AllSnap: Snap Window Edges Together

As you may recall, I'm the kind of person that prefers to maximize my windows instead of minimizing and arranging the windows myself. However, I'm coming to compromise better between maximized and non-maximized, as I try to come up with better and more organized ways to take care of my various computer-related tasks, mainly taking care of my finances, as I have my bookkeeping software, my online banking accounts, and the calculator all open at once.

Allsnap is a small, simple freeware app created by Ivan Heckman, which makes managing multiple non-maximized windows, well, a snap. But why not check out this video to see for yourself how it works?


Allsnap installs simply, and gives you the option of starting with Windows (by installing an icon in the Startup folder). Once installed and running, you can also right click on the system tray icon and change features such as running in the background without a system tray icon (you know that's important to me!) To unhide the system tray icon, just run the program again.

There are also many other customization options that I'll let you explore yourself. I personally left almost all the settings in the default option, with the specific exception of the system tray icon hide option.

Allsnap takes up 4 megabytes of RAM in the background, which so far is doable for me. It could stand to be lighter-weight, but it's not terrible. As a result, I will be keeping Allsnap installed until I find a better product. Specifically, if someone develops an app that can actually dock windows like many instant messaging apps, I would be in heaven.

Get Rid of "Use the Web Service to Find the Correct Program" Window

How-to-Geek offers a great, quick registry hack that gets rid of the otherwise useless "Use the Web Service to Find the Correct Program" dialog when you try to open a file that Windows doesn't know what program to use on. I mean, don't we all just go to the "Select a Program from the list of installed programs" dialog?

Well, just check out the registry hack here. What's great about this and other How-To-Geek articles about registry hacks is, they offer a downloadable .reg file that you can just double click on, and it installs itself in the registry automatically! Of course, if you're the kind that's paranoid about installing registry files, the article also offers step by step directions on doing the registry hack yourself.

I meanwhile, just went ahead and used the install. Now don't screw me on this, How-To-Geek!

Finally, MY HOST: Hostmonster!

After regaling you all with the various horror, horror-er, and not-so-horrific web hosts I bounced around to and from for my official portfolio site, finally I reveal who I decided to go with, to much satisfaction: Hostmonster.

6.95 a month is, in my opinion, on the high end of "budget hosting" solutions (those including sites that offer 9.95 A YEAR), especially since you pay for a full year up front. However, it's become more than worth it.

First of all, for every account, you get one free domain, registered in your name for as long as you keep your account with them. With domains costing about 7.95 a year, that's like getting 66 cents off per month. Of course, I already had my own domain, so I just went and used the extra free domain name to finally register my name.

Secondly, Hostmonster offers the latest version of CPanel, which, if you may remember, was a dealbreaker for me. Cpanel lets me administer the backend of my site in a user-friendly manner, and I've come to be dependent on it for years now.

Thirdly, Hostmonster offers all of the PHP and CGI script capabilities that I needed to run my site, another thing that ixwebhosting did not have at the time I used their service.

Fourthly, and perhaps most importantly, Hostmonster also offers 24/7 phone tech support. I'd had to call them once and emailed them once with questions about setting my site up, and they responded promptly and courteously. I still think ixwebhosting's support is better, but I really doubt now that I'd be hit with a serious emergency that would need me to call at 3 in the morning on a holiday.

And finally, Hostmonster offers a whopping 1.5 TERABYTES of hosting space, and 15 TERABYTES of bandwidth per month! Yes, I know other sites had offered unlimited space, but for some reason having specific limits on space and bandwidth seem more comforting than having none at all. I've heard of hosts shutting down sites for excessive space and bandwidth even if they were told they would be unlimited, mainly because the hosts never really intended to give them limitless bandwidth, more like "as much as we can handle until we think you're using too much."

1.5 terabytes of space?? I calculated it, at my upload rate of 60 KB/sec, I can upload 216 megabytes an hour, and 5 gigabytes in 24 hours. At that rate, it would take me 289 DAYS of straight uploading to fill up the site! Hell, I can back up my entire computer more than twice over (and is something I'm seriously considering).

*Update: using the server as backup is against their Terms of Service. DO NOT DO THIS, I learned the hard way.

Anyway, I picked Hostmonster after reading its stellar reviews, and carefully checking its features list. I've been hosting with them for two and a half months now and I haven't had an issue with them yet. I highly recommend them.

Web Host Review: ixwebhosting

My anger at crappy, cheapo web hosts is by now well-documented. After five years of using those $9.95 a year, unlimited web space and bandwidth hosting services you can buy on eBay, I've come to realize that they're worth even less than the rock bottom price they go for, at least if you seriously depend on the uptime of your site. In my case, my main email address is connected to my domain, so if the host is down, I don't get email.

Finally, I buckled down and decided to go with a monthly paid, true customer service web host. I looked them up online, and tried to read as many reviews as possible, and weighed their various services, capacities, and bandwidths they offer.

At one point in late 2007, I actually went with ixwebhosting, which was a cheap host at 3.95 a month for unlimited capacity and bandwidth. I went with them mainly because they apparently had excellent customer support (they claim 24/7 phone support via an 800 number).

In fact, when I was setting my site up, it was during a long holiday weekend, and I needed to ask a question to get my email working. I called the number, and after a short holding period, I was put in touch with a well-spoken, genial customer service rep that answered my question easily. I was very impressed.

Unfortunately, IXwebhosting did not use CPanel, the web-based site management app that I and many other webmasters have come to rely upon to set up site services and track visitors. Ixwebhosting offered their own control panel, but it just didn't cut the mustard to my satisfaction. Likewise, IXwebhosting did not offer a MySQL database, which I needed to run my forum. These two things led me to eventually dump my service with them, for which I was able to get a full refund since I did it in the 30 day trial period. Even though it was my own stupid lack of making sure they offered everything I needed, they were still corteous and prompt at their response.

I've since checked out the site and it seems that while the price per month of ixwebhosting has gone up an extra dollar per hour at 4.95 a month, they have added MySQL support, and they seem to have updated their control panel to be more user-friendly.

I think what ixwebhosting offers now is a great deal for the price, mainly because of their stellar customer support service. However, if you feel you need the use of CPanel, don't be surprised to pay extra for it.

What's going on with my Zune XP Theme?

As I'd blogged about months ago, I've been in love with Microsoft's original Zune XP visual theme: it's dark, shiny, and requires no complicated hacking to get to install properly.

If you want to get it yourself, here's the direct link to the install file.

Now unfortunately, for some reason some elements of my Zune theme aren't displaying correctly. Specifically, it's instead displaying as the Windows classic view. Take a look:

Now if this was properly set up, the gray background for the "System Tasks", "Other Places" and "Details" should be the shiny orange look, and the background for that entire sidebar should be a darker gray.

I've reloaded my other themes and brought back the Zune theme, and it's still that way. I'm at a loss for what to do, and I'm afraid I'd end up changing things that would be a pain to change back if they don't work. Does anyone know what's going on here? If you do, you'll get your own featured article on Greasy PC!

The problem with April Fools' sites

Yesterday being April Fools, there were more than a bunch of sites that took on pranky gimmicks (all of Gizmodo's posts yesterday were Mr. T, Wisebread claimed that getting an Apple tattoo gets you cash and Apple Store discounts, Newgrounds did crap, and of course you probably saw what Google and Youtube were up to).

All funny and cute, but the problem is, it's really only funny the first site you visit. It's not any of these sites' fault (okay, fine the Gizmodo thing got old pretty fast), since they can't help if they weren't the first site a person visits, but perhaps I'm really just that big of a fan of website pranks, or normal pranks.

See Craigslist Photos from The Listing Directory!

I saw the Craigslist Image Preview Ext Firefox extension blogged about in my usual stomping grounds the past few weeks and thought to myself "cute idea, but do I really need to have it installed, taking up memory?" I decided to move on.

That is until I was suddenly in the market for a new desk, and suddenly this extension saved my life. As you can see in the screenshot below, CIPE (as I'll call it) adds thumbnail views to ad listings that have images attached. Not only that, if you hover your mouse over the image, you get the full size view on the top right of the screen!

I'm still looking for the right desk, but this has certainly saved me time already. Whether or not I'll keep it enabled while I'm not actively bargain hunting, we'll see (probably not), but I'll certainly keep it installed.