r3fresh

Give Your WordPress Admin a New Look

The original Wordpress admin theme is boring; blue and white boxes with hard lines don’t make it the most eye-pleasing design. Up to this point I thought I was stuck with the original theme until I found WP Tiger Administration from Orderedlist.com.

Click above image for larger picture 

The Tiger Admin theme moves the various blog tabs (ie ‘presentation’) to the left for easier navigation and the subcategories are still kept at the top. If you’ve used WordPress at all you’ll easily understand the layout. Almost every link from the original is in the same place or close to it. The overall color scheme is gray and green, which is not as bold as the previous, but really simplifies the feel. The layout is obviously modeled after Finder in OS X, which explains why it’s called WP Tiger Administration. Realizing this right after I published the post.

Installing the theme is like installing a WordPress Plug-in. Just download the file, unzip it, throw it into your plug-ins folder with your FTP manager, and activate it. You’ll see the new look as soon as you press ‘activate’. I wasn’t going to risk screwing up my site for a theme that I’m only going to see, but it’s a plug-in I can delete anytime.

I’ve yet to find any big problems with the plug-in/theme. There are a couple of links that will randomly stop working, but with a refresh of the page they are fixed. Additional plug-ins also work peacefully. Currently, version 3.0 (latest version) works with Safari and Firefox. The admin theme isn’t incompatible with IE and will resort back to the original theme if using the browser.

WP Tiger Administration

r3fresh Web Showcase

I’ve decided to start a new series showcasing media on the net. There are countless sites with TV quality content that need to be promoted throughout the net. I already have a decent sized list, but I’m always looking for more content. If you find any worthy or even questionably worthy, shoot me an email. Content can be in the form of writing, video, pictures, or anything else experience-able.

Here is the first ( and relatively small) r3fresh Web Showcase:

Web Drifter, on Revision3, with once television host Martin Sargent is arguably one of the funniest shows on the site. Martin Sargent’s awkward personality mixed with the quirky, creepy people he follows make the show enjoyable. If you’ve yet to see a show, Martin interviews the interesting owners of even more interesting websites. The weekly video shows are roughly fifteen minutes and are free like the rest of the Revision3 content. Martin Sargent was once a host on Tech TV’s “Unscrewed” which is similar to Web Drifter. Here is the most recent episode of Web Drifter:

Norton Antivirus, for Mac? and People are Buying it?

Doing some last minute shopping, for myself, on Amazon and I was looking through the software. While I was going through the “Movers & Shakers” section of Amazon I found this:

Now when I saw this I became quite frustrated. The already shady Norton is now cashing in on new unknowing mac users. Those of you who are new to the mac world and aren’t tech savvy, you need to know that virus software isn’t needed when running Mac OS X. Don’t waste $50 on crappy software that will just take up space on your hard drive.

The “Product Information” on Amazon:

 

• Automatically detects and removes viruses Offers automatic protection against the latest threats with set-and-forget convenience
• Scans and cleans downloaded files and email attachments Delivers continuous, up-to-date protection via fast updates
• Protects against attacks that target software vulnerabilities Provides advanced protection against software and Internet vulnerabilities
• Works with new Mac OS® X v10.5 Runs natively on Intel® and PowerPC® based Mac® systems
• Includes an all-new Norton AntiVirus dashboard widget

The information is repetitive, but the dashboard widget sounds innovative. Right?

Is this the beginning of so called “problem solving” windows software moving to the mac? I can’t wait for the release Windows Movie Maker and disk defragmenter early next year.