This blog will hold favorite gadgets and graphic user interfaces that don't really fit in my main blog @ mmcelhaney.blogspot.com
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Pay Pal Donation Widget- Updated
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Geek Chart - Your Geek Chart
Mmcelhaney's Geek Chart
Geek Chart - Your Geek Chart
Posted using ShareThis
Blogger's Buy me a Beer - Paypal donation
Adding Google sitemap to blogger.com blog account
I just found a great article on how to add a Site Map to
Google for a blog hosted at Blogspot. Read the following link from Wikipedia to understand why you would want do this. And here is a the link for how you would do this: Adding Google sitemap to blogger.com blog account
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Tag Cloud Generator
Tag Cloud Generator
Make Cloud
Blogger Feed uRL
Individual post visitor counter with Google Analytics ~ Blogger Tips and Tricks
Although there is not an easy way to get the number of views on individual posts in blogger there is a way to get an idea of how many visits there are per post using Google Analytics! Trust me, I'm going to be using this little hack.
Individual post visitor counter with Google Analytics ~ Blogger Tips and Tricks
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Commenter Widget

Here is a great widget I found from WidgetForFree. It is easily installed in Blogger and list the top commenters out of the last 100 comments. Who has commented the most? This is how you find out.
Further info and Installation
Monday, August 17, 2009
Blogumus - Animated Tag Cloud
Thursday, August 13, 2009
How to Change the Favicon in Blogger
I came across this great article on how to change the FavIcon in the addressbars of browser. This is a nice little tactic.
How to Change the Favicon in Blogger
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Monday, August 10, 2009
Issuu Now With Better API

We have a good news. We can do more with Issuu. Here is an article talking about the new features..Issuu Now With Better API’s
Posted using ShareThis
Thursday, August 6, 2009
Creating Free Flash Websites

I have heard about a service that allows you to build flash websites and widgets for free. You just go to Wix.com and it allows you to pull almost any popular flash trick you have seen using drag and drop technique. It makes it really simple! Here is an example:
Free website - Wix.com
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
Adding Polls to Web Site/Blog

I have found 2 ways to put polls in your blogger post. Most tools allow you to put polls into the side bar of your site, but if you want to put it in your post you have to go through a little work.
1. Method One -
I like this method just fine. You just use the widget for installing a poll into the blog and then copy and past the HTML for generating into the post that you want.
2. Use a service like PollDaddy. You get a free account, design the poll, and then get the code to make the poll as a flash object. Then you can paste it where you want it. This my preferred method!
Tweetstream

Here is a cool tool that allows users to add near real-time twitter stream to any website or blog. You can get it at TweetSteam.
Tweet-A-File

I've just come across another Twitter tool designed to allow users to share files with one another. This one is pretty cool. Just login using your twitter account, browse for the file on your computer you want to send, and then send it. The homepage is at Tweetafile.
Monday, August 3, 2009
Addendum to Summarizing Blog Posts

As I mentioned in the previous post there is a way to automatically summarize your blog posts with thumbnails. However I found the problem that when you go to the full post, you can't return back to the listing without hitting the "back" button on your browser. So I added a code to add a link to allow the user to return to the main pages. Add the following to the next line after the the steps proscribed.
<p><a href="[URL]">Return to main page</a></p>
Sunday, August 2, 2009
Summarizing Posts on a Landing Page

I have looked at some ways of trying to change my blog to make it more user-friendly. One suggestion made by friend Mariano suggested that I add the function of summarizing my blog posts on the main page and giving the reader the option of reading further. The idea is to make the blogs load faster and make it more easier to use.
Mariano suggested a method where each post is summarized in the HTML using small changes in the blog's template and in the post itself. This method is great because it give you so much control over what the post looks like when the blog loads. The problem is that in order to take advantage all older posts will have to be augmented but every new post will have the structure in place and I am too lazy to add the HTML to the older posts because I have blogs containing more than 500 posts. Here is the code on how to make it happen from Mariano himself and you can visit Mariano's blog, Atheism is Dead, to see it in action.
I have found another alternate method to do something similar. I like this method a little better because it automatically summarizes the posts and puts a thumbnail of the first image in the post in the summary. In order to pull it off, you just need to follow the steps in the following website: Automatic Post Summaries for Blogger with Thumbnails. You have control over how many words are in the summary as well as quite a few other things.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Scientific Calculators
Image by D-Kav via Flickr
Maths-Whizz Scientific Calculator
This one is great for a blog or website and completely free. It has all the functions and features I crave. Had I had it college, I would have needed no other calculator. As for some of the pre-built features that other calculators have like converting units of measure, I don't need those. I'd rather convert them myself.
eCalc
This one I liked too, but it seems to be best for a desktop uses. The other things is that it's not free - $15. Good freeware, however.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
True Twit for Twitter

Get tired of spam tweets? How do you know if the person you are considering to follow isn't a script "bot" but a real person? I just found out about a service called True Twit that is a third party verifier. It a twitter user can respond to the service the person is added to your followed list otherwise the tweeter is ignored.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Zemanta - Blog publishing Tool
Image via CrunchBase
Zemanta TypePad from zemanta on Vimeo.
It's different from Apture in that the tool is part of the browser and not part of your blog.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
Twit This

I just saw a tool I liked for twittering blog posts called Twit This. It is used to easily tweet a post with the press of the a button. What's different is that you can select a word or phrase that answers the Twitter question "What are you doing?" with your link in your post to the Twitter stream. It's pretty cool. If you want to use it follow the following link: http://twitthis.com/tools and Cranial Soup.
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Recent Posts Widget for Blogger with Thumbnails and much more..

I just found ot about a great little gadget that lists the latest posts of your blog. apparently, you can put it anywhere that accepts HTNL. It's pretty Cool. Get it here and see it in action in the left side bar.
Monday, July 20, 2009
Automating Excel from VB.Net - Link to Excel Lost
I've been maintaining some software of years that i wrote that compares inventory data with GIS data. It uses some of Excel's spreadsheet function to pull this off. I use Excel's object library to get the effect. It's worked great until recently and ironically the problem shows up most consistently on the fastest computer I've ever used at work up until now. In the middle of processing, I've been getting an error message that says that the "link to the spreadsheet has been lost" and then the program crashes. For days I could not find the problem. But then when I stepped through through the VB.Net code stey-by-step the program worked then I realized it was because I allowing the steps in Excel to finish before the rest tof the program continued. It turns out that because my program and Excel are being processed in different threads, the Excel thread could be lagging behind my code. I have had to put code into a function in VB that tells the processor to pause for a certain number of milliseconds. 1000 milliseconds is 1 second. Therefore
System.Threading.Thread.Sleep(10000)
makes the program pause for 10 seconds which would give the excel thread 10 more seconds to complete what it is doing. It's my theory.
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Tweeting Music via Blip.fm
Friday, July 17, 2009
Get Paid For Clicking Ads
If you are interested, follow the following link, register, and get clicking.
Get the Bar
Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Publishing Links

If you have used Twitter or Facebook then you know that sometimes you want to post a link to website but many urls are long and hard to use and in twitter it can really eat up your 140 characters. I mean you could use TweetDeck or some other third party tool to shorten your URL to something more manageable. I found this online tool called bit.ly and it will shorten any URL you put into it and also allows you to tweet the link in twitter, and even tracks the number of times someone clicks on the link.
bit.ly
Twitter Tools: File Social.com
Monday, July 6, 2009
Tecmo Koei Boss Implores Sony For "Welcomed" PS3 Price Cut
from G4 TV - TheFeed
Undoubtedly, there are quite a few gamers out there who would love to see Sony drop the price of the PlayStation 3, if only to prove that analysts can still make solid predictions every now and then. Well, it seems gamers aren't the only ones hoping Sony's heart (as well as its install base) grows three sizes sometime soon.
In a recent interview with CVG, publisher Tecmo Koei's CEO Kenji Matsubara reveals that he's been consistently pressing Sony for a "welcomed" PS3 price drop for some time now.However, Matsubara explains that while a price cut would obviously expand the PS3 market, "It's Sony's strategy, and I don't know their cost structure. Sony introduced cutting-edge technology in the PS3, that's why people in the industry accept that the PS3 cost is so high, but we'd welcome a price cut."
Matsubara's is an unsurprising position, but it's also one that reflects the feelings of most gamers who have yet to make the PS3 plunge strictly because of its price point. A price drop is coming sooner rather than later, so now it's really just a waiting game to see when exactly Sony wants its hardware sales to skyrocket.
Source


