LastPass is a free password manager that works with IE and Firefox. It can also fill in forms and automatically log you in to your favorite websites. It is also able to import password from Firefox, IE, Keepass, etc.

Now some of you may be concerned about the security threat a password manager might bring. Not to worry, LastPass stores the login details in and encryted form of their servers. This information is decryted on your computer once you enter the main password/key for LastPass. This keeps the login info secure and prevents theft of the info while in transit from their servers.

Most people use the same password for most websites. This is a huge security risk considering that if one site is compromised you risk looking all your accounts. With LastPass, you can have strong, unique passwords for each site.

LastPass also has a portable version that can be installed on USB drives or portable Firefox.

Features of LastPass Password Manager

• One Master Password
• Automatic Form Filling
• One Click Login
• Secure Your Data
• Synchronize Across Browsers
• Store Secure Notes
• Import Existing Passwords
• Export your data to a text file
• Backup & Restore – Never lose another password
• Generate Secure Passwords
• Access your data anywhere

For some reason it didnt import my passwords from Firefox ! Madhur had a post of 10 password managers and this is the best one if found among them.

Try LastPass

This is a post from TechiePortal.

Online Password Manager that can Sync with Browsers

An ISO file is an archived image of a DVD or CD. It contains all the data of files contained on the archived CD/DVD and is stored in an uncompressed format. You can use the ISO image file to either burn the data onto a disk or mount it as a virtual drive on your computer.

If the file you downloaded was a program, game or some software chances are you want to mount the image as a drive on your computer so that you can install the software. If you just need to open the file to burn it, scroll down to next section.

How to Open ISO File – Mount as a virtual drive

Opening ISO files in Windows needs additional software. In this tutorial we will be using DAEMON Tools Lite. This is a freeware version that can emulate a virtual drive from the file. Install the software, make sure you do not install any additional toolbars or software that may come with the installer. Restart the computer.

1. Right Click the DAEMON Tools icon in the system tray.
2. From the Vitual CD/DVD ROM option, set the number of drives to 1.
3. You should be able to see a new DVD drive in My Computer! Now we need to mount the ISO file.
4. Again right click on DAEMON Tools choose Virtual CD/DVD ROM > Device > Mount Image
5. Now go to My Computer, you should be the new drive with a CD/DVD loaded in it.
6. Install or copy whatever you need from it. You can unmount the drive after use.

How to Extract Files from ISO File

This is very easy, common zip and rar programs can open the ISO file if you just need to extract files from it.

1. Download either 7-Zip (freeware) or WinRAR
2. Install it and make sure the ISO file is associated with it
3. Double click the ISO file and it will be opened with the program OR right click file > Open with > winrar or 7-zip
4. Extract files as needed.

Its better to mount software and movies rather than extracting files from it. Software sometimes require that it be run from a disk and might not install correctly when extracted. ISO files can also be burned to a CD/DVD as a copy of the original. We had written about Nero 9, it can also mount and burn ISO files. Download Nero 9.

Personally I used PowerISO for many years. It can extract, list, convert, mount, create and burn ISO files but is not free.

This is a post from TechiePortal.

Open ISO file – How to

1. Ripping to another DVD
2. Ripping to a file on hard disk
3. Ripping Dual Layer DVD into Single Layer DVD

How To Rip a DVD to another disk

To do this we are going to use a very popular and free software called DVD Decrypter which can bypass most of the common region code and macrovision protection on DVD’s. Download DVD Decypter

Install the program and run it. You should see a screen similar to the one shown below. Click on Mode from the menu and choose ISO > Write. Choose a location to save the file and click the decrypt button. This should start the decryption process.

Now that we have a saved .ISO file we can use DVD Decrypter to write the image onto a DVD.

Again go to Mode > ISO > Write. Choose the .iso file that was saved in the earlier process, insert a blank DVD into your computers drive and press the write button. You can optionally choose a write speed (Try to set it low around 2x to 4x). This will create a copy of the original DVD.

How To Rip DVD to a video file

To do this we will use DVD Decrypter and HandBrake

Run DVD Decrypter and from the menu choose Mode > File. Usually for a DVD movie the longest program chain is what we need and is automatically detected. Click the Decrypt button.

Now run Handbrake so that we can convert the files into a single video file. Click the Source button and choose DVD/VIDEO_TS option. Browse to the directory where the files are saved. Now choose the longest program chain (title) and select the location of the destination file.

Under Video options, format choose AVI or MP4 (iPod). If you are saving a movie you could sex size limitation at 700MB. I will not go into detail on the settings here. You can find all the information you need on settings at Best Settings for Handbrake. Click the Start button and go get a coffee while it saves the file for you.

How to copy a Dual Layer DVD to a Single Layer 4.7GB DVD

Follow the steps above ( Use DVD Decrypter > Mode > File) but do not use Handbrake. We will use DVD Shrink to compress the 7-8 GB files into 4.7GB so that they can be written on a normal DVD. You can download DVD Shrink from AfterDawn forums.

Install and open DVD Shrink. Click on Open Files and choose the location where you had saved the files using DVD Decrypter. DVD Shrink will take a few moments to analyze the contents.

As long as the green bar below the menu buttons in DVD shrink stays green and the size is below 4.7 GB everything should be fine. Click the Backup button to bring up the menu.

Insert a blank DVD into your drive, in the select backup target you have options to save the files on hard disk or write them to a DVD if you have Nero installed. Choose a folder for DVD Shrink to store the new files. Click OK.

The software should begin the encoding process after this completes it will start burning the disk using Nero if the option was selected.

(Optional) If you had choose the save to hard disk option you can write these files to a DVD at a later time. Just ensure that the DVD has 2 folder VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS. Paste all the files in the video_ts folder and burn them.

Hope you guys found this useful. There are some paid programs that make this process simpler but this is the basic way and I’ve been doing this for many years. If you know an easier way, do share your knowledge with us by leaving a comment.

Download DVD Decrypter, Handbrake, DVD Shrink

This is a post from TechiePortal.

How to Rip a DVD

I spent the whole day wondering why my visitors were so less, kept sending mails and tickets to my hosting company about it too. Finally realized that this was due to a combination of site downtime and the 404 error for posts. Having gone through this error twice on this blog before and once for my Mom’s blog, I immediately corrected it with the fix I will share below.

Anyways my hosting is also bad, too many downtimes on their part. I really need to move this blog over to a better host. Most of you bloggers are more experienced at that, so please leave a comment and give me some suggestions. Or mail me !

Fix for Wordpress 404 error on posts but homepage opens

1. Login to your Wordpress Admin area (http://yourdomain.com/wp-admin)
2. On the right menu click on Settings
3. Now click on Permalinks
4. If you are using a custom permalink copy it
5. Change the permalinks to a different type and save
6. Change the permalinks back to the old setting
7. Voila your Wordpress posts are working again !

I have setup a post page for monitoring on Montastic. Should save me a lot of trouble the next time this happens. So people lets hear about some good cheap hosts !

This is a post from TechiePortal.

Why does Wordpress rewrite .htaccess on its own ?

Nero 9 is an integrated digital media software suite. It contains everything you need to burn and rip DVD’s and even allows copying & editing music and movies. Another reason to download Nero 9 is due to its ability to import Powerpoint presentations and convert it to DVD video.

The Nero 9 suite includes 20+ application which can help you with many tasks. Here is a list

1. Nero StartSmart – Like a wizard that can help you find things in Nero
2. Nero Express -The Burning Engine of Nero 9
3. Nero ShowTime – DVD & Music Player
4. Nero CoverDesigner – Create labels for your DVD and print them
5. Nero Live – Watch and record TV
6. Nero Vision – The video editing and authoring program
7. Nero Live Gadget – Watch TV on Vista sidebar
8. Nero DiscSpeed – Test the speed and performance of your drive
9. Nero DiscCopy – Sidebar gadget, 1 click disk copy
10. Nero DriveSpeed – Reduce drive noise levels by controlling the reading speed
11. Nero WaveEditor – Audio editing and recording program
12. Nero BurnRights – Lets users without administrative rights burn discs
13. Nero SoundTrax – Mix music in a virtual multitrack music studio (DJ)
14. Nero RescueAgent – Recover files from damaged media
15. Nero Recode – Recode DVD movies to DVD or hard drive
16. Nero InfoTool – Info about installed drives, inserted discs, installed software
17. Nero PhotoSnap – Photo Editor
18. InCD – Use your rewritable disc like a big floppy disk
19. Nero PhotoSnap Viewer – Photo album software
20. Nero Burning ROM- Disv Burning software

Nero 9 Download

You can get a free trial download of Nero 9 or download Nero 9 Update. Nero is also offering 3 months of free online backup (1GB).

This is a post from TechiePortal.

Nero 9 Free Download

Email ID to image generators

Choose the one you like by clicking on the images below.

1 ) EmailCover

Captha images for your email ID ? Then this site is for you.

2 ) HideText

This site also has an option to save lots of text as an image. This can help to keep content from being indexed by search engines.

3 ) Signature Generator

This site has many options for depending on your email provider.

Lastly if you need to contact me just use the Contact form on this site, or send me an email to the address on the first pic.

This is a post from TechiePortal.

3 Email ID to image generators

I have tried my best to give links to the plugins page on wordpress.org.  This is because plugins get updated by author pages usually dont change forcing you to download older versions. Hope you enjoy this list.

Best Wordpress Plugins

SEO

1 ) Google XML Sitemaps

This plugin will create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog. Everytime you edit or create a post, your sitemap is updated and all major search engines that support the sitemap protocol, like ASK.com, Google, MSN Search, Bing and Yahoo are notified about the update. Plugin author page

2 ) All in One SEO Pack

Optimizes your Wordpress blog for Search Engines. Features include Canonical URLs, Nonce Security, Support for CMS-style WordPress installations, Automatically optimizes your titles for search engines, Generates META tags automatically. Plugin author page

3 ) Google Analyticator

Google Analyticator adds the necessary JavaScript code to enable Google Analytics logging on any WordPress blog. This eliminates the need to edit your template code to begin logging. Just add you Google Analytics’ UID and your all set. Plugin author page

4 ) Dagon Design Sitemap Generator

This plugin creates a sitemap for your WordPress powered site. This is not just another XML sitemap plugin, but rather a true sitemap generator which is highly customizable from its own options page in the WordPress admin panel. (You can see the sitemap for this blog on the top navigation bar)

Advertisment Management

5 ) Shylock Adsense Plugin

This plugin allows you to add advertisment code like adsense to different pats of a post without ever editing the template. It can handle up to 10 different codes, these codes can then be inserted into the top, middle or below posts. Also has options to show different ads based on the number of days since a post was published.

6 ) AdSense Now!

Aiming at simplicity, AdSense Now! does only one thing: it puts your AdSense code in up to three spots in your posts and pages. Enforces the Google policy of not more than three ad blocks per page. Control over the positioning and display of AdSense blocks in each post or page. Plugin author page

7 ) WP125

This plugin can help you manage those 125X125 ad spaces you have on your sidebar. Max 6 ad boxes, can auto deactivate an ad after set number of days. Shows ads in random spots and can track the number of times ads were clicked. (The tracking doesnt seem to work correctly, I see very high numbers) Plugin author page

Comment Management

8 ) Do Follow Plugin

The dofollow plugin for WordPress lets you remove the nofollow attribute from your comments. Removing the nofollow attribute means google will respect links from comments to the authors site. This encourages readers to comment more. (TechiePortal is a dofollow blog, so leave a comment)

9 ) Top Commentators Widget

The Top Commentators Widget a sidebar widget to show the top commentators in your WP site. You can easily change most of the options from the widget screen. Another way to encourage commenting. Plugin author page

10 ) reCaptha (Spam Control)

reCaptha is one of the best captha plugins for wordpress. It also helps to digitize books while stopping spam from spambots. Combine this plugin with wordpress’s built in Akismet and you will never see spam again. Akismet API Guide in case you need a API key.

11 ) Comment Mailer

Comment Mailer helps you maintaining the discussion on your blog by letting the commenters know that you have replied their comments on the comment section of your post. You have an option to choose who you are replying to and they get an email with their comment and your reply.

12 ) Comment Luv

CommentLuv enables you to reward your blog readers by leaving a titled link to their last post automatically whenever they comment thus encouraging more comments by more people on more posts!

13 ) Get Recent Comments

This plugin shows excerpts of the latest comments and trackbacks in your sidebar. You can let the plugin order the comments by the corresponding post, or simply order them by date. Plugin author page

14 ) OpenID

This plugin enables commenters to leave authenticated comments with OpenID. The plugin also includes an OpenID provider, enabling users to login to OpenID-enabled sites using their own personal WordPress account.

Wordpress Enhancement

15 ) Yet Another Related Posts Plugin

Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) gives you a list of posts and/or pages related to the current entry, introducing the reader to other relevant content on your site. Plugin author page

16 ) FD Feedburner Plugin

Redirects the main feed and optionally the comments feed to Feedburner.com. Just tell the plugin what your Feedburner feed URL is and you’re done. On this website I still use the old feedburner feedsmith plugin but cant seem to find a link for it anywhere. Plugin author page

17 ) Maintenance Mode Plugin

Adds a splash page to your blog that lets visitors know your blog is down for maintenance. Logged in administrators get full access to the blog including the front-end. For those times when you need to update your blog or take it down for testing something. Plugin author page

18 ) Enhanced WP Contact Form

Every blog needs a contact page so that readers or advertisers can contact you.  This plugin gives an easy contact form, embed it in a post or page by writing a shortcode. It has inbuilt spam protection, shows referrer info so you know what the person was doing on your site and more. Plugin author page

19 ) Firestats

Its an excellent stats plugin for WordPress and other self-hosted systems. Able to show deatiled informations about who’s visited, referrals, search engine terms, countries, browsers and popular pages on your blog. My blog shows the User Statistics (right sidebar, last widget) using Firestats. Featured on this blog earlier

20 ) WordPress Database Backup

You never want your MySql database to crash without a backup do you !?! This plugin helps you backup the wordpress database on a regular schedule. It can also mail the backup file to you, so you always have a backup. Plugin author page

21 ) RSS Footer

All those scrapbots out there using RSS feeds to take content blogs to build scrap sites. Now you finally have a way to make that work for you. This plugin makes it easy to add a line of content to the beginning or the end of all the articles in your feeds, for instance to display a link back to your blog. This gives you backlinks when those bots use your content. Plugin author page

22 ) Exec-PHP

The Exec-PHP plugin executes PHP code in posts, pages and text widgets. For those times when you need to put some PHP code into your sidebar or pages. Plugin author page

23 ) Insights

Insights brings a powerful new way to write your blog posts. It increases productivity and at the same time the appeal of your posts. With Insights you can search your blog for posts, edit them or insert links to them into the current post, insert Flickr Images, Youtube videos, Search and link to Wikipedia and a lot more without leaving your post !

24 ) WP Opt-in

For those of us who dont use aweber and do CPA marketting, this lil plugin allows you to collect email addresses from visitors. The front side of the ‘WP Opt-in’ plugin is a simple form with an e-mail input field and a submit button. By entering an e-mail address into the field and pressing submit, an e-mail is sent automatically to the specified address. Plugin author page

25 ) WP Greet Box

This plugin lets you show a different greeting message to your new visitors depending on their referrer url. For example, when a Digg user clicks through from Digg, they will see a message reminding them to digg your post if they like it.

26 ) Homepage Excerpts

Once you activate the plugin you will have the option to select how many posts to display fully in the homepage. Helps reduce the duplicate content penalty by Google for having duplicate content on your homepage.

27 ) Thumbnail For Excerpts

There are some solutions for you if you want to show thumbnails near excerpts of your posts. Thumbnail For Excerpts search the post for the first image. If exists, than it will search for the thumbnail created by default by WordPress for the image, if it was uploaded from WP administration area. If not, it will show the image itself (scaled).

28 ) Lightbox Plus

Lightbox Plus permits users to view larger versions of images without having to leave the current page, and is also able to display simple slide shows. The use of the dark or light background, which dims the page over which the image has been overlaid, also serves to highlight the image being viewed. Lightbox Plus captures the image title for display in the overlay. Plugin author page

29 ) WP-Cumulus

Seen those rotating spherical category boxes on some blogs. This is the plugin that makes them. WP-Cumulus allows you to display your site’s tags, categories or both using a Flash movie that rotates them in 3D. It works just like a regular tags cloud, but is more visually exciting. Plugin author page

30 ) Share This

Make it easier for your readers to bookmarks and submit your pages to social networking sites. If you would like to make your own, visit our Custom Social Networking code for Wordpress page.

Hope you liked this list of plugins. Leave a comment if you know any plugins you think are worth being mentioned. Help our readers discover more !

This is a post from TechiePortal.

30 Best Wordpress Plugin Collection

Installing Firefox 3.5 will overwrite your existing installation of Firefox. You won’t lose any of your bookmarks or browsing history, but some of your extensions and other add-ons might not work until updates for them are made available. You can reinstall an older version later if you wish to downgrade.

It also features the TraceMonkey Javascript engine which is twice as fast as the existing version (3.0.11). The new version also support HTML 5 audio and video support. A list of performance improvements can be found on the Under The Hood page as well as a list of tips.

Download Firefox 3.5

This is a post from TechiePortal.

Download Firefox 3.5

How to Submit a site to Bing

This is fairly simple. Visit the link below and add you site.

Submit URL to Bing

How to ping your site to Bing

There are 2 ways we can do this.

1) Bing has their own Webmaster Center like Google. Visit the Bing Webmaster Center Page and sign in with a live ID. You can then add your site and the sitemap URL.

2) Another way to ping Bing is by directly using their ping service. For this to work change the URL (red) to your blog’s sitemap file. Just paste the url in the browser’s address bar to ping.

http://www.bing.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?siteMap=http://alfred.co.in/sitemap.xml

Incase you do not have a XML sitemap, you can use the Google XML Sitemaps plugin in wordpress to make one. Also read our list of 90 Blog Ping Services list to add in wordpress.

This is a post from TechiePortal.

How to Submit site to BING or Ping Bing

In order to do this, we are doing to install a very popular codec pack. K-Lite Codec Pack is a collection of codecs and tools. Codecs are required to play audio and video. With the K-Lite Codec Pack you should be able to play 99% of all the movies that you download from the internet.

This codec pack also allows you to make thumbnails for FLV and other file types. While going through the installation, on the “Select Additional Tasks” screen, scroll down and choose to file types for which you require thumbnails.

Enjoy the new thumbnails. I recommend using GOM Player to play videos. We also have a list of Free Media Players that opens most video formats.

If you know another way to get this done, do let us know by leaving a comment.

Download K-Lite Codec Pack

This is a post from TechiePortal.

How to show thumbnails for FLV files (Flash) in Vista