Time-saving tips

Time management is one of the most valuable skills in contemporary world. Every other year, every other technology generation gives more and more opportunities to speed up work processes and makes time pressure higher and higher.Several years ago companies expected from a successful candidate basic knowledge of MS Office.

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Amazing Innovations In Video Streaming Technology

Three years ago, adding streaming video to your website would definitely give it the wow factor and it could provide your website enough buzz to generate a lot of traffic. Nowadays, however, the rules of the ballgame have changed.

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Top 10 Firefox extensions to avoid

Firefox fans! Here is a list of 20 must-have Firefox extensions. But the ability to tweak your browser is a double-edged sword. There are extensions best avoided, including some of the most popular. Popularity shouldn't be the acid test to determine if you should install

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Maxwell Render - you too can CREATE breathtaking images

Maxwell render offers plug-ins for some of the most common 3d modeling programs. It is a highly sophisticated rendering program that can turn even the simplest of models (like those created in google sketchup for example) and turn them in to something stunning.

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How to Make a 3D Movie

Behind the scenes with George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic, a look at how CG designers and new digital projection technology are manipulating images so fast your brain can’t tell the difference—and how Hollywood can.

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iSixSigma Test Lab: Project Tracking Software

iSixSigma Test Lab put the top four Six Sigma project tracking software programs through their paces. Which one is best for your organization? Read and find out.

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8 Windows XP Tips & Tricks

8 Windows XP Tips you can't live without.

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Top 10 reasons you should not upgrade to IE7

Because prime numbers are inherently evil. Because your pirated version of Windows won
’t let you install it. Because some 13 year old in IRC said that IE7 was “teh scuk.”

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Being a better developer: #5 Blogging (or blog with passion)

Follow these simple guidelines to enjoy blogging and make it work for you.

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111 free Photoshop plugins

The Plugin Site (aptly named) has 111 free Photoshop-compatible plugins available for download. Take your pick from categories such as Image Effects, Patterns/Textures, Photo Enhancement, and many more. Each plugin is rated according to a three-star usefulness scale; plus, you can easily see if the plugin is Mac or Windows compatible...

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Live HTML/CSS/Javascript Preview

Cool webpage that will allow you input/work on CSS/HTML/Javascript and see the results in a live preview window.

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How to Turn your eBooks into Paperback Books At Home…FAST

"If you like ebooks but don
’t like reading them on your computer screen, this How-to post is for you. I’ll show you a quick and dirty book binding technique you can use to turn your ebook into a real book with about 5 minutes worth of effort. In fact, this is so easy, you might end up self-publishing your own books on demand for profit."

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How to design logos using only letters

This pdf doc shows you how to design logos using letters. It deals with various techniques like stroking, angling, altering, reversing, crossing, bridging etc.

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MIT student hacks his dorm room door lock

Dheera Venkatraman, a crafty MIT student, needed an innovative way to enter his own room without using a key. He's gone through a series of various door-opening mechanisms over the last couple of years, but finally settled on the simplest design, a computer-less setup that involves a microcontroller, a motor, and a PS/2 (waterproof) keyboard.

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The Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing (version 3.0)

Joel Spolsky's amusing and informative screed on the proper way to interview and hire software developers. (This is updated from the older, previously-dugg version.)

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Automate windows tasks with this simple scripting language

AutoIt v3 is a freeware BASIC-like scripting language designed for automating the Windows GUI and general scripting. It uses a combination of simulated keystrokes, mouse movement and window/control manipulation in order to automate tasks in a way not possible or reliable with other languages (e.g. VBScript and SendKeys).

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Photoshop Tutorial: Simple Soft Focus Technique

Simple little technique to create that old school Soft Focus to an portrait photo.

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Turning Portrait Into Stone Statue with Photoshop

This is a simple tutorial on how you can make a statue from a portrait with Photoshop. It is highly recommended if you’re using a close up portrait of a woman/man.

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Turning Portrait Into Stone Statue with Photoshop

This is a simple tutorial on how you can make a statue from a portrait with Photoshop. It is highly recommended if you’re using a close up portrait of a woman/man.

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Create 3D Images out of 2D Pictures

This free software automatically constructs a 3D model, like those one would find in a children's book, out of a single outdoor image. It is simply amazing. A MUST SEE!

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Add date and time to your log file automatically

One common use for Notepad is creating log files or journal files. For example, assume you need to keep track of events that happen during the day, noting the date and time of each event. You could use an application such as Outlook's Journal folder to track events, but perhaps that’s overkill for your situation. All you want to do is open a text file, insert the current date and time, write a few notes, and close the file.

You can easily insert the current time and date into Notepad manually. Just open Notepad and press [F5] or choose Edit | Time/Date. But Notepad also offers a third option that inserts the time and date automatically when you open the file.

Create a blank text file with .LOG as the first line of the file, followed by a carriage return, and then save and close the file.
Double-click the file to open it and notice that Notepad appends the current date and time to the end of the file and places the cursor on the line after.
Type your notes and then save and close the file.
Each time you open the file, Notepad repeats the process, appending the time and date to the end of the file and placing the cursor below it.

Register using a fake email address - then grab the emails from dodgeit.com

To avoid spam, send your registration forms to *(anything)*@dodgeit.com, then go to dodgeit.com and type in *(anything)*. Your email will be available with complete anonymity. No prior setup or login required.

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20 Things the average person may not know about XP

#3. You can lock your XP workstation with two clicks of the mouse. Create a new shortcut on your desktop using a right mouse click, and enter 'rundll32.exe user32.dll,LockWorkStation' in the location field. Give the shortcut a name you like. That's it -- just double click on it and your computer will be locked.

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Convert Everything

WAV to MP3, OGG, AAC, AMR, FLAC, MPC, MMF, AU, AIFF, QCP.
MP3 to WAV, OGG, AAC, AMR, FLAC, MPC, MMF, AU, AIFF, QCP.
WMA to WAV, OGG, AAC, AMR, FLAC, MP3, MPC, MMF, AU, AIFF, QCP.
OGG to WAV, MP3, AAC, AMR, FLAC, MPC, MMF, AU, AIFF, QCP.
AAC to WAV, MP3, OGG, AMR, FLAC, MPC, MMF, AU, AIFF, QCP.
# MP4 (AAC) to WAV, MP3, OGG, AMR, FLAC, MPC

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Making An Animated Smiley In Photoshop And ImageReady (Video) Tutorial

This free Photoshop video tutorial will teach you how to create an animated smiley for the use on your website, forum or just about any other web aplication on earth. You will be learning the pencil tool, switching the foreground and background colors, sending documents into imageready, adding frames, optimizing your web graphics, ...

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How to embed a Flickr slideshow in your blog

There's a lot of ways to get your Flickr photos onto a web page or blog post, but few are as clean and elegant as Flickr's own slideshow player. Wouldn't it be nice if you could embed that player in your blog? Ah, but of course you can!

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How To: Basic Flash Cartooning - Props

"This instructable will teach you how to make vector props for animation or anything else you want to use them for."

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Photoshop >> Pattern/silhouette tutorial using a layer mask

Made in/for Photoshop CS, compatibility with earlier versions dependent on availability of a certain filter.
May not be translatable to other software due to the above dependency.
Skill level: intermediate (layer mask, saved selection, filter use)
Usefulness of the tutorial is highly dependent on the source image possessing certain characteri

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Make a WordPress Theme In Minutes

ThemesPress.com which is a site to turn any standard HTML template or design into a fully functional WordPress Theme in minutes.

The best part, it
’s all automatic, so people with little to no PHP or HTML skills can make a WordPress theme from any design they have or purchased from a design site.

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Turn Your Photos into Lichtenstein-inspired Comic Book Art

Earning your chops as a painter is no easy task. But if you manage to do it, and further, do it while critics lambast your pieces for being mere copies of comic book panels, you must be something pretty special.

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Ten Best Free Wordpress Templates

Wordpress is a great blogging system there are so many themes available that it becomes hard to find the best these are Some of the best Free Quality Wordpress templates.

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5 Ways To Optimize Your Design

Everyday thousands of websites are being created based on the needs of website owners and not the needs of their visitors. Visitors are being ignored which is the biggest reason most websites are not successful; here are 5 ways to optimize your design:

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Photoshop tutorials >> Amazing colored sketched photos

Learn how to made this amazing photo effect to your photos : VERY EASY TUTORIAL!

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99% of your Blog's Readers are Lurkers - How to Get them to Comment

10 techniques for getting the silent majority of your blog's readers to leave a comment

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Is there an art of 404 pages ?

Here are some 404 pages I found that are noteworthy. I never knew you could make them so cool! I wish more websites would make them like this.

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More Than Just a CSS Design Gallery

If you're a part of a web standards world, join the css globe and use the opportunity to create the news yourself.

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18 Questions Your CEO Forgot to Ask When Building Your Website

A list of 18 questions your boss forgot to ask you when building a site. Some of the questions include: do you have a brandable domain, who should we host with, what is our business model and how is it unique...

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How to create a business layout

In this tutorial, you will learn step by step how to create a web layout with Adobe Photoshop. Really amazing and useful for web design beginners!

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Create a simple liquid layout

John Oxton explores how to make a simple but effective liquid layout, which will work across browsers and uses absolute positioning

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Amazing Pro Photoshop Tutorial! Old Hag to Beautiful Woman!

Ever wanted to turn back the clock? In this Pro Photoshop Tutorial I take an old woman and transform her into a beautiful young model. Remember this is a Pro tutorial so it focuses on advanced techniques rather than the basics.

Please mirror this if you can to avoid crashing the server.

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List of CSS Tools

Huge List of CSS Tools : Fonts, Forms, Layout, Formatters and Optimizers

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CLOCK!!!

The coolest clock/calendar you will ever see!

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3 Easy Steps to Avoid JavaScript Memory Leaks

It doesn
’t take any special coding skills or expertise. By following the easy steps above, even a novice can write JavaScript code that is leak free.

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The Most Hypnotizing Website Ever

Definitely listen with speakers or headphones. The dots are arranged to trigger notes on a chromatic scale when they pass the line. How can something be so creepy yet so cool at the same time?

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Optimizing HTML Page load time

Google engineer Aaron Hopkins has written an interesting analysis of optimizing page load time.

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10 Tips for Moving From Programmer to Entrepreneur

#1 - Code is 5% of your business - "I see developers getting caught up in code. Spending countless hours making a function perfect or building features which show off the latest technology. The best code in the world is meaningless if nobody knows about your product."

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Top 3 reasons to use clean URLs

Clean up your URLs and reap the rewards. Learn the top 3 reasons to use clean URLs. The reasons may just surprise you!!

read more 

Styled HTML Checkboxes and Radio Buttons

A fairly simple and elegant way to style checkboxes and radio buttons, wrapped up in an easy to use package. Uses javascript and CSS with graceful degradation in almost all major browsers.

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Fifteen Exercises for Learning a new Programming Language

Here are 15 exercises that will help you learn and get familiar with a programming language in no time.

read more 

Check your Site in 30 Different Browsers

Browsershots.org is a free online service that allows you to test your web design in different browsers.

You simply submit your web site URL. A number of distributed computers automatically open your web site in a browser. They take screenshots of the site, and upload them to a page at browsershot.org. You can bookmark this page and return to it later, or send it to your designers or developers for their information.

It's a very useful service for web designers, not only because it aids the design process, but because it allows you to demonstrate to your clients the importance of compatible design. After all, seeing is believing!

Excel tutorial for beginners

This is a basic, useful tutorial of Excel.

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Learn How to Create a Keygen

After reading this, you hopefully will have a better understanding of how programs generate and check serials.

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AJAX Feedback Mechanism

Nifty little mechanism that lets you get user feedback on a page without harassing them. Should be on your site

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How to Make Your AJAX Applications Accessible - 40 Tutorials and Articles

"AJAX is a great tool for creating rich internet applications, however, when improperly implemented it can cause hugh accessibility issues. The good news is that most of these issues can be fixed so your websites are viewable by a much wider audience."

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Library of free database models

The library includes hundreds of sample database schemas for tons of topics â?? ranging from â??Airline Reservationsâ?? to â??Organizations and Peopleâ?? to â??Car Servicingâ?? to â??Pizza Deliveryâ??.

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Free 10 Week Online AJAX Course by Sun Microsystems

A free 10-week "AJAX Programming" online course is about to start from August 4th, 2006. This course is for anyone who wants to learn AJAX for the first time or increase their knowledge on AJAX. In this 10-week course, students learn basic concept of AJAX as well as how to use various AJAX frameworks and toolkits....

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How to Normalise Your Database

Normalisation is part of successful database design.Without normalisation, database systems can be inaccurate, slow, and inefficient and they might not produce the data you expect.

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TOP 69 CSS Menus with Tutorials and Downloads

The ultimate CSS Menu resource with screenshots, tutorials and how-tos.

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ASP.NET Developers and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Many developers forget about Search Engine Optimization when developing websites. Here's some SEO tips for ASP.NET developers, but the concepts can apply to other languages as well.

read more | digg story

Easy Photoshop tutorial - Add 'Thought Bubbles' in PS CS or CS2

I just had a student ask me if there was a more or less automated way to add thought bubbles in Photoshop. I hunted around and found TalkBubbles. Thank you Adobe!
This works in Photoshop CS or Photoshop CS2, and has a variety of thought bubble and talk bubble shapes. It may work in earlier versions as well.

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A design gallery just for logos

A well designed logo gallery that is described as "A Place To Fish For Ideas".

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Automate Your Favorite Photoshop Routines

If you find yourself repeating the same tasks in Photoshop, it's time to learn how to write a Photoshop action.

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The Best Whiteboard on the Internet

This is one of those great tools that the Internet was
born to host! A free white board that you can easily invite people to collaborate with.
With a plethora of features and no membership required.
Great for small businesses, not for profits and just people that want to share
ideas.

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Hidden Windows XP tool to convert batch files and VB scripts to .exe

Have you ever needed to convert a batch file or script into a .exe only to find that the only tools that are available are programs you need to buy. Check out this site to see how you can make Windows XP do it for free!

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Create animations with easytoon!

This is a free easy-to-use software for making animated GIFs and Bitmap sequences.

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Create Motion Graphics Using Only CSS

Fed up with 'Flash'? Getting annoyed with animated gifs? Well, why not try an alternative - CSS Flick Animation.

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Must know tips & tricks for photographers using photoshop

Some really neat tips, tricks and tutorials that can make a huge impact on your pictures.

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How to: Create Realistic Fake Depth of Field in Photoshop CS

Create very realistic depth of field effects using the lens blur filter and self made depth maps in Photoshop CS. Example files provided for each step. I did a couple this morning, looks great! Great way to add focus to your photographs.

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New human-powered world record

Traveling 53.43 miles (85.97 km) in one hour from a standing start in a specially designed recumbent bicycle, "Fast Freddie" Markham just set a new world record and won an $18,000 prize. At 49 years old, Fast Freddie was a surprise winner, which must have something to do with the bike. And yes, the course was flat.

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Top 10 things they never taught me in Design School

Interesting read for all you aspiring designers out there on what it really takes to be a successful Designer.

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Talent isn't everything: 7 habits of highly effective junior designers

After working for the past three years at MetaDesign, I've noticed that talent has very little to do with the success of a junior designer who's just starting out. Instead, the ones who survive and last more than six months practice these 7 habits.

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How to create an AJAX homepage - step-by-step

This tutorial covers everything you need to create your own Netvibes-like AJAX HOMEPAGE.

It covers everything from detecting the browser, handling events, drag and drop, working the DOM, AJAX and JSON background, and loading RSS feeds and Web APIs into the Web application. cool.

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learn HTML or CSS fast

This great site has free and easy tutorials for learning HTML or CSS for programmers who are new to it

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Library of free database models

The library includes hundreds of sample database schemas for tons of topics â?? ranging from â??Airline Reservationsâ?? to â??Organizations and Peopleâ?? to â??Car Servicingâ?? to â??Pizza Deliveryâ??.

read more

5 Tips For a Beginning Programmer

A collection of tips for the beginning programmer regardless of the language. Learn how to build a strong foundation that will make learning languages in the future easier.

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CSS Library Launched

DHTML has been the main focus of Dynamic Drive. Now, with ever increasing CSS capabilities, CSS needs its own showcase. Enter CSS Library...

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IT is the Most Stressful Profession

IT experts are more likely to suffer from stress than any other professional, according to the survey.

A staggering 97 percent of people working in IT claim to find their life at work stressful on a daily basis.

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The Night Sky on Your Desktop

Stellarium is a free open source planetarium for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope.

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Kids Programming Language (KPL) going open-source

Jon Schwartz, creator of Kids Programming Language (KPL), says that version 1.1 will be released as an open-source project this summer. KPL, "makes it easy for kids to learn computer programming... [and makes] it especially easy to program computer games, with cool graphics and sound."

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Turn Your Monitor Into a Touch Screen Monitor

NAVIsis has come out with a technology that allows you to turn your regular and boring LCD monitor into a useful touch screen monitor. Called the NAVIsis EZ-Canvas, its a pair of sensors that you simply attach to the top corners of your monitor and use a special stylus to write and draw on your screen.

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Internet Explorer usage keeps going down worldwide

OneStat.com today reported that Microsoft's browsers have a total global usage share of 85.17 percent. The total usage share of Microsoft Internet Explorer decreased 0.65 percent since January 2006. The total global usage share of Mozilla is 11.79 which is 0.56 percent more than at the of of January.

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How To make Money While Blogging

Here are some great article tips on how to make money with blogs. The author(s) clearly explains in lay man terms what blogs are and what to do if interested in blogging for cash.

read more | digg story

Will Digital Photos Fade Away?

Images stored on recordable disks won't last forever, but here are some tips to hang onto them longer.

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Free video 'flash' tutorials- These are AWESOME

This guy rocks! What the web should be about, learning, information and knowledge - and all FREE & no adds! Awesome tutorials showing how to create flash presentations simply and easily.

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File-Upload Script With Embedded AJAX Progress Bar

This free script lets you accept file uploads through the web while displaying a progress bar. Very easy to install and modify. Excellent support provided in the project forums.

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AJAX-based Web Recording Tool

Tapefailure is a "history recording tool." Ayone can record a browsing session using Tapefailure's recorder, then save it, and share it with others. Each recorded session can be played back virtually perfectly through our playback tool; as long as you know the tape ID or have a link, you can view your recorded session over and over again.

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10 Part Video Tutorial on How to Make Your Own 3D Game

Microsoft's Coding4Fun website has a 10 part video tutorial on how to recreate RocketCommander (http://www.rocketcommander.com) from start to finish. The tutorials cover topics such as game design, managed DirectX, and high level shader language.

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Javascript Rotating Cube Animation Slideshow Effect

Using some pretty crazy math, Yusuke Kawasaki managed to put together quite a nifty javascript "rotating cube" animation effect. There is a demonstration on the site, along with source code and the explination of how it was created. Fascinating!

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A great way to preload images on your site with CSS

This is a great way to pre-load images with a very simple bit of CSS. Not a commonly known trick.

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Speed up your AJAX based webapps

Using the simple tips and tricks you can speed up your web applications for your regular visitors.

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Convert HTML to PDF with PHP

Handy for PHP developers looking to generate PDFs from their HTML content: dompdf is an HTML to PDF converter written entirely in PHP5. It has no dependencies on external libraries (e.g. html2ps) and it supports CSS 2.1.

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Collection of AJAX Tutorials

100â??s of AJAX Tutorials, Articles & More are linked to here.

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Learn CSS

This CSS Tutorial will get you started with CSS in just a few minutes. It is easy to understand and will teach you all the sophisticated techniques.

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Free HTML Javascript tool for integrating RSS feeds into your website

A XML RSS free reader enables you to increase functionality to your website. Search engines look for fresh content and an up to date website is more likely to climb search engine rankings and get more visitors. The page is automatically updated on-the-fly, easily spidered by search engine robots, and easy to implement.

read more | digg story

10 Best Designed Blogs

The particular platform (WP, Moveable Type, Typepad, Handcoded) doesn't matter. It's what you do with it that counts. This isn't about prettiest blog, or the best written blog. This is a list of the most groundbreaking, cutting edge blogs out there. There may be others not known.

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Big windows IT site is caught Google Cloaking!!

WindowsITPro.com has been caught google cloaking, see for yourself

read more | digg story

Web Design Basics

Web design tips for beginners: Page loading time, graphics format, etc.

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Adventures in Freelancing

A real beginners guide to freelancing during the first year (usually the hardest), every designers thought of it but whats it really like?

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Amazing 3D Site

This is a shockwave powered site with some incredible special effects. All I can say is... wow.

read more 

Remote Desktop Tips and Tricks

Microsoft packaged Remote Desktop in their OS for free but sometimes you realize that the standard shortcut keys just don't work within it. Learn which shortcut keys work and don't work and lots more.

read more digg story

Take GIMPShop with you

GIMPShop, the free open source image editor that is similar to Photoshop, can now be put on a flash drive and taken with you so you don't have to install it on the hard drive to use. Sorry, the tutorial is for Windows only.

read more | digg story

What colour should be your Blog?

I came across this in this blog while I was surfing on Blogmad. So I went and took the test. And interestingly it came with a Green which is already my blog's colour.

Your Blog Should Be Green

Your blog is smart and thoughtful - not a lot of fluff. You enjoy a good discussion, especially if it involves picking apart ideas. However, you tend to get easily annoyed by any thoughtless comments in your blog.

What Color Should Your Blog or Journal Be?

Freeware equivalents of commercial software

For those who don't want to pay for commercial software, either now or when purchasing a new PC, here's a list that should help. It's a listing of free software you can use to replace commercial equivalents.

read more | digg story

10 Great Photoshop Tips You Might Not Know

Handy compilation of 10 Photoshop techniques that will be new to a number of Adobe Photoshop users, beginning or advanced.

read more | digg story

10 things every Microsoft Word user should know

Get out of the word-processing stone age and learn how to use your word processor the smart way.

read more | digg story

Web Standards in a nutshell

Natalie has come up with a very simple explanation of the web standards. Even a layman can understand what web standards are now. You can have a look for yourself here

CNET's Top 10 worst tech of 2006

I came across this list of worst tech 2006 today. This list was put together by Tim Moynihan, Michelle Thatcher, and Peter Butler of CNET. Calling a piece of tech the "best" often starts an argument, but just about everyone knows a lemon when they see it. December is a long way away, but they already put together a list of the worst tech, tech events, and downloads of 2006.

Web 2.0's Startup Fever

If you're Web-literate, you can organize more and more of your life around Web-based tools and services given away by a host of young startups. You can keep your social calendar at Eventful or Upcoming, organize your to-do items at Gootodo, store a gigabyte's worth of documents at Box.net, read the news (or write your own) ....

read more | digg story

Making wise use of AJAX - 6 Guidelines

I came across this article today which contains 6 very high level guidelines for when NOT to use AJAX. Hopefully it will make people think twice before they go ahead and fill their pages with AJAX.

read more | digg story

Have You Backed Up Your Blog?

In a short but informative post, Pam Blackstone describes four ways to back up blogs for most major blogging systems, including Blogger, WordPress, TypePad, and Moveable Type.

If you are using blogger, this is the easiest way to backup your blog

I have just done mine for the first time today.

read more digg story

The Big List of Open Source Content Management Systems

Today I came across this great list of open source content management systems with a good description and link for each.

Go ahead and have a look.

read more | digg story

Do you want to score your blog?

I have just now submitted my blog on silk tide. Theoverall score of my site is 7.6 This site automatically tests for the following features:

• Marketing
• Design
• Accessibility
• Experience
• Visitor rating

So what's the delay? Submit your blog now and get your site score.

A free tool from Microsoft

Can't believe it isn't it? But yes there is this Microsoft Visual Web Developer Express Edition 2005 which the microsoft is offering. You can download that from here

Main features are:

An ideal environment for new Web developers
Visually design your Web applications
Visually design your databases
Easily share your Web applications with your friends

Do you want to learn more about this? Click here

137 Online Tools for Webmaster

An must keep one-for-all list for online free tools that help webmaster, programming, and web design to program, design, develope, optimize web sites.

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The Three Great Virtues Of A Programmer

"We will encourage you to develop the three great virtues of a programmer: laziness, impatience, and hubris" -- Larry Wall.

read more digg story

Don't know how to create a banner?

Here are some easiest links to create them for your blog.

This is one of the links that I liked the most where you can create a banner just in five minutes. I have created my banner using this.

There are also other sites like create banner, cool text, 3Dtextmaker etc.

Hope these links are useful.

Test Microsoft's new Web Design app! (EXCLUSIVE BETA)

Microsoft is testing their new Expression Web Design tool, and it's an EXCLUSIVE BETA! Once 5000 signups are done, the beta will be closed off and no one else can participate. So far, this promises to be better than front page (think Microsoft's own version of Dreamweaver) so I think this is worth signing up for.

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Stored Procedures in SQL Server -- Permissions

This is a small code that displays stored procedures/functions for which the user does or does not have permissions to execute. In the event, the user has no permissions, also display the grant SQL neccesary to give them EXECUTE permissions.


*/ /* Set this to your desired target database */

USE DATABASE_NAME
DECLARE @TARGETUSER varchar(255), @SHOWPERMS bit SELECT

/* Set this to your desired target user */
@TARGETUSER = 'USER NAME HERE',

/* Set this to 0 (zero) to show objects the user has NOpermissions upon */

/* Set this to 1 (one) to show objects the user HAS permissionsupon */

@SHOWPERMS = 0

IF ( @SHOWPERMS) = 0
BEGIN PRINT 'showing no permissions'
SELECT name, id FROM sysobjects
WHERE
xtype IN ( 'P', 'TF' )
AND base_schema_ver < 16
AND id NOT IN
( SELECT SO.id FROM syspermissions SP
LEFT JOIN sysusers SU ON ( SP.grantee = SU.uid )
LEFT JOIN sysobjects SO ON ( SP.id = SO.id )
WHERE ( UPPER(SU.name) = UPPER (@TARGETUSER)
) )
print 'GRANT EXECUTE statements ... '

SELECT 'GRANT EXECUTE ON [' + name + '] TO [' + @TARGETUSER + ']'
FROM sysobjects
WHERE
xtype IN ( 'P', 'TF' )
AND base_schema_ver < 16
AND id NOT IN ( SELECT SO.id FROM syspermissions SP
LEFT JOIN sysusers SU ON ( SP.grantee =SU.uid )
LEFT JOIN sysobjects SO ON ( SP.id =SO.id )
WHERE ( UPPER(SU.name) = UPPER(@TARGETUSER) ) )
END ELSE
BEGIN PRINT 'showing no permissions'

SELECT SU.name, SO.name, SO.xtype FROM syspermissions SP
LEFT JOIN sysusers SU ON ( SP.grantee = SU.uid )
LEFT JOIN sysobjects SO ON ( SP.id = SO.id )
WHERE ( UPPER( SU.name ) = UPPER ( @TARGETUSER )
AND SO.xtype IN ( 'P', 'TF' ) )
ORDER BY SU.name

END

[/code]

Collaboration of Businesses and Programmers

I have found a very interesting website today which connects businesses with programmers. Hence if you would like to earn some money with the skills that you know and enjoy working with why not sign up?

Or do you have a project which you would like to get done but don't have the staff to do it. Again this is the place for you to post your project.

What is SQL Profiler?

Do you use SQL Server? Are you losing track of what's going on when you run your code on SQL Server? Then you must know of this tool called SQL Profiler.

SQL Profiler uses an integrated SQL parser to build statistics on the most accessed tables and columns and can generate SQL index creation files. Other information is also gathered and displayed, such as the request time for a single request, for a class of request, and for all the requests. Sorting may be done on these views to detect database problems efficiently.

This tool can be very useful when you have a big volume of queries that you need to analyze not one by one (meaning that the specific time isn't that much of interest), but rather when you want to know what "group" of queries is taking a lot of time, such as queries on the same tables and columns but with different query values.

You can use this as an audit tool as well particular when you want to watch the traffic on your sql server.

How do I get SQL Profiler?

SQL Profiler is one of the standard suite of client tools that are distributed with SQL Server 2000. You can install these tools from the SQL Server setup disk; they are a part of the main SQL Server setup, but you don't have to install SQL Server to install the client tools.

After installing the client tools, you can launch SQL Profiler by selecting Start, Programs, Microsoft SQL Server, Profiler. SQL Profiler will open without apparently doing anything. It's waiting for you to define a trace: a set of characteristics that tell it what to keep an eye on. That is what it does, keeps an eye on what's going on in the database.

Open Source Web Design

Here are two open source webdesign links that I have found today.

• Open SOurce Web Design
• Open Web Design

There are quite a few nice designs in there. Go have a look for yourself

Free Vs. Open Source Software

I have been hearing these terms "Free Software" and "Open Source Software". What is the difference between these two or is there a difference?

The term "Free Software" was first used by Richard of the GNU Project because he wanted to give users "Freedom"

The term "Open Source Software" was coined by Eric Raymond and Christine Peterson of the Foresight Institute to avoid the misinterpretation of free being cheap.

The term ``open source'' quickly became associated with a different approach, a different philosophy, different values, and even a different criterion for which licenses are acceptable. The Free Software movement and the Open Source movement are today separate movements with different views and goals.

Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement. For the Open Source movement, non-free software is a suboptimal solution. For the Free Software movement, non-free software is a social problem and free software is the solution.

Daylight Saving -- Facts

As today we have to change the daylight saving time back to normal, I was wondering how this daylight saving came about. I did some research and found the following.

It was originally conceived by Benjamin Franklin. in an essay, "An Economical Project." Read more about Franklin's essay.

Later on the idea was first advocated seriously by London builder William Willett (1857-1915) in the pamphlet, "Waste of Daylight" (1907), that proposed advancing clocks 20 minutes on each of four Sundays in April, and retarding them by the same amount on four Sundays in September.


It was Germany who first adopted by Germany in 1915 and a year later Braitain followed. During World War II, the clocks in Britain were put 2 hrs ahead of GMT during Summer. This was called Double Summer then.

It was adopted in the US only in 1918.

Today, approximately 70 countries utilize Daylight Saving Time in at least a portion of the country.

And still some countries like Japan, India, Sri Lanka, China, Pakistan and many others.

Do you want to make your blog famous?

If you want to get more people to view your blog from all over the world, you can try blogmad. Currently it is through invitation only.

If you would like to get invited comment here with your email address.

The latest Buzzword SOA -- What is it?

SOA is an acronymn for Service oriented architecture. These days we see a lot of this acronymn being used in IT magazines, IT conferences etc.

According to www.service–architecture.com:

“A service-oriented architecture is essentially a collection of services. These services communicate with each other. The communication can involve either simple data passing or it could involve two or more services coordinating some activity. Some means of connecting services to each other is needed.

Service-oriented architectures are not a new thing. The first service-oriented architecture for many people in the past was with the use DCOM or Object Request Brokers (ORBs) based on the CORBA specification.”

You can read the full article on what SOA is and What it isn't here

Opening Excel from an email in Outlook

I came across this problem today where Excel by default opens a s a 'Read Only' when opened from an email.

This is because the macros of the sender of the email are set to 'High'. This option automatcially sends the excel attachement in the email as 'Read Only' file making it difficult for the user to make changes.

This problem can be overcome by setting the Macro Security to Low in the Senders outlook. To do this, go to Tools -- Macro -- Security -- Choose Low and save the setting.

Date and Dateserial functions in Crystal Reports

I found a solution for my date problem in Crystal reports after 15 days of investigating.

The Date function of Crystal Reports requires arguments of year, month and day in that order as Date(y,m,d). But the Date function fails if there are special cases.

The dateserial function behaves in a similar way to Date function but is more tolerant

For example a value larger than 12 or less than one will still calculate a valid month, and will adjust the year correctly if DateSerial(y,m,d) is used.
Days work in a slightly different way. A value of 0 gets the last day of the previous month. This makes sense if you think that 1 gives you the first of the month, so 0 must get the day before.

For more information on functions in Crystal REports you can visit here

Microsoft is doing new Web 2.0ish things with a twist

Looks like Microsoft is investing even more into a business model Web 2.0 style with a twist.

See: http://officelive.microsoft.com/
Some of the main Web 2.0 elements are all there:

1. On-line service free for the subscriber.
2. Subscribers are the content providers.
3. Service released early as Beta.
4. Advertisement supported model.

Obviously they also have to inject their Microsoft twist to it; infiltrate and conquer...

If you try to subscribe using FireFox they tell you to go get IE.Again, Here again a twist.

Creating a single line graph in Excel

Today I was asked a question from my friend as to how to add a single line graph in excel. That is how to display a line graph between price and quantity in excel with price in X-axis and quantity in Y-axis. When you select line graph in excel, that gives two line graphs one for quantity and one for price.


To arrive at a single line graph here is the procedure to follow. Enter the data into two coulmns of price and quantity as shown. Then select the two columns and click on chart wizard.




Select XY(Scatter) for Chart type. And the first one without any lines for the sub chart as shown. Click once on "Press and Hold to View Sample" to check whether the X-axis and Y-axis values look as what you are expecting. Then click next and change the X-axis and Y-axis values appropriately for both the series.


Then click on Finish. You get a range of dots which can then be connected by a line. To do this, click on chart and then on a "Add a trend line". Choose automatic and your line graph is ready.

Monitoring ports on server

The terms "server" and "network" go hand-in-hand. Without a network, a server is essentially useless. Putting a server on a network means opening ports on that server to listen and respond to incoming requests, but every port you open can lead to potential security problems.

It's a good idea to closely monitor the ports that are open on a server in order to identify unwanted or rogue services, and identify other services that can be shut down to improve security. One tool you can use to monitor open ports is the netstat command, included with Windows 2000 Server.

To identify ports with netstat, open a command console and type the following command: netstat -a. To view IP address for local and remote addresses rather than host names, add the -n switch: nestat -an. If you only want to view active connections and not listening ports, use the netstat command without any switches.

Ruby on Rails

Have you heard about Ruby on Rails?

It is a new way to develop web applications,

This article steps through the development of a web application using Rails.


Go ahead and try it when you have some time.

Google Pages (Beta Version)

Google has unveiled Google Pages ( a beta version) which lets you create websites online using simple drag & drop WYSIWYG editor. It gives you a 100MB storage space and a subdomain at http://www.googlepages.com/. It's pretty much like Yahoo Geocities but with no ads and huge storage space and easy-to-use tools.

Wonder how this is going to get them revenue?

Trademe.co.nz sold. Guess for how much??

Trade Me is New Zealand’s only online auction site. A site created by New Zealanders for New Zealanders, the company has already experienced the benefits of having the homeground advantage when eBay tried unsuccessfully to enter the New Zealand market in 2001.

Today Australasian newspaper publisher, John Fairfax Holding, paid NZ$700 million for buying online auctioneer, TradeMe. This shocked many commentators and analysts.

Is 700 million too much?

What is Supergluing? Do you know?

I came about this word Supergluing today. There is a site called Suprglu.com This is a website where you can gather all your content from the different websites you publish and publish them in one place. Above all it is free!

Here is My Superglue


So why delay? Start Supergluing.

Happy Supergluing!

WYSIWIG Editors

Peter Krantz of Standards Schmandards has published his evaluation of some popular web editing tools. So if you're on the lookout for some WYSIWYG-editors for your content management project or blog, you might want to read this review first.

Capturing time spent on a form

There was a requirement to show the time taken to take the test in the test module. I started off with something like this.

I used the following code on the test page:
[code]
<body onload="" starttime =" new" onunload="endTime = new Date(); document.form1.timerField.value = endTime.getTime() - startTime.getTime()">

[/code]

But this was somehow not capturing the endTime.

So I had resorted to functions as follows using javascript.

var endtime
var starttime
var tdiff

function doStart() {
starttime = new Date();
document.form1.startTime.value = starttime.valueOf();
}

function doEnd() {

endtime=new Date()
document.form1.endTime.value = endtime.valueOf() ;
diff();
document.form1.submit;
}


function diff()
{
tdiff = endtime.valueOf() - starttime.valueOf();
document.form1.timerField.value = round_decimals((tdiff/60000),2) ;
}

This displays the time taken to complete the test on the results page by using the Request.Form("timerField")

What is BBCode? What are the differences between HTML and BBCode?

I have seen lot of forums that require postings be written in BBCode rather than HTML.

The main reason, must be so that there is some control over people not adding unauthorized links (like including pictures from unaffiliated Web sites) because it doesn't seem that much easier than HTML when you look at the two.

The basic differences between BBCode and HTML is that HTML uses <> two surround tags, BBCode requires that you use [ and ]. For example:

Bold text is produced with [b] text to have in bold[/b],

While italics is generated with [i] and [/i] and

Underlining is done with [u] and [/u].

Font color and size changes are accomplished with deprecated HTML "font" tag attributes: [color=red]text in red[/color] turns some text red, for example. You can also use the hexadecimal color equivalent (that is, use [color=#00ff00]), and text size can be specified as a value (that is, use [size=1]).

There are two ways you can show a hypertext reference in BBCode. The easiest is to use a URL tag. To point to this Web site, for example, you'd use this: [url]http://mytechlearning.blogspot.com/[/url]. If you want to display a name instead of the actual URL, use this: [url=http://mytechlearning.blogspot.com/]My Tech Learning[/url].

There is also special code listing blocks denoted with [code] and [/code]. Within these two tags, all <> symbols are translated into their displayable equivalent (the HTML character entities < and >) so that you can share HTML code with other members of the forum like in tek-tips forums .

As in HTML, you can combine multiple tags in a sequence if you want. Just make sure that you always close links from innermost to outermost, just like parentheses in your English writing!

Do you want to amuse yourself ?

Oops! see I have spilt coffee on my weblog. This is how I amused myself by trying the different options.

I have also seen the flowerpower on my blog . It looks cute isn't it!

You also can do these things and many more by Check for yourself here.

Hope you enjoy this!

Ticks and Crosses

Today I had to mark the test module I was creating with some ticks and crosses when the user answers the questions in the test. I thought of using images of crosses and ticks. So I searched on google high and low for a reasonable tick and a cross. But couldn't find reasonable ones.

Then Wayne suggested to use symbols from Word. So I used the symbols in Front Page.

Did you know that 'P' means a tick(P) when we change the font to 'Windings 2'?
Also did you know that 'Q' means a cross(Q) when you change the font to 'Windings 2'?

Well the advantage of using these symbols was you could change the color of the font to whatever you want.

This is the homepage of the test module application that I am developing in asp. This module has a user and an admin features.

The user after creating an account can login and take tests and see the results. The administrator can add a test category, add questions under the test category, edit existing questions.

What's AJAX?

These days I have been hearing a lot about AJAX. So today I had sometime to explore and see what it means.

And I have found heaps of information about it and didn't where to start. But I found this site where it starts from the basics.

So What's AJAX? Is it just another plugin like a flash, or an applet? no it isn't. Ajax is just a style of design, one that milks all the features of modern browsers to produce something that feels less web and more desktop. Sounds nice isn't it?

As Jesse James Garrett puts it, "AJAX" itself is a geeky acronym: "Asynchronous JavaScript+CSS+DOM+XMLHttpRequest". The technologies involve: Javascript and DHTML, to let applications respond to events such as mouseclicks; DOM, to let applications manipulate the display; XMLHttpRequest, to let the browser and the server communicate without having to refresh the page.

I am going to explore this AJAX phenomenon in the coming days and learn more about it.

Multiple-step OLE DB operation generated errors. Check each OLE DB status value, if available. No work was done.

I worked a long time on this error with the application I am developing in ASP. My research today has shown that this is often a datatype problem. If the value that is filled in the form is not the same as that has been defined in the database, you get this error. For example, if you are passing a null value to a field that doesn't accept them (DATETIME field) or passing an value to a Boolean field etc.

For more information on this error, click here

Emailing Voice (Really???)

Many thoughts come to our mind while we are walking, relaxing, driving etc. Our thinking cap is on as long as we are awake but we are not at our computers all along. And these thoughts are lost if we don't make a note of it and execute it. Now in this Technology age there is this company Springdoo that provides phone users in New Zealand, Australia, UK and USA the ability to 'talk' their emails.

In other words, you can be lazy like me and record a Springdoo voice message using a computer microphone and send it via their existing email account for free. You can also configure your cellphone (which you always carry with you) and whenever you feel like making notes you can record your thoughts and email it to yourself or the appropriate people and make sure those thoughts get actioned.

Wonderful! Isn't it?

Now imagine Blogging Voice instead of Emailing Voice!! Sounds spectacular. You don't need to be at your computer posting your blog. You can publish your voice as your blog entry everyday. Hope one day we will be able to do this with the help of companies like Springdoo.

"[Microsoft][ODBC Microsoft Access Driver]General error Unable to openregistry key 'Temporary (volatile) Jet DSN for process"

This error occured for the first time to me today when I set up my connection in the asp code. I spent about 15 mins. thinking why this error is occuring. I thought this could be something related to permissions either for the database or for the directory where the database is residing.

These are the things I tried:

• the webserver environment needs "write" permission to the directory where the Access database resides. So, set permissions first. Go to Windows Explorer, Tools, Folder Options, View and turn off the very last entry in the list ("Use simple file sharing") if you haven't already done so.
• When you right-click on the database folder there is a "Security" tab . Make sure you give write permission to the folder with the Access database to the "IUSR_****" account (with *** being your computer's name). This account is used by IIS, as default, to evaluate permissions for the default access to your local website and scripts.
• Give the same user IUSR_ (or whatever is the default account) access to the TEMP directory of Windows. MS Access might need to write some stuff there.
  Give the same account write permission in MS Access itself. These permissions can be reset by Access if you compact and repair the database so keep in mind to refresh this permission if necessary.
• If you still get the error "[Microsoft][ODBC Microsoft Access Driver]General error Unable to openregistry key 'Temporary (volatile) Jet DSN for process", check that the database is really in the directory referenced by the DSN or the connection string in your ASP file! Also, check for misspellings in the file name and whether the path is correct. This was the reason for my error today.