Update: Works in Safari 5 as well.

While there isn’t a native Ad Blocker in Safari 4, I was able to clean up most websites by using Fanboy’s Element Hider stylesheet¹ to collapse the advertisement elements.

Here are the steps to setting up the Advertisement Hider in Safari 4:

Step 1: Download Fanboy’s Element Hider CSS file and save it to the Safari profile (or any folder of your choosing).

Step 2: Launch Safari4, go to Preferences -> Advanced -> Style Sheet -> Other… and select the fanboy-adblocklist-elements.css file you just saved.

Note: I am aware of 3rd party tools like Proximity to block ads but I prefer using a browser-specific solution. If you have a better way of handling ads in Safari, please share your ideas in the comments.

1. The Element Hider is part of an excellent, lightweight Adblock List maintained by Fanboy and available for Opera (my primary browser).  It is made up of two parts: (1) a urlfilter.ini replacement file that catches the ads before they are loaded and (2) an element hider .css file that colapses the ad space so that the webpage looks cleaner.

Note: since I don’t have Iconpackager (shareware), I downloaded a 30-day trial of IconWorkshop and extracted the icons to be used as .ico files. Then, I use IPhile to apply those icons to my system. (do a google search to find a valid download link)

Cursors: I modified & mixed a number of Cursors to make my set (download).

Here’s a breakdown of where I got the cursors from:

• Graphite (Normal, Alternative) – I shifted the angle
• Obsidian (Handwriting, Unavailable, Move, Resize pointers)
• Comix (Precision Selector, Text Selector)
• Aero (Busy, Working in Background) – I used my modified Graphite Normal cursor and added a modified Aero busy icon which I shaded orange.
• TN (Link)

1. by jrdn88.  Package also contains sounds and cursors

In practice, I worked up a wireframe of how I wanted all my ‘real’ productivity components to be laid out on the desktop and then found a wallpaper that met the needs of my layout. But, as far as these Productive Desktop Project posts go, I’ve opted to start with the eye-candy!

Wallpaper: Striped Allegiance¹ (download)

1. I modified/merged the following two wallpapers: I Pledge Allegiance by mnmsfreak and Arrays by Citrus Moon

So, here’s how I optimized my Outlook toolbars and pane layout:

     
Default                                                  Optimized

Step 1: Reduce Toolbar Clutter

1. Determine which buttons are most useful to you.
   I tracked my usage over the span on one month. Here are my frequently-used buttons:
   Mail (5): New, Delete, Reply, Reply to All, Forward
   Calendar (3): New, Delete, Today
   Contacts (2): New, Delete
2. Add your commonly-used buttons to the menu bar.
   1. While in the Mail view (i.e., looking at your inbox), right click on toolbar and select “Customize…”
   2. Remove unused Menu Bar items. For example, I don’t need the “Go” menu or the “Ask a Question” box in the top right. So, I removed both of these.
   3. Drag your commonly-used buttons to the appropriate place on the menu bar. Switch to Calendar and Contacts view and repeat.

   Click on the images below to see optimal icon layout (outlined in red)
   Mail Toolbar:
   
   Calendar Toolbar:
   
   Contacts Toolbar:
   

Step 2: Minimize Navigation and To-Do Pane in Outlook 2007.
The trick is to use this in conjunction with “Favorite Folders” to always have your commonly-used folders accessible with one click. To achieve this:

1. Determine your most useful folders
2. Right-click on them and select “Add to Favorite Folders.”
3. Click the minimize arrow (as opposed to the ‘x’ to close) in the corner of the side pane

Note: In my Optimized screenshot, I have menu items for some 3rd party plugins (ClearContext & Xobni) installed. For the purposes of this post, I disabled those plugins/toolbars when taking the screenshot (since most people don’t have them installed).

If you do have 3rd party plugins that add buttons to the Standard Toolbar, you may find that those buttons don’t function correctly if taken out of the Standard Toolbar. So, using the method described in this post will work but you will still have to keep the Standard Toolbar visible for those 3rd party buttons, albeit with fewer icons!

I like Chromium based solely on its speed (Opera still wins for customizability).  And since I decided it was “dock-worthy” (i.e., I will be using it regularly), I needed an icon that matched my desktop color scheme. So, I sepia’d the default blue Chromium icon.

You can download the 256×256 icon and png below:

• GoogleChrome_Sepia.png
• GoogleChrome_Sepia.ico

1. Note: you can download the latest Chromium nightly builds here.

Update: This has been tested in Outlook 2010, 2007 & 2003

I find that Outlook’s Personal Folder (.pst) files have a haphazard way of getting corrupted – which obviously impacts daily performance as well as reliability of my email achieve. Microsoft’s Inbox Repair Tool (ScanPST) diagnoses and repairs corrupt .pst/.ost files to make sure the file structure is intact, but the process requires more manual intervention than I care for. So, here’s how I made Outlook’s Inbox Repair process completely automated:

Step 1: Download some 3rd party utilities!

1. Download NirCmd.zip.
   In order to run the ScanPST utility against your .pst/.ost files, Outlook must be shutdown. While there isn’t a way to do what we need natively in Windows, NirCmd (free) allows us to accomplish the task gracefully – meaning Outlook will not shut down when unsaved content exists (in which case the Repair will be skipped for this instance).
   (Note: If you prefer to forcefully end Outlook, you can do so using process.exe ¹ . Of course, doing this could cause corruption – which is what we’re trying to avoid/fix!)
2. Extract nircmdc.exe² to ‘C:\\Windows\System32′.
   (Note: I don’t usually like to install 3rd party executables to WindowsSystem32. In this case, however, I feel these simple cli utilities don’t justify additions to my Path entry. If you wish to install somewhere else, you can add the location to your Path³ or add the full path into the script file.)
3. Download cmdscan.zip.
   Quester‘s cmdscan (free) allows us to run ScanPST without any user interaction.
4. Extract cmdscan.exe to ‘C:\\Windows\System32′
5. Download autopst.bat – my batch file template.

The next Steps will outline what is happening in the batch file:

Step 2: Make sure Outlook is not running/Close Outlook if it is.

1. (informational) To gracefully close outlook, the script executes:
   nircmdc closeprocess outlook.exe.
   To test your nircmd install, open Outlook and execute this command from the command prompt.
2. (informational) We want to wait for Outlook to close because the Repair Tool will not analyze/fix an open .pst file. To do this, the script executes:
   nircmdc waitprocess outlook.exe.

Step 3: Run ScanPST from the Command Line.

1. Find the path to scanpst.exe on your computer:
   1. in Outlook 2003 – C:\\Program Files\Common Files\System\Mapi\1033\
   2. in Outlook 2007 – C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office12\
2. Edit autopst.bat in notepad and verify ScanPST-location=”<your path>”
3. If your .pst/.ost files are in the default location, the command in the script – cmdscan %ScanPST-location% *.pst *.ost – will work just fine. (Otherwise, follow the instructions in readme.txt, found in the cmdscan.zip file. It will show all your file selection options).

Step 4: (optional) Open Outlook so it’s ready to go when you access your computer again.

1. If you prefer to automatically restart Outlook after the scan, remove “REM” from the front of the “REM start outlook.exe” line.

Step 5: Create a Scheduled Task ⁴

1. Start -> Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Scheduled Tasks.
2. Next -> Browse… -> select the autopst.bat file -> Next
3. Select task frequency (i.e., Daily/Weekly) -> Next
4. Set run time (when are you least likely to need Outlook open?
5. …you get the idea…

Step 6: Test

1. Double-click on the autopst.bat file or execute the newly created task to make sure things go as expected.

1. Command Line Process Viewer/Killer/Suspender – This method first tried to gracefully shut down Outlook. If Outlook remains open after 60 seconds, the process is forced to terminate.
2. nircmdc is a command line only version of nircmd – this makes popup dialogs print to cmd window instead; thus, allowing us to automate processes more reliably
3. How to set the path in: Windows XP / Vista
4. How To Schedule Tasks in Windows XP

Nick Bradbury, the creator of FeedDemon, wrote a blog post in 2004 outlining how to add a “Send to FeedDemon” context menu option in Opera¹.  Still, I didn’t find it to be the complete solution I was looking for

So, here’s how I send RSS feeds from Opera to FeedDemon:

Step 1: Add the Send to FeedDemon Button
Since FeedDemon is intelligent enough to pick up the default feed, this works fine for 98% of my cases.

However, if a site has numerous feeds and you don’t want to pick the default, then the Button isn’t the ideal choice.  So, here’s a few alternative ways to accomplish the task.

Step 2: (optional) Disable Mail (and, thus, Opera Feeds)
This will prevent the annoying ‘Do you want to subscribe to this feed in Opera’ popup.²  However, it will also disable the RSS icon that is displayed in the address bar when a feed is found.

1. Uncheck opera:config#UserPrefs|ShowE-mailClient.
2. Save Settings & Restart Opera.

Step 3: Add the feed:http protocol.

1. Go to Preferences (Alt+P) -> Advanced Tab –> Programs.
2. Select “Add…”.
3. Under Protocol, type feed:http .
4. Select “Open with other application” then Choose the FeedDemon.exe path (note: if FeedDemon is your default feed reader, this step isn’t absolutely necessary.  Still, I like setting this so that even if another broswer/app steals the feed protocol, FeedDemon will always be used.)

Step 4: Add the ‘Send to FeedDemon’ context menu.

1. Open Windows Explorer and browse to ‘C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Opera\Opera\profile\menu’.
2. Save Opera-FeedDemon-Menu.ini in the menu folder.
3. Go to Opera Preferences (Alt+P) –> Advanced Tab –> Toolbars and select ‘Opera 9.5 + FeedDemon’ from the Menu Setup.

Step 5: How to Use.

1. Click the ‘Send to FeedDemon’ button while on the website. Or…
   
2. Right-click in the whitespace of this webpage and select “Send to FeedDemon” from the menu.  Or…
3. If the link uses the feed protocol, clicking on the link directly will open the feed in FeedDemon.  Or…
   
4. In some cases (like with FeedBurner, for example), you will be redirected from the main website to a page where you can select the RSS reader of your choice.

Example/Test Feeds³:

• http://my.opera.com/community/forums/topic.dml?id=245333
• feed:http://www.opindian.com/feed/
• http://feeds.feedburner.com/NickBradbury

1. Nick Bradbury’s ‘Adding FeedDemon to Opera’ blog post
2. Opera Forums – disabling and/or managing feeds…
3. Tested with Opera 9.5 Weekly & FeedDemon 2.7

This tweak initiates the User’s logon/startup sequence before locking Windows 7/Vista/XP; thus, speeding up the OS startup process while maintaining the security provided by the login screen.

What it solves: Traditionally, you turn on your computer and wait a few minutes. Then, you log into windows and wait a few more minutes. This tweak eliminates that wasted time by allowing you to turn on your computer, go work on something else for a few minutes, come back, login and begin working immediately because your profile and startup programs have already loaded! It is particularly useful for people who are the sole or primary user of their PC and use the login screen purely as a security mechanism.

I couldn’t find a streamlined step-by-step guide online so I figured I’d put one together myself.  Sources are credited below.

Step 1: Auto-Login on Startup.¹

1. In Vista/7, Click Start, type netplwiz in the search field, and hit Enter.
   In XP, Click Start, click Run, type control userpasswords2
   (This loads the Advanced User Accounts control panel).
2. Uncheck the Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer option.
3. Click Apply.
4. Enter your password into the Automatically Log On dialog box that pops up and click “OK“.

Step 2: Lock PC Immediately after Login.²

1. Click Start -> All Programs, right-click on the Startup folder, and select Open.
2. The Explorer Window opens. Right-click in the whitespace and point to New and click Shortcut.
3. The Create Shortcut Wizard opens. In the text box, type the following:
   rundll32.exe user32.dll,LockWorkStation
4. Click Next.
5. Enter a name for the shortcut (e.g., “Lock Workstation“).
6. Click Finish.

Step 3: Reboot.

Step 4: Enable Power-On Security.

1. Please view your BIOS Security options and enable the power-on password feature. Otherwise, you run the risk of allowing someone to boot to safemode without any password access (as pointed out by a commenter).

1. about.com – Source of Auto-Login steps.
2. microsoft.com – Source for Lock PC steps.

The WP-Profilactic Plugin publishes your LifeStream or informs readers where to find you online by parseing your aggregated online activity feed from Profilactic.

• Plugin Details & Download
• Lifestream Demo

Road to v1.0 (Why I wrote this plugin)

If you want to keep friends in-the-know on your life online, then you need a way to aggregate your online activities. But, with the number of social sites on the web today, it’s hard to manage one’s own online identity/activies, much less that of friends.

If your friends care to know what books you’re reading, what music you’re listening too, what restaurants you love, etc., then services like FriendFeed, Plaxo Pulse & Profilactic – commonly referred to as “lifestreams” – are a great way to keep friends in the loop. (Compare Services at lifestreamblog.com)

As I searched for a solution to aggregate my lifestream to my blog, I came across Kieran Delany‘s WP-SimpleLife plugin for WP.  It did exactly what I wanted; however, adding new services was somewhat tedeous (others agreed.  So, I began searching for a simpler solution.

My search of online aggregators led me to Profilactic.  The noticable initial diffirentiator between Profilactic and the others (w.r.t. what I needed) was the large number of supported sites (175 at the time of writing this), the ability to include your own RSS feeds, and the title formatting.  All the other LifeStream Services post items to the feed in a consolidated format (i.e., UserX posted three links on delicious); whereas Profilactic displays the title of each post individually so that users can see exactly what I bookmarked without having to go the services’ website to read the rest of the content.

So, I forked K’s SimpleLife plugin and came up with WP-Profilactic. Visit the Project Page to download.  If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at prof…@opindian.com).

Melpo Mene – I Adore You