30 Things to Stop Doing to Yourself in Next year 2012

When you stop chasing the wrong things you give
the right things a chance to catch you.

As Maria Robinson once said, “Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.” Nothing could be closer to the truth. But before you can begin this process of transformation you have to stop doing the things that have been holding you back.

Here are some ideas to get you started:

1. Stop spending time with the wrong people. – Life is too short to spend time with people who suck the happiness out of you. If someone wants you in their life, they’ll make room for you. You shouldn’t have to fight for a spot. Never, ever insist yourself to someone who continuously overlooks your worth. And remember, it’s not the people that stand by your side when you’re at your best, but the ones who stand beside you when you’re at your worst that are your true friends.
2. Stop running from your problems. – Face them head on. No, it won’t be easy. There is no person in the world capable of flawlessly handling every punch thrown at them. We aren’t supposed to be able to instantly solve problems. That’s not how we’re made. In fact, we’re made to get upset, sad, hurt, stumble and fall. Because that’s the whole purpose of living – to face problems, learn, adapt, and solve them over the course of time. This is what ultimately molds us into the person we become.
3. Stop lying to yourself. – You can lie to anyone else in the world, but you can’t lie to yourself. Our lives improve only when we take chances, and the first and most difficult chance we can take is to be honest with ourselves. Read The Road Less Traveled.
4. Stop putting your own needs on the back burner. – The most painful thing is losing yourself in the process of loving someone too much, and forgetting that you are special too. Yes, help others; but help yourself too. If there was ever a moment to follow your passion and do something that matters to you, that moment is now.
5. Stop trying to be someone you’re not. – One of the greatest challenges in life is being yourself in a world that’s trying to make you like everyone else. Someone will always be prettier, someone will always be smarter, someone will always be younger, but they will never be you. Don’t change so people will like you. Be yourself and the right people will love the real you.
6. Stop trying to hold onto the past. – You can’t start the next chapter of your life if you keep re-reading your last one.
7. Stop being scared to make a mistake. – Doing something and getting it wrong is at least ten times more productive than doing nothing. Every success has a trail of failures behind it, and every failure is leading towards success. You end up regretting the things you did NOT do far more than the things you did.
8. Stop berating yourself for old mistakes. – We may love the wrong person and cry about the wrong things, but no matter how things go wrong, one thing is for sure, mistakes help us find the person and things that are right for us. We all make mistakes, have struggles, and even regret things in our past. But you are not your mistakes, you are not your struggles, and you are here NOW with the power to shape your day and your future. Every single thing that has ever happened in your life is preparing you for a moment that is yet to come.
9. Stop trying to buy happiness. – Many of the things we desire are expensive. But the truth is, the things that really satisfy us are totally free – love, laughter and working on our passions.
10. Stop exclusively looking to others for happiness. – If you’re not happy with who you are on the inside, you won’t be happy in a long-term relationship with anyone else either. You have to create stability in your own life first before you can share it with someone else. Read Stumbling on Happiness.
11. Stop being idle. – Don’t think too much or you’ll create a problem that wasn’t even there in the first place. Evaluate situations and take decisive action. You cannot change what you refuse to confront. Making progress involves risk. Period! You can’t make it to second base with your foot on first.
12. Stop thinking you’re not ready. – Nobody ever feels 100% ready when an opportunity arises. Because most great opportunities in life force us to grow beyond our comfort zones, which means we won’t feel totally comfortable at first.
13. Stop getting involved in relationships for the wrong reasons. – Relationships must be chosen wisely. It’s better to be alone than to be in bad company. There’s no need to rush. If something is meant to be, it will happen – in the right time, with the right person, and for the best reason. Fall in love when you’re ready, not when you’re lonely.
14. Stop rejecting new relationships just because old ones didn’t work. – In life you’ll realize that there is a purpose for everyone you meet. Some will test you, some will use you and some will teach you. But most importantly, some will bring out the best in you.
15. Stop trying to compete against everyone else. – Don’t worry about what others doing better than you. Concentrate on beating your own records every day. Success is a battle between YOU and YOURSELF only.
16. Stop being jealous of others. – Jealousy is the art of counting someone else’s blessings instead of your own. Ask yourself this: “What’s something I have that everyone wants?”
17. Stop complaining and feeling sorry for yourself. – Life’s curveballs are thrown for a reason – to shift your path in a direction that is meant for you. You may not see or understand everything the moment it happens, and it may be tough. But reflect back on those negative curveballs thrown at you in the past. You’ll often see that eventually they led you to a better place, person, state of mind, or situation. So smile! Let everyone know that today you are a lot stronger than you were yesterday, and you will be.
18. Stop holding grudges. – Don’t live your life with hate in your heart. You will end up hurting yourself more than the people you hate. Forgiveness is not saying, “What you did to me is okay.” It is saying, “I’m not going to let what you did to me ruin my happiness forever.” Forgiveness is the answer… let go, find peace, liberate yourself! And remember, forgiveness is not just for other people, it’s for you too. If you must, forgive yourself, move on and try to do better next time.
19. Stop letting others bring you down to their level. – Refuse to lower your standards to accommodate those who refuse to raise theirs.
20. Stop wasting time explaining yourself to others. – Your friends don’t need it and your enemies won’t believe it anyway. Just do what you know in your heart is right.
21. Stop doing the same things over and over without taking a break. – The time to take a deep breath is when you don’t have time for it. If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’ll keep getting what you’re getting. Sometimes you need to distance yourself to see things clearly.
22. Stop overlooking the beauty of small moments. – Enjoy the little things, because one day you may look back and discover they were the big things. The best portion of your life will be the small, nameless moments you spend smiling with someone who matters to you.
23. Stop trying to make things perfect. – The real world doesn’t reward perfectionists, it rewards people who get things done. Read Getting Things Done.
24. Stop following the path of least resistance. – Life is not easy, especially when you plan on achieving something worthwhile. Don’t take the easy way out. Do something extraordinary.
25. Stop acting like everything is fine if it isn’t. – It’s okay to fall apart for a little while. You don’t always have to pretend to be strong, and there is no need to constantly prove that everything is going well. You shouldn’t be concerned with what other people are thinking either – cry if you need to – it’s healthy to shed your tears. The sooner you do, the sooner you will be able to smile again.
26. Stop blaming others for your troubles. – The extent to which you can achieve your dreams depends on the extent to which you take responsibility for your life. When you blame others for what you’re going through, you deny responsibility – you give others power over that part of your life.
27. Stop trying to be everything to everyone. – Doing so is impossible, and trying will only burn you out. But making one person smile CAN change the world. Maybe not the whole world, but their world. So narrow your focus.
28. Stop worrying so much. – Worry will not strip tomorrow of its burdens, it will strip today of its joy. One way to check if something is worth mulling over is to ask yourself this question: “Will this matter in one year’s time? Three years? Five years?” If not, then it’s not worth worrying about.
29. Stop focusing on what you don’t want to happen. – Focus on what you do want to happen. Positive thinking is at the forefront of every great success story. If you awake every morning with the thought that something wonderful will happen in your life today, and you pay close attention, you’ll often find that you’re right.
30. Stop being ungrateful. – No matter how good or bad you have it, wake up each day thankful for your life. Someone somewhere else is desperately fighting for theirs. Instead of thinking about what you’re missing, try thinking about what you have that everyone else is missing.

Top 5 Gadgets of 2011 and 2012

We are here with one more list of the top 5 entries for this year and the coming one. We wanted to highlight the best gadgets of year 2011 and also what gadget to watch out for in 2012. So here we are with the list that shows top 5 gadgets of the year 2011 and also for the next year 2012.

Top 5 Gadgets for 2011:

1. iPhone 4S

With all the hype around iPhone 5 to be released this year, we did see the launch of the next model but this was iPhone 4S. With the new feature of voice recognition based artificial intelligence called Siri, this is the device that tops our list.

2. iPad 2

The leaner, meaner and slimmer iPad 2 beats its competition fair apart and also rules the tablet market.

3. Galaxy Nexus

The Samsung Google phone made news when it was first released in UK. With Super AMOLED display and latest Android version Ice Cream Sandwich, this is the phone worth buying.

4. Amazon Kindle Fire

Famously known as “iPad Killer” and customized by Amazon has definitely made it to the top 5 gadgets of 2011.

5. Canon EOS 1DX

Put simply, this is the perfect DSLR to date. It combines many of the features of the 1D Mark IV and the 1Ds models with many major upgrades.

Top 5 Gadgets to look in 2012:

1. iPhone 5

With new launches of the iPhone till know, we know it is coming just not sure when. iPhone 5 will surely be the phone to watch out next year.

2. iPad 3

Apple has been constantly able to maintain its position in the tablet market with the new models of the iPad, surely we are expecting the iPad 3 next year with new and improved features.

3. Wii U

Nintendo’s new console features a significant amount of power compared to the previous version of the Wii, but it’s the controller that has a lot of people excited.

4. Windows 8

Surely something to wait for the next year, this is going to be one major revolution in 2012. Microsoft has designed it to be similar and accessible on PCs, tablets and phones.

5. Ultrabooks

Thinking of buying more portable laptop? Then it would be the Ultrabook that you all need. We are expecting one soon in the year 2012.

Note: The list may vary person to person and has been compiled by us after some research on the internet. We would still love to hear from you, drop a comment.

Add any item in Right Click Send To Menu easily

Right click context menu is a great way of choosing one of the many options that an item have like we can have the file sent via Bluetooth or sent to a removable drive without the need of copy and paste, or other options like compressing it etc. Right click Send To menu is one of the most useful options a file can have. The only concern here is that the send to menu have only limited options which might not always come handy. Well if you want to add an option or any item to this send to menu, you can do this easily.

You can add any item whether file, folder or a network location to the right click send to menu easily with the help of a small tool called SendToSendTo. You might be wondering when you can add any entry to this menu by placing a shortcut manually in the C:\Users\%username\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo location then why use this tool?

Well a simple reply would be that why you would want to do all this work manually when you can just right click on an item, and add it from right there to the send to menu. Yes it is that easy and saves a lot of time and effort. All you need to do is just right click on an item, go to send to menu, and click Add Here option, give a name in the dialog box that opens and click Create button.

This will now place a new right click send to option in the send to menu, isn’t that easy? In case you wish to remove it back, you need to visit the above mentioned location or just type shell:sendto in the Run and delete the entry from there.

Download SendToSendTo

Automatic Captions in YouTube Demo

Here's another quick YouTube tip. Need captions for your YouTube video? It's never been easier:

Automatic Captions in YouTube Demo

youtube.com – Watch this short demo to learn about machine-generated captions in YouTube and automatic timing for manually created caption tracks. (As you can see ...

SpreadsheetGear – Easy and Scalable ASP.NET Excel Reporting…

ASP.NET Excel Reporting Easily create richly formatted Excel reports without Excel using the new generation of spreadsheet technology built from the ground up for scalability and reliability. Create Dashboards from Excel Charts and Ranges You and your users can design dashboards, reports, charts, and models in Excel rather than hard to learn developer tools and you can easily deploy them with one line of code. Excel Compatible Windows Forms Control Add powerful Excel compatible viewing, editing, formatting, calculating, charting and printing to your Windows Forms applications with the easy to use WorkbookView control. Excel Compatible Charting Enable users to visualize data with comprehensive Excel compatible charting APIs which make creating and modifying charts easier than ever before. Excel Compatible Calculations Evaluate complex Excel based models and business rules with the fastest and most complete Excel compatible calculation engine available. SpreadsheetGear 2010 Evaluation Download our fully functional 30-Day evaluation and bring Excel Reporting, Excel compatible charting, Excel compatible calculations and much more to your ASP.NET, Windows Forms, and other Microsoft .NET Framework solutions.

SpreadsheetGear 2010 Now Available NEW! Autofilters, password protected workbooks, macro-enabled Open XML (.xlsm) support, Excel 2010 support, Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4.0 support, a number of charting features and more. Download the free Trial. Microsoft Chooses SpreadsheetGear for .NET "After carefully evaluating SpreadsheetGear, Excel Services, and other 3rd party options, we ultimately chose SpreadsheetGear for .NET because it is the best fit for MSN Money." Chris Donohue, Program Manager, MSN Money Reduced Time From 20 Minutes to 4 Seconds "We integrated SpreadsheetGear for .NET with an existing application with about two days work and it reduced the time it takes to generate a critical daily report from 20 minutes to 4 seconds. Thanks for making my team look like miracle workers!" Luke Melia, Software Development Manager, Oxygen Media Over 100 Times Faster Than Other Controls "We just wanted you to know how thrilled we are by the performance we are seeing with SpreadsheetGear for .NET. A 6,000 KB Excel workbook is loading into the WorkbookView control in less than a second. This is over 100 times faster than other controls we’ve tested. That difference makes it possible for us to develop and release a viable product with the Microsoft .NET Framework."

Why is Windows so slow?

Why is Windows so slow?
I’m a fan of Windows, specifically Windows 7. For the most part I like it better than OSX. I have 4 Macs, 3 Windows machines and 3 Linux machines that I access regularly.

But…I work on a relatively large project. Windows is literally an ORDER OF MAGNITUDE slower to checkout, to update and to compile and build than Linux. What gives? I don’t know this is the fault of Windows. As far as I know some of it is the fault of the software I’m using not using Windows in the correct way to get the maximum speed.

You can reproduce this yourself though. Download the code.

The simplest test is this: On Windows open a cmd, cd to the src folder and type

dir /s > c:\list.txt
Do it twice and time how long it takes. The reason to time only the second run is to give the OS a chance to cache data in ram

Now do the same thing in linux. Check out the code. CD to src and do

ls -R > ~/list.txt
In my tests, on 2 exact same machines (both are HP Z600 workstations with 12gig of ram and eight 3ghz cores) on Windows it takes 40seconds. On Linux is takes 0.5 seconds. Note I used git to checkout the files on both machines so there are more than 350k files in those folders.

Why is Windows in this case 80x slower than Linux? Is there some registry setting I can use to make it faster?

Similarly compile the code. Using Visual Studio 2008 follow the instructions here. Select the chrome project and build it. Edit one file, say src/gpu/command_buffer/client/gles2_implementation.cc. Just change a comment or something then build again. Try the same on Linux. For me, these incremental builds, on Windows it takes about 3 minutes, most of that time is spent in the linker. On Linux it takes 20 seconds. That’s 9x faster. I can install the new ‘gold’ linker and take it down even more. 7 seconds or 25x faster.

Come on Microsoft, step up your game! Personally I’d much rather program on Windows than Linux (yea, I know, sacrilege to some). Visual Studio’s debugger is far more productive than gdb or cgdb (maybe there is something better on Linux I don’t know). Plus, our users are mostly on Windows so I’d rather be on Windows so I get the same experience. GPU drivers are much better on Windows as well plus there are other apps I use (Photoshop, Maya, 3DSMax) that don’t exist on Linux.

But, I can’t stay on Windows with Linux being so much faster to build. It’s the difference between being totally productive and taking a coffee break every time I change a line and compile.

That’s not all of it either. git is EXTREMELY FAST on linux where as on Windows not so much. It’s probably no slower than svn on Windows as far as I can tell (I haven’t timed it) but one of the many reasons people switch to git is because it’s so fast on linux. Again it’s in the 10x to 100x difference between Windows and Linux.

All I can think of is 99% of developers that use Microsoft’s tools are writing Windows only code. As such they have no way to compare times and so Microsoft has no incentive to make it better. Except of course they do. If they themselves are using the same tools then their own developers are losing valuable time waiting for these tools to do their jobs.

Here’s hoping Microsoft will step it up.

PS: Of the 3 OSes, OSX is a mixed bag. git on OSX is slower than linux, faster than Windows. Building on OSX though is SSSLLLOOOWWW. Nearly 3 times slower than Windows using XCode.

PPS: Chromium has the option to build as a set of shared libraries instead of one large executable. This helps the link times in Windows significantly but it also helps link times in Linux. The relative speeds are till the same.

YouTube launches YouTube Schools for Students

I remember the days how I used to study and complete a work assignment that was allotted to me, those were so difficult but seriously the days have changed now, we have so many things to help us like the technology and so many resources like the Internet.

Seeking help from the Internet is quite common these days and in fact schools also use internet media like the educational videos to impart knowledge to the students. Thus YouTube is one of the favorite medias used. However one common problem with this is that YouTube have all sort of content and it gets very distracting to use it at the schools.

Recently YouTube have launched its new service called the YouTube Schools and as the name suggests, it is specifically launched and designed for students and the schools. The main features of it are the thousands of educational videos, math help, videos on foreign languages, university lectures, science experiments and world events. In short, every educational thing you are looking.

Additionally, the YouTube Schools don’t display any comments, no related posts which preserves the attentions of the students. All the distracting items are removed from here making this place one of the best places to study and learn.

If you are a person who likes spending time in learning, then this is the place to be.

Visit YouTube Schools

Free Flac to MP3 Converter for Windows

By default our Windows Media Player support lot of codecs but there are some which even it is unable to recognize. Like there is Flac audio format, which is the best audio quality available. FLAC stands for Free Lossless Audio Codec, an audio format similar to MP3, but lossless, meaning that audio is compressed in FLAC without any loss in quality.

Like jpg is an image format in compressed form of RAW quality images, we have FLAC format which is uncompressed form of the audio. Now some people like to save audio in this quality in their system, if space is not an issue as FLAC consumes around 5 times space as compared to mp3. But if you want to convert this format into mp3 you can do so with some audio converters.

There are many audio converters available but not each come without any restrictions. Here is a converter that can convert FLAC as well as other formats into mp3 and others for you easily. The converter is called Free Mp3 Wma Converter, and is a freeware.

Free Mp3 Wma Converter can Convert all your Mp3, Wma, Ogg, Aac, M4a, Ac3, Ape, Flac, Wav files:

• Mp3 to Ogg, Mp3 to Wma, Mp3 to AAC, Mp3 to Wav

• WAV to Mp3, Wav to Ogg, Wav to AAC, Wav to Wma

• Wma to Mp3, Wma to Ogg, Wma to AAC, Wma to Wav

• Ogg to Mp3, Ogg to Wma, Ogg to AAC, Ogg to Wav

• AAC to Mp3, AAC to Wma, AAC to Ogg, AAC to Wav

• Ape to Mp3, Ape to Wma, Ape to Ogg, Ape to Wav

• Flac to Mp3, Flac to Wma, Flac to Ogg, Flac to Wav

• M4a to Mp3, M4a to Wma, M4a to Ogg, M4a to Wav

• Ac3 to Mp3, Ac3 to Wma, Ac3 to Ogg, Ac3 to Wav

You will also be able to convert your Itunes music library (m4a format) to mp3, wma, ogg, etc.

The tool is a freeware just be more careful while installing this as it tend to install some other shareware tools along and also make some changes to toolbar, homepage etc. but this can be avoided if you install only what is required.

Download Free Mp3 Wma Converter

See how long your Computer has been Active

You think that your computer has been active for quite long in the last week or is it you want to monitor if someone has logged in your machine for long, then you don’t need to worry you can just monitor how long your system has remain active in the last 3 weeks.

It is also a good idea to see how much you have worked on your system to analyse if you are using your machine exhaustively or under utilizing it. Whatever be the situation you can see the active times of your machine in an easy presentable form with the help of a tool called PC On/Off Time.

PC On/Off Time is a free time tracking tool that shows the times your computer has been active during the last 3 weeks, with no previous setup required. You don’t even need to install this tool as you can directly double click and use it.

Windows, by default, tracks the logon and logoff or standby times and this is what is analysed by this tool to provide you the results. This is another reason why you don’t even need to keep it running in the background. The results are displayed graphically which are easy to understand.

Features:

• Doesn’t require runtimes

• Doesn’t require installation

• Doesn’t write to the registry

• Doesn’t modify files outside of its own directories

• Isn’t adware

The tool is free to use and is very small in size. It is also compatible on all versions of Windows and requires no installation.

Download PC On/Off Time

List of Top 25 most common Passwords

Passwords are the highly confidential string of characters and numeric that can provide access to anyone on any restricted place. Setting up the most difficult password is equally difficult in guessing. Thus it is advisable to have a password that is long enough and also is a combination of all three criteria:
• Letters including both the cases
• Numeric letters
• Special characters like @ # etc.

If you feel that setting a password like some random name of a person or even replacing letter o with a 0 (zero) would help, then believe me there are tools with the hackers that can guess even this.

Not even setting the password like 11111 or your own car number would help. I know it is very difficult to remember password for each and every login form, but it is equally risky to set the easy and common passwords.

Here is a list of the top 25 most common passwords that people around the web use for their login access and if you are using one of these, then do change it before it’s too late:

• password
• 123456
• 12345678
• qwerty
• abc123
• monkey
• 1234567
• letmein
• trustno1
• dragon
• baseball
• 111111
• iloveyou
• master
• sunshine
• ashley
• bailey
• passw0rd
• shadow
• 123123
• 654321
• superman
• qazwsx
• michael
• football

There are many things that you can do create a stronger password, like you can create a password with a mix of two things like your phone no and street address somewhat in this fashion, +998-west+AreA_2496. Well this was just an example.

You also need to stop the password reuse which is using the same password for different personal and social login websites. Here you can make use of the name of the website in the password for example: for facebook you can set a password like FB=Pss613_westArea.

Well it is always a good idea to have your password changes right now. Better safe than be sorry!

Thousands of online accounts are hijacked every day. Enable 2-step verification to protect your account.

Accounts Help

Help articles Google Help Forums

Getting started with 2-step verification How it works How it works » How you sign in with 2-step verification Setup Setting up backup options Signing in using application-specific passwords Turning off 2-step verification Common issues More on 2-step verification Print this guide How it works Why you should use 2-step verification 2-step verification adds an extra layer of security to your Google Account by requiring you to have access to your phone – as well as your username and password – when you sign in. In addition to your username and password, you'll enter a code that Google will send you via text or voice message upon signing in. 2-step verification drastically reduces the chances of having the personal information in your Google account stolen by someone else. Why? Because hackers would have to not only get your password and your username, they'd have to get a hold of your phone.

Google can send you a text message if you ever forget your password. Learn more

Find Complete Information about your Computer in single click

If you were required to find the complete information about your system like the OS installed, Memory, Service Pack, Computer Model, Processes running, RAM information, Disk utilization etc what would you have done? I am sure it would take quite some time for you to find all these. Here is a cool tool that I came across recently called Computer Info Tool that does everything for you and you don’t need to manually find the information yourself, as it will list everything for you and display them in a window. All you need to do is just click and run it. The tool is actually a .hta file and is not a tool to install. Hta file is a directexecutable script that on running gives you the results. This Computer Info Tool is also an executable script that has been saved as .hta file for you to double click and execute it directly. Features: • Lists all the important computer information like OS installed, Memory, Service Pack, Computer Model, Processes running, RAM information, Disk utilization, Hard Disk information, Processor information, User accounts and other things. • Moreover, you can also either shutdown the system, restart, kill any process or generate this report in a sheet easily. • Free code to use and share. I have saved the code and created the .hta file for you to use directly. Now what you all need to do is just download the package from link below, extract the hta file and click to run it whenever you need. Download Computer Info Tool

How to Make (and Sustain) a Good First Impression Every Time

In a perfect world, friendships, relationships, and business contacts would all develop naturally and blossom exactly how you'd like, but that's not the world we live in. In reality, we're all busy people, and relationships take work—work that sometimes slips our mind. Rather than leave it all to chance, here are a few things that can help you leave a great first impression, and form that into a lasting relationship. How First Impressions Work People often say "you never get a second chance to make a first impression", and that's actually quite true—which is why it's so important to start on the right foot. In fact, one popular study showed that those impressions can form in just a few seconds: Consider one study in which untrained subjects were shown 20- to 32-second video-taped segments of job applicants greeting interviewers. The subjects then rated the applicants on attributes such as self-assurance and likability. Surprisingly, their assessments were very close to those of trained interviewers who spent at least 20 minutes with each applicant. What semblance of a person—one with a distinct appearance, history and complex personality—could have been captured in such a fleeting moment? Not only that, but after they're formed, those impressions become pretty set in stone.PsychCentral notes that even if you were to contradict someone's first impression of you, it would only apply in that particular context. So, if you had a bad interview with your new boss, don't expect to change his perception of you too easily. You may have been very likable at the office's holiday party, for example, but when you step back into the office environment his first impression will still reflect how he thinks of you (though he'll probably like you more in the context of office parties). So, you want to make sure you get it right on that first meeting, since that impression can be hard to turn around. How to Make Sure Your First Impression Is a Good One So, knowing that, how do you make the best first impression possible? Everyone's different, and while you don't want to be too formulaic, there are definitely a few things you'll want to keep in mind that should universally help show you in a positive light. Be On Time: If this first impression is to be made at a scheduled meeting—like a job interview, perhaps—it should go without saying that tardiness will not work in your favor. Do whatever it takes to be on time. CareerBuilder.com suggests arriving five to ten minutes early—any earlier than that and the person you're meeting might feel rushed and you might look desperate. If you're early, just stop off at a nearby coffee shop to collect your thoughts. Dress and Groom Yourself Accordingly: Also among the obvious is to make sure you look presentable whenever you meet someone new. That means dressing up for a job interview, or putting on nice, clean, situation-appropriate clothes for social situations. It isn't difficult and itdoesn't have to cost you much, either, so there's no excuse for wearing the same clothes you wore to mow the lawn today. When in doubt, err on the side of more formal. Being underdressed is worse than being overdressed. Photo by buddawiggi. Be Aware of Your Body Language: Your body language says a whole lot on a first meeting. If you're nervous, you're probably going to look more introverted or disinterested than you actually are. Smile, try to keep from fidgeting, and adopt an "open" posture—that means no crossed arms or crossed legs. A nice tilt of the head can also be the difference between looking bored and actually being interested. If all that sounds like too much to think about at once, personal development weblog The Positivity Blog recommends you do one thing: just act like you're meeting a good friend. If you just imagine that the person you have just met and are talking to is one of your best friends you'll probably adjust unconsciously and start to smile, open up your body-language to a very friendly and warm position and reduce any nervousness or weirdness in your tone of voice and body language. Don't overdo it though, you might not want to hug and kiss right away. MSN offers another helpful tip: mirror the body language of the person you're talking to. Generally, that should help you capture the tone of the meeting in your own body language. You don't want to go overboard, obviously—no Groucho Marx impressions, please—but watching them can provide some hints. While you're at it, you'll probably want to check out the formula for the scientifically perfect handshake. Since it's the first thing you usually do when meeting someone, it can have a big impact on their first impression of you. Use Their Name: Find a time to use the person's name in conversation. Again, you don't want to overdo it and say their name at the end of every sentence, but a few uses will not only make the meeting more personable, but it'll help you remember their name for later on. Don't Talk About Yourself Too Much: Job interviews may be somewhat exempt from this rule, but generally, you want to be careful of taking over the conversation. Sociologist Charles Derber calls this "conversational narcissism", and you probably don't even realize that you're doing it: The quality of any interaction depends on the tendencies of those involved to seek and share attention. Competition develops when people seek to focus attention mainly on themselves; cooperation occurs when the participants are willing and able to give it. I highly recommend you read up on conversational narcissism over at weblog The Art of Manliness—they've done a good job of summarizing some of Derber's views. People love talking about themselves, and if you can strike a good balance between them and you during a conversation, they're likely to form a more positive impression and find you charming. Photo by bpsusf. Don't Be Afraid to Show Your Flaws: While you don't want to tell someone your whole life's story (especially the more intimate details), you don't need to look perfect. Showing some of your little flaws will not only make you look honest, but you'll look a little less robotic, too. Plus, if you're in a job interview, you won't perform the fatal flaw ofpresenting "fake weaknesses". Be Prepared: Lastly, remember that first impressions can happen anywhere, even when you don't expect it. These rules don't just apply to premeditated job interviews; they apply to everyone you meet, whether it be at a social gathering or just a trip to the grocery store. As such, make sure you always carry yourself as you would in those situations. Otherwise, you never know what you might miss out on. This is also a good point to make sure your internet personality matches the one you'd like to project. Make That Impression Last The last step, of course, is keeping up that good impression. Whether you're turning that new acquaintance into a business contact, friend, or your boss, there are a few things you can do to make them remember you fondly. Keep a Database of Contacts: It's a sad fact of life, but a lot of us are very "out of sight, out of mind"—if someone isn't a close friend or coworker, you can easily forget about them and that relationship will fizzle. I usually separate different groups of people into different databases, too—my Google contact list is mostly personal friends and family, while work contacts stay in a completely separate address book so they don't get mixed up. I also make sure to add new people as soon as I get their business cards, with a few notes on where and how I met them, when applicable. These databases do two things: they help you remember who those acquaintances are so you don't seem forgetful, and for the closer friends, they help you remember to contact them if you haven't seen them in awhile. Which brings us to the next step: Touch Base Regularly: Once you've got a good database going, make sure you keep in contact with those people. Again, technology can help a lot with this: set up calendar reminders for regular phone calls or text messages, and use social networking to keep up with older friends and acquaintances. Every week or so, go through your contacts and see if there are any friends or family members you haven't talked to in a while. You don't need to go crazy—not everyone will appreciate an hour-long impromptu phone calls—but a simple Facebook message asking what's going on in their life can mean a lot to some people. Obviously, the form of communication depends on the person; your grandma would probably prefer some more direct interaction. Photo by Scott Raymond. Reciprocate: This is very important, and is often forgotten in many relationships—both work-related and social. It's easy to get in the "networking" mindset, where every person you meet could be of value to you later on—but don't remember that you are also of value to them. If someone does something for you—whether it's a new acquaintance helping you out with a task at work, or your friend offering up their own talents for you—make sure to ask if there's anything you can do in return. Even if there isn't, they'll remember that you asked. The key in all of this is showing your appreciation for that other person. Whether you do it in a big way or a small way, they'll remember that you care, and their perception of you will be that much better. Never forget any of the "first impression" tips, either—just because you form a closer relationship with someone doesn't mean you can stop listening or start being late. Lastly: Be Realistic Remember, though, that you don't need to keep up an active relationship with everyoneyou meet. Not everyone is an ideal close friend or business contact, so you need to make sure you're spending time on those that actually matter. Quality is more important than quantity, and it doesn't make you a bad person to say that—after all, you can only maintain relationships with so many people at once. All of these things are pretty easy to do, though, so it doesn't hurt to make a good first impression whenever possible. The more you put yourself out there, the more natural it will become.

How to Build a Chrome Extension

Google Chrome is the best web browser around right now, and part of Chrome's appeal is owed to its excellent extensions. The good news: It's not that hard to get started making your own Chrome extensions. In this guide, we'll take you from the most simple Hello World extension (no HTML or JavaScript knowledge required) to a more complex RSS-fetching extension to get you started down your path as a Chrome-extension-making guru. I released my first Chrome extension—a Google Music power-up extension called Music Plus—this summer, followed by a simpler Lifehacker Notifier extension that monitors Lifehacker's RSS feed, displays notifications of new posts in HTML 5 popups or badges, and so on. Today, we'll walk through how to make your first and simplest Hello World Chrome extension, then we'll make a light version of the Lifehacker Notifier extension that fetches an RSS feed and displays feed items in a popup window when you click your extension's button. So let's get extending! Note: While the Hello World extension requires zero knowledge of JavaScript or HTML (and, frankly, you could have a lot of fun with just that if you wanted), this second half of this post requires an understanding of both. To make it to the end of the post, some experience will be necessary. We've also previously shown you how to build a Firefox extension, so if Firefox is more your speed, you may want to check out that guide. What You Need to Know Before You Start If you're comfortable putting together a web site—that is, you know a little HTML and are familiar with JavaScript—you can make a Chrome extension. If you're new to HTML and JavaScript, our beginner's guides for learning to code and how to make a web site are great starting points. Beyond those two core competencies, there's really nothing special you need to know. Chrome extensions are delightfully easy to make if you've ever spent any time making web pages or hacking away with JavaScript, and even if you're only a beginner in those arenas, you can probably pull off a Chrome extension. So let's do just that. Our Project: From "Hello World" to RSS Fetcher For the purpose of this guide, we're going to start with a "Hello World" extension. If you're new to programming, the classic "Hello World" program is a rite of passage for getting started with any language, framework, or project, and its goal is simply to create something capable of outputting the text "Hello World". After we finish our "Hello World" project, I'll walk you through the basics of making an RSS fetching extension along the lines of the Lifehacker Notifier extension for Chrome. Basically this extension adds a button to your toolbar, monitors Lifehacker's RSS feed, and displays our posts in a handy drop-down. It also shows a popup when a new post appears and displays an unread badge on the extension button. So let's get started. Manifest.json: The Cornerstone of Your Chrome Extension Every Chrome extension consists of, at minimum, a file called manifest.json, which defines the basics of your extension—its name, description, version number, what kind of extension it is (there are a handful of different things a Chrome extension can do, which we'll talk more about below), the permissions it needs to run (e.g., what web sites it needs access to), and so on. So let's get started. Create a new folder—let's name it Hello World—and, using your favorite text editor, create a new text file called manifest.json. Copy and paste the following code into it: { "name": "Hello World!", "version": "1.0", "description": "My first Chrome extension.", "browser_action": { "default_icon": "icon.png" } } The name, version, and description are all pretty self-explanatory, butbrowser_action is something new! The browser_action property tells Chrome that we're making an extension that will add a button to the toolbar. So far, all we've done is assign an icon to that button. Basically you're telling Chrome that your extension has an icon, called icon.png, and that it's located in the same folder as yourmanifest.json file. Of course, you don't have an icon.png file in your Hello World folder just yet, so let's fix that. Download this tiny image (via) and copy it to your Hello World folder. We haven't done much yet, but you've actually already made something you can test out, so let's do that. Point Chrome to chrome://extensions/, tick the Developer mode checkbox at the top-left of that window, then click the Load unpacked extension button. Point Chrome to your Hello World folder, click Select or OK (varies by operating system), Chrome will load up your stub of an extension, and you should see your little globe icon appear in your Chrome toolbar thusly: If you try clicking your Hello World button, however, you'll notice it does an unsurprising amount of nothing. Let's fix that. Creating a Browser Action, or, Wouldn't It Be Nice if That Button Did Something? Open up your manifest.json file and add a popup action that points to an HTML file called popup.html, like so: { "name": "Hello World!", "version": "1.0", "description": "My first Chrome extension.", "browser_action": { "default_icon": "icon.png", "popup": "popup.html" } } Note: The filenames don't matter as long as you're pointing Chrome to the right files—you could call it helloworld.html in manifest.json as long as you also named your file helloworld.html. Speaking of, you now need to create popup.html. So, once again, create an HTML file called popup.html and save it in your Hello World folder. Inside popup.html, simply add the text "Hello World!" (In theory you'd want to put some valid HTML markup in there, but it's not strictly necessary, so we're going to skip it here.) Make sure you've savedmanifest.json andpopup.html, head back tochrome://extensions/, click the expand icon next to the Hello World extension in the Extension list, then click the Reload link (pictured at right). Chrome will reload the extension using your updated code. Now click the button and get ready for the money shot! Achievement unlocked! You've Hello World-ed your first Chrome extension. Nice work. Now let's take things up a notch. (If you had any trouble along the way, download my working Hello World.zip and compare it with yours.) Where Do We Go From Here? So Chrome can add buttons to your toolbar, you can click those buttons, and something can happen. Neato! You could stop your extension development here and have plenty of fun installing extensions on your friends' computers—add a little HTML image markup in place of the "Hello World!" text and you've unlocked a prankster's delight! Imagine the possibilities. Your unsuspecting friend clicks an alluring new button and—slam, goatse! Or toss in a YouTube video and... RICKROLL! (Or don't do this. Your friends won't thank you, but they might if they knew what you weren't subjecting them to.) Impressing your friends with your sparkling sense of humor will only take you so far, though. You've probably seen the basic click-button-show-drop-down behavior in tons of different Chrome extensions before. But you've also seen extensions that perform very different tasks. If you take a gander at the Chrome Extension Developer's Guide, you'll see the familiar Browser Actions at the top of the list, but you'll also notice a ton of other things your extension can do, from creating desktop notifications or adding a keyword to the omnibox to creating an options page or performing actions that modify specific web pages. When you're ready to dive deep into extension development, you'll want to page through the developer documentation to get a feel for what your extension might take advantage of. You may also want to take a look at the manifest.json documentation to get a feel for some of your other options available to your manifest.json file. For now, we're going to dive a little deeper into the browser actions. It's time to make yourself an RSS-reading and -notifying Chrome extension. So let's do it. It's Time to Next Level This Hog Now that you've safely navigated from zero to Hello World, we're going to pick up the pace a little. The "Hello World" extension didn't use a lick of JavaScript (apart from the JSON), and we didn't actually write any HTML, either. This section will rectify that. First, let's take a look at the new and improved manifest.json we'll use for this extension: { "name": "RSS Fetcher", "version": "0.1", "description": "Keep up with the latest from [example.com].", "icons": { "16" : "images/icon.png", "48" : "images/48.png", "128" : "images/128.png"}, "homepage_url": "http://insert_web_site_here.com/", "background_page": "background.html", "permissions": [ "http://insert_base_rss_url_here.com/*" ], "browser_action": { "default_icon": "images/icon.png", "default_title": "[INSERT WEB SITE NAME HERE] Fetcher", "default_popup": "popup.html" } } Let's quickly walk through what's new here. First, you'll notice I've added icons. These are the icons that will display as the extension's icon in various places, including the Extensions page of your browser and in the Chrome Web Store should you decide to distribute your work. homepage_url points to whatever site you want to associate with the extension you've written. background_page is an HTML page that will run in the background constantly, allowing you to maintain a certain state or perform regular actions for different parts of your extension. In our extension, the background page will poll the RSS feed to see if anything new has been pushed to the feed. permissions tells Chrome what special permissions you need access to. Chrome sandboxes extensions so they don't have access to all your browsing activity unless they request it (and you allow it). The permissions property allows you to set exactly what permissions you need. In our case, we need permission to load an RSS feed from a root URL, and we want to be able to create HTML 5 notifications when new items arrive. You'll have noticed that our manifest.json file also calls for a lot of new files and folders, so instead of requiring you to set them all up yourself, you can download a basic, working version of this code that fetches from the Lifehacker RSS feed here. (I've decided to include the images I used in the Lifehacker Notifier extension, but obviously you can swap out whatever images work for you.) You'll also notice that I've included jQuery. If you're unfamiliar with jQuery, it's a JavaScript framework that makes doing a lot of things in JavaScript insanely easier. If you do anything on the web with JavaScript and you're not interesting in rebuilding the wheel and you are interested in saving a lot of time, you should learn to use jQuery. (Also, lucky you! The very cool web site Codeacademy just released an introductory guide to jQuery.) This all may seem like it got complicated really quickly, but the main difference between our Hello World extension and this more complex RSS Fetcher is actually quite simple: Our popup.html file will now contain HTML and some JavaScript. Together, they'llactually do things beyond displaying "Hello World!" every time you click the button. The other thing sets Chrome extension development apart from your everyday HTML and JavaScript is the Chrome extension APIs, which provide access to all kinds of functions that blur the line between your extension and the browser. So let's try a few basics. How Our New Popup.html Works The new popup.html file in our RSS fetching extension works like this: When you click the extension's button, it loads popup.html. When that loads, it passes a call tobackground.html, asking it to fetch our RSS feed. Once background.html has successfully fetched the feed, it passes the feed's XML back to popup.html, which then parses the feed into some friendly HTML, which it then displays inside the popup. Message Passing Between Background.html and Popup.html Because of various security sandboxing going on in Chrome, some parts of your extension can't access the same APIs or information that other parts of your extension can. To get around this, one common technique you'll need to employ in your Chrome extensions involves passing messages and data back and forth between different parts of your extension. To demonstrate the basics of how this works, I've put the method that fetches the RSS feed into background.html, and I call it from popup.html. Inbackground.html, you'll notice the fetch_feed method: function fetch_feed(url, callback) { var xhr = new XMLHttpRequest(); xhr.onreadystatechange = function(data) { if (xhr.readyState == 4) { if (xhr.status == 200) { var data = xhr.responseText; callback(data); } else { callback(null); } } } // Note that any URL fetched here must // be matched by a permission in // the manifest.json file! xhr.open('GET', url, true); xhr.send(); } It's a very basic function that takes a URL and a callback function as parameters, fetches the feed, then passes it to the callback function. To listen to the other parts of your extension, we add this code: function onRequest(request, sender, callback) { if (request.action == 'fetch_feed') { fetch_feed(request.url, callback); } } // Wire up the listener. chrome.extension.onRequest.addListener(onRequest); The last line, which uses the wonderfully useful chrome.extension API, tells the page to listen to requests from other parts of the extension. When it receives one, it's going to pass it to the onRequest function. As you can see, the onRequest function then checks to see if the request is asking for an action that it knows how to handle (in this case, a request to fetch a feed), and if it does, it calls that function. Now let's jump over to the popup.html file. When it loads, the page is entirely empty. This is what kicks off changing that: $(document).ready(function() { fetch_feed(); }); Our fetch_feed method then fires off this request: function fetch_feed() { chrome.extension.sendRequest( {'action' : 'fetch_feed', 'url' : 'http://lifehacker.com/index.xml' }, function(response) { display_stories(response); } ); } As you might have guessed, chrome.extension.sendRequest sends out the request to other parts of your extension that may be listening. And as we know,background.html is listening for this exact request! So our request bounces frompopup.html to background.html, which fetches the feed, then passes it back topopup.html, which then calls a function called display_stories, passing with it the response from background.html. The display stories function (which I won't step through here but which you can see in the source) then uses a little jQuery and JavaScript to parse the XML feed and render the stories in the popup. Do you see how unbelievably easy this is??? I kid. Once you get the hang of it, though, making Chrome extensions actually is very easy, and very fun. (Obviously the complexity varies depending on what you want to make.) If you're comfortable with HTML and JavaScript (oh, and I guess CSS if you want to make it pretty), you can do so much, and the learning curve is pretty gentle. So go forth, intrepid coders, and make thee some awesome extensions! Troubleshooting You're great at everything (go you!), but you're going to stumble from time to time, particularly with your JavaScript. You'll find two invaluable tools to help debug. The first isconsole.log, which is a JavaScript method that writes text, objects, or whatever you pass it to Chrome's JavaScript console so you can catch where things may have gone wrong. The second is Chrome's awesome Developer Tools—and more specifically, the JavaScript console and DOM inspector. You can pull up the console for your popup by right-clicking your extension's button and selecting Inspect popup. Likewise, you can pull up the Developer Tools for background.html by clicking the background.htmllink in the expanded view of the extension in chrome://settings/extensions. Helpful Resources All of my Chrome extension-building knowledge comes from Google's very thorough documentation and good ol' fashioned World Wide Web searches when I'd get stuck. So you should certainly check out: The Official Google Chrome Extensions Developer's Guide: It's the starting point for everything you need to know, lays our all the various extension APIs you may want to use, and so on. If you know what kind of extension you want to make, I'd highly recommend taking an hour or so, reading through the docs, and taking notes/saving links whenever you stumble upon something that sounds like you'll need it to accomplish your extension goal. Stack Overflow's Google Chrome Extension tag page is filled with great Q&As regarding Chrome extension development. If you're stumped by something, give StackOverflow a search, give the web at large a search, and if you can't find the answer, try posting your question to Stack Overflow. It's awesome. Get Coding So, enough of this starter guide. Time for you to roll up your sleeves and do some extension development of your own. If you've got any questions, or just want to share what extensions you're planning to make, let's hear it in the comments.