Twitter sends out SMS alerts every time you receive a direct message or a nudge, provided you have chosen to receive such messages. However, Twitter does not send you messages each time you get a reply. When using services such as Vakow! to post messages on Twitter, it would help if you were able to get those replies to you via SMS as well. That’s where we at Harmless Geek come in. =)

If you have activated your mobile number with Twitter, then skip to the next paragraph. Else, head over to your Twitter devices page and activate your mobile number now.

Provided you have five minutes to spare, this tutorial should be pretty easy and straight-forward. Follow the steps:

1. Setup another Twitter account. Try to have a short username for this account, even if it doesn’t make any sense. This account is only for you and for the purpose of receiving @replies. For the purpose of keeping the public timeline clean, make this account “private”.
2. Create an account on Twitterfeed or any similar service.
3. In the following URL, change username to your Twitter username (handle). Also change username2 to the second Twitter account you created at step1.

   http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=username+-username2&show_user=true

4. It should look something like this, where 9_6 is my primary Twitter handle, and santoshgs is the second account I created.

   http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=9_6+-santoshgs&show_user=true

5. Now copy that URL and head over to the Twitterfeed account you created on step 2. Create a new feed with the login details of the second Twitter account, and use the URL we previously created. Include just the title or the description, but not both. Keep the update frequency to a minimum. It should look something similar to the following photo. What we have completed till now is making Twitterfeed post the search feed for your username to your second Twitter account.

   

6. All that remains now is that you follow your second account and activate device updates. (Pardon the username in the following crude image. It should actually be your second account handle.)

   

That’s it. You’re done. Now get @replies SMSed to you wherever you are! Remember, you read this FIRST on Harmless Geek.

Printing a web page could not get any easier. PrintWhatYouLike.com lets you edit a web page on-the-fly and print just the information you want. Sounds pretty good, right?

PrintWhatYouLike facilitates printing of exactly what you want from any web page, minus all the clutter. It’s sort of an online web page editor, if you may call it, that lets you edit a web page and then print it straight away from the Web, without having to install any additional software.

You can cut, add, stretch, compress, and more so that your print does not appear broken, filled with ads, or with any other unwanted content.

The only drawback I found was that you could not save the page to come back and edit later. That was hover solved with the help of Scrapbook (which by the way, has some really cool page editing features we missed out).

Check out what we have done with Harmless Geek.

We wrote about saving entire websites and web pages using PageNest recently. It works like a charm, and was more of an offline browser. Only problem was that it’s a 1.4 MB software that works only on Windows. For those of you who use alternative operating systems or want something running out of their browser, Scrapbook is what we recommend.

Scrapbook is a small plugin for Firefox that saves web pages for offline reference. An added feature of Scrapbook compared to other web page saving software is that it allows you to manage your saved web pages very easily, and comes with several useful features integrated. Other basic features include exporting saved pages and combining them.

You can add a comment, a sticky annotation, inline annotation, highlight text for future reference, show all the saved web pages in the sidebar, and much more. (click on the image above to really understand what Scrapbook can do).

Advanced options are available where you can specify the depth of links to be followed, and choose what type of media (JPEG, ZIP) formats should be saved. You can even bookmark a tab for future saving.

I haven’t yet told you the best part of Scrapbook. It’s the ability to capture all open tabs! Now how’s that for a small plugin? =)

I’ve been a long time user of Sxipper. It has undoubtedly made my Internet experience very convenient. Any website that I visit which requires a registration is immediately taken care of by my trusty old doggy pal.

Sxipper is a plugin for Firefox that keeps track of your personal data, including any number of usernames and passwords.

Sxipper allows you to import your personal data from a vCard, or a Roboform identity. You can then add further information so that Sxipper can be even more accurate.

When you first visit a site, you’ll see a Sxipper icon next to each input area. Clicking on it will bring up the corresponding information that you have previously entered into your Persona. If you skipped the previous step, no problem. Sxipper will learn from each registration.

Image credit Sxipper.com

The next time you visit that site, a Sxipper dialogue will appear with the login information. All you need to do is click on login and everything else is taken care of.

Any forums that I visit, any WordPress blog that I comment on, every single detail is automatically entered by Sxipper. =)

Cl.ickable is a new plugin for Firefox that makes copying text and images as easy as a click. With Cl.ickable, you only need to select the text or image you want to copy and a pop-up appears asking what you want to do. Among many options, you can either Google the selected text, or copy it into their online clip board called My Clips.

The website also provides a Ubiquity command which provides a link to Cl.ickable in the Ubiquity drop down, although this basically does the same task as the plugin.

If, by any change, you want to temporarily disable the functionality, you can do so by clicking on an option in the Status Bar. Quite convenient.

Install Cl.ickable Firefox Plugin

Day by day, new Twitter tools/mashups are being launched. And here are our picks, as of now, that will enhance your twitter experience.

1. Twits Like Me
Search for Twitter users with similar interests. Takes a while to run, but comes up with interesting results

2. TwitStamp (seriously cool !!)
Easily transform your current Twitter status into an image for use anywhere.

3. LessFriends
Do the people you follow on Twitter, follow you? Less Friends is a service that helps you find out.

4. CrowdStatus
Create a crowd of people and track their current Twitter status. Expanding to Facebook, Jaiku, and Seesmic as well.

5. Favrd
Lists interesting things that show up on Twitter, based on the number of times an item has been declared a ‘favorite’.

6. TweetLists
Lists popular links sent on Twitter by day, week, or in a live stream format. Also has a “twitterati” mode that lists links posted by people with the most followers.

7. Monitter
A trending mashup that lets you monitor the Twitter world for a set of three keywords and watch what people are saying in real-time. One of the besties among our personal favs. We used this one, to keep track of the Google Chrome launch.

8. Twuzzer
A live aggregation of tweets and photos related to large special events. Twuzzer is currently focused on the Beijing Olympics.

9. TweeTake
Already reviewed tool for backing up your Twitter Timeline.

10. TweetRush
A service based on the Rush Hour engine that aims to provide estimated stats on Twitter usage over a period of time.

11. TwitterRatio
Discover your Twitter ratio and see if you’re more friend or follower.

We are sure to see more and more innovative twitter tools/mashups. Subscribe to HarmLessGeek, so that you don’t miss another helpful tip. You can follow HarmLessGeek and receive updates on Twitter.

WordPress follows the Open Source policy of release early, release often. While this is a pretty good thing - you get fast releases to security exploits and loads of new features - but updating can be a rather problem, especially so if its something as important as your site’s CMS.

Fortunately Keith D’Souza has written a VERY NEAT plugin - WordPress Automatic Upgrade Plugin which makes it a painless affair to upgrade your WordPress installation. WordPress Automatic Upgrade updates WordPress installation in a step by step manner.

Read more…

RichFLV is a free tool that runs on Adobe AIR and can easily edit your FLV files. The app also allows you to convert the file to formats that include SWF, MP3, and several image formats.

In addition to the editing features of this application, you can also view FLV files without having to seperately download codecs. Besides, the software is pretty small (about 500 KB), runs on the Adobe AIR platform, and doesn’t take as much memory as a full blown video editing application. Pretty neat, huh? =)

Check out a screenshot I took using this software in the middle of a YouTube video.

Download RichFLV (live install) or use the direct link.

Google Reader - the web-based feed aggregator that’s the Harmless Geek’s favourite way to catch up with feeds. Aravind, Sathya, and myself are all avid Google Reader users. It’s the first site we visit in the day, besides Gmail.

Google Reader is also a fun way of sharing articles with people not on your contact list, like on Friendfeed. It’s a nice way to start up a conversation. But one problem is that you cannot share pages from websites that you do not subscribe to. That’s where Harmless Geek comes in. =)

Save the following link, by right-clicking and saving it as a bookmark, preferably in your Bookmarks Toolbar. You can also drag it to the Bookmarks Toolbar.

Note in GReader

If that did not work, create a new bookmark and copy-paste the following code as the address.

javascript:var%20b=document.body;var%20GR________bookmarklet_domain='https://www.google.com';if(b&&!document.xmlVersion){void(z=document.createElement('script'));void(z.src='https://www.google.com/reader/ui/link-bookmarklet.js');void(b.appendChild(z));}else{}

Go ahead, try it. Share the love. Share this page. =)

[Windows Only]: If having lots of shortcuts on the desktop is your idea of making life easier, then you probably should try this trick out. No software involved, just a few minutes spent in tinkering with the properties of your applications.

There are plenty of software like Launchy to make launching applications by keystrokes a snap. But what if you’re the kind of guy (like me) who does not want to install software if it can be done manually? There’s a very simple solution to this for Windows users.

Create a shortcut for your app if it doesn’t already exist. Start Menu items, desktop items, Quick Launch, or any other shortcut will also do. Now right-click on it and proceed to Properties. You should be in the ‘Shortcut’ tab.

Enter your desired keystroke in the ‘Shortcut Key’ area. For instance, I have used the keystroke Ctrl + Alt + P (for the plugins directory) as seen in the screenshot (click to enlarge). You’re done.

Launch applications with easy-to-remember keystrokes.

Additional tip: You can even select to run the shortcut in a normal window, maximized, or minimized. Quite convenient.