Ifttt is a really handy tool for creating simple triggers that set off actions or tasks. It works off of what ifttt calls "channels" (a particular date & time, Foursquare, Facebook, Flickr, and Evernote are a few examples)

You might find that the "if this, then that" is a bit too simple for certain things you would like to do - I would have loved to see a little more complexity involved. For example, "if this and this, then that".

Here are a couple of examples:

• When your Facebook profile picture changes, update your Twitter profile picture as well
• Post to Facebook at midnight, January 1st (or any other time)
• Starred items in Google Reader -> Evernote
• If it's raining tomorrow, send me an email
• If you're tagged in a photo on Facebook, send it to Dropbox
• If photo is uploaded to Instagram, send it to Dropbox
• Flickr-favourites to Dropbox
• Archive all your Facebook statuses to Evernote

Ifttt is in beta at the moment, and it's free to sign up - but I don't suspect it will stay that way for very long.

Anyways, you might as well try it yourself and start making your own recipes: ifttt

No related posts.

An inconsiderate friend sent me a couple of .eml files with attachments that I had to look through. I downloaded the files and found that I had no associated application to open them. So instead of finding an application to open them, I thought I'd take a closer look at the files:

The top portion had a whole bunch of stuff I had no interest in whatsoever:

After all the HTML, I found the code for the attachment:

So I figured I just had to decode the Base64-encoded data and save it as the filename (in this case, a PDF)

The most logical thing at this point was to write my own application to do it. Just made a simple C# form with a textbox for the Base64-encoded data, a textbox for the filename to write to and a Decode button to get things going:

The Decode function is pretty simple:

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public byte[] decode(string data)
{
    byte[] output = Convert.FromBase64String( data );
    return output;
}

So feed the function the Base64 part and it spits out the good stuff that you just write to a file:

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FileStream fs = new FileStream(txtFilename.Text, FileMode.Create, FileAccess.Write);
BinaryWriter writer = new BinaryWriter(fs);
try
{
    for (int i = 0; i < decodedData.Length; i++)
    {
        writer.Write(decodedData[i]);
    }
}
finally
{
    writer.Close();
    fs.Close();
}

You can also just download the latest version of the app here: Base64 Decoder

The open file function is a bit experimental and does some .EML file clean-up.

It requires the .NET framework and no, it doesn't come supported, and I can't promise that I'll continue working on it.

Related posts:

1. Listing key Oracle Database files
2. Unlocker

That being said, I have to say I'm a big fan of Yahoo! Pipes, and I haven't been able to find an alternative that's as good.

The name is derived from the Unix pipe where simple commands can be combined together to create output that meets your needs.

Example

So here's a very simple example: let's say you have a specific RSS feed (in this example, the Guardian football RSS feed) you like - but you're only interested in very specific news (in this example, we only want content relating to Liverpool FC).

Go to Yahoo! Pipes and create a new pipe. Then add the RSS feed as input:

Click on the input-box and you should be able to see a preview of what the input is like:

Under the 'Operators' menu on the left, drag a 'filter' module into your pipe, add some rules and then connect the boxes together:

Click on the 'pipe output' box to see a preview of the new output:

Once you've saved your pipe, click on 'Run pipe' and get the output's RSS feed address:

I'm curious to see how others use Yahoo! Pipes - leave a comment if you think of something.

Related posts:

1. Use Google Reader to find out rough estimate of RSS subscribers
2. Firefox extension: DragDropUpload
3. Finding new photos on Flickr (almost effortlessly)

After Flickr redesigned their photo-pages, the script stopped working though, and people had to actually think of comments to write (terrible!). I finally took the time out today to update the script and now everybody can have generic-goodness available to them.

Also, if you would like to contribute to this terrible project by submitting generic comments of your own, feel free to send me an email here

Related posts:

1. Automatically insert rubbish Flickr-comments with Flickr-comment-generator
2. Flickr comment generator
3. Flickr modifies start page – and makes life harder

Find out who's faved your Tweets

http://favstar.fm

ReTweetist

Find out who's re-tweeted/RT'ed your tweets

http://www.retweetist.com

For even more tools, check out my previous post: Twitter Tools

Related posts:

1. Twitter tools
2. Ridding Twitter of Annoyances

Personally, I think this is the best Twitter client/interface I've used so far - they also have a version available for the iPhone.

Get Tweetdeck

TweetStats

Find out more about your Tweeting-patterns:

TweetStats

Twitalyzer

Find out about your Twitter 'influence', 'signal', 'generosity', 'velocity' and 'clout':

Twitalyzer

TweetPsych

This is interesting - build a psychological profile of a person based on the content of their tweets:

TweetPsych

Twitter Karma

Find out who isn't following you back and who you're not following:

Twitter Karma

BackTweets

Lets you search for links on twitter (even through URL shorteners). Useful if you want to see who's been tweeting about your website. They also have a WordPress plugin for it.

BackTweets

Twuffer

Twuffer is a "Twitter Buffer" that allows you to schedule tweets for a later time

Twuffer

Qwitter

Qwitter lets you know when someone has stopped following you

Qwitter

Did I miss something? Let me know in the comments. You can also follow me on twitter

Related posts:

1. More Twitter tools
2. Ridding Twitter of Annoyances

• Secure a public WiFi connection
• Bypass country-specific-content websites (e.g sites that only allow users from the U.S)
• Connect to a remotely-secured MySQL database via localhost

It's pretty easy to do in Linux (and I think the command is pretty much the same in MacOS or with cygwin installed):

ssh -L localport:hostname:remoteport username@Server

This is how to do it with Putty

Open Putty and enter in the basics: the Server and port (22):

Next, create the tunnel. Enter the source port (in this example, it's 3306 - a MySQL port) and leave the destination field empty (not always left blank, but it works for most cases)

The tunnel will be open/active as soon as you've logged in. Obviously, you still have to set up your proxy settings in whatever application you're using (for those who don't know, 127.0.0.1 is 'localhost'):

Related posts:

1. Photoshop tutorial: Creating detailed-masks from channels
2. Ubuntu: Installing Apache, PHP 5, and MySQL 5
3. Simple MySQL backup-script

I came across "Project Honey Pot", which is a distributed system for identifying spammers and the spambots. Simply said, IPs of your site's visitors are verified against the Project Honey Pot database and spammers are kicked out.

Participating in this network comes in 2 forms. You can either install a Honey Pot (which is pretty easy) or if you don't want to install a Honey Pot of your own, you can link to someone else's.

Installing Honey Pot on a server (optional)

Installing a Honey Pot is easy enough. Start out by visiting Project Honey Pot. Once you've signed up for an account, you can begin adding a Honey Pot:

Depending on your webserver's supported languages, you can choose from a bunch:

Once you've chosen your options, you can download the files and upload it to any accessible-directory on the site you specified. Just visit the site to activate it.

The next step, is to customize your blog or site in such a way that you can actually catch suspicious activity:

Plugin: WP-Honey Pot

In order to make use of your new Honey Pot (or a Honey Pot elsewhere), install WP-Honey Pot. WP-HoneyPot enables you to add a hidden link on your blog in one of several randomised locations to ensure that spammers are less able to adapt to the solution and once you are a contributing member to Project HoneyPot then you are able to use the http:BL (which I'll be getting to just now).

Once that's set up, you'll be doing your part in helping to catch email harversters, comment spammers and other suspicious folks.

Plugin: http:BL

The obvious next step, would be to block the spammers from your site. And that's where http:BL comes into the picture.

Once you've installed and activated the plugin, all you need to do is specify an API key (which you get from the Project Honey Pot site) and the URL to your Honey Pot of choice. And that's pretty much all there is to it.

This flow-chart sums up my Spam protection for the time-being:

So far so good:

If any of you have tried something similar, or tried what I described above, drop me a line below and let me know your experiences!

Related posts:

1. How to get rid of your CAPTCHA and still avoid spam
2. WordPress BlogInfo variables

Possible additions:

• More encryption algorithms
• Emailing functionality

Let me know if you find any major bugs.

Blowfish encrypt/decrypt

No related posts.

I created an AJAX application that generates somewhat generic comments for Flickr. But I soon realised that people would not use it unless it was completely simple and automated.

That's where GreaseMonkey comes into action. I've created a GreaseMonkey script that automatically retrieves a random flickr-comment and places it into the comment text-field of a picture. You get to choose whether you would like to publish the comment or not.

If you notice any bugs in the script, or any improvements I can make to the script - please let know.

Go to Flickr-Comment generator

Or download the script directly

Related posts:

1. Updated: Flickr comment generator
2. Flickr comment generator
3. Flickr modifies start page – and makes life harder