How To Enable Half Star Ratings in iTunes

If you want to get those fancy half star ratings in Itunes you can follow these instructions to get them on either Windows or Mac.

Windows

1. Close Itunes
2. Find Itunesprefs.xml and open it using Notepad
3. Find <Key>User Preferences</key><dict>
4. Under that line add: <key>allow-half-stars</key>
5. Under that line add: <data>dHJ1ZQ</data>
6. Save the file and Open Itunes

Mac

1. Open up Terminal (in Application/Utilities)
2. Make sure iTunes is closed
3. Type the following line: defaults write com.apple.iTunes allow-half-stars-bool TRUE
4. Hit enter
5. Close the terminal and fire up iTunes

Streaming Live Video of any sports, PPV, NBA, MLB, NFL game online

How to Watch live sports online.  NBA, UFC, MLB, NFL, PPV Streaming Video

Sometimes you find yourself away from home without the comforts of your couch, universal remote, and large paid television selection.  Fear not, there are many online cowboys streaming your favorite channel to a free online service for your viewing pleasure. 

Like finding anything online, your first stop in the search box.  The search box on Justin.tv to be more specific.  Justin.tv is an online service that allows anyone to stream themselves online and enterprising users have figured out ways to pump anything through that video pipe. So take any flash enabled browser and head on over.  Do a search using good keywords; for example, if you were searching for an NBA game feature the Boston Celtics, you would search for.. duh.. “Boston Celtics” and you might append NBA on the end.  

Another key feature is there categories, clicking on the sports category brings up the most viewed content, and generally, the most viewed content is the best content.  So if your searching for a Cricket video stream from Pakistan you will be able to find it.

Once inside one of the many populated sport channels, let the chat room come to your attention.  You can find scores of other streams, high quality feeds and aggregation sites for your desired sports through links provided in the chat by other users.  Just try not to get Rick-Rolled.

Get Track back on your Twitter with Twitter Spy!

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Twitter Spy is an excellent way to get xmpp streaming and track functionality back on your twitter.  You can use an jabber compatible IM client, even Google Talk or Gmail.  I use Adium for this on the Mac and Pidgin is an excellent alternative for Linux and Windows users.

Here is how to set it up for your Google Account

To get it set up in Google Chat (the IM feature with in GMail. This will work for Google Talk as well):

1. In Gmail, go to the chat sidebar and paste in twitterspy@jabber.org

2. In the popover that opens, click Invite to Chat

3. You will get another window, click Send Invites

This will generate an auto response for twitterspy and twitterspy will then become a friend that you can IM with. First thing to do is IM ‘help’ (no quotes) and you will get a list of the things you can do:

autopost    Enable or disable autopost
follow    Follow a user
help    Get help for commands.
lang    Set your language.
leave    Leave (stop following) a user
off    Disable updates.
on    Activate updates.
post    Post a message to twitter.
search    Perform a sample search (but do not track)
track    Track a topic (summize query string)
tracks    List your tracks.
twlogin    Set your twitter username and password (use at your own risk)
twlogout    Discard your twitter credentials
untrack    Stop tracking a topic
watch_friends    Enable or disable watching friends.
whois    Find out who a particular user is.

You can then then use twlogin to log into twitter via TwitterSpy in Gtalk. Then you can post new messages to Twitter.

For example, if I want to track the techganghow, I simply IM: track techgangshow 

This will show all posts with techgangshow in it, except those posted by the user techgangshow.

Become a Twitter Power User today!

Create Gorgeous Screencasts with Screenflow

Are you an Apple/OSX user looking to make screencasts?  Check out Screenflow from flip4mac.com. It is an incredibly robust suite of tools for creating and editing screen captures for your website or clients.

Here is some information from there site:
Using a unique new screen capture system, powerful enough to capture the contents of your entire desktop at the same time as your video camera, microphone and computer’s audio, you’ll be creating incredible screencasts in no time.
The finished result is a QuickTime movie, ready for publishing to your website or blog.
Feature Highlights
	Record from desktop, a video camera, microphone & computer’s audio simultaneously
	Powerful editing tools
	Highlight using ‘Callouts’
	Position video in 3D
	Easy narration of presentations
	Highest quality exporting
	Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard Only
	And much more…

How-To Run a Script on Any website

Have you ever wondered how people test websites for multiple combinations of data.  Or are you more nefarious and wish to rig an online vote?  In any case, every developer needs to check out Selenium.

Selenium is a piece of software and Firefox plugin that allows you to record a set of actions and apply logic to the steps to create a custom script in a matter of second.

Check out the video.