End User License Agreements (EULA's) and Word Count Tool

       I found a friend of mine I have been searching for on the web for some time.  He is a programmer and it got me to thinking... I should check the licenses on the software I link to.  I had been providing direct downloads using copies I had uploaded  for some of the soft ware as well as providing a link to the authors sites.

    I figured Google would not appreciate me offering downloads of their software, in this case Chrome Beta but though I might as well check.
    Proof that the big software companies do not want you to read their agreements, this turned out to be a 6398 word document.  The document is extremely long and complicated, for example I found this at Paragraph 16, Part b.2 (as opposed of course to part b. and b.1).  Not of the actual document mind you!  No this is at Paragraph 16, Part b.2 of the Appendix!  Lol!

Full text available here;

http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/eula_text.html

["b.2. Sublicensee shall not (i) circumvent the Content Protection Functions of either the Adobe Software or any related Adobe Software that is used to encrypt or decrypt digital content for authorized consumption by users of the Adobe Software, or (ii) develop or distribute products that are designed to circumvent the Content Protection Functions of either the Adobe Software or any Adobe Software that is used to encrypt or decrypt digital content for authorized consumption by users of the Adobe Software."]


    I guess it needs to be said, I just thought it was funny that there is a Paragraph 16 part b.2 of a document that probably hundreds of millions of people have signed and not read!  


    Did I count all 6398 words in the document?  Nope!  I used the easy web tool Word Count Tool available at;


http://www.wordcounttool.com/

    Just Copy your document to your clipboard, paste it in the window at Word Count Tool and click Submit!
    Works great, it's fast and no need to install anything on your computer, of course it only works while you are online!

TinyURL.com link shortener with custom naming feature

    Sometimes you want to give someone a link, whether in an email or on a webpage/blog but the link is either too long or ugly.  Try www.tinyurl.com, go to the site;

    Paste in a link from your clipboard.  My example is an Ebay page whose link has 127 characters, the fun part is the the "Custom Alias" feature which lets you name your link!  Here I have am using "green-glasses", all links begin with "http://tinyurl.com/" making my new custom link "http:/tinyurl.com/green-glasses".

My link went from 127 random characters to 32 hand picked, not bad!

    Now you can copy and paste your new custom named shortened link wherever you want!  TinyURL claim that their links will never break in an email and never expire!

    Chrome users may want to check out the goo.gl URL Shortener extension.  Unfortunately there is no custom naming ability, but no need to navigate to a new site either!

New features in Chrome

    When Chrome first came out I was pretty excited.  A faster browser that uses fewer resources!  I normally used Firefox, saving Internet Explorer for a couple of sites which do not work in Firefox, namely Microsoft Windows Updates and the Panasonic Toughbook Configurator site.
    Unfortunately, after trying Chrome a few times I stopped using it.  The problem was that at the time the browser did not support plug ins/ add ons/ widgets!  I was used to my Google toolbar with Spell Check, Auto Fill and the searchbars with the choice to search Google, Wikipedia, Amazon or Ebay.
    Well, Chrome has grown up! I'm using Chrome Beta as of May 2010.  It now supports plug ins called Extensions, and there some pretty cool ones!

   

     A Wikipedia Companion that opens up a little Wikipedia with search and Options

  Explain and Send Screenshots, image below which I covered in my post on Screenshots

 goo.gl, A built in URL shortener.  In true Google Minimalist fashon.  Click on it and  a tiny dialog bubble pops up, "Shortening..." and then your shortened URL in this case; http;//goo.gl/cP7u .

   No way to custom name your link, though which takes a lot of the fun out of it, for me!  I like www.tinyurl.com, but this one is fine if you don't care about naming the link and it is faster, since you don't need to navigate to the page.   There was a tinyurl plug in for firefox, but I could never get it to work right, or maybe it was the same problem with not being able to name the link...

    A weather applet, Gcast that never works, I keep it installed in hopes that it someday might!

    It has said that since I installed it.  I have my location in the correct boxes, it just doesn't work.  I guess maybe I should try uninstalling it and reinstalling it.

    There is also the very cool TinEye Reverse Image Search.  See an image on the web and wonder if there is a higher quality copy of the same image anywhere on the web?  Find your image online,

        Click on the Tin Eye icon on the toolbar,

    Click on the image you would like to search and a new browser window opens with your search results, I got 50 results for Harrison Fords eye in blade runner.

    Wading through these results resulted in a beautiful 720 by 480 shot, on a Ukrainian site!

    I had heard that image search technology was coming, but this is the best I have seen available to date.  If you have a picture of something you could use it instead of a search term.  The 50 results on my TinEye results page each had their own web page somehow referencing this seminal cinematic moment! 

    Oh, and don't worry you won't get stuck with an avcocado browser window in Chrome, that's just my Robots theme!

    To change your theme go to the Settings Wrench (Customize and control Google Chrome), Options, Personal Stuff, Themes: Get Themes. 

 This will take you to the Google Chrome Themes Gallery.

    You can choose from "Themes by Artists" or "Themes by Google"  just click apply theme and it will automatically download and apply!  No need even to restart Chrome!

    The official gallery site only has 150 or so themes at any one time, but you can also just perform a web search for Chrome Themes and you'll find plenty!

    Another cool Extension is called FastestChrome;  It adds a tiny quick search box when you select a word or phrase in your browser;

    Now you can just select and click on the Google or Wikipedia icon and search your term!  There are also some other weird search engines, WTF is Surf Canyon?  Duck Duck Go?

    Another very cool, must have feature of FastestChrome is the Endless Pages option which starts to load the next page of a web site when you near the bottom of a page! 

And it works great on most sites!!  It is actually a very nifty feature!

Download Google Chrome Beta

Get Google Chrome Extensions

How to capture a screenshot for your blog

    It took me a little practice to get good at capturing a screenshot and adding it to my blog, so I thought some of you might appreciate a couple of tips!

    I am using the PrtSc (Print Screen) button on my laptop to capture the screenshot.  This automatically Copies the visible part of the screen to your Clipboard.
    Next I open Paint and grab the select tool (the square dotted line on the left top of the sidebar), rightclick anywhere in the large white field and click paste.

    You will notice that the screenshot is surrounded by a dotted line (selected) while the image is selected go up to Image and click Crop.  This will keep the saved screenshot from having a large white border.
    Now is the time to make any extra comments or changes to the image like write comments.  I removed my email address using Paint's Eyedropper to pick the color, zoom in and use the Brush tool to paint out my email address.
    Your image is still too large to display  properly in a blogger window so I suggest you go back up to Image, Resize/Skew and type a percentage into both fields;

    This works to take an exact copy of what is currently visible on your screen. If you want to take capture the entire web page to save in an image format such as .jpg you can use the new Chrome Extension "Explain And Send Screenshots.

    There are options to " Grab visible part of this page"  "Grab a selected area" or "Grab the entire page"

    Notice the capture is a little different than the images captured using PrtSc.  Only the web page is visible, not all my tabs and Taskbar etc.  This my be better in some applications.  The ability to quickly comment on the page and to capture the entire page rather than just the visible part is also handy!