Archive for April, 2010

View Hundreds Of Channels From Around The World In Chrome With TV Chrome

Recently I was thinking how to initiate recording a TV channel via Windows 7 Media Center. The problem was that I needed to do this remotely, in case I was not at home, remembered that a series I liked was being aired on TV, and wanted it recorded. After much extensive searching, I finally found an application called Remote Potato.

Setting up Remote Potato was no child’s play and it took me quite some time. I am still not satisfied with it. When I told a fellow blogger about my predicament, he asked “But if you can access the internet while you’re away from home, why not simply use it to view television online?” I asked him what he meant and he answered “TV Chrome.”

icon

When he showed me what TV Chrome was, I did not believe my eyes. Without paying anything, setting up anything, I was able to view hundreds of channels from around the world. I bet you do not believe me.

TV Chrome is an extension for Google Chrome. It places an icon in Chrome’s address bar which we click to dropdown a window.

Channels

This window has channels from all over the world sorted country and genre wise. Of course not each and every channel from all countries are available, but the list that is available is very impressive.

Take the “Movies TV” genre, for example.

MoviesTv

It has HBO USA on top that can be streamed online. Click on HBO and a new Chrome window opens up.

HBO

We can double-click on the video to view it full screen. While the video quality is not great, the advantage is that the loading time is impressive and we can view the video stream easily.

Impressed with TV Chrome yet?

There is just one thing you should know before you start using it. When I first tried to view the channels, I got a message in the newly opened window that my Chrome was missing the Windows Media Player plug-in. I did a bit of searching and found that to fix that issue, I need to download the Windows Media Player plug-in for Firefox. It made little sense, but I did it anyway and I could use TV Chrome then.

Here is the link to Chrome guiding users how to install the Windows Media Player plug-in and here the link to the plug-in itself.

In the end of this post, I want to wholeheartedly thank the team behind TV Chrome which has made online TV completely free to view.

75+ Truly Useful Tutorials & Colorful Resources For Designers To Discover The Best Of The Web In March

We are always in search of great free resources, tips, tricks, etc. for our readers. Every day we work hard to find new resources and inspiration for designers like you. Today, we have another great post, “Discover the Best of the Web” on SmashingApps. In this, we made a list of 75+ Truly Useful Tutorials & Colorful Resources For Designers. We obviously cannot cover all the best from the web, but we have tried to cover as much as possible.

You are welcome to share if you know more best of the web in the month of March which our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at SmashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter and do not forget to become our fan on facebook as well.

Design Tips, Tricks and Tutorial

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Balance 3D with mixed media

A Collection of Photoshop Business Card Tutorials and Free PSD Files

Create a Digital Camera With Wooden Accents Using Photoshop

90+ Smoking Cinema 4D Tutorials and Best Techniques

How to Create a 3D House Icon with Photoshop

The Ultimate Collection Of Brilliant Web Design Tutorials

The Ultimate Guide To Cloning In Photoshop

Use Photo Manipulation and 3D Layers to Design a Surreal Cover Art Illustration

30+ Best Apple Inspired Photoshop Tutorials

Melting Girl in Photoshop

Motion Graphics And 2-D Animation: 10 Tips For A Clean Workflow

50 Hot New Tutorials (Part2)

20 High Quality Photoshop Web Design Tutorials

Create a Call to Action Button With Adobe Fireworks CS4

Learn Adobe Illustrator: All the Basics for Beginners

Make a Surreal 3D Outdoor Room Scene in Photoshop

40 Detailed Drawing Tutorials for Adobe Illustrator

Photo Manipulation Techniques to Enhance Portrait Photography

15 Impressive Photoshop Tutorials

40+ Autodesk 3ds Max Tutorials for Beginners and Advance

Achieve Brilliant Lighting Effects in Photoshop

Massive Collection of Photo Editing Tutorials and Photoshop Actions

Artwork, Digital Photography and Inspiration

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40 Brilliantly Illustrated Web Designs

66 Sinister CG Monsters

45 Creative Resumes to Seize Attention

25+ Beautiful And Creative Business Card Ideas

Inspiration: Awesome Dark Portfolio Sites

Fantastic Content Sliders for your Inspiration

30 Amazing Typographic Movie Poster Designs

5 Green Websites Built on Flash

50 Epic Digital and CG Artworks

50 Beautiful Sketchbook Scans

50 Beautifully Brown Web Designs

Showcase of Inspiration Typography Text of Modern Art

22 Most Unusual Google Earth Photos

55 Latest Examples of Perfect Slideshow Presentation in Web Design

Funny Examples of Celebrity Caricatures

Collection of 30+ Stunning Hand Picked CSS-based Layouts

50 Amazing Shots Taken in the Most Dry Regions

Web Design: 40 Fantastic Examples

Call to Action Buttons: Guidelines, Best Practices and Examples

Showcase of 20 Mobile-Friendly Popular Design Blogs

30+ Artistic Examples Of Colorful Wallpapers

Showcase of Textures in Print Design

Javascript and Ajax

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20 jQuery Cheatsheets, Docs and References for Every Occasion

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Fresh JavaScript/jQuery Tools and Resources

20 Helpful jQuery Methods you Should be Using

45 Fresh Useful JavaScript and jQuery Techniques and Tools

25 Amazing and Fresh jQuery Plugins

jQuery Resources for One-Page Portfolios

xHTML and CSS

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47 CSS Tips & Tricks To Take Your Site To The Next Level

22 Handy HTML5 & CSS3 Tools, Resources And Guides

Basic CSS3 Techniques That You Should Know

The Future Of CSS Typography

Resources

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40 Fresh Free Fonts For Your Next Designs

Tired Of Photoshop’s Complexity? Try These Free And Easy Apps For Your Photos

Interactive Flash Graphs and Charts For Your Website

11 Qualified Mobile Interface Tools and WordPress Plugins

Ultimate Collection of Free Buttons in PSD Format

10 Blank/Naked WordPress Themes Perfect for Development

The Best E-Commerce Icons All In One Place

29 Premium-Like Free But Extremely Tremendous Portfolio WordPress Themes

25 High Resolution Photoshop Brushes

Superb Free Vector Sets for Designers

9 Insanely Useful Firefox Add-Ons That Will Save Your Time

Miscellaneous Articles

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Writing For The Web: Tips & Common Mistakes We Make

Principles to Become (and stay) Strong in the Search Engine Rankings

How To Add A “Print This” Button In Your Blog

11 Ways to Create a Mobile Friendly WordPress Site

Techniques for Squeezing Images for All They’re Worth

Custom WordPress Homepage with Customizable Widgets

5 Unique Ways to Do Keyword Research

What Every Designer Should Do Right Now

8 Tools to Analyze Your Website’s Level of Accessibility

Ten Tips to Improve your Freelance Portfolio

Progressive Enhancement: What It Is and How To Use It

8 Design Elements Your Blog Should Have

7 Great Chrome Extensions To Make Your Life Easier

You might have been using Chrome for a quite some time now but there is a good chance you are not taking its full advantage. Chrome’s maximum potential lies in the power of its extensions. Below I have gathered 7 Chrome extensions that will enable you all to realize Chrome’s full potential. You will not find these extensions in similar lists on other websites; I hope you find them to be useful to your computer usage.

Give the list a thorough reading, try out any extension you are interested in, and let me know in the comments how they worked out for you. You are welcome to share if you know more useful chrome extension which our readers/viewers may like. Do you want to be the first one to know the latest happenings at SmashingApps.com just subscribe to our rss feed and you can follow us on twitter and do not forget to become our fan on facebook as well.

1. Shareholic

Shareaholic


Shareholic is a Chrome extension that eliminates the need to install multiple Chrome extensions for multiple social media networks. By installing this single Chrome extension, we can share interesting material we find online to a multitude of websites and networks including Facebook, Twitter, Buzz, and Delicious. Certain email servers are also supported which enable us to email the links directly to specific recipients.

2. Xmarks Bookmarks

xMarks

If your work involves frequently shifting from another browser to Chrome and vice versa, then one of the biggest problems you face is constant bookmarks synchronization. You need a solution that synchronizes bookmarks across multiple browsers. Xmarks Bookmarks not only performs that function, but also makes your bookmarks available online so that you can access them from any computer with an internet connection.

3. Chromepad

chromepad

Chrome users who need to take notes regularly off websites they visit most probably do this by employing Notepad. While Notepad does offer great simplicity, opening it means going over to its shortcut and opening a separate window. Chromepad eliminates that procedure and places an icon in Chrome’s address bar which drops down a window where we can take and store all our notes.

4. RemindMe

remindme

Personally I often lose track of time while working on the computer and need to be reminded of all non-computer tasks. For Chrome users who face the similar problem, RemindMe is the best remedy. Using it we can set custom reminders; a reminder includes a title and the time after which we are to be reminded of it. This extension is a nifty way to ensure we do not lose track of the real world and any task while working on our computer. For professional bloggers working under deadlines, this extension can work as a great countdown clock.

5. TooManyTabs

toomanytabs

As the number of open tabs increases, reading their titles becomes increasingly difficult. This makes it quite hard to find and open the tab we need to view. TooManyTabs presents our tab in a cascaded manner which makes it easier to find our tabs. The arrangement can be changed by the user to suit his/her preferences. This extension is a must-have for people who like having many tabs open at the same time.

6. zoomZOOM

zoomzoom

If there is a picture on a webpage which is too tiny for clear viewing, we often need to click it. Clicking it redirects us to the page hosting the image in its original size; loading that new page takes considerable time. To eliminate that time, zoomZOOM can be used. With zoomZOOM installed, whenever we hover our mouse pointer over a small image, it is enlarged and shown at a corner of the screen. zoomZOOM works on a number of websites include Facebook, deviantArt, and Flickr.

7. Chrome SEO

chromeSeo

Chrome SEO is a must-have Chrome extension for all professional bloggers and webmasters. Often we employ separate SEO (search engine optimization) tools for each SEO service; however Chrome SEO incorporates a large amount of such SEO tools within itself. It packs a wonderful array of useful SEO which will greatly serve all webmasters.