Will I teach my kid 'A for Apple' or 'A for Android'?

As a soon-to-be-father I was thinking that very soon I will have to teach my kid ABC alphabets :)
I started with A for Apple and when I reached F, the first word which came was Facebook! Funny enough, I decided to start all over again, this time writing down what I am calling the Alphabets of the Web 2.0 and Social Media.

A - Android
B - Blog
C - Collaboration
D - Del.icio.us
E - Email
F - Facebook
G - Google (of course)
H - HowStuffWorks (hardest one to come up with)
I - iPhone
J - Joomla!
K - Kindle
L - LinkedIn
M - Mashable
N - Ning
O - Open Source
P - Profile
Q - Quora
R - RSS
S - Second Life
T - Twitter
U -
V - Virtual Worlds
W - Wiki
X - Xbox? Coudn't find better
Y - YouTube
Z - Zoho

I haven't been able to find anything starting with U :(  Have you?

Upgrading Joomla 1.6.3 to 1.7

A couple of months ago I deployed Joomla 1.6 and I am now having to upgrade to 1.7. This latest version doesn't come with major changes from an admin perspective.
After August 2011 Joomla! will not be releasing security updates for Joomla 1.6. It is thus recommended to upgrade to 1.7.  This is the last of the short cycle releases until Joomla 1.8 scheduled for January 2012 reaches. The latter is planned to run for 15 months.

Anyway life was made easy with the one-click upgrade button. Here's a quick step-by-step guide.

1. Open your Joomla! Backend administration page.
2. Go to Extensions --> Extension Manager

3.Click on 'Purge Cache' button (located in upper right corner)

4.After that click on 'Find Updates' button next to 'Purge Cache'

5.Select the Joomla check-box in the results list and click on 'Update'

6. Notice the new version of your Joomla! installation after successful update.

Am happy that my templates and add-ons still work properly for now. A mail just popped in saying that CB is now 1.7 native. Great!

MediaWiki Tip: Enhancing your search results with tags

MediaWiki has many limitations with regards to its search engine.Sometimes searching for 3 to 5 letter words does not return any result.It is also known that the Wiki engine is limited in terms of syntax and functionality.

The use of search extensions such as Lucene (http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:Lucene-search) will help overcome the setbacks of MediaWiki's search facility.

Personally I haven't tested any of those extensions. Running a relatively small corporate wiki hasn't given need for advanced search requirements  - at least not yet!

One thing I would like to share though is how to tag your pages with keywords you don't necessarily want to show as content on the pages.

Lets say you want a page called 'Test', which contains steps to install a printer, to show up each time a user searches for words like HP, Xerox or Lexmark. You don't want these words to appear on the page itself coz you've got nothing to say about them. I simply use the basic HTML comment tag!

Yeps, as any MediaWiki user will know, there is a list of permitted HTML tags which can be integrated in the Wiki Markup code.

Thus, searching for Lexmark will return the results hereunder:

 

As easy as that. Hope this helped.

Kindle - A must-have device.

One week ago I received my Kindle 3 and it is proving to be purchase of the year already. No wonder there is not a single negative review on this e-reader on the net, this thing is just WOW - pure value for money for those who like to read, are studying or who keep lots of documents as reference.
Here are a the steps for those who want to quick start with their Kindle:

So, when you receive your Kindle, the first thing to do is to have it registered with Amazon.
You either connect to Wifi, have it registered automatically or access the 'Manage Your Kindle' page on Amazon, where you will be asked to enter the serial number of the device (the S/N is viewable in the Settings on your Kindle). I used the second option here.

You can now purchase your book directly from Amazon or load it with your personal PDF files.
Since the Kindle 3 now has a native PDF support, you just have to connect it via USB to a PC and copy the files in the 'Documents' folder.
I recommend reading your pdf files in landscape view. This will minimize zooming and scrolling over to read one page.
When you register your Kindle, you are offered two mail addresses: You use the @kindle.com one to send documents to your Amazon account, and you can have them delivered via wireless to your device.
When sending documents to the @free.kindle.com address, Amazon will freely convert them into Kindle version and send them back to your registered mail address within minutes, if not seconds.


Lastly purchasing books on Amazon is pretty much straightforward. You just have to look for the Kindle version and finalize your order by  of course paying for it.
Again in the 'Manage Your Kindle' page you will have a list of all books ordered. You can download your ebooks on your computer first or send it via Wifi to your Kindle.

Now that you know the basics you're ready to go. Happy reading!

154 words

16 days already gone in 2011 and I finally decide to write down my New Year's resolutions! Well, am writing them somewhere else, not here!
However, since one of them is about blogging, I thought I might as well share it to you.
Like many of us, on 1st January we woke up and took the resolution to blog more this year. But we all agree that writing takes time, a lot of time.. so does reading!
So, this year I've decided to write more posts but with less words. It doesn't mean I will be saying less things, but rather communicate things effectively. With thousands of blogs out there people tend to bypass long posts they come across and move to more readable ones - and this is what I do too :)
This year, let us all post more, keep them brief and to the point, and be happy in the blogosphere.