My Technophilic Musings

My Sites: My Blog | My Tech Blog | Follow me on Twitter
—-

• If you are twittering kinds, doesn’t matter online or offline
• If you blog or are interested in all things blog and blogging
• If you live in Delhi, have lived there, have been there, or just connect with Delhi somehow else
• If you want to meet up with your fellow twitterers and bloggers

Then you’ve got to be a part of the your very own City of The People With Hearts, Delhi. How, you ask? It’s as simple as pointing your mice and keyboards towards Delhi Tweetup to get the latest on every scoop about blogging, twittering and blogging and twittering in Delhi (and outside as well).

And if you want to be a little bit more involved, you can also join the Delhi Bloggers’ Yahoo Group.

—-
If you liked this post, then you can Subscribe to my feed
Quote of the day: Grandpa: My Homer is not a communist. He may be a liar, a pig, an idiot, a communist, but he is not a porn star.

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: blog, Blogging, Delhi, Delhi Bloggers Yahoo Group, Delhi Tweetup, New Delhi, Twitter

My Sites: My Blog | My Tech Blog | Follow me on Twitter
—-

If you serve any kind of files for download on your WordPress blog(s), one thing you should definitly be looking out for is a download manager plugin. Post attachments are oh-so-2007. Uploading files to your server and hand-posting links everywhere is a pain in the butt. And what about your hunger for statistics?

Well, if you agree with me, then i would like to tell you about two fantastic plugins:

• Drain Hole: This is a real time saver. Some of the features are:
• Automatic scanning of directories to generate downloadable files.
• Simple interface to upload files
• Categorized downloads
• SEO urls (no more of those weird links)
• Automatic hotlink protection
• Simple integration with SVN repositories
• Can maintain versions of the files (cool !!)
• Download urls can be different from their actual path in your server
• Can even pick files from directories residing out of your www or public_html directory.
• Superior download security by assigning permissions based on WordPress user roles.
• Template tags allow you to insert any particular file(s) or list of all files or files in  particular folder on any post, page, sidebar widget
• Statistics – no. of downloads, IP addresses, referrers, etc
• Can force files like php, html, txt etc to be downloaded rather than displaying in browser
• Pretty, can attach icons to files for displaying, different templates can be used for displaying files
• and…..AJAX

phew, lemme catch my breath here…you can download it from here.

• WP-Vault: This is the second best plugin I could find in this category. It is not as feature rich as Drain Hole, e.g., it misses SEO URls, hotlink protection, svn integration, versioning, etc, but it does have its own set of interesting features:
• get files from FTP/HTTP directly without downloading to computer first. (a real time saver)
• Image galleries from stored images.
• Supports WordPress’ caching mechanism to reduce load on database.

You can take your own pick out of the two. And yeah, this blog uses Drain Hole, if you must ask.

—-
If you liked this post, then you can Subscribe to my feed
Quote of the day: All we really need to survive is one person who truly loves us-Penelope

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: ajax, Blogging, blogs, download manager, drain hole, ftp, hotlink protection, http, image galleries, plugin, SEO, statistics, svn integration, wordpress, WP-Vault

My Sites: My Blog | My Tech Blog | Follow me on Twitter
—-

This is a post about irresponsible/careless journalism/bloggism. For Gizmodo, getting that post about HTC’s latest press release out the door took precedence over actually reading the release properly and then commenting over it. The gizmodo poster’s comment is:

……but HTC’s finally released a statement saying that a fix is coming. They say that the video acceleration will be supported in the future, and will be included in software upgrades for current devices…….

I’m still puzzled, after reading and rereading HTC’s (pretty short) statement 10 times over and I can’t find where it is mentioned that they will provide video acceleration for the current devices. My point is that if you don’t read it yourself, then better not release it to your readers, (or atleast refrain from commenting on it improperly, if you must be ahead in the “race”).

Read the statement below (and for actual post on Gizmodo, click here)

Continue reading »

—-
If you liked this post, then you can Subscribe to my feed
Quote of the day: “Stan, what did I tell you about watching the Osbournes? It’s going to make you retarded!” — Stan’s Mom

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: ATi, Blogging, careless blogging, careless journalism, driver, gizmodo, hardware acceleration, HTC, HTC Kaiser video drivers, irresponsible blogging, irresponsible journalism, journalism, MSM, performance, press release, software optimization, software upgrades, TYTN, video acceleration, video drivers, Windows Mobile, WM, WM6

My Sites: My Blog | My Tech Blog | Follow me on Twitter
—-

A few days ago, I had written about a wonderful blogging tool Blogjet. Now, if you host a wordpress blog, you’d be aware of the fact that for wordpress to be able to upload yor files (images, attachements in post etc) to the server, you have to make the upload directory writable by all. Now, this is a BIG security risk. Some people go to the lengths of CHMOD’ding their upload directory for a short while and after upload, restoring the apt file permissions back. Some upload their files separately through ftp. But Blogjet has a very cool feature. It supports uploading all your non-text content to your webspace not only by using wordpress APIs but also through ftp if wordpress doesn’t have necessary permissions to write files on your server. This saves you a lot of time, that you can then devote on writing the actual post instead of meandering around with the “technicalities”. But many a people have a heart-ache configuring the ftp with Blogjet, although it is quite simple really. This is basically due to conflicting and confusing instructions existing on the ‘net. So, here I present to you step by step, simplest instrutions to configure this. Read on.

Continue reading »

—-
If you liked this post, then you can Subscribe to my feed
Quote of the day: “Bravery is not a function of firepower.” - JC Denton

written by Shantanu Goel \\ tags: apis, Blogging, blogjet, blogjet ftp configuration, CHMOD, configuration screen, connection settings, direct upload, ftp, ftp configuration, images, movable type api, necessary permissions, Remote, security risk, upload, upload images, webspace, wordpress, wordpress blog