Happy Holidays 2011 (and public domain photos)

Happy Holidays

Christmas time Christmas celebration by Marius Iordache

The photo above is from http://www.public-domain-image.com/ which you might find helpful when looking for free images. Photos on the site are public domain images, royalty free stock photos, copyright friendly free images, not copyrighted, and no rights reserved. All pictures on this site are explicitly placed in the public domain, free for any personal or commercial use.

Flowing Fix: Force a visitor's browser to always load a fresh version of your website

"HELP!  I just updated my website and when I visit the site I don't see the changes."  This is a common problem that occurs when updating a website in which can be easily be resolved by clearing your browser cache; however,  your site's visitors have no way of knowing this and they might not be able to see the updated site.  A quick solution is to include the following right before the close of the header section of the HTML code:

<META HTTP-EQUIV="CACHE-CONTROL" CONTENT="NO-CACHE">

<META HTTP-EQUIV="PRAGMA" CONTENT="NO-CACHE">

<META HTTP-EQUIV="EXPIRES" CONTENT="0">

If you are using Apple's iWeb, you cannot directly edit the header code in iWeb; however after you publish it you can edit the html files to include the above META code in the header section.  This can be tedious, but luckily there is a FREE program iWeb SEO tool (http://www.ragesw.com/products/iweb-seo-tool.html)  which helps easily add this meta code and other tweaks as well as help publish the updated website.


(for other  HTML tags see http://www.i18nguy.com/markup/metatags.html )

Keyboard Shortcuts

Today is your lucky day... you get two posts today for the price of one.

Using the keyboard can be much faster than moving the mouse to click on buttons or menus.  Here are some that I use on a routine basis:

MS Windows
Windows + R: Run action from the Start Menu (you can type a lot of commands [e.g. excel, winword, calc] in there to start programs)

Google Stuff
Ctrl+Alt+1 ==> Heading 1
Ctrl+Alt+2 ==> Heading 2
Ctrl+Alt+N ==> Heading N

MS Office
Ctrl+Alt+1 ==> Heading 1
Ctrl+Alt+2 ==> Heading 2
Ctrl+Alt+N ==> Heading N
Alt+I+N+C ==> Insert Caption
Alt+I+B ==> Insert Page Break

Flowing Fix: Don't let your USB drive be a carrier

Panda USB Vaccine (MS Windows only) will stop virus from using the autorun.inf file on a USB from installing a virus from an inflected computer to your USB. It disables the autorun.inf file so the a potential virus cannot use it.   For more information see http://research.pandasecurity.com/panda-usb-and-autorun-vaccine/

Download location:
http://download.cnet.com/Panda-USB-Vaccine/3000-2239_4-10909938.html?part=dl-55967&subj=dl&tag=button

Bulk Renamer

Bulk Renamer (MS Windows Only):
http://www.bulkrenameutility.co.uk/Main_Intro.php

This is another file renamer.  I like this one a lot because it does things that other renamers don't.  At least that's what I remember when I was searching for renamers.