I was going to title this post “Say Hello To My Little Friend” since I think the Hab.la character is pretty funny.  Hab.la btw is the chat feature I’m testing out on this site.  You might have noticed the chat feature in the bottom right hand corner.  That is powered by Hab.la.

Since I use Pidgin for instant messaging I needed to set up Pidgin to work with Hab.la.  Hab.la looks promising for website owners who want to easily connect with their visitors without having to pay for, or install complicated “Live Help” software.

Anyway, at first I couldn’t get pigdin to connect to Hab.la according to Hab.la’s pidgin tutorial.  So I had to mess around with it for a bit… and finally got it working.  Here’s the screen shot of my pidgin settings.  This is currently different from the settings you’ll find listed on Habla’s site.

Protocol: XMPP
Username: just your username, not username@hab.la!
Domain: hab.la
Resource: pidgin
Password: your password you set up at Hab.la

That should work for you.

I’m using the latest version of Pidgin for this, currently 2.5.2

Anyway, hope that helps you out if you’re having problems setting up Pidgin to work with Hab.la.

I’m going to test out Hab.la for awhile here and see how well it works.  So if you want to chat then hit me up!

Those of you who use Techsmith’s Camtasia to produce video tutorials will appreciate Camtasia 6′s new features.

• Reduce editing time on large projects by 30% or more with hotkeys
• Produce HD-quality videos for the web with new H.264 format
• Edit audio and video independently
• Import and edit digital camera video in .MOV format
• 3D Tilt Effect

Now supports High Definition Video

Produce Camtasia videos for the web using the industry-leading H.264 format. All the presets for web destinations default to an MP4 format that consists of an MPEG-4 AVC (H.264 AAC) file coupled with a Flash player. That means you get HD-quality; the smallest file size possible; and ubiquitous playback, on any platform, within any Flash-enabled browser. No tweaks or technospeak, just sparkling HD-quality video with compact file sizes…every single time. Two existing production presets (blog and web) and three new presets (YouTube, HD display, and Screencast.com) take advantage of the new format.

Now supports .Mov files

Now you can import video from your digital camera right into Camtasia.  Most digital cameras nowadays take video and most export it as .mov files so this is a perfect addition if you ever wanted to include video from off your computer.

Got an .MOV video file from a digital camera or a previous project? Bring it into Camtasia Studio and edit it on the timeline. Any self-contained .MOV file is fair game.

3D tilt effect

Apply the new tilt effect to your videos and they’ll really pop! By bringing some things closer to the viewer and putting other things in the background, you’ll not only grab attention…you’ll also direct it effectively.

Amazon’s S3 (simple storage) service has been out for awhile now and if you’re not already using it then you’re missing out on cheap and unlimited disk space and bandwidth.

What might keep a lot of people from using it is that it seems a bit complicated to set up and use.  You can use it for anything you want… from simple file backups, archivals or even relieving your current hosting from bandwidth or disk space limits.

Well Jungledisk is helping make it easy to use with their software that makes creating backups and uploading/downloading files from your S3 service a lot easier.

How Jungledisk works:

Works just like another hard drive in your computer.
Drag and drop, copy and delete. Use it just like your existing hard drive.

Keeps your valuable data safe and secure.
Your data is encrypted using a personal key known only to you. No one else can access your data.

Unlimited storage at 15¢ per GB. No minimum. No maximum.
Best of all, you only get charged for what you use.

Supports multiple platforms.
Jungle Disk gives you access to your all of your data in Windows, Mac and Linux.

Offers backup reporting to keep you informed.
Stay on top of your backups with reporting via web, email or RSS.

Facilitates worry-free, automatic backups.
Your selected data is continually monitored to ensure everything is backed up automatically.

Provides online backup and storage for every computer you own.
When you purchase Jungle Disk, it is yours to use on as many computers as you like.

Why Jungle Disk is Awesome:

Most online backup services can only be used for basic backup. You select the files you want to backup and if you need to restore, you use their proprietary software or web page to select the files to restore, often waiting several minutes or hours before you can access your files.

Jungle Disk has a great automatic backup system, and can easily be used for basic data backup, but Jungle Disk also gives you a complete network drive that you can use from multiple machines – like an unlimited size USB drive that you can connect to from anywhere. The exclusive caching features in Jungle Disk make it so that using your network drive is as fast as a local drive, and you don’t need to constantly transfer data from the server

This also allows you to use your favorite 3rd party backup tool such as ChronoSync, SyncBack, or rsync to manage your data if you prefer – something no other online backup service offers.

No restrictions on what or how much you backup and you can use it across multiple computers.

A single Jungle Disk license can be used across an unlimited number of computers with a single Amazon S3 account. Other online backup services make you pay monthly for each computer you want to backup, even if you’re only backing up a small number of files from each computer. With Amazon S3 you only pay for the actual storage you’re using across all of the machines running Jungle Disk.

Jungledisk works on Mac, PC or Linux

How to start using Jungledisk:

1. Download the software

• A 100% functional copy is available for a 30 day evaluation – a license costs $20
• Setup and configuration is a snap regardless of your operating system

2. Create an Amazon S3 account

• To protect your data, we use one of the industry leaders in online storage
• Jungle Disk will connect seamlessly to your Amazon S3 account to securely store all of your data

3. Start using Jungle Disk!

• Copy, add, and delete files to your new network drive
• Once you configure your backups, they take place behind the scenes, automatically

$20 is a great price for Jungledisk, but there is a free Firefox plugin you can use to upload/download files from your S3 service.  Check it out here

Also, if you are worried about your current website hosting account not having enough disk space or bandwidth you need to set up an Amazon S3 account.

Scenario: Imagine you have a small web site with big potential. You’re currently using a reasonably-priced web hosting provider that provides a good value for the amount of traffic you normally receive. Perhaps you’ve gone one step further and are hosting your site on a dedicated server. However, your site has caught the attention of the blogosphere and you’re about to get much more traffic than you can handle in your current web hosting setup.

What are you going to do?

You’re going to go read this article on how to scale your hosting so it doesn’t collapse thats what.

I recently came across a great toolbar for web designers. It has a whole bunch of cool features that will speed up testing and overall put more information at your fingertips when designing a website. I won’t go through all the features, you will just have to check them out for yourself. Some of the features are:

The CSS features provide various tools related to the CSS on the page including displaying the styles applied to the selected element and live editing of the CSS.

The images features provide various image related tools including finding broken images and outlining images.

The information features provide various informational tools including displaying element information and viewing the document size.

The resize features provide the ability to resize the window to pre-defined or custom sizes and to display the current window size.

The tools features allow an unlimited number of configurable tools including validating the CSS and the HTML.

There view source features provide the ability to view the page source including viewing the generated source and viewing the source in an external application.

Screenshot

Web Developer Toolbar Documentation

This toolbar is great and you should check it out if your developing for the web.