2GB limit. Encryption is possible via password or a key in file.

First backup is long. Every other just backup byte changes or new files. Old versions and deleted data are kept 30 days back.

+ 256MB through every new user via your recommendation

tried and it works. Recovery is ok. For large data DVD burn available.

Different internet radio

bl9k — Fri, 09 May 2008 15:42:19 +0000

http://www.last.fm

do it yourself playlist

File sharing

bl9k — Fri, 09 May 2008 15:41:28 +0000

Everyone need to send some data over the internet that are bigger than usually. Too big for mail, DVD is not easy, ftp not available. On the net is couple of services for free data storage. This one look very good:

Share files and images with all of your friends and upload them only once

Link to files from your MySpace page, your blog, or forums

Upload an unlimited number of files to share with friends and family or storage

Use folders to easily share groups of files or create galleries for all your images

No registration necessary and no software to install

Keep frequently used files online for easy access from any computer with an internet connection

No need for registration, unlimited transfers, unlimited space, multiple paralell transfers at once, free …

http://www.mediafire.com/

webtools

bl9k — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 18:28:52 +0000

Here I’m goiing to write down and update by the time a set of usefull small online and offline tools and goodies that might be usefull for one who want to learn, create or improve his “web interface” author abilities

.htaccess online editor

http://www.htaccesseditor.com/en.shtml
easy online tools for creating custom .htaccess files

Embded FLV video player

bl9k — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 02:34:00 +0000

I’ve been sneeking around the web for a free flash player and with reference from Menalto’s Gallery discussions I found JEROENWIJERING.COM website with its FLV MEDIA PLAYER. For noncommercial use its free and has lot of nice features:

high customizeability through supported flashvars (variables) that you can set to customize the player’s UI and functions
it supports playlists supported playlist formats
you can use a large list of all third-party plugins for the FLV Media Player for use in third party apps like Joomla, WordPress etc

on site can be found nice collection of tutorials where you can start with player features exploration

A tutorial on embedding the player in your site.
A tutorial with all functions of the javascript API.
A tutorial on adding captions and an audiodescription (accessibility).
A tutorial on FLV encoding and video formats.

For quickstart use web based wizard for easy player setup which creates embedable list of parameters for your web page

Some common info regarding flash video is on wikipedia, Adobe website (flash video central, encoding calculator) and a few posts bellow you can find online services for conversion to flv format

ajax libraries and frameworks

bl9k — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 00:48:00 +0000

This post is far from to be a research on what’s on the market. I just needed to add web 2.0 capabilities to a small microsite and thus made a web search. What was important to me is

easy to learn
cross browser stability and compatibility
good documentation
and of course peoples reference
as open licence as possible (GPL or so)

so here is the result. I will not explain difference between library and framework here as now I do not see clear boundary what is what. In easy way as I do understand it libs are for quick solving frameworks for more complex projects so grouping in post is based clearly what authors tell about their creations. Nice informational discussion on what to choose can be found here

Same as most of people in that discussion I ended with jquery. Quick and easy for my need

Libraries

jquery

jquery ss very powerfull js library with lots of AJAX functions.

“jQuery is a fast, concise, JavaScript Library that simplifies how you traverse HTML documents, handle events, perform animations, and add Ajax interactions to your web pages. jQuery is designed to change the way that you write JavaScript.”

Lot of other scripts that can add interactivity to a website is based on jquery.jquery has also its own standardized UI plugins and there are other third party plugins which are in fact just codes built on top of jquery like this image carousel

Thorough post on how to use jquery is on WebDesigner’s wall site here

script.aculo.us

“script.aculo.us provides you with easy-to-use cross-browser user interfaceJavaScript libraries to make your web sites and web applications fly”

Frameworks

Mootools

http://mootools.net/

“Object-Oriented JavaScript framework designed for the intermediate to advanced JavaScript developer. It allows you to write powerful, flexible, and cross-browser code with its elegant, well documented, and coherent API“

The Yahoo! User Interface Library (YUI)

http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/

“The Yahoo! User Interface (YUI) Library is a set of utilities and controls, written in JavaScript, for building richly interactive web applications using techniques such as DOM scripting, DHTML and AJAX. The YUI Library also includes several core CSS resources. All components in the YUI Library have been released as open source under a BSD license and are free for all uses”

Google Web Toolkit (GWT)

http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/download.html

“Google Web Toolkit (GWT) is an open source Java software development framework that makes writing AJAX applications like Google Maps and Gmail easy for developers who don’t speak browser quirks as a second language. Writing dynamic web applications today is a tedious and error-prone process; you spend 90% of your time working around subtle incompatibilities between web browsers and platforms, and JavaScript’s lack of modularity makes sharing, testing, and reusing AJAX components difficult and fragile”

PrototypeJS

http://www.prototypejs.org/

“Prototype is a JavaScript Framework that aims to ease development of dynamic web applications.

Featuring a unique, easy-to-use toolkit for class-driven development and the nicest Ajax library around, Prototype is quickly becoming the codebase of choice for web application developers everywhere.”

Collection of nice AJAX applets

nice looking simple downloadable ajax and dhtml code
http://miniajax.com/

ajax modal window aka lightbox

bl9k — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 23:00:00 +0000

AJAX modal window

modern way of displaying modal window using ajax

http://www.synapsesinc.com/lightbox/
http://mjijackson.com/shadowbox/
http://www.huddletogether.com/projects/lightbox2/
http://jquery.com/demo/thickbox/
http://www.ibegin.com/blog/p_ibox.html
http://www.digitalia.be/software/slimbox

and comparative blog article with list of lightboxes and comments about them

Preload images
here you can pick one you like and customize it for use in one of lighboxes
http://loadinfo.net/

Youtube utilities

bl9k — Sat, 23 Feb 2008 22:25:00 +0000

List 1

“Google has a solid amount of cash in its pockets, but with all the recent lawsuits against YouTube one has to wonder if it’s time to salvage whatever videos you like from the service and save them somewhere where evil attorneys won’t look – your hard drive.

Luckily, there are literally dozens of tools for downloading videos from YouTube and/or converting those YouTube videos to some format other than .flv. It’s hard to pick the best one, as they all have pluses and minuses. Thus, we’ve chosen 23 YouTube downloader tools we’ve found to be actually working. Here they are, categorized according to the platform they work on:”

http://mashable.com/2007/05/05/download-youtube-video/

List 2

“This is a collection of free you tube software which includes youtube to ipod and iphone converter. Online Youtube Downloader and Online Converter to formats like flv and others. Players required to view downloaded you tube videos and youtube firefox extensions to download youtube(you tube) videos. There are links to couple of posts who wrote about it and some are directly linked to the software. You wont need anything more than this to have fun with you tube videos.”

http://www.technospot.net/blogs/10-must-have-you-tube-utilities/