Blogger app for Android

Well, searching through my app store on my new Galaxy S2, I came across this Blogger app. So in an attempt to give it a try, here is my first post via my phone. Not really something I got working (which is what this blog is all about) but cool non the less.

Getting RAR files to auto save in Firefox

I was stuck with this problem for a while, and I never understood why it ever came to be, but if you download a '.rar' file in Firefox, you will always get prompted as to what to do with the file. If you select 'download', the checkbox to remember the action remains greyed out, and you get a prompt every time. This is inconvenient if you have a series of files to download, for example if there is a file split into, say, ten rar files: file.rar.part1, file.rar.part2 and so on...

This solution works on a Mac, but should also work on Windows, albeit a little common sense tweaking might be required.

Look for you Firefox 'mimeTypes.rdf' file. This should be located in:

/Library/Application Support/Firefox

Edit this file with a pure text editor, I use TextMate (Windows users Notepad will be fine). Then add the following (making sure that it is pasted between the end of another RDF description, so look for a tag, create a new line and paste away...):

<RDF:Description RDF:about="urn:mimetype:handler:application/rar"
NC:saveToDisk="true"
NC:alwaysAsk="false" />
<RDF:Description RDF:about="urn:scheme:mms"
NC:value="mms">
<NC:handlerProp RDF:resource="urn:scheme:handler:mms"/>
</RDF:Description>

Also, and not sure about how important this is, look for the section that starts:

<RDF:Seq RDF:about="urn:mimetypes:root">

and add another line within that tag:

<RDF:li RDF:resource="urn:mimetype:application/rar"/>

Google Webmaster Tools

I tried Google Webmaster Tools the other day. It's for analysing any websites you may own - check it out for more info. I noticed one of my more recent 'Google Blogger' blogs (this one in fact) was already listed in there, but my others weren't. Why was that?? Turns out that any Google Blogger blogs you have created recently will have been automatically added, I guess since the Webmaster Tools have become available, but existing older ones will need verifying.

There are various ways of verifying that the website you are registering belongs to you; the options are all presented to you when you try and register a site. For the blogs, what you need to do is choose the meta tag option. You need to go to your Google Blogger dashboard, choose the blog in question and edit the template. In the section, paste the meta code given to you in the registration process. Save the template.

Next you return to the Webmaster Tools verification and press the 'verify' button. This should verify your site straight away.

Another problem I had was with my www.steveturnbull.com site. It needed verifying but I was at work (in my lunch hour!!) and did not have access to my webserver or the html template for the site. I did, however, have access to my domain registrar's site (123-reg.com) which enabled me to use the DNS verification method. 123-reg wasn't listed in the drop down of possible registrars, so I had to do a little digging to suss out how to make it work.

All the other providers were instructed to leave the 'name' field blank, however 123-reg does'nt allow this. What you need to do is put the '@' symbol in the name field. Make the Type a TXT and then paste the string Webmaster Tools gives you into the content field which should leave you with something looking like this:


Again, press verify and this should work. With the DNS method, I guess there is the risk of it taking some time to propagate, but I didn't find this.