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Backing up photobucket albums had been much of a trouble for free users as the service only allowed the "Batch Download" option to Pro account users. However, things got changed when I posted some time back about how a simple hack could make things much simpler.

It seems like Photobucket noticed the bug after I started getting enormous traffic and high search engine listings on this particular post explaining how to download photobucket albums without a Pro account. Not only did they fix it by removing the "Preview" option, but also complemented it by deleting one of the pictures used in the tutorial.

Well, they may have thought I would do nothing about this and keep sleeping like their bitches. Sorry sirs, but I have found ANOTHER (yeah! You heard it right!) POSSIBLE EXPLOIT to do the same. For now, the new trick is working perfectly on Mac and Linux systems. We're still looking for a way to do the same on Windows and we're sure that in a few days, the post and the hack will be out in the open for you to enjoy. So keep checking this space regularly, because you're going to find what you came looking for really soon :D.

Utorrent has been indisputably the best Bit-Torrent client for Windows due to it's light-weight resource friendly interface and simple usability almost since the 1.5.0 release, or perhaps since even much before. When it comes to linux, selecting the "best" Bit-Torrent client has always been a n-sided affair. Bit-Torrent, Transmission and Ktorrent are some of the most popular torrent clients used across the Linux community. Azureus, which was the only reliable client for windows available before Utorrent, is also only a bit behind, mainly because it is Java-based. Other less popular clients include CTorrent, Deluge, Torrent Swapper etc. Of all only three worked comfortably on my system on PCLinuxOS Minime 2008. Somehow Bit-Torrent kept crashing and the others weren't even worth mentioning.

KTorrent

Often termed the "Utorrent for Linux", this client has much more to offer. It's light as a feather and has easily the sleekest UI out there. It's latest stable version is 2.2.5 for KDE 3 engines and 3.0 for KDE 4. The version 2.2.5 boasts of features including-

1) Efficient UI with no bloated features. Moreover, it even allows you to configure how much memory the software occupies according to a Slow/Fast CPU.



2) In-client search for torrents on torrent websites. The list pre-includes popular services like Bitoogle, Bittorrent, Bytenova, Isohunt, KTorrents, Mininova, PirateBay, TorrentSpy and Torrentz. Torrent Search Engines can be easily added to or removed from the list.

3) Bandwidth Scheduler allows you to schedule the bandwidth distribution according to time.

4) The RSS Feeds Plugin scans the RSS feeds for torrents matching regular expressions and loads them.

5) Partially/fully downloaded torrents can be imported from other clients

6) The Web Interface allows you to manage your downloads even while you're miles away from your computer through a web browser.

7) The ZeroConf Plugin scans the local network for users using KTorrent and allows sharing of torrents with them.

8) A user-defined IP or hostname can be sent to the tracker.

9) Although a minor feature, I was impressed with how carefully structured the "Torrent-Tree" was.



10) Then again, it comes with all the other commonly available features like IP Filter, Peer Exchange etc.

The 3.0 version updates include (source)-

IPv6 support
SOCKSv4 and v5 support
The network interface to use, can now be selected
Alternative flat list mode to display the files of a torrent
Reorganization of the config dialog
Individual files of a torrent can now be moved
New queuemanager gui

Azureus

I stopped using Azureus long ago when Vuze acquired it due to the memory-hogging interface and the irritating "On Vuze" integration. Almost after an year, I tried the 3.0.4.2 version and I must say, despite the yet-irritating UI, I was a bit (a teeny little ant-brain sized bit) impressed. Only because of its detailed customization. But first, to survive even looking at it, you must change the default interface to "Classic" from the Settings. Some of the features are-

1) Highly Customizable UI including Language, Colors and Splash Screen.

2) User selection of permitted Peer Sources and Peer-Peer Data Transmission Networks.

3) Includes IPv6 support, multiple connections from the same IP, transparency to bitfield based blocking and option for setting a separate speed for LAN based transfers.

4) Prioritization of files according to file formats can be set up.

5) Plugins include LAN Peer Finder (Similar to ZeroConf) and IRC (allows entering IRC channels through the client).

All in all, almost everything you do can be defined by you.

Transmission

There's nothing really "special" about this software except that it is perhaps the best option for the torrent-beginner being absolutely basic and small.


Besides torrent clients, several free torrent tools are also available for linux systems which are integrable in almost all popular clients. These include-

1) Torrent Episode Downloader (Ted)- It is a sleek Bit-Torrent tool developed by "two TV addicts" which downloads the latest episodes of your favorite TV Show through Bit-Torrent and RSS Feed searches and comes with a huge list of popular TV Shows.

2) Torrent Sniff- This is a useful tool that displays the current status of a torrent from a URL or from your own system. A sample outut (from the official website) goes as-

http://www.rpmfind.net/BitTorrent/shrike-i386-disc1.iso.torrent
info hash: 8a4c7a49fe5e8d7777b196b9ac2d8145160d49f5
announce url: http://www.rpmfind.net:6969/announce
full copies: 4 seeds
partial copies: 8 leeches
Bytes File
668,991,488 shrike-i386-disc1.iso

Mozilla, a couple of days back, released the latest build of Firefox 3 for testing purposes, the Beta 4. The beta comes with many promising and exciting features and is perhaps the fastest and most standard compliant browser as yet. The latest Firefox 3 Beta browser can be downloaded from here. For Linux systems, extract the bzip2 archive and run the shell script firefox (./firefox). Although, it is recommended to backup all private data. Add-ons not supported by the latest beta version may also be disabled.


Fast and Polished Interface

Mozilla has made many changes to the browser's GUI. The Add-Ons Manager now also allows you to search addons without having to actually visit website. The Download Manager has also been pimped up a bit and a search feature has been added. Moreover, the browser is now faster than ever. AJAX based sites take almost half the time to load in Firefox 3 Beta 4 than in other browsers, even Opera Kestrel 9.50 Beta 1 for that matter.

Increased Usability

The browser now provides certain features which bring in much more ease for geek-browsing. Auto-Complete has been introduced in the address bar which makes things simpler. The "Create Search" feature, previously native only to Opera, has also been included this time and Bookmarks can, now, be grouped using tags.

Other New Features include Full Page Zoom, and a number of Security additions. Read more here- release notes.

Firefox has certainly grabbed the limelight pretty firmly as of now, especially since IE8 Beta 1's disastrous performance in the Acid 3 Test. All this just makes us expect even more from the final version.

UPDATE- Firefox 3 Beta 4 got added to the PCLinuxOS repositories yesterday. So, it can be directly installed from the Synaptic Package Manager instead of running the shell script.

Ever since I moved permanently to PCLinuxOS Minime 2008 from Windows XP, I faced absolutely no problems. At least until tomorrow, when the horrible issue came up. How to pass my time? While on Windows, random games like Carmageddon 2 and Street Fighter Mugen would help entertain me. But, seriously, do I want to spend my time getting them to work on the wine engine? I don't think so.

Some days back, I had noticed how some of my old favorite games were listed in the Synaptic Package Manager in the PCLinuxOS repositories for DosBox, an emulator for MS-DOS. So while the games and the emulator got downloaded, I dugg out my ancient CD colledction which contained the exe file for everyone's first game, Mario.

Have you played Mario recently? If not, then perhaps you wouldn't quite relate with the rush of nostalgia that followed. All I had to do was place the exe file in /mnt/win_c/games, mount my win_c/games directory as the C drive for DosBox and run mario.exe-

Z:\>mount C /mnt/win_c/games
Z:\>C:
C:\>mario.exe

Sound was perfect, although rendering was a bit slow, which got fixed by hitting Ctrl + F12 a number of times. And voila! It felt as if I was a child again. Then it went on for hours. After Mario came Jammit, the first basketball game I ever played. This game parade left me pretty amused in the end. Here are some screenshots-

Finding the virtually non-existent "perfect" template can be, sometimes, the most difficult part of setting up a blog, something I can say from my personal experience. Sometimes, the sidebar doesn't look good, sometimes the background is not appropriate and sometimes there's no apparent problem, although the design just "does not seem right." Once you have learnt basic XML, a template is pretty easy to design. However, it's a really tedious task, especially creating the graphics. The best option is to get a ready-made template and tweak it according to your needs (as I've done).

Googling "blogger templates" would be the worst thing you could do right now. The only thing the search results would result in is a new mess and a whole lot of confusion.

First Things First

Before choosing a template, you have to first decide what kind of topics you are going to blog about because unless the template is in perfect rapport with the theme, readers don't get interested. Usually, a personal blog is full of bright colors, while a professional/business blog is plain and simple.

Choose Your Color

Relating the blog with a color makes things much simpler and lessens the confusion by limiting the range of your choices. For example, I chose green for The Goofy Express and white & light blue for Red Spinach

Ads or No Ads ??

Another thing that could be a deciding factor in choosing blog templates is placement of ads. Sometimes ads just dont integrate perfectly in the template and become an eye-sore. Moreover, many people don't like ads on their blogs altogether. You have to decide whether you want to earn money through ads along with blogging, and whether the template would actually look good with ads.


* PERSONAL BLOG TEMPLATES

1) Lemonade Designs

For personal blogs, Lemonade Designs is the best place to be. Lemonade is a 19 year old design student from South India (who has, by the way, recently won the Best Asian Blogger award for her personal blog, Freshly Squeezed). I love her work, especially the artwork. The templates add an extra personality to your blog. The best part is, lemonade even designs custom templates for "people in dire need". So start pouring in your requests, as she might just do the same for you. The custom templates would be completely personalised in everything ranging from the colors to the graphics. Although Lemonade Designs has not had as much exposure as some of the other blogger template resources on this post, it's really one among the best. All you need to provide in return is a single credit link. Take a look at her complete porfolio-

2) Final Sense

The next best resource for personal blog templates would surely be Final Sense. The website provides an amazingly huge number of free templates categorized separately in various groups, namely:

3-Column Themes
4-Column Layouts (new)
Animals
Architecture
Art
Beta (Google account)
Cars, Ships & Airplanes
Cartoon And Kids
Classic
Computer and Electronic
Country and City
Flower and Plant (new)
Food and Drink (new)
Game
General
Music and Dance
Nature
Popular Themes
Religion
Simple and Clear (new)
Sports
Women

Although the coding follows all the XML standards, it is a bit messy due to lack of indenting. However, the results are pretty good. In fact, the template for The Goofy Express is also derived from one of the Final Sense templates. The templates are neither too shiny, nor too dull. All that's required is a backlink pointing to the website.

3) Other Good Resources

-> Pyzam- Pyzam provides a number of blogger templates in different colors and different categories. If you are looking for something simple and shiny, pyzam is the place for you

-> Blog Crowds- Blog Crowds also has some really pleasant and colorful personal blogs. If you are looking for templates for nature-related blogs, try this site out.

-> http://www.bloggertemplates.org, http://blogger-templates.deceblog.net/ and http://bloggertemplates.itmag.org/ are some other websites hosting nice templates


* PROFESSIONAL/BUSINESS BLOGGER TEMPLATES

1) Blog And Web

Blog and Web.Com provides some of the best free blogger templates for business blogs. The template currently being used on Red Spinach is also a Blog And Web product. The designs are plain and simple, colors are mild, writing space is large enough, ads are easily integrable and columns are aptly organized. The only problem is that the designing is done by Spanish people and the XML variables are, consequently, named in spanish. Although some templates are available in the English version as well, in others, editing has to be done more or less through the code. This is, however, not too difficult if you have basic knowledge in any programming language. The terms only require, once again, a backlink pointing to the Blog And Web homepage. Here is a list of all the Blog And Web templates available for blogger- list

2) Pannasmontata

Pannasmontata Templates provides another good set of professional templates. The hosting is currently down due to some problem with the FTP. However, you can checkout one of the templates that I earlier used for testing purposes on the Test Blog


* OTHERS

1) Mashable lists 50 decent looking blogger templates here. Don't miss this.

2) Free Blogger Templates is another site that lists a number and a variety of good templates for blogger.

3) Some of the templates at Gecko And Fly are also worth mentioning. If you would like to go for a plain and elegant design, maybe this is what you were looking for.

4) Blogger Templates- I don't really like many of the templates over at Blogger Templates. However, the latest post lists some pleasant templates ported over from wordpress themes.


Templates at some of the websites mentioned above have been designed for the Classic Blogger platform, as New Blogger was introduced not much ago. Read more at Bug The Bug about How To To Install Old Blogger Templates On New Blogger.

Amarok is a popular free audio player based on the K Desktop Environment. Right now, it's available only under Linux and other varieties of Unix, although the Windows version is to be released soon. There has been much talk already about how it is the best music management software. However, not many amarok users are aware of the powerful scripts that can be used to extend its usability further.

Amarok includes many useful features by default. Supported scripts and plugins, providing a huge new range of functionality, complete the package to bring you your ultimate music solution.

I have listed only some of the large number of scripts, ones I found especially useful for the average music lover. The whole list can be seen at the official Amarok Scripts Page.


Instant Messenger Support

Displaying your song information to your friends is the easiest thing to be done through amarok. Pidgin users can install the AmarokPidgin script which includes the broadcast of a variety of information including the Song, Artist, Album, Track Duration and the Elapsed Track Time. AmaroKopete allows Kopete users to do the same and more. Amsn-Amarok integration is also possible through amsn-now-listen. Other supported messaging clients include XChat, Skype, Gaim and Gajim.


Network Accessibility

Amarok supports a number of scripts that provide you with the ability to manage your music without actually sitting at your Desktop. The best script in this section is definitely Blueamarok. A Sony Ericsson mobile phone and a bluetooth dongle is all you need to control the functionality of your music player. Blueamarok allows you to control the basic functions of amarok, including play, pause, stop, previous/next song and volume control, through a bluetooth connection. Another script called the Amarok Shouter allows you to stream your songs to your friends computers through the internet. You can also manage the music playing on your computer from anywhere in the world using XUL Remote. All you need is a simple script and Mozilla Firefox web browser. Moreover, the connection is completely secure and requires a login/password authentication


Lyrics

A large number of lyrics scripts ensure that you have your favorite song's lyrics right in your music player. The more popular ones are Wiki-Lyrics, Lyrc and GoogLyrics. I have personally found GoogLyrics to be the most effective.


Other Scripts

The list of useful scripts and plugins can go on and on. Here are a few more that have helped me pretty much-

1) AmarokTube- Search for YouTube videos of songs directly from your Amarok playlist with a single click. The videos are, by default, opened in Firefox.

2) e-mail- Mail your songs to your kmail contacts.

3) MP3 Fixer- This small script fixes the various errors in an mp3 file.

4) transKode- transKode lets you transcode audio files from and to different formats. This is one of the most useful scripts for Amarok and support includes flac, ac3, mp4, mp3, ogg, spx and wav.

5) nightingale- Want to listen to music while going to sleep? This 'xmms goodnight plugin' parallel lets you do the same by shutting down the PC after the last song of the playlist. Moreover, it allows you to replace the shutdown function with anything else you want by simply editing the script.

Actually, the irony here is that the question is itself misphrased. The only solution to this problem is shifting to Old Blogger and all it requires is a few mouse clicks. Yet, I've seen many people relinquishing their preferred templates simply because they were originally designed for Old Blogger layouts. Here's a solution for all of them-

I have used the Pannamontata template named i-bot for this tutorial and you can temporarily see the effects on the Test Blog.

First you need to browse through your Dashboard to your blog's Template->Edit HTML section. Here, at the bottom of the page, click on "Revert To Classic Template". A new layout will appear in front of you. And now, your work's finished! You simply need to paste the code for the Old Blogger Template here and click on "Save Template Changes". At any later time, you can also revert back to Blogger Beta by clicking on the "Customize Design" tab and then on "Upgrade Your Template".

P.S: The i-bot template has a small bug which shows the profile image in it's original size. You can fix this by removing the profile image itself by deleting this line-

Technorati gets its thumbnailing done from an external and very popular service called Snapshots. You might have noticed it on a random site, while scrolling over a link or just plain text, a balloon pops up and shows you a small image of that site. This is very useful in case you don't want to visit the site and still want to have a look at its layout/appearance.



Anyway, I was reading their FAQs, and I found out that they updated thumbnails on request. So, to get your Technorati thumbnail updated, or to get the thumbnail updated on any site that uses Snapshots, use this link. Very easy, and the thumbnail usually gets updated in about 24 hours.

Another great tutorial on setting up a website can be found at- Site Helper

Can't see the video? Download and install adobe flash player.

IMPORTANT NOTE- This hack was perfectly simple and effective for downloading complete Photobucket albums, until sometime ago when Photobucket noticed it and took steps to make it unusable, also taking the liberty of deleting one of our pictures. But, luckily for you, we have found another hack for doing the same. Currently it works only on Linux and Mac systems, however we expect to make it work for Windows users as well. To stay updated about the new hack, keep checking this space- New Hack For Downloading Photobucket Albums.


So here was my problem- I needed to backup all of my 111 odd pics from my photobucket album. However, a little birdie at the Photobucket Forums told me that only Pro users could do something like this using something called a "Batch Download". However, another avid user helped me out to prove otherwise.
Here's how you proceed-

Firstly, this method works only for Mozilla Firefox. You can download it here- Mozilla Firefox Download.

Next, you'll need to install this extension for Firefox named "Down Them All"- Down Them All. This extension allows you to download all the images or links present on a webpage.

When both the browser and the extension has been installed, open Photobucket and sign in to your account. In your album, click on "view all".



Then, scroll down to the bottom of the page, check the "select all" option and click on "Generate HTML or IMG Code".



Once this is done, click on the very first "Preview" button in the webpage.



In the pop-up screen, right click and select "Down Them All".



From here, it's rather simple. you just have to select the pics you want to download and choose the destination folder. Voila!