It’s a new year. Isn’t it time to update your Twitter profile with a cool new background? Here’s an awesome trick for geeking up your Twitter background with any kind of theme you can imagine. The best part: it automatically updates every day!

A cool Twitter background can tell people a lot about yourself, instantly showing your personality and interests. Here’s how to make a one-of-a-kind Twitter background that proclaims your geekhood to the world. It’s quick and painless — and you may be surprised at how powerful it is.

1. Point your web browser at instabg.com.
2. Click the big “Sign in with Twitter account” button at the bottom.
3. Twitter will appear and ask for your permission to let InstaBG to access your account. Click “Allow.”
4. A configuration page will come up. This is where the magic happens:

InstaBG Options page

Instagram’s entire database of images is now at your command. The first and most important option is “Target Photos.” There, select “Tags” and then enter a geeky keyword. It can be anything you want, but be sure to enter it as a single word with no spaces. For example, you could enter “xbox360,” “dcnew52,” or “gameofthrones.” These represent tags that Instagram users have labeled their photos with.

Make sure “Auto Update” is on; this will automatically rotate your background daily with a whole new set of Instagram pics. I recommend the following further settings, although this is entirely at your discretion:

• “Order”: new
• “Layout”: small
• “Spacing”: small
• “Background” : “FFFFFF” (aka, white)
• If you want to see the date a picture was posted to Instagram, or how many IG users have “liked” a pic, you can set those under “Option.”

Feel free to play around with any of these settings and see what different kinds of results you get. InstaBG is a powerful tool, and changing the “Target Photos” options can let you do things like set your personal IG photos as your Twitter background.

The “Preview” button will show you what your background will look like. From there, you just activate it when you find one you like. And remember, since you selected “Auto Update: on,” you’ll get a whole new set of IG pics as your Twitter background every single day.

Take a look below at some backgrounds I made using keywords from a few of my favorite geeky things.

#doctorwho

#thehobbit

#darkknightrises

#spiderman

1. Features matter

Given the choice between two similarly priced gadgets, one with more features and the other simply covered in crystals or other “precious” bling, you should definitely pick the feature-laden item.

Features trump bling any day. Even if you think you’re dealing with a girly geek, chances are high they are much more interested in what their new gadget can do than how much shiny stuff there is on the outside.

And definitely no Hello Kitty. Please.

Example: You might think those Swarovski crystals add a much needed wow factor, but your geek will simply be looking for the extra 2GB of memory, expansion port, megapixels, extra controllers…

2. Brand matters

If you know that your geek is after a specific brand, then it’s for a good reason. It doesn’t matter whether the reasoning (assuming you’re told it) matches your perceptions or not — it has been well researched, is there for a good reason, and is generally set in stone.

You might be tempted to buy a cheaper unit from a different manufacturer, but be aware that smiles on Christmas morning are highly unlikely if you do this.

Example: if your geek wants an Apple iPod Touch, don’t buy a Zune or something by Creative. And so on.

3. Speed matters

Don’t buy a slow gadget, either on purpose or out of naivety.

As mentioned in point two, a great deal of research will likely have gone into your geek’s choice of gear, and buying something that doesn’t do the task (quickly enough or at all) just won’t cut it.

4. Capacity matters

You’d expect this to follow point three.

If a geek has told you that the latest gadget needs 16GB of storage, it’s because that requirement has been painstakingly measured. Buying a gadget (even when all else is equal) with just 8GB of storage will leave your geek in a quandary.

Better buy the right capacity in the first place. Memory is cheaper than a broken relationship.

5. Platform matters

Please make sure that you know what computer platforms or games consoles your geek has before trying to buy software for it.

Software can be quite a personal choice as it is, but at least get the platform right.

Example: Buying a Mac user something that only runs on Windows will not go down well.

6. Power matters

Find out what most gadgets of a certain type run on, and stick to that.

For example, many geeks turn their noses up at digital cameras that don’t use lithium-ion rechargeable batteries because it’s the standard for decent cameras.

Many geeks will have invested in USB battery chargers for AA, AAA and other usually disposable batteries, but they tend not to go down so well.

7. What I want matters

The best way to know what to buy is to ask the geek, but with technology and gadgets it can be so easy to get the choice wrong because you didn’t get the product code quite right.

Why not ask your geek for their Amazon Wish List instead?

The geek may well have preferred vendors for really specialise geek stuff, but knows that nearly everyone has heard of Amazon and knows how to use it, so will oblige with a list for that purpose.

8. The Store matters

If you’re not using the Amazon store, you might want to give vouchers, but make sure they are for a store that actually sells decent geek stuff.

If you’re unsure, find out in advance. Examine old packaging lying about the house for clues.

If all else fails, money works well.

9. Snacks matter

(Photo: Terren in Virginia)

It’s not all about the gadgets. It’s about what geeks eat when they’re using them.

Sometimes, proper mealtimes fall by the wayside while a new piece of hardware or software is investigated, so find out what their favourite beverages and foodstuffs are, and buy them a large supply.

10. Duplicates matter

You can never have too many of certain items, but others are a pain to have in duplicate, so do check that your geek hasn’t already got the same, or very similar, item you’re thinking of buying.

11. Boredom matters

(Photo DaveFayram)

Some gadgets are the equivalent of socks, underwear and toiletries — useful but boring.

Items that fall into this category are USB memory sticks, cables, discs, hubs, and so on. Unless your geek has specifically asked for them, avoid them.

12. Deconstruction matters

(Photo makelessnoise)

Most geeks are sensitive enough not to disassemble their presents in front of you, but you need to understand that it’s not cool for you to be offended if one day you visit their house and find that present in bits all over the living room floor.

Maybe it went wrong, or maybe it’s being upgraded (even if it’s not supposed to be), or maybe your geek just got bored and decided to see how it works.

You might shudder at the thought of doing anything but the norm with your gadgets, but it’s merely second nature and child’s play to your geek.

So there you go. Twelve tips for buying decent presents for the geek in your life.

I can’t guarantee you’ll buy a perfect present because every geek is different, but at least you have a better chance now.

Geeks, help me out here. What tips would you give to non-geek friends and relatives in their quest to buy you decent presents?

Not too sure if you know about this already, but something worth your attention is waving at Gmail.com. Gmail now offers themes… yes, themes! Well I know know it was there for a long time through third-party aps, but now Gmail has ported the theme function from their very own.

Getting your theme is as easy as clicking the theme’s tab when you log into your Gmail account.

Now to some of you this is a GREAT step towards making Gmail work a little livelier. I could imagine those who work using their Gmail accounts every day. I know how bland and bleh Gmail can be at times. But hey, Google heard yah, so here are themes.

According to Annie Chen on the Gmail Blog, the Gmail team wanted to “go beyond simple color customization” so “there’s a shiny theme with chrome styling, another one that turns your inbox into a retro notepad, nature themes that change scenery over time, weather driven themes that can rain on your mailbox, and fun characters to keep you in good company.”

This problem has happened to me before, and the solution to get the downloads working again (in my case) was very easy – just had to delete one file, the “downloads.rdf” to be more specific, that is suppose to be located in the Profile folder of Firefox.

There might be other solutions to solve the “downloads in Firefox problem” – check this page on the Mozilla Knowledge Base for more information/solutions, such as reseting the download folder.

You can access the recently closed tabs list under the History menu. It gives you the option to re-open tabs you’ve closed while in a particular session. You can also open all recently closed tabs in a new tabbed window. When you close the browser, the list is cleared.

It won’t help if you have unsaved forms filled up when you close a tab, as the Recently Closed Tabs feature won’t bring these back (but FireFox 2′s session recovery feature will, though this only works if FF2 crashes and not when you close it normally). Still, this is a useful feature–a good way to revisit closed tabs, instead of having to dig through your browser history.

[via TUAW]

First of all, this article won’t include anything “homebrewed” so if you dumb enough to update your PSP to v2.7+ (me included) you’re very lucky to find this, there is one downside, for most of the tricks listed here, you’re going to want a big memory stick, there’s a few counterfeits on eBay (2GB for $89 – actually works, I bought one, fills up to 2GB), or you can take out the cash and buy one from Circuit City or Best Buy.

Everybody who’s experienced the fun of customizing Firefox to his or her liking has a favorite extension. Whether it’s the improved navigation and session-saving friendliness of TabMixPlus or the convenience of All-in-One Sidebar, I can’t imagine living without some of them. It’s empowering to tweak your browser as you see fit, but the price often comes in the form of slower performance and memory hogging. Though Firefox has long been accused of leaking memory, there are simple ways to reduce RAM usage and increase speed. Here are a few extensions and tips designed to lighten your load.

So how do we go about with duplicating a Firefox profile?

First, open up your source (the original one, where you want to copy the profile from) profile in Windows Explorer. Let’s assume you only use one profile on your system, which is automatically named by Firefox as default, and that you use Windows XP. Point Explorer to:

[Windows installation drive]:\Documents and Settings\[Your username]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles

You might have to first enable viewing of hidden files and folders and system files at TOOLS – FOLDER OPTIONS – VIEW. Simply uncheck the boxes that say “Hide protected system files …” and select the radio button for “Show hidden files and folders.”

You will see at least one folder inside, with this format:

XXXXXXXX.default

where XXXXXXXX is an eight-character code for your Firefox installation on that particular machine.

This folder contains all your Firefox information, including bookmarks, history, extensions, form auto-fill, passwords, and cache. You can already ZIP/compress and copy this onto a USB flashdrive or any other recordable media, or transfer via the network. Remember that this folder could get very large if you have a large cache of temporary Internet files, so you might want to clear your browser’s cache first.

Then, in the destination computer, make sure you’ve already installed Firefox, and opened it up at least once, so that the application would automatically create a new default profile for you. Then open up Windows Explorer and then browse to:

[Windows installation drive]:\Documents and Settings\[Your username]\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles

where you will see a folder named

YYYYYYYY.default

where YYYYYYYY is the eight-character code for that firefox installation.

Simply copy or uncompress the folder containing the original profile into this \Profiles folder.

Now copy the YYYYYYYY string onto your clipboard (so you won’t forget), and then rename that folder as you please (i.e., YYYYYYYY.default.backup). Then rename XXXXXXXX.default into YYYYYYYY.default. Make sure Firefox is not running while you do this, or you’ll get file access conflict errors.

Now open up Firefox, and voila! Your original settings have been copied. Do check some of the options, though, as some extension and proxy settings may not have been transferred. But what’s important is that your new Firefox installation looks and feels like your old one. Now you can go and browse away to your favorite, bookmarked sites, not having to re-input all your URLs and passwords again.

There are plenty of tools with which you can check your disk space. However, Linux already has a built in function to show you just what you need to know. Open a terminal window or push (ctrl+alt+F1 to go to console) and type:

# df

You will see something like this(your output may be different, depending on how many partitions/harddrives/cdroms you have mounted):

Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda3 78012484 17606992 56442660 24% /
/dev/hda1 101086 16400 79467 18% /boot
none 516808 0 516808 0% /dev/shm
/tmp 247919 7339 227780 4% /tmp

This one looks a bit unreadable, because size is represented in 1K-blocks, lets try to make it clean and more readable:

# df -h

Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/hda3 75G 17G 54G 24% /
/dev/hda1 99M 17M 78M 18% /boot
none 505M 0 505M 0% /dev/shm
/tmp 243M 7.2M 223M 4% /tmp

Now the size is represented by megabytes and gigabytes … better? :) Now let’s create an executable file to show the disk sizes:

#!/bin/sh

DISC=$1
PARTITION=`df -h |grep $DISC |awk ‘{print $1}’`
SIZE=`df -h|grep $DISC|awk ‘{print $2}’`
USED=`df -h|grep $DISC|awk ‘{print $3}’`
FREE=`df -h|grep $DISC|awk ‘{print $4}’`

echo “Partition: $PARTITION”
echo “Total size: $SIZE”
echo “Used space: $USED”
echo “Free space: $FREE”

Simply copy & paste this script into for example into a file named info.sh(create it with VI or JOE or even PICO). Next, you’ll need to make it executable. To do this, use the following command:

# chmod +x info.sh

Now, to execute the file, you need to run it, and pass it the correct argument. For our example, we are going to use hda3. So, to execute the file, type in the command as below….

# ./info.sh hda3

Tadaaa :)

Here is how to do it.

Server: talk.google.com
Username: youremail@gmail.com
Password: yourpassword

The server seems to be going up and down randomly.

It looks like the folks at GoogleLabs have added an RSS/Atom feed to Gmail. Very cool. It’s even SSL to keep things nice and safe. Now, where can I get one of these to install for my regular pop/imap accounts? I’m hooked!

Thanks, Netaku!

Update: Just to clarify… the “visit site” link below is the gmail atom feed link. If you want to subscribe to it in your RSS reader, though, you’ll probably need to use a URL in the following format:
https://USERNAME:PASSWORD@gmail.google.com/gmail/feed/atom
That’ll plug your username and password into the request, since your RSS reader probably can’t prompt you for one. Also, this is mostly just to let you know you have mail.. it only displays what you’d see on the gmail inbox screen. This is probably what they’re using for the Gmail Notifier, behind the scenes.