Sunday, November 25, 2012

How to Root Your Samsung Galaxy S3... and Why? Top 3 Root-Required Apps

Rooting your Samsung Galaxy S3 has become quite the straight-forward process thanks the mskip over at XDA-Developers. Check out the guide HERE.

But WHY root your brand new phone? The number one reason is that you will gain the ability to use many valuable apps and you will gain full access to your phone's storage. Without root access, you can only manipulate data on your sd card... and so can your apps. With root access, both you and your apps can manipulate data on the actual root storage of your phone.

Here are my top 3 must-have root-required apps:

  1. Titanium Backup
  2. Root Explorer
  3. Avast! Mobile Security (see my other post on Avast!)

    

Friday, November 23, 2012

Want to use Android on your Windows Mobile smartphone? Here's how!

There are a number of good Windows Mobile based smartphones out there, mainly HTC produced phones like the HTC Touch Series. Now that Windows Mobile is antiquated and you probably don't want to drop $200 + contract on a brand new phone, you can rather bring some Android life to your Windows Mobile phone. The best part, Dual Boot is supported with Gen.Y DualBOOT over at XDA Developers. Check out this video and you'll be hooked...


    

Thursday, November 15, 2012

Facebook Page Delete Post Function is Broken

While using Facebook tonight to manage a 'page' I noticed that the Delete Post functionality is currently broken. Take a look at the screencap below. There is a 500 (Internal Server Error) associated with a javascript file on Facebook's CDN. This is a disappointment in quality code control. This shouldn't be happening at a publicly traded mega site like Facebook. If you are experiencing this error, all we can do is wait for Facebook's fix to be released and distributed across the CDN. Not fun when page moderation is needed.


Tuesday, November 13, 2012

Google Chrome v.23: New Ruler Feature

With the release of Chrome version 23, you are in for a pleasant surprise! The developer tools (F12) now offer a horizontal and vertical rule built-in to the browser window when inspecting elements.
  1. Right click an element on the page and click "Inspect Element"
  2. Developer Tools will open at the bottom of your screen
  3. Hover over any element in that window and you'll see it highlighted in your browser...
  4. and there will be horizontal/vertical rules
Now guessing at positioning and sizing is made much easier. Thanks Google!

Friday, November 9, 2012

Chrome's Hidden 'Empty Cache and Hard Reload" Feature

Sick of having to clear your cache in Chrome while developing? Going through the Chrome option menu takes much too long. There is an easier way!
  1. Open Developer Tools by pressing the F12 key
  2. Click and hold Chrome's reload button
  3. You will get a sub-menu with 3 options
    1. Normal Reload (ctrl + r)
    2. Hard Reload (ctrl + shft+ r)
    3. Empty Cache and Hard Reload (no shortcut unfortunately)
  4. Select the 3rd option and enjoy a fresh page load with the cache cleared all in one simple click


There is also an easy way to clear your cookies:
  1. Open Developer Tools by pressing the F12 key
  2. Click the Network tab
  3. Right click anywhere inside the Network display area
  4. The last 2 options are:
    1. Clear browser cache
    2. Clear browser cookies
Hopefully this makes things even better for your Chrome development!

This write-up was done on Chrome version 22


Thursday, November 8, 2012

Google's Disavow Tool: Long awaited and quite ominous

It is no secret that many webmasters and SEOs have long awaited Google's backlink disavow tool. After Panda and Penguin, bad backlinks have become toxic to a website's SEO efforts. Now that Google is allowing webmasters to disavow bad backlinks, the problem is solved right?

Wrong. As typical, as one problem is solved another is created. Let's take a look at an all too real hypothetical example.

Website A has 1,000 backlinks and took a big hit in rankings after the Panda and Penguin updates. The webmaster doesn't know what to do. The webmaster calls the SEO who is in a state of panic and buried with emails and phone calls. Why? Because every one of the SEO's clients is having an SEO meltdown. Giving up on the SEO, the webmaster decides to research why the big drop in rankings occurred... the verdict: bad backlinks. The webmaster now starts hunting down bad backlinks - any links with unnatural anchor text, spammy content, biased one-sided content links, pretty much anything that wasn't generated by an actual fan or customer. What to do with all these links? Well the webmaster spent so long building them, it is now time to start removing them, but the links are on sites out of the webmaster's control. Google finally releases the disavow tool, allowing the webmaster to indicate which links are bad and should not be counted in Google's search ranking algorithm. The webmaster kicks back and starts generating quality content... it is all over. Or is it?

Lets say that 400 of the 1000 backlinks were disavowed by the webmaster. Well now the webmaster has effectively reported around 400 websites to Google as having no value. The webmaster's friends have done the same. Now that the webmaster is generating real quality content, there is no place to put it. All the webmaster's favorite article and blog posting sites have been mass-reported to Google via the disavow tool and hold little value now.

What is the answer? Generate content worth sharing. Share it yourself on social networks (embrace Google+) and encourage your fans and customers to share the content as well. Participate in conversations on social sites and forums and offer real valuable content.

YOUR CONTENT IS YOUR NEW PRODUCT. IT IS YOUR NEW "LINK-JUICE"
Generate good quality content regularly and offer value first and foremost. This can be easier than it may seem once you have established a good methodology for it. Schedules, ordered lists, and brainstorming once a week can provide enough direction for a month of good content. I will be glad to share my tips on content generation, so keep check for that. Be sure to share this content and check back for more updates and tips.

ColdFusion: How to Get Image Dimensions

Starting with ColdFusion 8, you can easily check the dimensions of an image server side. No, I am not referring to <cfimage> which is overkill for many image related tasks IMHO. What I am referring to is imageInfo. The process is actually simple: create a ColdFusion image variable then check the properties of the image.

<cfset cfImage = imageNew(newfile)>
<cfset imageData = imageInfo(cfImage )>
<cfset vars.imageWidth = imageData.width>
<cfset vars.imageHeight = imageData.height>

Raymond Camden has an excellent write-up on this HERE, which is summarized above.