Technology, Photography and the Arts

This is something worth watching...

Email Etiquette

In a nutshell...consider these...

• Experiment with three-sentence emails for a better response rate.
• Start with action-oriented steps, don't leave them at the bottom of the email.
• Market your subject lines--make them an advertisement to open and read the email.
• Take disagreements offline.
• Don't "reply all" unless everyone needs to be involved.
• Use numbers for reference in back-and-forth correspondence to reduce redundancy and length.

[FastCompany: Work Smart: Disrupt Your Inbox]

Life is great, Disconnect and enjoy.

This is something worth watching...quite a different way to look at things.

A way to download Youtube videos!

A number of days ago. I have been searching for a program or a software that can easily download Youtube videos for offline viewing or even for later watching onto the iPad or iPhone.

Finally found this freemake.com program and it does exactly that. A quick and easy by copying and pasting the web address (Youtube), and also comes with an option for saving in different file formats like MP4, AVI etc. Magic!

[ freemake.com ]

If you don't want to download any program, an alternative is to use this online version of ZAMZAR (Free Online File Conversion).

[ ZAMZAR ]

Related Links

• How to Convert Your Files to a Different Format

A 6th Grader App Developer - An inspiration!

This kid is an inspiration to all of us adults...Just when I'm learning my way to develop an app...this young kid is now promoting his quite successfully...certainly a bright future ahead of this kid.

The secret to happiness… is to lower your expectation!

Barry Schwartz on the paradox of choice

The Past, Present and Future of Connectivity

Sourced: TechCruch

Amazing Photography - Nikon Small World Competition

Photo courtesy of Nikon's Small World 2011

If you're into 'Macro' photography, here's a link to Nikon's Small World website. Quite fascinating photos to get inspirations from.

Steve Jobs has passed away - Apple's visionary CEO

Photo courtesy of Apple.com

A sad day for million of Apple fans around the world, to hear the passing of legendary Apple icon Steve Jobs. For most of us, who watched in awe and fascination his keynote speeches, introducing different products that changed that way we view technology, not just as a tool or device but something as a work-of-art, beautifully designed to impress even the most critics.
I'll be posting more resources in here as I discover bits & pieces to the life and inspiration of Steve Jobs.

The man behind the following:

• Apple I (1976)
• Apple II (1977)
• Lisa (1983)
• Macintosh (1984)
• NeXT computer (1989)
• iMac (1998)
• iPod (2001)
• iTunes store (2003)
• iPhone (2007)
• iPad (2010)

Resource Links

• [Herald Sun: Steve Jobs, a visionary who changed the way the world lives]
• [Herald Sun: Ten products that defined Steve Jobs' career]
• [Wired: Steve Jobs, 1955 – 2011]
• [CIO: Steve Jobs: Life and Leadership Lessons] 
• [The New York Times: The Genius of Jobs]
• [GIGAOM: The Tao of Steve]  
• [Tech Crunch: Jobs: “Focus Is About Saying No”]
• [All Things D: Steve Jobs’s Appearances at D, the Full Video Sessions]
• [Famous People Lessons: English Lesson Plan on Steve Jobs]
• [Youtube: Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address]

Think Different

Steve & Bill together!

While I was researching for inspirational Steve Jobs videos on Youtube, I came across this clip where Steve Jobs & Bill Gates being interviewed together, not sure if for first time though. It is fascinating to watch, how each share thoughts about each of their company (Apple vs Microsoft) & the crossovers.

Advice from Steve Jobs

• Love & Passion in anything and everything!
• You need great people around you (a good eye for detecting one)

Part1


Part2


Part3


Part4


Part5


Part6


Part7


Part8


Part9


Part10


Part11



and for the funny side...


Google's Eric Schmidt Says Jobs Merged Art, Science

Moving On Up - The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs

[Photo courtesy of Amazon.com]

I'm currently reading the book 'The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs' by Carmine Gallo and found these interesting quotes.

"A person can have the greatest idea in the world— completely different and novel—but if that person can’t convince enough other people, it doesn't matter." - GREGORY BERNS

Moving On Up

"As soon as you move one step up from the bottom, your effectiveness depends on your ability to reach others through the spoken and written word." - PETER DRUCKER

The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs

[Photo courtesy of Amazon.com]

While I was at the bookshop today, looking for some interesting books, I found this book titled 'The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs' and discovered other amazing stuff about Steve Jobs including Youtube videos from Carmine Gallo at Gallo Communications.

I've just tried downloading some of the Kindle (ebook) edition from Amazon.com.


Gallo Communications Youtube Channel

VPN in Plain English

Wikipedia: A Virtual Private Network (VPN) is a network that uses primarily public telecommunication infrastructure, such as the Internet, to provide remote offices or traveling users access to a central organizational network.

VPNs typically require remote users of the network to be authenticated, and often secure data with encryption technologies to prevent disclosure of private information to unauthorized parties.

A good way to understand VPN through this Youtube video below.

HTTPS in Plain English

A video to explain the concept of a technical term called - HTTPS

Wikipedia: Hypertext Transfer Protocol Secure (HTTPS) is a combination of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) with SSL/TLS protocol to provide encrypted communication and secure identification of a network web server. HTTPS connections are often used for payment transactions on the World Wide Web and for sensitive transactions in corporate information systems.

Martin Seligman on Positive Psychology - TED

Another one of those Happy and inspiring videos that makes you smile.

Conscious listening, creates understanding

Found this video quite interesting and informative.

Waiting for the Lion's roar

Just halfway to the download process from the Mac App Store and reading through the reviews and feedback from those early birds.

Check out the blogs below for some comprehensive review of the latest Mac OS!

• [TechCrunch: With OS X Lion, Apple Touches Upon The Next Decade Of The OS]
• [LifeHacker: Should I Upgrade To Mac OS X Lion?]
• [InfoWorld: The complete guide to installing Mac OS X Lion]

Edward de Bono on being 'Creative'

I've just been trying to get back to things that Edward de Bono has taught me, 'thinking outside the box' ... 'lateral thinking' and specially on 'thinking creatively'.

Before upgrading your Mac OS, some considerations

Prior to downloading the latest Mac OS X 10.7 Lion, might be worth checking some considerations from this web link below-

[InfoWorld: How to get your Mac ready for Lion]

Tutorials on how to share or upload your photos

If you're using any of the online photo sharing sites like Flickr, Picasa or Facebook...below is a link to some basic instructions on how to upload your photos.



[LifeHacker: How To Upload And Share Photos On Flickr, Picasa, Or Facebook]

"Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish" by Steve Jobs

"Don't Let the noise of others' opinions drown out your inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition."----Steve Jobs

Certainly powerful words from the Apple's CEO Steve Jobs and quite inspirational to watch.



If you would like to read the written speech, click on this blog - When Steve Jobs Said "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish," He Did Not Mean This Foolish

Mobile Phone Cancer Danger

Understanding The Types of Connectors

Working in the IT industry, you'll encounter many different types of connectors and adapters for your computer to the TV, Monitors or any Video Projectors etc. I've just found this blog article quite useful in better understanding these connectors. Click on the link below.

[LifeHacker: How to Connect Your Computer To Your TV].

How do I recover my admin password?

Found this quite helpful in recovering Joomla admin password (1.0 or 1.5)

----------------------------

If you know the email address that was used, the simplest thing is to do is to use the "lost password" Front-end function if you have made it available.

If not, you will need access to the MySQL database.

You have two choices, either add a new super administrator or change the password stored in the data base. To do this you need to go to phpMyAdmin (or use a similar tool) and manually edit the database. Before doing this back up our complete database.

Run this to create a new user known as admin2.

INSERT INTO `jos_users` VALUES
  (62, 'Administrator2', 'admin2', 'your-email@email.com', '21232f297a57a5a743894a0e4a801fc3',
  'Super Administrator', 0, 1, 25, '2005-09-28 00:00:00', '2005-09-28 00:00:00', '', '');
INSERT INTO `jos_core_acl_aro` VALUES (10,'users','62',0,'Administrator2',0);
INSERT INTO `jos_core_acl_groups_aro_map` VALUES (25,'',10);

The password will be admin. Immediately log in and change this password.

Or

You can change the password in the table for your admin user (assuming you never changed the user name; if you have just change the instructions below to .

The password is stored in the MySQL database jos_users table password field. (change this for your table prefix if different)

Open the table, find your admin username, and then select that row for editing.

The password must be hashed, you cannot simply enter text into this field.

Set the password to a known value

- password = "this is the MD5 hashed password"
------------------------------------------------------
- admin  = 21232f297a57a5a743894a0e4a801fc3
- secret = 5ebe2294ecd0e0f08eab7690d2a6ee69
- OU812  = 7441de5382cf4fecbaa9a8c538e76783

Paste the hashed password into the field, save the change, and log-in using the new password. Immediately change your password to something more secure!

----------------------------
Source Article by clicking here.

Deleting the unnecessary [Home] link

Downloading free templates is easy but sometimes what you'll discover, there's this unnecessary feature/functionality that comes with the 'free' template. A good example is using the 'Themza' free template with the [Home] that links to marketing site(s)...

SOLUTION-

All you need to do is get into the files and follow the instructions below-

[home] delete ext link

I also found another way to do this. Find the file functions.php in the template folder and delete or comment out the string:-

$items->_items[500] = (object)$GLOBALS['arr'];

change to

//$items->_items[500] = (object)$GLOBALS['arr'];


Thanks for this Forum/Blog for the solution

Free Joomla Template

Looking for a good free Joomla template - Found this Joomla 1.5 template from Themza very useful, specially if you would like to further customise the template.

Have a look at the East Arnhem Shire Council website, developed using the above template.

View and Download the template from this website

Useful Extensions for this Template

• Attachments for Content Articles (v 2.2) - download by clicking here
• Very Simple Image Gallery (Read more - Instructions)
• Events Calendar (Download using JEvents)
  

How To MANUALLY Install Joomla 1.5 With cPanel

If you would be manually installing Joomla, below are 2 useful Youtube tutorials (Part 1 & 2)





I found this version of Joomla (Joomla1.5.23) quite stable and easy to use.

Here is where you can download the source files - JoomlaCode

Dan Gilbert asks, Why are we happy?

Why are you happy?

Something to smile about!

Happy to have found this video on Facebook, something worth sharing-

Dropbox as a collaborative tool!

Using multiple computer(s) and devices (iPhone, iPads etc) can be a nightmare in terms of managing files, contacts etc. Just to get on top of the file version(s) saved from different machines, tracking, searching which one can be really daunting after a long time.

With this, I've been testing and using Dropbox for all my collaborative and synching of files and found it very helpful and powerful!

Check out some of the links below to learn more about Dropbox -

• How To Use Dropbox As A Killer Collaborative Work Tool

The Virtual Revolution (BBC)

I found this BBC documentary quite fascinating, explaining the evolution of the Internet and how it all affects us in our daily lives and what the future holds...Check out the introduction to the series below.



Virtual Revolution - The Cost of Free

The future of business is the "mesh"

Watching a short clip of 'Lisa Gansky' from TED inspired me think about this new way sharing things online called 'Mesh'...quite fascinating concept in this day & age of Social Media, where everyone is collaborating and sharing through their social networks (family, friends & colleagues etc) and extending that further to different resources that can be shared like 'Cars', 'Apartments'...etc.