Month: September 2011

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Firefox 7 brings speed and UI annoyances

1.

For power users who need their address bar to show the “http://” in a web address, you can revert to the original, preferred behavior:

  1. Open a new window and type about:config into the address/URL bar
  2. Paste in this quick filter-field search: browser.urlbar.trimURLs
  3. Double click on the browser.urlbar.trimURLs field to change its value from true to false
  4. Close the window (or tab) and your URL protocols will be unhidden

Why would you want to do this? If you copy/paste web address routinely — say, to clients, via email — you don’t want to be manually adding back the protocol to every email you send or document you create, so that the URL can be clickable.

2.

Firefox 6 introduced a new “domain highlighting” feature, where the address bar grays-out any protocol (like http://  or https:// )  and the directory path in the URL, leaving just the domain in black. The thinking was that it would help inexperienced users easily catch phishing websites.

It is annoying to me, though. It makes the true path harder to see, and since I work with URLs on a regular basis — copy/pasting them to clients in emails and documents — I wanted to turn it off. Here’s how:

  1. Open a new window or tab, and type about:config into the location bar
  2. Search for browser.urlbar.formatting.enabled in the filter field; you can copy/paste it from here
  3. Double click on the browser.urlbar.formatting.enabled field to toggle the value to false
  4. Close the window (or tab) and your domain paths will be unhidden

That’s all there is to it! Now you can revert to a better way. :-)

firefox snapshot

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Informate versus Automate: Customer service hangs in the balance

Slate.com had an insightful article by Zeynep Tufekci about how software automation (using artificial intelligence via software algorithms) is risky and bad for customer service.

In the article Ms. Tufekci describes the employee-to-customer ratios at the largest web companies:

http://slate.me/oXohl2

A similar dynamic dominates policies of social networking platforms—and you only need to look at the employee/user numbers to understand that it could not be any other way. Facebook has about 2,000 employees to 750 million users; Twitter 600 employees to about 100 million users. That’s only three human employees per million users for Facebook and about six for Twitter. Google is larger, with about 30,000 employees, but an enormous portion of the 2 billion netizens use many of its services every day. It probably has about 50,000 users per employee, but for a broader range of services.

With such ratios, the business model becomes to push work onto the user—for example, have the users flag/report what they consider inappropriate content—and then automate the rest.

This explains in part why it is frustrating to use Google’s free products when something breaks down: there is literally no one to help you! You must service yourself by combing through support forum posts and hopefully lucking upon a clear solution (or at least unresolved explanation).

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Web Security Flaws – Domain Names and Certificates

This recent article by MacWorld is an excellent primer on SSL security, the underlying technologies that power HTTPS://  browsing.

This year there have been numerous reports suggesting that the fundamental security infrastructure of the Web is on shaky ground. In March we heard about a collection of stolen security certificates, and in August the release of more than 500 improperly issued certificates came to light.

http://macw.us/nyMA9y

It focuses on protecting Mac browsers, but talks about Windows and Google Chrome as well.

 

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Facebook Timeline debuts. Social Overload.

TechCrunch’s MG Siegler wrote something this week that gave me pause:

With the new Open Graph, you’re sharing stuff as you do it. You don’t have to think about it. You’re listening to music on Spotify and it’s being shared with your friends automatically in the Facebook Ticker. The only button you hit is “play”.

…

There’s one massive problem in the social space: everyone is competing for the same user time. But most services compete by piling on features that erode that time even quicker. They’re offering up services that if I use, it means I’ll have even less time to actually enjoy life. That’s not a sustainable model. Being “social” online has become far too much work.

Facebook has clearly been thinking about this problem. And now they have a way to tap the power of social without thinking about it. That’s the future of the space. It’s not about needing a share button. It’s about not needing a share button.

Given that none of us complain about having too much time on our hands, the investment we make into our social networks (twitter, facebook, grapemojo, orkut, flickr, netflix, and any other forum through which we share ourselves) can feel like it robs us of actually living “real life” outside, offline, away from the computer, with humans in the flesh. (Think about when you last said, “I had a great night out on Facebook last night.”)

Sure, we get satisfaction from posting, sharing, creating and commenting — but anything that reduces the time it takes to do this will be much appreciated.

 

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Mac PowerPoint How to Export Text from Slides

PDG is continually astounded at how unhelpful and unintuitive Microsoft programs can be. But thankfully in this case, my not-uncommon gripe has a happy ending.

The unmet need, as framed as a typical google search query:

I want to export all of the text from a 20-page PowerPoint file to a plain text file.

Why? so that we can translate the text easily… or perhaps to proof read the text, or use the content in another medium, like in an email or Word document.

Out of thousands of hits, only 1 website solved the problem. I’ll share with you the solution next.

Thinking (wrongly) that surely PowerPoint 2008 for Mac lets us export the text from slides, I hunted for the option. First discovery: there is no export function. Okay, let’s try Save As… no, these options are useless, as the RTF outline text or HTML options do not export any slide text! Astounding.  The “Outline” option requires some unusual structuring that ignores any actual content on the slides! And the “HTML” option actually flattens all the text into a graphic. Wow. Because in this SEO era, we surely don’t care about text-based content on our web pages, right?

I found one helpful web page out of thousands that had a solution. It involves running a simple macro snippet, after adding it to the PPT file. I have never used Macros before, but I was able to figure it out in under 5 minutes.

But this technique does not work for POWERPOINT:MAC 2008 — because Microsoft removed Macro support in Office 2008.  Astounding again. Who does the thinking at the Mac Business Unit there?  UPDATE:  Macro support is back in Office 2011.

However, luckily, I also have Office 2004 for Mac. If you do too, follow along.

powerpoint Mac 2004

The website with the macro solution is here, at the PPT FAQ site. Credit to Stephen Rindsberg, who modified code from Kris Lander.

Copy the 2nd chunk of code. Here it is for you:

Sub ExportText()

  Dim oPres As Presentation
  Dim oSlides As Slides
  Dim oSld As Slide         'Slide Object
  Dim oShp As Shape         'Shape Object
  Dim iFile As Integer      'File handle for output
  iFile = FreeFile          'Get a free file number
  Dim PathSep As String
  Dim FileNum As Integer

  #If Mac Then
    PathSep = ":"
  #Else
    PathSep = "\"
  #End If

  Set oPres = ActivePresentation
  Set oSlides = oPres.Slides

  FileNum = FreeFile

  'Open output file
  ' NOTE:  errors here if file hasn't been saved
  Open oPres.Path & PathSep & "AllText.TXT" For Output As FileNum

  For Each oSld In oSlides    'Loop thru each slide
    For Each oShp In oSld.Shapes                'Loop thru each shape on slide

      'Check to see if shape has a text frame and text
      If oShp.HasTextFrame And oShp.TextFrame.HasText Then
        If oShp.Type = msoPlaceholder Then
            Select Case oShp.PlaceholderFormat.Type
                Case Is = ppPlaceholderTitle, ppPlaceholderCenterTitle
                    Print #iFile, "Title:" & vbTab & oShp.TextFrame.TextRange
                Case Is = ppPlaceholderBody
                    Print #iFile, "Body:" & vbTab & oShp.TextFrame.TextRange
                Case Is = ppPlaceholderSubtitle
                    Print #iFile, "SubTitle:" & vbTab & oShp.TextFrame.TextRange
                Case Else
                    Print #iFile, "Other Placeholder:" & vbTab & oShp.TextFrame.TextRange
            End Select
        Else
            Print #iFile, vbTab & oShp.TextFrame.TextRange
        End If  ' msoPlaceholder
      End If    ' Has text frame/Has text

    Next oShp
  Next oSld

  'Close output file
  Close #iFile

End Sub

Now open the PPT file in PowerPoint:Mac 2004, open the menu item “Tools –> Macros” and you will see the Macro editor. It will be empty at first.

PowerPointt 2004 Macro dialog box

You will not see this macro like I show, at first; to begin, type in a simple name, then click CREATE.

Copy/paste the visual basic snippet into the new dialog/edit box that appears, then SAVE it.

Now you can RUN this macro. Voila. The exported txt file will be placed in the same directory as the PPT file itself.

It worked seamlessly, without a hitch.

And his script works for Mac and PC.

Try it out! it saved me lots of manual copy/paste time.

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Mac OS X – how to clear the print queue

Credit goes to Techie Corner for this tip:

mac, clear print queue mac

The print queue is stuck in my Mac machine. I’m not able to clear the print queue. Whenever i clear the print queue, the print job will show up again. These print jobs has stucked in my Mac machine for long time.

To clear the computer’s print queue in Mac OS X, follow the steps below:

  • Go to Finder -> Application -> Utilities -> Terminal
  • Enter the command below:- 
    $ cancel -a
  • Once entered, it will clear the entire print queue in your system.

* ‘cancel’ is a command that used to clear all the print job in Mac OS X. With the parameter -a, it meas clear all the print jobs, in other words clear the print queue.