LyteByte » Blogging

There is something new here at LyteByte!

Mr.Byte — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 05:28:11 +0000

Change, Change, Change! Everybody is looking for a change this time of the year and we do have some major changes here at LyteByte. With my semester end and Christmas break, we did not see any posts in the last two month but we are back again.

Theme Change
First the obvious change everyone can see is the theme change. The previous design has been here for almost two years though we had header and favicon design change a year ago. As the matter of fact that favicon was featured in Smashing Magazine.

This new theme is based on the Options Theme from Theme Hybrid by Justin Tadlock. This magazine style theme totally changes the front page look with featured post gallery, Categories tabs and lot of other features in the sidebar.

The new logo design and the favicon was designed by me using Adobe Photoshop. See my earlier header designs and article on how to create a simple one for yourself.

Server Change

The next change is the server where Lyte Byte is hosted. Earlier it was in a shared hosting but now we are hosted in a Virtual Private Server (VPS) by Slicehost. Thanks to Nirmal for the recommendation.

Finally a weeks work on moving the server and changing the design has paid off and now its time to get back with good tips and tweaks here at LyteByte.

P.S. I would like all my subscribers to visit the home page and other pages and let me know how does the new one look. How is the ease of use? Still its prone to some bugs, so please report any feature which is not working yet.

Also, if anybody knows how to tune LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySql, Php) do let me know and your help would be much appreciated!

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LyteByte Icon Featured in Smashing Magazine

Mr.Byte — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 00:56:58 +0000

It came as quite a suprise when LyteByte’s Icon (Favicon) was featured in the Smashing Magazine today.

These are formed by the characters L and B. Small b is inside the L and they were turned upside down to form the number 97 but later I turned the angle to give an arrow look.

I was always inspired by blogs which have very unique Icons and hence it motivated me to design this favicon earlier this year. You can also see my earlier designs I thought of and have used.

You can also read how to create a simple favicon by yourself.

Thanks to Smashing Magazine for featuring LyteByte’s favicon.

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Best of Last Month from Lyte Byte– June 08

Mr.Byte — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 02:34:00 +0000

Last months we had couple of more posts than the recent past months and in short it was a month filled with lots of tips and tweaks. Here are some of the top posts from June 08 here at Lyte Byte.

Since we had Firefox 3 release, all the Firefox 3 tips were the most popular posts from last month.

How to Browse Firefox 3 without Leaving a trace?

Understanding How and Where Firefox 3 Bookmarks are Saved

How to Auto Export Firefox 3 bookmarks to bookmarks.html?

How to Open Links next to the current tab in Firefox 3?

Other top posts from other categories like Office 2007, Excel, Word, Vista, How to etc

How to write mathematical equations, physics derivation, chemistry formulas in Word 2007?

How to remove duplicates in Excel 2007?

How to do calculations with Live data from web in Excel 2007?

How to change text orientation in Excel 2007?

Windows Vista

How to remove unwanted startup programs in Vista?

How to disable clicking sound in Internet Explorer from Vista?

My guest post at HowtoGeek: How to create a custom keyboard shortcut to access hidden desktop icons and files?

We still have lots of how to tips on Vista, Office Applications, and Internet Applications coming on so stay tuned.

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The Best of Last Month from Lyte Byte – May 08

Mr.Byte — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 23:17:09 +0000

Its another month gone by and its time for another post in the series, ‘The Best of Last Month’. Last month we were able to see more tips when compared with the past few months and we will try to improve the number of post yet maintaining the quality.

Here is the poll of the month about what do you feel about the quality of the posts at Lyte Byte. please visit LyteByte and vote at the sidebar.

Here are some of the best posts from last month including How to tips on Vista and Office applications.

The best article of the month,

12 Must Have Extensions for Windows Vista in a single package

How to add Copyright Watermark to Images using Windows Live Writer?

Mr.Byte — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 01:57:02 +0000

Content stealing and Image hotlinking are one of the unresolved problems of the blogging network. Though there are attempts to solve this, none provides an ultimate solution to end it and without thinking about it ever again. I was trying some plugins and changing .htaccess to avoid image hotlinking but none worked for me so far as it removes the images when people view from feeds.

Watermarking may be one of the solution to avoid people from hotlinking but the main disadvantage of that is, it would make the image a little clumsier.

(Pic: Screenshot of my Desktop)

Anyway, if watermarking is what you decide, then Windows Live Writer provides the solution which watermarks all the images on the fly when you publish.

To watermark the images, click on the image and go to the effects tab on the sidebar. Click the plus sign and overlays -> Watermark.

You can give the website or blog name, change the font and its size. Also choose the location where you want to position the Copyright symbol.

To make sure these settings are applied for every image you add using Windows Live Writer, go to the image tab and at the bottom, click Save settings as default. From now on copyright watermark will be added to every image you publish using Windows Live Writer.

You can also do other Transformations for images in Windows Live Writer like Black and White, Sepia Tone, Adjust Temperature, Sharpen, Gaussian Blur, Emboss, Color Pop etc.

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How to Update Windows Live Writer After Changing Blog Theme?

Mr.Byte — Sat, 17 May 2008 21:24:38 +0000

Windows Live Writer is almost used by most of the bloggers as the application to compose and manage posts especially for Wordpress. The features which I like the most are adjusting the size of the images and the way we can structure the post. It also gives a preview of the post as it would look after its been posted along with the sidebar and header images.

It does this as Windows Live Writer downloads the current theme that is used in the blog and presents the content to match with it.

So how to update Windows Live Writer after making changes in the theme so that it would reflect the current theme along with changes?

If you want to update only the weblog Style or the theme, then go to View and Click Update Weblog Style. This will detect if there are any changes in the theme and update them.

Or if you have made any other changes like Password then you can update those information through Weblog -> Edit Weblog Settings.

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The Best of Last Month from Lyte Byte – Apr 08

Mr.Byte — Fri, 02 May 2008 01:37:44 +0000

Its been a while since I write the post on the series ‘The Best of Last Month‘ and I thought it would be appropriate to start it again.

If you have missed any top posts over the last month, here is the top 5 from April 2008.

My new mobile phone helped me to write Nokia N95-4 8GB review which has become one of the top post of Lyte Byte. These days, I am writing more on Excel Tips. Although I am planning to write more on other Office Applications like Word and Powerpoint and also more on free applications for Vista. Stay connected for the upcoming How-to tips and tweaks.

As a reader of Lyte Byte, what is your suggestion? Should I diversify the topics covered or should I just concentrate on one field?

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A Note of Thanks to 1111 Lyte Byte Readers

Mr.Byte — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 00:05:16 +0000

It’s been little more than a year since I started Lyte Byte as a technology blog where I have been writing about tips and tweaks for software, internet applications and other computer related posts.

After working for a major software company, the one thing I learnt is no matter what field you are in, what matters the most is NUMBERS!!! Numbers not only count but they also speak a lot.

So, Thanks to the 1111 readers of Lyte Byte (as of April 17, 2008). These little numbers mean a lot to me keeping this site going. These numbers have made me accept the fact and realize that I am not writing in vain or for no reason and somebody is benefiting from what I write. Sometimes they have become the source of inspiration to me to write new posts.

If you are one of the 1111 subscribers, I would really appreciate if you could drop a comment below just saying a Hi or stating what you like and dont, and any other comments or suggestions. I just would like to know about the subscribers better.

And also thanks to Google and other search engines as it has made easy for everybody to find the answers and solution. I remember writing a post very long back, how a person lost a turtle in his house and found it on Google! So if you lose something in your house and if you search in Google, you may end up finding it.

This has made Lyte Byte to cross more than 100,000 page views every month and it’s constantly growing. There are lots of post which are constantly searched upon and the top three posts would include “How to convert .FLV(Flash) to .WMV, .AVI or any other format?”, “3 + 3 + 3 Places Where You Can Get Free Icons For All Seasons And Reasons”, and “How to share one Internet connection with another computer using Vista?” but other posts in the category of Vista, Office, How to, Tips are so closely following these.

FREE ADVERTISING FOR A MONTH

As these numbers go higher, this has also helped to gain some advertisers in Lyte Byte. And as we are just trying to find some advertisers direct or indirect apart from Google adsense, here is an initial offer of FREE ADVERTISING FOR A MONTH! The prices are very competitive and for more terms you can read it from Advertise at Lyte Byte.

One of the first advertisers here at Lyte Byte is Free Icons Download. They have more than 15,000 high quality icons for download and the best of all, they are free! These icons are user submitted and they have wide variety of source and in different categories like Art, Application, Business, Cartoon Icons, Computer Icons, Food, Funny, Holidays, People, Sport and so much more.

Do visit Free Icons Download and check out the amazing collection of Free Icons.

Once again, Thanks to all the readers of Lyte Byte and if you have not subscribed it yet, you may subscribe by mail or full feeds.

Don’t forget to drop your comments!

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How to Change FeedBurner Settings to Use Original Permalinks in Feeds?

Mr.Byte — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 21:39:33 +0000

Feedburner uses a redirected permalinks in the feeds to track the clicks to the posts from the feeds. But since most of the bookmarkings are done through the feeds, you don’t get the most of the benefits from this. I was wondering how to do this and was going through the feedburner features and finally found in under the PRO features.

So how to change the feedburner settings to show the original permalinks in feeds by disabling feedburner redirect?

Click on the Analyze tab for the feed that you want to change. Then click on Feedburner Stats PRO. Under For my Feed, track: , uncheck the option Item link clicks. You can set these options for complete item use statistics or Search engine ranking.

So if you are unchecking this option you will not be able be track the clicks from feeds to posts. Click Save and you are done. Now the permalinks in the feedburner feeds will be the same as the actual post permalinks.

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Lyte Byte’s New Header and Logo

Mr.Byte — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 07:38:14 +0000

Its been a year since I started this blog and I had the old header image for my blog all through that time. I also wrote a post earlier on how did I make my own web 2.0 logo and icon for my blog. So it was time again to redo the whole thing and update to a better interface. As I needed to include the main categories in the header to improve the visibility of those sections, I had to extend my header image a bit.

So I sat down and made the new header image during this weekend. Also changed the angle of the icon with a better look. Everything was done in Adobe Photoshop CS3. Transparency, gradient overlay, inner glow, outer glow, gaussian blur are some of the features that were used to create these web 2.0 look.

The Old…

and the new

Also made the buttons for the popular categories. Since I made these buttons to be partially transparent, they merged well with the header and formed a better darker image.

Also changed the logo of the blog to look much more appropriate to the header.

These are formed by the characters L and B. Small b is inside the L and they were turned upside down to form the number 97 but later I turned the angle to give an arrow look.

If you are looking for some good articles to start with, you can read my earlier post on how to create a web 2.0 icon and header for your website or blog. Last time, after I posted many had requested me to create header image for their websites. However as I am at school, I don’t have much time to devote to create for others. But, If you need some help I can give some pointers.

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