TechLifeWeb

Sites that I found interesting for June 14th 2009 through June 15th 2009:

• A New Type of Cloud? – undulus asperatus, Latin for "turbulent undulation."
• No Experts Exchange for Greasemonkey – @kevinthompson on Twitter wrote this handy script for Greasemonkey on Firefox to block Google search results that point to Experts-Exchange. You would know if you need this script, trust me.
• Build a DIY Windows Home Server – via @isdixon on twitter.

Sites that I found interesting for April 2nd 2009 through April 5th 2009:

• Late Roman village found near Salzburg – Workers found the remains of the village which is thought to date back to the 5th to 7th centuries at a 6,000-square-metre site for construction of a home for pensioners at Anif-Niederalm in the Flachgau region.
• Troys Twitter Script for Greasemonkey – Nested Replies, Custom Search Tabs, Autocomplete, Pagination, RT button, Media Embed, URL Expansion, Hash Tag Search Links, Social Links
• Behind the scenes at Netflix – Pictures of a Netflix warehouse operation

Sites that I found interesting for March 16th 2009 through March 18th 2009:

• Amazon Sued For Kindle – Amazon.com was sued today by Discovery Communications for patent infringement by its Kindle e-book reader, the parent of The Discovery Channel and Animal Planet.
• Students tie £56 camera to balloon and send it to edge of space to capture stunning images of Earth –
• Twitter Search Results on Google for Greasemonkey – It displays the most recent 5 tweets for the query that you are search for, giving both real-time Twitter search results and Google results on the same page

One of my favorite applications for Twitter is TweetDeck. TweetDeck comes as close to my idea of the Ultimate Twitter Client as there is. It lets me set up groups and watch keywords and arrange a sort of dashboard to keep track of everything.

The main downside to this is if something goes wrong. Once you set up a group and add lots of people only to later accidentally delete it you will know what I mean. All that time down the drain. Additionally, the settings are local to your computer. If for some reason you have to do a clean reinstall of Windows or you move to another computer, all your carefully crafted settings are left.

To remedy this situation I wrote 2 Windows batch scripts. One for back up and the other to restore. They are meant to be run from a USB memory stick or other location but you can put them anywhere.

Running the backup script will create a subdirectory in the location where you run the file and copy all your TweetDeck settings there. For example, if you put the backup and restore scripts in a folder called h:\backup and your run the backup script, it will create a folder called h:\backup\tweedeckbackup and copy into it all your TweetDeck settings.

The restore script does the reverse, copying files from the special subdirectory (h:\backup\tweedeckbackup in my example above) into where you have TweetDeck installed.

The scripts are contained in this zip file. Unzip it to your USB stick or anywhere you want to put the files.

tdbackup.zip

The scripts are commented so you can see what they are doing. Open them in notepad if you want to see how they work. I have used them on Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7.

Update to clarify restoring:

If you run the backup script from a USB memory stick and you want to move them to a fresh install, first install TweetDeck. Then run the restore script. This will put back all of your preferences including notification settings, groups, search queries, layout and colors.

UPDATE: 28JAN09 4:20PM

I just discovered the wrong versions of the files were included in the zip file. They should work but I redid them to work better with network drives and be more efficient.

UPDATE: 16MAR10 11:40PM

I discovered some settings were not being backed up. I believe these are new settings that were not present in Tweetdeck when I wrote the original script. These center around all the settings related to the different accounts you may have set up through Tweetdeck. All of these should now be preserved.

Sites that I found interesting for November 7th 2008 through November 10th 2008:

• Twitter Ajax Reload – GreaseMonkey script for Firefox. Reloads Twitter every two minutes using Ajax. A countdown is shown above the last status. If there is any text in the status box reloads are postponed. You can change the time if you know how to edit the script. Script is well documented so it isn't hard.
• Fixing the HD PVR BSOD – Andy's how-to for fixing problems with the Hauppauge HD PVR.
• Understanding and Aligning the Value of Social Media – While social media should be a part of any forward-thinking and transparent company, I would urge caution if you believe that you can monetize it easily or quickly. It’s also not a magic pill for traffic building.

Sites that I found interesting for October 30th 2008 through November 3rd 2008:

• Most Wanted Ajax Techniques: 50+ Examples and Tutorials – This list is made up of the best 50 FREE scripts available, they are all of the highest quality and more or less easy to configure.
• 40 Beautiful Free Icon Sets – Six Revisions – 40 beautiful, free icon sets that you can use in a variety of ways (websites and/or your desktop). In total, you’ll find close to 3000 invidual icons showcased in this article.
• Announcing MeshPack – Live Mesh is a unified computing environment that gives data access, device access and synchronization for all my important data and software. This means I can access anything I need from all my computers, from a web browser, and even from my smart phone. Mesh also supports sharing so that I can give someone access to a folder. It’s nicely integrated with the desktop and has a great web interface. For more information on what will ship in the first version check out www.mesh.com.