Chris Pirillo » plugin

How to Improve Internet Explorer

Chris — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 20:22:24 +0000

How to Improve Internet Explorer is a post from Chris Pirillo

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Back in the day, I used to love Internet Explorer. It was awesome… up until version 4 and above. A lot of people out there still use IE, and will continue to do so. You can install a new plugin that Google has released – and have your install of Internet Explorer kick serious browser butt once again.

Installing the new Google Chrome Frame plugin will allow you to still run Internet Explorer. But, instead of using the IE rendering engine (the way that HTML and objects are rendered) this plugin will supplant it with Google’s engine. This is so much faster, and will make web pages look even better.

You don’t need Google Chrome’s web browser installed. You can simply load this plugin, and everything will run faster and better from within Internet Explorer – including javascript! You can also start using open web technologies – like the HTML5 canvas tag – right away, even technologies that aren’t yet supported in Internet Explorer 6, 7, or 8!!

So if you have friends and family who insist on using Internet Explorer, go ahead and install this plugin for them. They’ll never know you did it, and they’ll be raving about how much faster and better their IE is running!

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How to Create Art from Digital Photos

Chris — Wed, 27 May 2009 04:22:38 +0000

How to Create Art from Digital Photos is a post from Chris Pirillo

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Someone decided to print a digital photo, and then turn it into a work of art by placing it on canvas. They also applied styles to it to make it look as though it had been painted. If you look at it from a distance, it truly does look like it was painted by hand! Did you know there is software that you can use to make your digital photos look like works of art? It’s easy to do, using Snap Art 2.

Quickly start by choosing from hundreds of new styles and ten natural media, such as oil paint, watercolor, and pencil sketch. Then customize anything from brush size to paint thickness to make your signature look. Snap Art’s wide range of control lets you make your work completely unique.

The folks at AlienSkin have long been the leader when it comes to PhotoShop plugins – and this is definitely not an exception. Snap Art is an amazing little plugin! There’s a color pencil effect, as well as an oil painting one. You can choose to apply pen-and-ink or pencil sketch to your photo, or even make it look like it is a comic strip!

You may think you already have these things built into PhotoShop. But, you can’t tweak it to make it perfect. It’s just too difficult and limited. AlienSkin makes it simple. You just click the different templates and styles, and let it apply them for you. If you hate it – revert back and do something different.

You won’t get as much detail and perfection by using PhotoShop alone. You definitely want to check out Snap Art if you love to mess with photos. What 3rd party filters do you use? I want to see what our audience is into at this point in time. If you use coupon code: CHP0900, you can save 10% off your order through the end of June!

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Do You Need a Better Blog Search Tool?

Chris — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 11:56:42 +0000

Do You Need a Better Blog Search Tool? is a post from Chris Pirillo

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You know my name, and you know how to find me. If you look at my blog, you know that I run WordPress as my blogging platform. I host my blog myself, and it works quite well for the most part. There is one plugin in particular that makes life much easier. The Viewzi Search Plugin provides a very visual way of searching the Web. Now, you can bring that experience to your own blog.

Viewzi Site Search (VSS) is a pilot program that takes the Viewzi search experience and embeds it on your website or blog. Your search results become highly visual, elegant and engaging!
With multiple Views to look at search results, visitors click 2-3 times more pages per search on average.

When you visit my website now, you will notice a new search box under the video. The view of results will superimpose instantly, without even having to reload the page. You can customize the way your search results display, in order to show you what is the most relevant to you. It makes it soooo much easier for you to find anything I’ve ever posted.

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An Essential Firefox Add-on

Chris — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 06:43:42 +0000

An Essential Firefox Add-on is a post from Chris Pirillo

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What page do you use in your default Web browser as your “start” page? Have you bothered to change it from the browser’s start page? As you know, Firefox 3 was officially released on the day this video is being posted. Now that you have it, what are you doing with it? Are you doing more than just browsing the Internet?

There’s a new application for Firefox 3 called Feedly. This is a plugin that integrates seamlessly with Firefox 3. It gives you the ultimate start page, but then again… it’s so much more than just a starting place. You can manage and DO so much with it. There’s a Twitter integrator, an Annotation tool, summaries of the most relevant content, and even a wall with an overview of articles recommended by your friends.

The welcome wizard can learn from your existing personalizations – bookmarks, My Yahoo!, Bloglines, Netvibes, Twitter, Yahoo Mail, Gmail and Friendfeed – and apply them to your feedly. feedly is an attempt to use everything which is good in cloud service, RSS and social connectivity to create a more social and magazine-like start page. Think MyYahoo meets Digg meets Wired.

You’re going to be able to browse and read your feeds right from within the Feedly interface. This will save you time, and get you more information faster. It’s a more social and magazine-like start page, made just for Firefox 3.

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How to Make an iPhone Web Site and Icon

Chris — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 05:27:41 +0000

How to Make an iPhone Web Site and Icon is a post from Chris Pirillo

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Yes, I have an iPhone. If you look closely, you can see my little Chris icon on there. It’s also on my home screen. When I tap it, it opens my blog. When you open my blog on your iPhone, it’s going to look a lot different than it would on a browser. That’s due to a plugin I am running in WordPress.

WP Touch is a plugin that was designed specifically for your iPhone or iPod Touch. What it does it to automagically reformat my blog (or any WP blog), and optimizes it specifically for the iPhone and iPod Touch. It gives it a whole new layout, even, that is designed to just render better on your Apple mobile device. There’s no better way of giving you a better experience than to use WP Touch on a blog that is running WordPress.

As I drill down into the actual content on the home page, I can cascade out and read brief previews. Or, I can dive deeper and go so far as to leave a comment. It loads fast, and it’s clean. It’s a great way of getting content specifically optimized. It even uses Gravatars! There’s even a little search button at the top. Simply tap that, and you’ll be able to run a search through my blog.

How did I get the little Chris icon, you ask? If someone is viewing your website and they press the little plus (+) icon at the bottom in their Safari browser, they can select “add to home screen”. When they do that, the little graphic that is on my web server (or yours) is automatically pulled in when it’s added to their home screen. Even if you don’t have the iPhone or the iPod Touch, you still want to do this. You don’t know who out there in your audience does have one. You want to give them an amazing experience. Just open up your favorite photo editor. You’ll need to create a .png file. The size can vary up to 60×60 pixels. I uploaded mine to my root directory. It’s very important to name it properly: apple-touch-icon.png. That has to be the name, and it has to be in the root directory. This way, the plugin will be able to pull in this icon.

Think of it: you’re doing something simple and free for your audience. If you’re like me, you want to do everything you possibly can in order to keep people coming back for more.

FirstRSS+ThunderIT AWS HMAC ERROR: "http://xml-us.amznxslt.com/onca/xml?AWSAccessKeyId=05G128QTRXN0J06J6PG2&ContentType=text%2Fxml&Keywords=ipod%2Btouch&Operation=ItemSearch&ResponseGroup=Large&SearchIndex=Blended&Service=AWSECommerceService&Signature=rF0J%2BZTPSNyP2xeKoaeG3Fos0zaQQLfLbC%2F%2B1igj9TE%3D&Style=http%3A%2F%2Ftagjag.com%2Fcss%2Famazon.xslt&Timestamp=2009-11-24T06%3A40%3A52Z&Version=2005-07-26" NOT FOUND!

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Over 300 Tag Searches in One Spot

Chris — Thu, 15 Jun 2006 23:16:55 +0000

Over 300 Tag Searches in One Spot is a post from Chris Pirillo

Don’t expect every one of these searches to yeild results, though. The output was generated by a single OPML file and the Optimal OPML WordPress Plugin. Looking for other easy ways to display the OPML from Gada.be right now. Hell, entirely new sites could be built on top of the OPML we produce – much like RSS, it’s a poor man’s API.

From BlogWare to WordPress – Part Deux

Chris — Sat, 20 May 2006 06:51:06 +0000

From BlogWare to WordPress – Part Deux is a post from Chris Pirillo

Getting the code out of BlogWare and into WordPress was one thing. Getting everything else to work well has been something of a task. All my old URLs didn’t have any helpful keywords in them, so the 404 redirect script I found wasn’t working as effectively as it might have. Shayne pointed out that both the old URLs and new URLs have date information in them, so it would just take a little scripting before things would work easier for all those search engine visitors. I’ve got a new Google Sitemap submitted, FWIW.

I remembered the WP-Hackers, which we used to develop a Gada.be plugin – both standalone, and for the amazingly awesome Ultimate Tag Warrior. I posted my request, and received several satisfactory answers. Mark Jaquith responded with a single line of code that needed to be placed at the top of the .htaccess file. Easy. Done. Awesome.

Cleaning Up Old Posts

Chris — Wed, 17 May 2006 04:40:49 +0000

Cleaning Up Old Posts is a post from Chris Pirillo

Here’s what I need: a WordPress plugin that will go through old posts and comments, detect where there’s no blank lines between paragraphs, then insert a blank line for me. I’m sure there’s a complicated way to do it through MySQL, but Shayne and I have been trying to figure out how to do it effectively without ruining everything. Beyond that, the transition has been going relatively well. There’s still a lot of tweaking to do.

How to Handle Remote Tech Support

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 06:30:00 GMT

Using GoToAssist is the easiest way to view and control another person's computer online. Use it to provide instant technical support to family, friends and customers. Start a session with just one click, and instantly connect with the other party.

Network Tools for Windows

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:30:00 GMT

You need these network tools, no matter which operating systems and networks you have to support. SolarWinds ipMonitor: Affordable Network Monitoring for SMBs. Get turnkey network, server and application availability monitoring with SolarWinds ipMonitor v9.0. This easy-to-use, reliable solution for SMBs delivers out-of-the-box availability monitoring so you always know exactly what's up with Active Directory, DNS, Exchange, FTP, Web, IMAP, MS SQL Server, and SMTP. Download your free trial today. Or, try their totally free tools! And, through 2/29, save 20% when you purchase ipMonitor 9.0.

Get Your Own Web Site

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:30:00 GMT

Starting at just $3.99/month, web hosting from GoDaddy includes 99.9% uptime, 24/7 support and free access to GoDaddy Hosting Connection, THE place to install over 30 FREE applications sure to help you get the most from your hosting plan and Web site. Enter code CP2 at checkout, and save an additional 10% on any order.

Plus, as a friend of Chris Pirillo, enter code CHRIS7, that's C-H-R-I-S and the number 7, when you check out, and save an additional 10% on any order. Get your piece of the internet at GoDaddy.com.

VMware and Parallels for Virtual Machines

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 06:30:00 GMT

It doesn't matter if you're running on Windows or Mac OS X - every power user needs either Parallels or VMware (or both). There's never been an easier way to test software without destroying your primary operating system's stability. Think of how many times you wish you could press a 'reverse' button on your computer. Plus, there's no easier way to try new Linux distributions - see what all the fuss is about. Run Windows in OS X, run Linux in Windows, but the best way to do either is with VMware and/or Parallels.

Coupons for Online Shopping

chris@lockergnome.com (Chris Pirillo) — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 07:56:13 GMT

This feed is fueled by Lockergnome Online Shopping and Coupon Codes

Before you shop next time, see if we have a coupon first.