Tech and life

If you regularly find yourself copying and pasting text from websites or desktop applications then you should really have a look at PureText. When activated, this free utility quickly removes text formatting such as bold, italics, colour, underline, bullets and hyperlinks allowing you to just paste the text. For example, I commonly find myself having to paste portions of information I’ve found online into Word documents but I don’t want all the web formatting to be carried over. Similarly, I sometimes copy sections out of Word files into other applications and I often don’t need all the Word formatting. With PureText installed, once the information has been copied to the Windows clipboard in the usual fashion, I just click the PureText icon in the system tray and paste the text into the new document (or there’s an alternative hotkey combination to paste without the formatting – by default, it’s Windows key + V). Pure Text only removes rich formatting from text and won’t remove carriage returns or tabs.

There are free utilities for just about everything you need to do on your PC. In fact, you could end up downloading way more than you need – and forget they’re there on your PC. But if copying and pasting is something you do regularly then this is one utility you’ll end up using on a regular basis. It only takes up about 3MB of memory.

PureText

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If you’ve ever used a browser on a netbook, you’ll know that pretty much half of your screen can be taken up by menus, address bars, bookmark bars and tabs. Here’s a screenshot of the full netbook screen showing Firefox on my Acer Aspire One netbook running Ubuntu Netbook Remix – just 12 lines of posts in Google Reader – not too good.

Okay, I know all you keyboard ninjas know about this one, but for those out there who do everything by mouse, try pressing F11 when your browser is open. This is the same screenshot of the full netbook screen after pressing F11.

Great isn’t it. As you can see, the Firefox menus are gone from the top and the status bar from the bottom, and we now have 16 lines of posts. And the F11 full screen trick works in Google Chrome and Internet Explorer as well, and on a desktop PC of course. Hitting F11 again will toggle the menus on again, but here’s a nice feature. If you’ve maximized your screen real estate with F11 and then move your mouse up to the very top of the screen in Firefox and Internet Explorer, the address bar and tabs will auto-show allowing you to open new tabs or key a new URL in the address bar! Move the mouse back down and the menus auto-hide again.

Now if you want even more control over which menu bars and address bars show in Firefox, you could add the Hide GUI Bars extension as described on How to Geek.

Okay, so you knew about F11. Well did you know that in Firefox, hitting Ctrl-F brings up a search bar at the bottom for searching that browser window? Not only that but you can highlight the search results too and click through them. Also works for the other browsers I’ve mentioned. Here’s an example of a search for ‘Facebook’ in my Google Reader feeds.

Okay, so you knew that too and you’ve been short-changed by these simple tips. Well how about the ultimate list of Firefox keyboard shortcuts – head over to ShortcutWorld. There are pages for Chrome and Internet Explorer there too. More keyboard shortcuts than you’ll probably ever need!

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Another Google Reader topic today to follow on from my last post. This annoyance has been bugging me for a while and I’ve found a solution to it today.

More and more webmasters and bloggers are using FeedBurner to manage their RSS feeds. FeedBurner has introduced a feature which allows tracking of feed clicks in Google Analytics so as to track visitors from FeedBurner feeds. Problem is that when Google Analytics tracks FeedBurner visitors, it appends the feed item URL with Google Analytics tags, e.g. utm_source=feedburner, utm_medium=feed, etc. I’m sure you’ve all seen this. If you hover over the link to the feed URL in Google Reader before clicking it, it will start something like http://feedproxy.google.com…. Just as an example, here’s what appeared in the browser address bar after I clicked a link in Google Reader to a web page on Techie Buzz:

http://techie-buzz.com/google-chrome/google-chrome-now-supports-greasemonkey-scripts.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+techiebuzz+%28Techie+buzz%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

Pretty ugly. If you now bookmark that web page in Delicious or Diigo, all the tracking stuff is included in the link. I don’t know about you but I just want to bookmark the URL of the web page without all that tracking data. So from the above URL, I just want:

http://techie-buzz.com/google-chrome/google-chrome-now-supports-greasemonkey-scripts.html

You could of course delete all that stuff off the end before you bookmark it, but there’s a simpler way to remove this tracking data in Firefox and Google Chrome. In Firefox, it involves installing a Greasemonkey script, while in Chrome you just install an extension.

Firefox: Greasemonkey script to remove FeedBurner tracking data

First you have to install Greasemonkey. If you haven’t already done this, visit my last post for more info. Then install the FeedBurner Tracking Query Stripper from here. Once installed, when you click a link in Google Reader, the URL will load initially showing the tracking data then, after a second or two, it will magically disappear.

Chrome: Unburner extension to remove Feedburner tracking data

If Google Chrome is your browser, then install the Unburner extension from here. Again, once installed, when you click a link in Google Reader, the URL will load initially showing the tracking data then it will be stripped out.

Now when you follow a link in Google Reader in Firefox or Chrome, all the tracking analytics will be stripped out and the web page will load as it should.

I spend well over an hour a day going through my 250 feed subscriptions in Google Reader. I always work in List View so I can skim through the post titles as quickly as possible. If the title of the post doesn’t look interesting to me, I move right along. Anything that would speed up working through the feeds would improve my productivity. What I really needed was a way to filter out stuff so that I didn’t have to read uninteresting posts and at the same time that highlighted stuff of real interest.

Coincidentally, I found the answer I needed when browsing through though the posts in Google Reader, and it’s a real gem. Thanks to Arpit Kumar at Techie Buzz for blogging this great tip about filtering within Google Reader. Don’t worry, it’s real easy to install and set up so please try it out.

Google Reader Filter

Installation in Firefox is a two-stage process. First you have to install Greasemonkey then the feed filter. But first what’s Greasemonkey? Well it’s just a Firefox extension that allows you to customize the way webpages look and function. So first download and install the Greasemonkey Firefox extension from the Greasespot homepage. It will install just like any other Firefox addon, and you’ll probably have to restart your browser. Once it’s back open, you should see a Greasemonkey icon in the lower right corner of the browser window. Now you can add Greasemonkey scripts. Hundreds have been written and are available here but today we’re going to install the Google Reader Filter script available here. Just click install on that page and then reload Google Reader.

You’ll see a new blue button called Filter settings at the top right of the Google Reader window as shown above. If you click on that you can add filter words to exclude or highlight posts in your list.

As you can see, if the post title has excluded words, the title will show as greyed out and if highlighted words are present, the title will be highlighted in green as shown above. If you check the box Hide excludes, you can drop the post completely if you like. Checking the box Prefer Highlights over excludes will highlight the post if it contains both highlighted and excluded words. Checking Hide duplicates does just what it says and any duplicate post titles in the list are excluded. The words in your filter list don’t appear to be case-sensitive. I did notice that if the word in the title is followed by a full point it won’t be excluded unless you add the word followed by a full point to the excluded list. If there’s a colon, dash or exclamation mark directly after the word in the title, it will be excluded or highlighted.

So now, in my case, I can filter out any feeds with the words iPad, Norton, etc., because I’m just not interested in these topics and my time can be more productively used reading other posts. At the same time, any topic I’m particularly interested in like Windows 7 will be highlighted and I can prioritise reading these posts if I want. Now, as I read post titles, when I spot further words I can add them to the filter.

I’ve set up the filter in Firefox on my Windows and Linux machines and they both work great. And yes I know, it’s yet another Firefox extension which is probably going to slow your browser even further. But if reading feeds in Google Reader is important for you then this is a must-have extension. And of course you can use Greasemonkey to run other scripts too. At the moment unfortunately, this filter doesn’t work in the Google Chrome browser.

All in all, a really simple way to filter your feeds within Google Reader and improve your productivity. I recommend you try it out and see what you think.

I’m frequently opening new blank browser tabs in Firefox to load a new website. Well there’s a nice way to get a reminder note in the new browser tab instead of a blank page. First download and install the Firefox add-on NewTabURL and once installed click the Options for that plugin in your browser side bar:

Select the option for URL and key in the URL http://stickyscreen.org. Then in Firefox go to that URL and enter your reminder message.

You don’t have to register with this site to use it. Your sticky reminder is unique to you. According to the website, nobody will see it except you (and whoever you let use your web browser). You can change the reminder as often as you like. The info is stored as a browser cookie. Now any time you open a new tab in Firefox, the StickyScreen website will load showing your reminder before you key your new URL. But if you delete your browser cookies using a PC maintenance program like say CCleaner you will lose the reminder info and will have to rekey it at the StickyScreen website.

Incidentally, as you can see in the Options, if you like, in your new tab you can set NewTabURL to automatically load a URL that’s in your clipboard.

Many people treat an operating system upgrade with great trepidation. Is my data safe? What if I have problems, can I go back? I’m just going through an upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7 but I’ve chosen a no-risk route which completely preserves my old OS and all my data so I can transition to Windows 7 at my own pace, getting it set up just the way I want and getting used to it before completely moving over from XP.

I’ve already blogged about installing a new 1TB SATA drive in my PC and I’m going to do a clean install of Windows 7 Home Premium (Full Version) on this new drive. I’m going to be replacing my 4-year-old 80GB Maxtor drive running Windows XP (which still works fine). I should say that I also have an identical 80GB removable Maxtor hard drive to which I cloned my primary drive soon after its installation and where I back up new data on a regular basis with a simple batch file. I blogged about it soon after I started this blog. So I effectively have an XP install with a mirror in case the first drive dies. But I felt that both these drives were too small (and probably too old) to move forward with Windows 7 so I chose to buy a new 1TB drive and keep the old drives for backups of music, photos, etc.

Anyway, on to the Windows 7 install on the new drive. I must say that, as someone who doesn’t regularly reinstall my OS, I found the Windows 7 custom install a breeze and no-one should be worried about a clean install on a new hard drive. I booted up with the Windows 7 disk in the DVD drive and followed the prompts, picking Windows Setup on the first screen and then Custom Install (not Upgrade). A custom install is a clean install.

The install took about 20 minutes on my system, followed by a reboot to bring up the Windows 7 desktop. But the new OS couldn’t detect my ZOOM ADSL X6 wireless router and get online. A little strange considering that installs of Ubuntu 8.10 and later Ubuntu 9.04 on another desktop PC and Easy Peasy Linux on my Acer Aspire netbook had no problems at all seeing the wireless router and just needed the WPA password. So I tried installing the ZOOM router driver. Still no luck. Then I tried installing the driver for my Edimax Wireless LAN PCI card, selected the ZOOM profile and activated it and finally entered my WPA password and that got me online. That was really the only hitch in the install.

First stop online was Ninite, an excellent site where you can pick multiple applications from an ever-growing list and install them together. The screenshot below shows only part of the list of applications currently available

I picked Firefox, Skype, VLC, Audacity, Irfanview, Foxit Reader, Microsoft Security Essentials, Flash (for browsers other than IE), Java, .NET, Evernote, ImgBurn, CCleaner, Revo, CDBurnerXP, Recuva, 7-Zip and Notepad++. The complete install of all these applications took only about 10 minutes – obviously a lot quicker than visiting each site and downloading the applications individually. Then Evernote just had to sync with the web client.

I’ve already listed my essential software and web applications on the About page, so I went through that and installed what I would initially need. I’ve always used AVG Free in the past for antivirus but I’m going to give Microsoft Security Essentials a try this time round – you’d figure that Microsoft should be the best candidate to keep their own system clean and it’s had pretty good reviews so far.

So that’s where I’m at right now. Installing my data won’t be a problem later – just a case of booting up with my removable backup hard drive in place and copying across everything I need. At this point, if you’ve followed this route, you may very well be plugging in your external hard drive to copy across your data.

But before I copy the data over, what I propose to do next is, when I have all the applications installed that I want and everything set up as I like it, I’m going to image the ‘untainted’ system so in future I can restore a clean system with my essential applications if I have to. So I loaded my copy of Acronis True Image 8 to make an image but found it wasn’t compatible with Windows 7. No problem, I’ve found an excellent tutorial from Gina Trapani on using the free DriveImage XML to make the image instead.

I’ll blog later about finishing this install, and any new applications I’ve come across to replace utilities I’ve used with XP.

It’s possible to scan notes and documents directly to Evernote, the popular note-taking application, using Epson scanners. Here’s a quick walk-through for an Epson Perfection 4180 scanner and using Epson Scan v3.04E software.

First launch Epson Smart Panel and choose Scan to Application under Photo Project

Then scan your document/s or note/s in the usual way. I’m going to scan in a business card for this example. I found these settings were fine:

Preview, locate the image and scan it. Carry on scanning further documents and notes if you have them then close the above window. The View Images window will then appear showing all the images you have just scanned

You can actually go back and scan more notes at this stage by clicking the button in the bottom left corner. I’ve renamed my scanned image with a more useful name which will help searching in Evernote – but Evernote will pick up the text in the scanned image anyway and make that searchable. Once you click Next, you will see the applications which the scanner can already scan to. Evernote is probably not on this yet.

So we have to add Evernote to these applications. Click on the settings button (with the tool symbols) at the bottom left and then click Register at the bottom left of the Settings menu

Now you have to enter details so the scanner software can find Evernote on your PC

I’m using Evernote 3.5 beta but you may still be using the older version. In the Location panel, just click Browse and navigate until you find the Evernote.exe program (it’ll have the familiar elephant icon on green background) and click on it. Select the icon you want to use to display Evernote as in the Applications panel below. I scanned the business card as a jpg file so I have still to change the Format in the bottom panel. When you click OK you should now see Evernote registered as an application as in the screen below and you won’t have to do this registration part again – unless any subsequent Evernote upgrade changes the name of the Evernote folder! Then you would have to redefine the location of Evernote in the Location panel above.

Almost there now. Highlight Evernote and click the Settings (Tools) button at the bottom left again to check the settings you will use to save the file to Evernote:

Finally when you are happy with the settings click OK, then click Launch on the next screen and you will see the following prompt:

Click No to have the image files go directly to Evernote. Launch Evernote from your taskbar or system tray and the new note should be there. Tag it with suitable tags and drag it to the correct notebook.

Hope that’s helped in setting up your Epson scanner for Evernote. If you’re using a different version of the Epson Scan software and the procedure is different, let us know in the comments.

If you’ve had a PC for any length of time, you’ll have probably experienced the trial and error approach to getting things done. Whether it’s achieving a particular effect in Photoshop, converting files to different formats, exporting or importing data into different applications, setting up preferences for applications or plugins the way you want them, reinstalling applications, or setting up hardware, often you have to methodically change different parameters until you get things to work or get the right result. You may have had to search the web to track down the answer. You may even have to resort to a workaround which achieves the right result – but it’s quite rewarding when you finally crack it and master a procedure.

Problem is, when you go back a few months later to do the same thing, you’ve probably forgotten how you did it first time round so you have to reinvent the wheel. Enter Evernote your ’second brain’. Start a new notebook in Evernote called say ‘How-to’ and immediately you crack a difficult procedure, save the steps you used to achieve your result as a new note. Tag it with the app name or whatever best describes the action you’ve mastered. So when you need to recall that same procedure later, it’s safely tucked away in Evernote ready to be recalled when you search that tag in the How-to notebook. And if you think it’s a really good how-to, you could even share the notebook with everyone or with individuals.

If you haven’t tried Evernote, make a point of checking it out.

By now most of us are familiar with RSS readers where you subscribe to blogs and have all the posts pushed to one place to read. Well that’s fine but blogs can fire a scattergun of information, some of which just isn’t of interest to us. Yes, it’s possible to filter the feeds to make the information more tailored to your needs or use Google Alerts to target particular topics, but I’ve found that a great answer to getting the latest on your favourite topics and discovering new content is a web app called Lazyfeed. It’s basically a blog search client. Once you’ve signed up to this free service, the initial screen shows current hot topics which you may want to look at.

You can get the latest on your favourite topic by entering the tag in the What interests you? box at the top. If you like the results you can save that search in the left side bar. The tags Lazyfeed searches seem to be mainly blog tags. If you want to search for a tag phrase, the words have to be separated by hyphens or closed up completely. When you revisit Lazyfeed later and view a saved search, it shows new content discovered since your last visit, which is very useful. At the top of the screen is also shown related topics if you want to branch out and view other stuff. You can choose to block sources (and unblock them later if needed) in a search feed if the content isn’t what you want in future in this stream. You can save content (posts) in the left column if you like and also visit the site directly to view the full post. The site opens in a new window so you can go back to where you left off in Lazyfeed later. You can also share discovered content on Twitter, Facebook and by email from within Lazyfeed.

As you can see, I’m following topics like Evernote, to help discover new uses for this great notebook app, and also bookmarklets, to discover new useful bookmarklets. I find new content is brought in pretty quickly to Lazyfeed. My previous post which had an Evernote tag was brought in to the Evernote stream within minutes. I’m pretty impressed with the new content Lazyfeed is discovering for me – and I’m discovering interesting new blogs in the process.

Have a look at Lazyfeed and see what you think.

Have you ever needed to annotate pdfs with your own notes, highlights, comments or corrections? Perhaps you’ve been asked by your boss for your comments on a document or to collaborate on corrections before releasing a final version. Perhaps you’re a student wanting a way to highlight important sections of your pdf or make notes in the margin. Or you’re at home, have read a great pdf and want to highlight important points or insert sticky notes before archiving it away in a notebook organizer such as Evernote. Well I’ve found just the app.

I have to collaborate on marking up and correcting pdfs at the moment. I was initially asked to compile a list of pdf corrections in a separate Word document detailing page number, column number, paragraph number and the correction. There had to be an easier and more productive way and I found it – PDF-XChange Viewer. There are paid versions for creation of pdfs but I found the free version is fine for my needs. Installation was simple – just watch the prompts during installation; you may not want it to be your default pdf viewer until you’re happy with it, so uncheck that box.

Annotating the pages just couldn’t be simpler. The Comment and Markup Tools menu is shown below to illustrate the tools available

You can highlight text in the colour of your choice, strikethrough or underline it, insert sticky notes, text callouts and text boxes, draw arrows and other symbols, draw with a pencil tool and erase the pencil annotation. The app is intuitive and quite easily set up the way you want it. For example, to change default annotation styles, just use the fly-out menus in the Tools menu shown above. If you want to change any style, just click on Show Comments Styles Pallet. Click the default style and modify it, or clone the style and modify it if you want to go back to the default style at some point. So, for example, you can set up a number of highlight colours for different purposes. You may want to change the default text size in text callouts and sticky notes. If you want to change the default text size, type the text in the font size you want , then right click on the text and choose Text Formatting and then Set Current Text Formatting as Default – or right click in the box and choose Set Current Appearance as Default.

Here’s an example of a pdf where I’ve insert a variety of sample annotations. No annotation has been added subsequently in the screenshot program.

You can show a comments list in the left margin and move through the comments and mark up that way. You can also export comments as an fdf file. Double clicking on this loads the comments and the original pdf in your default pdf reader. I haven’t tried it but presume that if you have to return corrections  or comments to someone, if they already have the pdf, all you have to do is email the (much smaller) fdf with the comments rather than a saved pdf. If they open the fdf they will be able to see your comments and corrections, make further changes and save the file.

You can rotate pages, or insert a number of different stamps over the document. You can search for text in the pdf using the standard Ctrl-F keyboard shortcut to put the cursor in the search box at the top. You can search for phrases and you can make the search case-sensitive. A nice feature is that if you have a number of pdfs open in tabs, when you hover over each tab you get a thumbnail view of each document. Another nice touch is that there’s a button to attach the active pdf directly to an email message. There’s also a function at the bottom right corner of the screen to open your default pdf viewer with the current pdf loaded.

All in all, a nice utility if you have to annotate your pdfs and well worth checking out. It would actually make a pretty good default free pdf reader.

Disclaimer – I haven’t been asked to write a review of this app and have not been paid for this post. I do not do paid reviews, but just like to find and blog about great apps, preferably free!