HypoCritically Thinking

Smart Auto-Suggest Plugin for Firefox and IE

One of Google Chrome’s best features is the location bar which suggests related searches and sites (including from your own browsing/search history) for what you type. Yahoo’s Inquisitor extension now allows IE7 and Firefox to offer the same feature. Click here to see a video demo of what the extension does.

Please note that the extension will set itself as the default search provider. It uses Yahoo as the default search engine but by going into options, you can switch it to Google, the only other option.

Perhaps in future versions of Firefox, the Awesome Bar will be improved to match or be better than Chrome’s location bar. Till then, this is a very good substitute.

Fixing A WordPress Database Crash

Once in a while a database table that is the foundation for a WordPress blog will crash leaving your blog inoperable and unviewable. Can you fix it and if yes, how? Matt Garrett of BlogTactics.com experienced this issue first hand and created the video below explaining how he fixed the table and his blog:

If you don’t want to or can’t see the video, here’s how to fix WordPress database tables:

1. Login into your blog’s host and go to the Control Panel (e.g., CPanel)
2. Find and click on the phpMyAdmin icon (under the Databases section) which will open a new window. In the new window, on the left side your database(s) will be listed, one for each blog hosted.
3. Click on the database you want to fix which will open a list of tables in the right side of the page.
4. If a table is corrupt, it will be highlighted. Select it by checking the box to the left of its name.
5. With the table(s) selected, go to the bottom of the list and click on the drop down box to reveal what you can do with the selected table(s).
6. Click on the “Repair table” option and wait for a few seconds while it fixes the table(s).
7. Your blog should be back to normal.

Click on the image above to see which steps refer to what on a phpMyAdmin screen. Also, you can use the same technique every month or two to make sure the table overheads (last column on the right in the image above), which can create issues if they get too big, are minimized.

Lyrebird’s Amazing Mimicry

This clip from BBC’s The Life of Birds series shows a male Lyrebird mimicking a variety of sounds, including other bird species, a chainsaw and a camera shutter to impress potential female mates! It can even mimic humans, opera singers, and TV shows as shown in the clip below:

Via: Neatorama and VideoSift