Access FTP Account from Windows 7 Explorer Without FTP Clients

If you have a blog or a website on your web host server, you know how important the FTP client can be. So an FTP program is a must have. But, if you didn’t know you can also access your ftp account right from windows explorer window, just like you access folders and files in your windows explorer.
Tip : Problem: Can’t Upload Files, Photos to Internet, FTP 0 Byte Error

Use FTP from Windows 7 Explorer Window

Step 1 : Type in the ftp host name of your webserver. (ftp.example.com) in the address bar of windows 7 explorer and press Enter.

Step 2 : After pressing Enter, it will prompt for Username, Password. Provide them and click Log On.

Step 3 : After you login you can access your FTP just like you access and edit files just like in a regular folder in windows 7 explorer.

I liked this method much better than using an FTP client because its so just like accessing regular files and folder in windows explorer.
Also copying and transferring files is just like in normal file transfers in windows explorer.

Copying Files to FTP Account from Windows 7 Explorer

I am glad windows 7 has this default FTP support built into explorer. This makes it lot easy to access our FTP account than using a separate instance of a FTP client softwares like Filezilla or CuteFTP.
Advantages : If you suddenly need to access your FTP account from a public pc with limited user access, you can’t install any software like a ftp program. But this way you can’t still access your files on your web server in case of an emergency upload, editing etc. Also it makes directly editing certain files easier.

Awesome 3D Virtual Tour of Sistine Chapel, Basilica of San Pietro

Among the many resources that can be found on the website of the Vatican, there is one I call special attention: The Sistine Chapel in 3D. We can navigate between the paintings by zooming and moving the cursor between the entire campus, discovering many details that will surely welcome you like a royal visit.

Much more complete than the virtual tour of the Basilica of San Pedro, which is also found in the same web site. A true work of art that deserves to be enjoyed in all its glory.

Create Your Own South Park Character Avatar Yourself Online

Re-creating yourself in South Park character, avatar is simple: start by choosing face color and gesture, skin and hair, then go to dress. Select favorite outfit (both ladies and men suits are available). Once you’re done with that little, explore the section of "things" to get the jewelry accessories like glasses, Wings, weapons, or to change the shirt design.
Tip : Convert Your Face Photo into Manga Avatar

Make Your Own South Park Character Online

# Sp-Studio.de (Link) – Create South Park Character, Avatar Online

This website exists for almost 10 years now and it might be the biggest create-a-character tool around the web. You can build cartoon look-a-likes of yourself, friends or celebrities, inspired by the TV show South Park. The idea of this site is to allow users to create south park style avatars that can move to use as profile pictures on social networking sites, or any use wishing, if not commercial. Save the image you created is very simple, since it only involves making a screen print, which in turn means that the character is saved as an image. In any case, detailed instructions are available for both PC and Mac users.

Re-creating yourself in South Park character, avatar is simple: start by choosing face color and gesture, skin and hair, then go to dress. Select favorite outfit (both ladies and men suits are available). Once you’re done with that little, explore the section of "things" to get the jewelry accessories like glasses, Wings, weapons, or to change the shirt design. The menu guy helps you to choose different body parts, clothes and other items for your picture. Its recommended to begin with the skin. You can move or delete single objects by clicking on them. To save you’ picture to your computer just click on the disc symbol up there.
Random : Make Yourself Look Like Avatar Characters with Avatarize Yourself

# SouthParkStudios (Link) Create South Park Avatar for Yourself

I’m not a fan of South Park. (If you’ve never heard of it, is a TV cartoon with a mature language and arguments politically correct.) However, I’m a fan of cute animated avatars. And I can not get anything to myself, I love finding sites online that let me play and create my own cartoon!

You choose the tone of the skin, eyes, hairstyle, clothing, and facial expression. You can also customize a little, choosing various accessories, weapons and a background color or scene. Capture a screen to save your creation, and you’re done! You have your own avatar cartoon South Park-ish.

Edit Images Directly on Web Page, Albums Online & Save to PC [Chrome]

GooEdit is a browser integrated image editor plugin for chrome web browser that helps you to edit your pictures, photos, images easily and fast, on any web page online without need to download. You can save the image to your pc after the editing is done.
Install GooEdit for Chrome : Link

Example: Directly Crop Facebook Album Photo Online and Save to PC

Step 1 : After installing GooEdit. Go to to any page with an image. For eg: Facebook Photo Album.
Step 2 : Press, Hold [Alt] and Right Click on the desired Image on that page. That will enclose the image in a red border meaning the image is selected.
Step 3 : You will see all the common editing options on a top toolbar that pops out once the image is selected. We are going to use Crop for this example.

Step 4 : Click Crop Icon. The mouse pointer turns into + over the picture. Drag and crop out the Area you want to extract and the click "Crop" button.

Step 5 : Then Click the Save button (Floppy Icon) to save the cropped region. It opens the image in new tab where you can right click or drag drop save.
You have several image options available to you. You can flip, magnify, crop, and rotate images, adjust brightness contrast, view and edit the histogram, view pixel co-ordinates and RGB, and add effects. Image effects include sepia, grayscale, solarize, invert, blur, sharpen, and sepia, color balance.

Generate, Create CSS Sprite Single Image & CSS Code Online

A simple way to explain CSS sprites would be to have 1 single image containing all the design icons, images , logo, buttons, hover effect buttons etc instead of having them individually load up on your site. This is useful if you have huge numbers of buttons and icons served on your web pages.

The more images the more http requests are made to load those images one by one. So instead of putting so many requests for a single small sized images, we can make just one http request for a medium sized image contain all your required icons, buttons etc images and display them as portions of the original image. See example above of Google reader icons.
Working Principle : Images are combined into one larger image at defined X and Y co-ordinates. Having assigned this generated image to relevant page elements the background-position CSS property can then be used to shift the visible area to the required component image.

Create CSS Single Sprite Image from Multiple Icons, Buttons, Logo, Design Images etc

Here are 2 online css sprite generators which allows you to automate the process of generating CSS sprites. Simply upload 2 or more images (GIF, PNG or JPG) and it will generate a sprite image and the corresponding CSS rules to target and display each component image.

# CSS Sprites Generators:  (Link1) and (Link2)

You can find more info about css sprites and why to use it here.
A solid example of CSS Sprite usage in the Google search result page where the all icons buttons etc are combined to this css sprite image.

Access Computer Remotely Over Internet Free Online Using Join.Me

Too often in life you come across situation where you need to share your screen with a friend or an acquaintance to get assistance or just to show them something. You get to have a bunch of applications in the online market that let you do the mentioned task with ease and convenience but there is always a room for improvement.

Remotely Access Computer Online Free Without Any Software

Guest Post by Daniel of iGadgetLife.com

Join.me (link) got hold of that room and developed an internet based application that lets you share your screen and get remote assistance with ease and convenience. It has got a Flash interface that is known for its speed and easy management giving you complete control and liberty over the functions.

What adds more to its features is the ability to be accessed through a mobile device. The latest smartphones and devices are all coming with Flash plug-in support therefore allowing you to look at someone’s screen or provide remote assistance through your mobile device. All you are going to need is a device that has Adobe Flash plug-in effectively working.

Remotely Share your Screen:

If you are on a collaborative project but your team is not around, join.me gives you an option to remotely share your screen over the internet connection just like recording a screencast online. The process is pretty simple here: you need to go to the join.me website and click on “Share” tab on the left side. You will be asked to download a simple application of 1.02 MB size. Once you install the application, you are ready to go.

Join.me is going to generate a simple code that is unique worldwide and can be used anywhere to access your screen. You can pass the link code to your friends, no matter how many are they. Join.me lets you share your screen to a number of them without any technical issues. The application allows you to chat while working through the IM application integrated with the remote accessibility application.
You can either send the 9 digit essential code through any IM source to start the screen sharing or rather you can simple email the link to them through join.me itself.

Joining Screen of Someone Else:

Joining screen sharing initiated by someone else is an even easier job where you just need to give in the link code that you are provided with by your friend. This will let you see the screen of your friend’s machine even when you are sitting in a remote location. The Flash interface enables you to see the computer’s screen through any of the latest smartphone that have Flash plug-ins enabled. Join.me has certainly turned screen sharing over a network connection handy and convenient.

Text Chat within Screen Sharing:

You might also need to talk while doing the collaborative job and the best way to do that perhaps is through the IM feature integrated with join.me. join.me comes with a Flash IM interface that lets you chat over a paired connection created through the link. Click on the Send an IM on the Floating toolbar on the top of the screen. Type and go! IM is as simple as that.

Call through Join.Me:

The toolbar has a telephone icon as well that lets you talk to the person you are sharing your screen with therefore adding maximum convenience to the session you have in place. The voice quality is just great for a technology as handy as this.

Share Control:

Share control feature integrated with Join.me is a great catch in itself. The join.me toolbar has a mouse icon on the extreme right that says “share control”. You can use this button to give your friend access to your computer that can be a great way of providing remote assistance. The next time you come across a situation where you wish to share your machine’s screen and privileges in order to repair the system or do any job, join.me is just a great place.
The same Flash interface is used in the control sharing as well therefore making it possible for you to get assistance from a mobile device as well.

Conclusion:

There are a number of remote assistance applications available across the planet that are proprietary and ask you for purchases before allowing you with unlimited access over the network. Join.me is the internet based application that you can used to share screen, talk while sharing and even share access to your computer in case you need assistance from a friend over the internet. The best part about Join.me is that it is completely free and you need not to pay anything at all.

Useful Default Keyboard Shortcuts to Quickly Navigate Facebook

Facebook has its own keyboard shortcuts with which you can easily access the main sections of your facebook account like profile, home, recent messages etc. This works by default and you can use them from your windows desktop keyboard.
Tip : Select All Facebook Friends to Invite All Friends

Useful Keyboard Shortcuts for Facebook Easy Navigation

The operation varies depending on the browser you use. For example, in Firefox you should also press Shift while in IE you have to press Enter after using these shortcuts:

• ALT + 0 – Loads the Help Center
• ALT + 1 – Take your Homepage Facebook
• ALT + 2 – Show your Profile
• ALT + 3 – Recent Friendship Requests
• ALT + 4 – Display the list of Recent Messages
• ALT + 5 – Displays the Latest Notifications
• ALT + 6 – Drive to Your Account Settings
• ALT + 7 – Enter  text in Search Box
• ALT + 8 – Show Facebook Official Fan Page
• ALT + 9 – Lead the Declaration of Rights and Responsibilities of the web

Facebook Keyboard Shortcut Example

• In Firefox : Press "Shift + Alt + 2" to go to facebook profile.
• In Chrome : Just press "Alt + 2" to go to your facebook profile.
• In IE : Use "Alt + 2" then "Enter" to go to facebook profile.

Using the keyboard for navigation not end there. While viewing a photo album, you can use the cursor left and right to navigate through the photos. It is much more convenient than using the mouse.

Make, Create Comic Animated Cartoon Movies, Clips Online Free

If you are looking for online tools to create animated cartoon movies to make funny comic video clips, hilarious spoofs and comedy clips there here are 2 useful applications you can use, Dvolver for simple clips like a funny comic strip or Xtranomal for advanced animated cartoon movies with text to voice etc.
Tip : Create Animated Gif Images from Youtube Clippings

Make Funny Animated Cartoon Movies, Comedy Spoofs Online

Dvolver MovieMaker is a free online tool that lets you make animated cartoon movies, with comic balloons and animation graphics. Such tools are fun to use and create funny comic animation videos or spoofs about any meme or cliché.
Go to Dvolver Movie Maker (Link)

Select the parts of the scenes, the background and the sky, the main characters, the text they will say, background music, then create the animation and send it to friends or share the link or embed it in webpages like below.

Example of an animated cartoon movie I created,

Note: If your liked this then you can try an advanced online animated cartoon movies creator called Xtranormal (link), which allows you to create awesome animated cartoon movies with text to voice and many actors and sets to choose from and then upload to youtube etc for fun. Here is an example(link) which is a viral video.

Download Only Selected Files from Any Online Zip Folder, Archive

Downloading an large archive (zip file) ? But you need only few files packed inside it. You can choose to extract selected files inside online zip archives. Use the tools below to access online zip archives an download only selected files from these zip folders.
Tip : Remove Background, Extract Person from Photo

Extract Files from Online Zip Archives

ZIPSelect: Download Selected Files Inside Zip Files Online

ZIPSelect (Link) is a small application that allows you to download selected files from online zip archives without downloading the whole archive. Download and install ZipSelect, enter the URL of the online zip archive and Click on "Load folder list.

ZipSelect will show you list of all the files and folders in that archive. From this list, select the files or folders that you want to download. You can select more than one file together. This will select the files, and will start downloading them. On the right side, a window will come up on which you will see progress of each file.
Tip: Convert RAR to ZIP Files

Loudscout: Extract Individual Files from Online Zip Archives

LoadScout (Link) is a smart program designed to help you browse the web and FTP sites. It allows you to get information from any remote media or archive file without downloading it. The basic idea is to download only a small part of the file and extract the required data.
When you browse a remote archive you can select any files in it and extract them right from the remote location. LoadScout will only download the required parts of the archive saving your time and network traffic.
Another similar tool to extract from online zip archives is ZipPreview.
Note: The zip archives must have a direct URL for these tools to work (rapidshare etc won’t work) .