Have you ever had your WordPress blog’s posts or sub-pages stop working for no apparent reason? Well, that happened to me recently. The home page worked fine but any page other than that resulted in an error page from the browser. How this happened I don’t know (if you have a theory, please let me know) but I did come across a quick and easy fix.
To fix this, you need to reset your permalinks in the WordPress admin interface. To do this, log in to your admin interface and click on ‘Settings’ in the left side bar. This should open up a sub menu. In that sub menu, click on ‘Permalinks’.
Once in the ‘Permalinks Settings’, change your settings to something other than what they are currently set to by clicking on one of the other radio buttons in the upper section of the page. If you’re using a ‘Custom Structure’, make sure you copy what is in there first as it will be wiped out when you change this. Now click on ‘Save Changes’. Then, change this setting to how you had it before and click ‘Save Changes’ again. Voila! Your links should work again!
If you’re like me an often come across useful links and tweets in your Twitter feed I can’t recommend this combination enough. I’ve used several different Twitter apps on my iPhones but the app that has one out for me is the actual app from Twitter. The app used to be called Tweetie and was a paid app. However, Twitter bought it in April of 2010 and made it free. Thanks Twitter!
I also use Instapaper to keep track of items on the net that I don’t have time for when I come across them but want to read later. I used Instapaper infrequently prior to using the Twitter iPhone app but since finding the built in integration my Instapaper use has exploded.
It’s so useful to be able to go through my Twitter feed when I’m stuck in a line-up or at a red light and add them to my Instapaper list in a couple taps. Then, when I have a bit more time to kill I can fire up Instapaper the app and read all those juicy items I didn’t have time for previously.
Have you ever noticed that wide grey bubble in the top right of some of your Mac application windows? When I first moved to Mac it took a while before I even noticed it. Its actually quite handy.
The button, sometimes called the ‘lozenge’ is used in applications that have a ‘Hide Toolbar’ option in their ‘View’ menu.
In Finder the button will hide both the toolbar and the sidebar. If you command-click the button it will modify how the toolbar is displayed, cycling through variations of words and buttons, buttons only, words only and various different sizes of buttons etc.
The Lozenge
Another handy use of the lozenge is installing an app. When doing so you are often presented with the window that has the app icon. Sometimes there will be an Applications icon that you can simply drag the app icon into in order to move the app to the Applications folder. When this isn’t the case people usually think they need to open another Finder window in order to drag the app to the Applications folder. However, the lozenge can save you this trouble. Simply click on it and a sidebar will appear and you can drag the app to the Applications folder listed there. Nice!
Some other applications that have the ‘lozenge’ include:
If you like to work from the command line there are many keyboard shortcuts that can make your life easier. Two of my favourites are control+a and control+e. When you are have some text entered and you want to quickly get to the start or end of the entered text these little shortcuts will save you some key-presses.
ctrl + a: moves the cursor to the start of the line
ctrl + e: moves the cursor to the end of the line
Many of you will already know about these handy shortcuts but if you haven’t I think you’ll really appreciate them.
Apple recently unveiled there much anticipated and much hyped tablet device, the iPad. Here’s a quick take on the new offering.
THE GOOD
Long Battery Life
The iPad is being touted as having an impressive 10 hour battery life with 30 days of standby
It’s Pretty
Like most Apple product the iPad is pretty and shiny and more pleasing to the eye than essentially any other hardware manufacturers devices.
It’s a Better E-reader Than the E-readers
Your Kindle is kindling compared to the iPad. Georgous full color display with the ability to embed video in publications. Big publishers should be sucking up big time to Apple for the opportunity the iPad gives them. The opportunity to get themselves back off of life support.
THE NOT SO GOOD
No Camera
What!? How sweet it would have been to be able to easily do video calls / conferences with this device. No dice. I guess Apple has to save some things to make people have to upgrade to the next iPad when that comes along.
Locked Down
Just like the iPod and iPhone, you’ll only be able to put on the iPad what apple allows you too. Apparently this isn’t really a computer but an oversized iPod touch.
You can’t replace battery yourself
A common grievance with iPods is the fact that you have to send your device to Apple in order to have a battery replaced. Unfortunately Apple continues this trend with the iPad. This is even more unfortunate considering Apple’s history of battery problems.
Text Entry
The on screen keyboard will undoubtedly be more difficult to use that a real keyboard, especially considering the back of the device is rounded. That means typing with the device on a flat surface is all but out of the question as the entire thing will wobble with every ‘key’ press.
No USB Port or SD Slot
Again Apple frustrates its users with a lack of standard connections. In order to use a USB based peripheral with the iPad you’ll have to shell out more money to Apple to get an adapter dongle. Would it be so hard to have just included one or both of these? Yes, we get it. The iPad isn’t a ‘computer’.
No Flash
This doesn’t bother me that much. I’d love to see Flash go the way of the dodo.
The iPad might make a nice addition to my coffee table or kitchen counter for casual web browsing or emailing and tweeting but I can’t see it being a must have device. I’ll wait to see if they can get things right in generation two, or until I can get a Google tablet that offers a bit more options and openness. While the iPad may not be ideal for the more technically savvy user there is a huge number of people out there who are less technical and don’t really like computers who will find the iPad will fit their needs very well.
Not only do I wish I had these everywhere in my house but I also wish I would have thought of these first. Power outlets with built-in USB ports simply make complete sense. What a great stocking stuffer for this Christmas/holiday season. Well, at least you could stuff a picture of one in a stocking; they don’t ship until 2010. You can pre-order them now though.
Two tools that I love enormously are Google Calendar and my iPhone. Google Calendar is incredibly powerful. It allows you to have multiple calendars with any mix of private and public/shared calendars you like. It has a powerful quick ad option for adding events with plain English, amazingly configurable repeating events and reminders, and the feature list goes on and on.
When Google launched Google Sync earlier this year the loop from my Google Calendar to my iPhone and back was completed. Sync allows you to view and edit events on either your iPhone built in calendar or on Google Calendar on the web and see the changes propagated almost immediately.
Google sync used to only allow 5 of your Google Calendars to sync to your mobile device but I noticed yesterday that they now allow up to 25 calendars to sync. If you are a Google Calendar power user this is music to your ears.
I highly recommend this combination of tools. If you haven’t tried it yet you are missing out on some serious awesomeness.
Copying text from a web site and then pasting it somewhere else usually results in the formatting being copied over as well, which in 99% of cases in not what I want. I’m definitely not alone on that either.
Someone has created this wonderful script for the extremely useful windows tool ”Autohotkey‘ that will remove all formatting from a normal control-v paste. For those rare occaisions when you DO want the formatting, simply control-shift-v and there it is.
So handy!
I have yet to write a post about Autohotkey itself but it is definitely one of the more useful Windows tools in my arsenal. You can check it out here: Autohotkey
Check out this very cool workspace as featured on Lifehacker. I can’t help but think that herd of Macs would be ultra-comfortable here. I’d love to work in a space like that. It even has a pizza oven!
Techcrunch has a post about a very funny spoof of the Windows 7 Party videos. The story and spoof are very timely as today is the launch day for Windows 7. You’ll find embeds of both an original corny-by-accident Microsoft video and the spoof. It’s definitely worth a watch.
Not only do I wish I had these everywhere in my house but I also wish I would have thought of these first. Power outlets with built-in USB ports simply make complete sense. What a great stocking stuffer for this Christmas/holiday season. Well, at least you could stuff a picture of one in a stocking; they don’t ship until 2010. You can pre-order them now though.
