Family Tree Builder

1. I have a big family which keeps on expanding
2. I live far away from most of them
3. I have terrible memory (being old and things like that... you know)

Those are my top three arguments why I sometime (or often) forget about things related to my family. Some examples: the date of my parent's marriage, my brother in law's birthday, or even the name of my one year old cousin. Now I'd like to say goodbye for all those fake arguments by introducing a geeky way to keep all family-related information in a sophisticated way: Family Tree Builder.


Family Tree Builder is a genealogy software (for Windows only) which can be downloaded for free at http://www.myheritage.com/family-tree-builder. I like this software a lot, especially since it offers some nice features such as: integration with myheritage.com (allows me to share and let others review the information on the web, though without capability of multi-user editing), photograph for every family member (and events), event reminder (birthday, marriage, etc), and also possibility to input unsure information for date (i.e. birthday around January 1982).

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Modifying Google Translation Button to Open Translation in New Tab/Window

The translation button from Google has proved to be very useful in most situation (by me), especially since the language detection was introduced. However, I feel that there is something lacking. The problem is that the translation generated replaces the current active window/tab while sometimes I prefer to have another window/tab open. The translation button itself is a JavaScript, so we can play with is just a little bit. Here is the original code for translation button (I use the code for translation into English):

javascript:
var t = ((window.getSelection&&window.getSelection()) || (document.getSelection&&document.getSelection()) || (document.selection&&document.selection.createRange && document.selection.createRange().text));
var e = (document.charset || document.characterSet);
if (t!='') {location.href='http://translate.google.com/translate_t?text=' + t + '&hl = en&langpair=auto|en&tbb=1&ie=' + e;} else {location.href='http://translate.google.com/translate?u=' + escape(location.href) + '&hl = en&langpair=auto|en&tbb=1&ie=' + e;};

In order to make the translation to be opened in a new window/tab, we just have to make a bit change in it:

javascript:
var t = ((window.getSelection&&window.getSelection()) || (document.getSelection&&document.getSelection()) || (document.selection&&document.selection.createRange && document.selection.createRange().text));
var e = (document.charset||document.characterSet);
if (t!='') {var myWindow=window.open('http://translate.google.com/translate_t?text=' + t + '&hl=en&langpair=auto|en&tbb=1&ie='+e,'Translation','')} else
{var myWindow=window.open('http://translate.google.com/translate?u=' + escape(location.href) + '&hl=en&langpair=auto|en&tbb=1&ie=' + e,'Translation','')};

If you hate this kind of stuff, just drag and drop the link below to your browser toolbar:
Translate to English

I hope this is useful. Please let me know if you have a better idea. Obviously, any questions are welcome.

edited: thanks for the suggestion

Related Posts

• Creating a One-Click Web Page Translation Button
• Google Translation Now With Language Detection
  

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Google Translation Now With Language Detection

It is a bit surprising that only 3 days since I post about Creating a One-Click Web Page Translation Button, Google Translation now includes another cool feature: language detection. So, instead of picking source and destination language now you can just select the destination language and let Google decides the source language. You can update the translation button here. You might also notice that the number of supported languages has increased quite a lot. The number of possible translation also increased drastically from 31 pairs to more than 500 pairs!

Related post

• Google Translate Becomes the Best Free Online Translator (external link)
• Creating a One Click Web Page translation Button
• Modifying Google Translation Button to Open Translation in New Tab/Window
  

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Creating a One-Click Web Page Translation Button

For someone like me who live in a foreign country with unfamiliar language, a translation tool is everyday necessity. My favorite tools for web translation so far are Google Translation and Altavista's Babelfish. However, I feel a little bit uncomfortable when using them in my usual way. It is because the process is too long and not straightforward.

Usually the sequence of web translation is like this:
1. Open a website with unfamiliar language
2. Copy the website's URL or the specified texts to be translated
3. Open web translator tool, paste the URL or the texts
4. Translate it

The sequence is not natural, what I really want to do are:
1. Open a website with unfamiliar language
2. Translate it (or select some texts and translate it)

I tried some extensions for my browser. Mostly the extensions are too sophisticated and complicated, while what I need is just a simple tool. After a bit of searching, I found that Google actually have the tool that I need, and it is very simple. Just go to here (I'm using English as my base language) and you will see this:


Drag the translation button you need to the browser's toolbar. Now you have the translation button. To use it, you just need to open a website and click the translation button, or select some texts before do so.

Related post

• Google Translation Now with Language Detection
• Modifying Google Translation Button to Open Translation in New Tab/Window
  

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Portable Applications

Are you working with several computers? Do you have some favorites application that is not available at your workstation? Do you have problem on installing your software because you don't have the priviledge to do it?

If you at least have one question answered yes, you probably will like portable applications. Portable Applications is just like another applications, except that they are... portable. It is designed to fit on your flash disk, iPod, external drive, or whatever. It involves no installation at all, no set-ups, no registry changes, and no whatsoever. Imagine all your favorite software in a single flash disk, you can pick any PC to work with, and still you have all the applications you need.

The applications are vary from Operating System to games, which virtually means that you have everything there. You can use Notepad++ for your editor, XAMPP for web developers, GIMP for image manipulation, FileZilla FTP Client, the amazing Mozilla Firefox, a complete OpenOffice suite, and many other things. You can check out the list of portable applications on wikipedia or on portable applications website, and yes, there's still a ton of applications that aren't on the list. You might want to check out the portable applications suite as well, a package that includes a set of commonly used applications.


Since Portable Applications are usually a modification from its conventional counterpart, it is only possible for applications in open source license. Commercial licenses in general won't permit any redistributions. Free applications with commercial license on the other hand permit redistributions, but not modifications. So most of the time you will find portable applications as a free, open source applications. Not bad at all.

Altough I'm not working with so many computers, I still found that portable applications are very useful. Its characteristics (not require any installation, leaving almost no "footprint") are remind me of a old-good days of the famous Disk Operating System (DOS). No installation required, and even if there is, most of the time it is just the same as copying a bunch of files to harddrive and that's all. Even uninstalling is just a simply files removal. No traces left. A clean and simple solution. Just love it.

Image taken from: http://portableapps.com/
Inspired by: http://brahmasta.net/2007/03/14/aplikasi-portabel/ (Indonesian)

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Firefox Add-ons: Snaplinks and Linkification

Two reccommended add-ons for your Firefox!

Snap Links allows users to easily open multiple links in new tabs by drawing a box around them. Links can also be opened in new windows, new tabs on a new window, copied to clipboard, bookmarked or downloaded. I mostly use it to (lazily) open multiple links into new tabs or as a replacement for a standard procedure: right click - open link in New Tab.

snap links screen shot

Linkification on the other hand, is a very simple yet useful add-ons. It converts text links into a genuine, clickable links. No more copy and paste to the address bar! I found it works perfectly with snap links...

Open this (Snap Links) and this (Linkification) if you are interested.

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Me and DNS

Several weeks ago I had a problem with DNS (Domain Name Service). Because of some situation I had, I couldn't get the access to the ISP DNS Server. That's why I used to use some free DNS server somewhere else. I was quite happy with this until one time the DNS Server performed poorly. I experienced some failure names tracking and some downtimes. Since I use 80% of my life surfing in the net (Okay, I'm exaggerating...) this is quite disturbing. I tried to find some more free public DNS but none of them could satisfy me.

Frustrated, another idea popped up in my mind. Rather than using some external DNS Servers, why don't I just try to make one for myself? Being 100% aware that I couldn't create my own DNS software for my XP system, I tried to find some on the net (How did I do that without DNS Server?). Then I found a very good application called SimpleDNS and there goes my problem. Finished? not yet... SimpleDNS is not a free software, and it only gave me 15 days trial (actually it expired in one days, strange enough huh?). Therefore I tried to find an alternative: BIND. Unlike SimpleDNS, BIND is not that easy to use, especially when you're not in the mood to do that. Luckily, after some extensive search, I found Treewalk, a program that's perfectly fit to my requirements! It's easy, simple, and on top of that... it also free for personal use.

For you who want to find an alternative, I found this website: OpenDNS which I think quite promising though I never use it. My only regret is that I found this website quite long enough after I overcame my DNS problem... :P

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