Simple Spark is the best source for online applications. It is a newcomer for me, but it’s a clear winner. Second one is Listio, good enough to be mentioned.

Time tracking applications

Toggl » It looks like a perfect one. Everything I wanted plus some advanced functions on desktop (Autopilot).

Personal Finances

Foonance » Simple and straightforward, but lacks multiple currency support. This can be solved with different “Money Stores” for every currency, but this is not a perfect solution.

Thrive » Nice design but site very slow. Too American in terms and simplicity.

Small Business Finances

Less Accounting » Simple and intuitive. Multiple currencies, recurring sales invoices and recurring expenses, no inventory.

In Advanced System Settings » Environment Variables (buton at the bottom) » You can figure it out.

He regularly had the CD media and the sticker (with Product Keys) that is legally bought together with the computer. It is Prefessional OEM Windows XP and Microsoft Office Small Business 2007.

However, he did not have the CD media for Office, because it is a so-called Medialess Kit. That means that you get, you will not believe, a blank CD box without any CD on which is written: “No disk is provided in this package”. Really funny (Why a CD box when there is no CD).

I expected that I should go to some site and easily download software. Then I would be able to activate that downloaded software with the OEM serial number that I have purchased. But, it is not so easy.

After 4 hours lost, here’s how to proceed.

As written in a package, you should visit this site. There you will enter any information, because that does not matter at all. Don’t be afraid of the price for sending a CD that will be displayed later - actually you will not order anything. Our goal is to find some download option. So, click Order Now.

The system will ask for the serial number of Office products that you own. Enter it. Based on this input, Microsoft knows what product you need to order. Then system displays something very similar to an invoice, which lists the price of products ordered (Backup CDs). It is not, in any way, specified that it is possible to download the files. But, be brave, feel free to select the Order Now button, again.

Only then, the system asks for your data. Well, that’s the screen that needs our attention. In the bottom of the screen you’ll see the possibility to Download - Download option. With this link, you are taken on an entirely different site, where you’re asked for your email again and for the selection of Office version that you want to Download. After the confirmation, you’ll receive an email (wait for it, it should be a little more time). E-mail messages in your inbox will have the following contents:

Thank you for ordering backup discs for your copy of Microsoft® Office. You indicated you would like to download the version of Microsoft Office that was preinstalled on your PC. Please click here to access the download site. You will be required to enter your email address on this site to validate your identity.

Go to the specified link, your email is a need again, and then you can finally download a so-much-beloved Office backup. And that’s it.

I know they are big. Huge. But being big does not assume being stupid. Or does it?

Shorter way

The sam ething can be achieved in another way (with a little referer-fakeing). It looks like the site that is letting you download a file is using only referer to check if you commed from Microsoft site. Because changeing referer is easy, I wrote a small proxy script to shorten the process of getting the Office download. Just click here, and follow the instructions.

Anyway, today I wanted to see the License information of some Office 2007 installation. I started Word, and tried to find “About” menu item. Well, it was not so easy. For that “special” feature, I had to go to the internet and dig through the long list of sites… Just to find out that is hidden here:

Office Button (upper-left corner) → Word Options (at the bottom of the opene flyout) → Resources (at the bottom of the array of options on the left) → About (the last button in right part of dialog box)

MoreCSS
Javascript effects - CSS syntax (where it should be). No new syntax to learn. No programming skills needed.

Almost everything is nice - the only thing that was not satisfactory is the fact that plugin developers assumed that I don’t like the www prefix, and that I want it to be removed. This is not true - I want my blog to work the same no matter what visitor enters in the browser address bar: domain.com or www.domain.com).

Solution is to change two files:
In line 55 of file domain_mapping.php, change:

$domain = $wpdb->escape( preg_replace( "/^www\./", "", $_POST[ 'domain' ] ) );

to

$domain = $wpdb->escape( $_POST[ 'domain' ] );

And in line 112 of the same file, change
echo "http://www.<input type='text' name='domain' value='' />/";
to
echo "http://<input type='text' name='domain' value='' />/";

In line 10 of file sunrise.php, change:
$wpdb->escape( preg_replace( "/^www\./", "", $_SERVER[ 'HTTP_HOST' ] ) );
change to
$wpdb->escape( $_SERVER[ 'HTTP_HOST' ] );

Anyway, when you do that, you just add two domains (www and without-www) for the same blog.

Then, after the warning screen, start typing in “Filter” field: mousewheel.withcontrolkey.action

The value of this field was, by default 3 (look at the <a href=”http://kb.mozillazine.org/Firefox_:_FAQs_:_About:config_Entries#Mousewheel..2A”>explanation</a>), and you should set it to -1 to disable any functionality. This “Disable” value was not so obvious at first look. SO, to summarize:
<pre><code class=”php”>mousewheel.withcontrolkey.action = -1</code></pre>
Oh. I just found out that <a href=”http://gmckinney.blogspot.com/2008/01/firefox-scroll-wheel-font-size-changer.html”>someone is having the same problem</a>. Their solution is not really exact, but it will do the job.

I was right about the huge database - it is the only way of having this kind of list. But, provider of this data is much bigger - it’s some search engine. And, the proof of that was found in one sentense on YouGetSignal: “Data is gathered from search engine results, which are not guaranteed to be complete.”. That’s it. They are getting data from search engines.

And the responsible is probably Microsoft, because theis MSN Search has an IP search functionality. Besides them, only a small GigaBlast engine is offering it, too. So, the right waz is to query both of them, mix results, and show them in cleaner way.

I just upgraded to a new Wordpress v2.6.2. Stop here - from security standpoint, I am very stupid for pointing this out. I just hope that I will not be punished.

Plugins that I used already

Templating engine

I need a system of templates to mimic CMS behavior, and the main feature is to allow that changes on a template to propagate to every post or article that is using this update.

• Templatedia » I used this plugin, and I wrote some small addendum-plugin (I called it Templatedia Metavars) that included custom fields into templates to achieve template-changes propagation. Templatedia is no longer maintained, and I plan to replace it with another solution as soon as possible.
• Post Templates
• Article Templates
• Page Template Extended
• Persistent Templates

Fancy article titles

For theming purposes, I need a simple method of styling a titles of a posts. This can be done in various ways.

• TTFTitles » Standard GD server side text-font processing. I used to use this.
• Facelift Image Replacment (FLIR) » Titles and text on steroids.
• wpSifrLite » sIFR text replacement in WordPress.

Private - permission based

I have a need for some content to be hidden from public, but still existent in a blog for some registered users. There is some included functionality in Wordpress, and there is external plugins.

• HidePost » Protect a part of your posts that only registered and logged members can see.
• WP Sentry » Specify users or groups that have access to the post. The idea for this one came from Post Levels.
• User Permissions Plugin » Assign permissions to specific posts that restrict users or roles from reading or editing it. I used to use this, but it’s no longer supported.
• Role Manager » Allows you to manage Roles and their Capabilities (standard Wordpress feature). Good resource.

Mandatory Plugins

Syntax highlighting » The Winner Is: SyntaxHighlighter Plus

On my blog, there is a lot of various code. Standard representation is very frustrating for me, and I expect this plugin to solve all of my problems. Very good review of available plugins can be found here.

• SyntaxHighlighter Plus (improved version of SyntaxHighlighter) » Based on Alex Gorbatchev’s JavaScript client side syntax highlighting, very nice designed. Works well in WPMU. No display customisation options. Lot of nice syntax variations.
• Google Syntax Highlighter for WordPress » Same as above, but compared to it does not have real support (only one blog post on author site), does not produce valid XHTML markup without a patch, only one version without improvements, lower coding standards, etc.
• Snippet Highlight » Based on Dean Edwards star-light syntax highlighting library (Javascript). No options but default looks is very plesant.
• Developer Formatter / GeSHi based » The best options page, and a very good editor helper. Has Copy-Code capability. The final look is not great, and it’s using jQuery without obvious reason (can be disabled). Anyway, not a bad piece of code.
• WP-Syntax / GeSHi based » Lot of these are using GeSHi which looks like a standard in this area. Neat display without much extra functionality (line numbers only). Works in WPMU.
• WP-CodeBox / GeSHi based » Adds a couple of simple options to WP-Syntax (Collapse, View Code), but uses jQuery without no real reason and has small advertisement.
• CodeHighlighter / GeSHi based » Looks bad without options. Really do not understand the developer.
• *** Highlight Source Pro » Flexible, XHTML-compliant, server-side GeSHi based.
• Sniplets » It is a text replacement and processing plugin, and has integrated syntax highlighting (GeSHi based), Textile support, etc. This is very advanced plugin, and it’s working very well, in general. But, in Wordpress MU, sniplets do not show in “Latest posts” page, only in the Post itself. Syntax highlighter has ugly “feature”. For example, if you want it to highlight a PHP language, it is not sufficient to specify language=php as parameter - you must include <?php ?> braces in a code.
• CodeColorer / GeSHi based » Lot of options, but not attractive display. Nothing special.
• FV Code Highlighter » Custom programmed, without some advantages. Ugly - same as authors site.
• WP Chili » Uses custom Chili Javascript (jQuery) code highlighter, made by same author. Code must be entered properly escaped (use Postable, for example), and I don’t fancy that.
• highlight.js » Javascript highlighting with no extra features, compared to others. Not capable of enabling tag attributes in KSES that it needs, so unusable out-of-the-box.

Editor impovements

Default editor is simple, but very frustrating, specially when you need a lot of source code examples. So, I need a better - improved one.

• Default (TinyMCE) Improvements: WP Super Edit, TinyMCE Advanced, Editor Extender.
• Monsters Editor for WP Super Edit » Brings the magic of Fckeditor, as a plugin for WP Super Edit. There is a button in TinyMCE to start Fckeditor. Heavy but practical.
• Real WYSIWYG » This one I like, and I believe that should be included by default in Wordpress. Import theme style sheet, and display the post as it will look when published.
• Lightweight markup language - Markdown for WordPress and bbPress and WP MarkItUp!. Both supporting the famed PHP Markdown (and Markdown Extra)

Comment Spam Filtering » The Winner is Disqus

There are various solutions for this problem - spam inside a comments. I used to use Spam Karma 2, but it looks it is discontinued now.

The idea is to avoid CAPTCHA usage, and still to block most of a spam. Javascript (WP-Hashcash) is some solution, but it’s not working for mobile users. Another solution are spam-fighting services as mentioned in this great post. The last resort is to completely outsource comments by using Disqus (or Intense Debate whch is acquired by Wordpress Company today). I chose Disqus because I like them more and for other reasons stated in this post.

• Aksimet » Included in installation (not included in MU, but works), very mature, uses unique API key. Same API key can be run on multiple blogs, but only in non-commercial purposes. For Commercial, there is a fee.
• Defensio Anti-Spam » Service very similar to Aksimet, with its API key. Not free for commercial use, but defines commercial more liberaly. In this area fits a similar not-free-for-commercial service Mollom that is worth mentining.
• TypePad AntiSpam » Same as Aksimet (Bayesian user contributed spam filtering). Free for any type of use, personal and commercial, regardless of how many comments you receive (free and works on MU). Needs an API key. My pick.
• WP-Hashcash » Javascript real browser check (MU compatible), Akismet compatible as first line of defense.
• bcSpamBlock » Same concept as WP-Hashcash and personaly, I like it more. Works with MU.
• WP-SpamFree » Same type as above - JavaScript and cookies, but I don not like it for some reason.
• Bad Behavior » Type of IP blacklisting. Now can incorporate data from Project Honey Pot http:BL. Free to use in any way, and compatible with MU.
• WP Captcha-Free » Javascript based, very simple and nice .

Search Engine Optimization

• All in One SEO Pack » Change title, description and keywords per page.
• HeadSpace2 » All-in-one meta-data manager.

Security Enhancements Plugins

• Stealth Login » Change login URL and prevent users from being able to access old ‘wp-login.php’ directly. Extremly important security measure.
• WP Security Scan » Scans WP installation for security vulnerabilities (file permissions, version hiding, etc). Has Prefix Table Changer included. Does not really work in MU.
• WP Prefix Table Changer » Change the table prefix from the default “wp_” to something else. Does not work on MU without changes.
• PHPIDS on Wordpress - PHP-Intrusion Detection System is a simple to use, well structured, fast and state-of-the-art security layer for your PHP based web application.
  I found two implementation of it, neither final and stable: WPIDS, and PHPIDS for Wordpress.
• TAC (Theme Authenticity Checker) » Very interesting. Scan all of your theme files for potentially malicious or unwanted code.
• WordPress Exploit Scanner » When a website is compromised, hackers leave behind scripts and modified content that can be found by manually searching through all the files on a site. This plugin does that, and works with MU. Always list itself as exploit (7 errors) and that is very annoying. Option is put under Dashboard - Exploit Scanner.
• Plugins for small security improvements and tweaks: WordPress Tweaks, Secure WordPress, WP All-in-One tools.

Login Process

Miscellaneous login improvements.

• WP-OpenID » Alternative login authentication with OpenID.
• BM Custom Login » Customize the login screen on your Wordpress.
• Login Sidebar Widgets: Sidebar Login, WP-UserLogin, UserSidebarPanel, MiniMeta Widget.
• Login LockDown » Lock IP on failed login attempts.

Statistics

Statistics plugins. These can be used with simultaneously.

• WordPress.com Stats » The standard. All of the processing and collection runs on external servers. Needs an API Key - but just like with Akismet, you’re welcome to use the same API key on multiple blogs. No mention about commercial blogs.
• WassUp » What your visitors do when they surf your blog - not intended to show standard statistics.

Optional plugins

Miscellaneous

Various plugins that improve a system somehow.

• WPlite (Wordpress lite) is a plugin that lets you hide ‘unnecessary’ items from the Wordpress administration menu - to allow the users to be their admins.
• File Inliner » Allows you to show the content of a text file inside a post - can be used in combination with some syntax highlighting plugin.
• Forgot the Category » Simply pops up alert box if you haven’t selected any categories when you save a post.
• Snazzy Archives » Visualization plugin featuring an unique way to display all your posts.
• Collapsing stuff - Collapsible Elements & Collapsible Comments, Collapsing Categories (very good) and Collapsing Pages, Collapsing Objects (immature Collapsing DIV)
• Redirection » All URLs can be redirected, not just ones that don’t exist. Lot of redirection methods - redirect based upon login status, redirect to random pages, redirect based upon the referrer.
  Pass-through redirection allowing to pass a URL even to another website. Extremely useful.
• Multiple domains on one Wordpress installation: Domain Theme, Domain Mirror and for WordPress MU plugin called WPMU Domain Mapping. Incredibly usefull stuff.

Post improvements

Plugins that in some way improve post-article functionality and look.

• Mangle with … based on content, or based on my specified cross-links, or something like “users who read this read this also”.
  The king in this category of plugins is a set of plugins that use Post-Plugin Library: these are Similar Posts, Recent Posts, Random Posts, Popular Posts, and Recent Comments plugins.
• BM Comment Highlight (works in MU), Comment Highlighter » Comment Highlighters are used to add different style classes to comments.
• WP-PostViews and WP-PostViews Plus » Enables you to display how many times a post/page had been viewed.

Form processing

The system to easily create custom forms for submit, recommend, etc. Very small offering in this area, whereas FormPress and Form Builder look most promising. I just found out Filled In that looks very simple and logical.

• WP-EMail » Allows people to recommend your post to a friend.
• cformsII - contact form » Simply the best form builder plugin.

Email and newsletters

Anything that has to do with the email sending, including full fledged email newsletter systems.

• MailPress » Newsletter & mailing list management, with ability to send beautiful and styled html emails. Very good one, and the only one serious - it even supports embedded images. Great one, really.
• Subscribe2 » Subscription management and email notification system that sends email notifications when you publish new content to your blog, on a per-post basis or periodically in a Digest email.
• Newsletter subscription optin module » Sidebar forms for newsletter subscription (single opt-in and double opt-in). Similar to this one is WP Opt-in.

Lifestream

This term defines a snapshot of your activities on social networking sites.

• Lifestream
• RSS Stream
• ComplexLife

Formatting

Things that are used in a content, and that make post somehow more nice formatted.

• Post Thumbnails - generate thumbnails from posts with the existing attachment system. The two found were Power Thumbnail and Post Thumb Revisited.

Video playback

Plugins for playing all sorts of video media files. And, in relation to video players, I found only one specific video theme file called Videographer Wordpress Theme.

• Viper’s Video Quicktags
• Anarchy Media Player
• pb-embedFlash
• FLV Flash Fullscreen Video Player
• Hana Flv Player (very nice)
• Embedded Video
• XHTML Video Embed (correct)
• FLV Embed (correct)
• Simple Flash Video
• Video Widget
• Flash Video Player
• wordTube (very good)

Photo Galleries

Showing a photo galleries in a fancy way.

• Cleaner WordPress Gallery Plugin » Force standard gallery feature to produce a valid XHTML output.
• NextGEN Gallery » De-facto standard. A lot of plugins for it: NextGEN-ImageFlow (really beautiful effect), NextGEN-FlashViewer, NextGEN Smooth Gallery, NextGen Gallery Add-ons, nextGEN_ajax
• WP-SimpleViewer » Add fancy SimpleViewer Flash galleries to your posts and pages. I used to use this before.
• WP FancyZoom » FancyZoom is extremly attractive and modern way of making popup images.
• There are lot of alternative photo gallery solutions, but difference in popularity with NextGEN is so extreme: Yet Another Photoblog, PhotoQ Photoblog Plugin

Breadcrumbs

I am really suprised that Wordpress does not include this by default. I really expect this to be implemented in future versions.

• Wordpress Breadcrumbs » Use of breadcrumbs in your Wordpress installation, with addition to the theme file. Similar is Breadcrumb NavXT, so check it out too.
• Breadcrumb Titles For Pages » Same, but for changing page title

Typography

These plugins should improve text readability.

• FD Footnotes Plugin, WP-Footnotes » Very easy way of entering footnotes into the articles.
• Drop Caps » Marks-up the first paragraph starting with a capital letter.
• wp-typogrify » Prevents ugly quotes, ‘widows’, providing CSS hooks and misc. Includes, for widows, the famous Widon’t plugin.

Online IM Status

These should show the current user online status, for direct and fast contact.

• Google Talk Widget » Google Talk status and chat.
• Skype Online Status » Show your Skype online status

RSS Feeds Aggregating (autoblogging)

Automatically create posts from the RSS feeds you choose.

• WP-o-Matic and FeedWordPress » Not sure wich one is better.

Automatic translation engine

I need a some kind of very basic translation system, just to allow as much readers as possible. I also found a good comparasion of multilingual plugins.

• Global Translator » Looks like very advanced system for automatic translation, utilizing 4 translating engines.
• Gengo » Standard multilingual engine that resolves the main problem that I have in Joomla multilingual sites. The problem is that I need a different structure for sites in another languages. Sometimes, some articles are not existent in every article.

Administration Serbian translation

I need a Serbian translation for administration area, for non-english speaking users. Look at the official cyrillic translation, and then look at official latin solution that uses transliteration plugin.

Optimization and engine improvements

These plugins improve Wordpress backend engine, to make it faster or more usable.

• XCache for WordPress and latest improvement of it. Object Memory Cache utilizing XCache engine.
• WP Super Cache » WP file-based cache was, in past, disabled by default, culminating in its removal from the WordPress 2.5 release. This plugin is fastest file-based cache, and works in MU.
• AskApache Crazy Cache » Lets you cache all the posts on your blog at once or clean cache at once. It only controls WP Super Cache - it’s not caching engine. Does not work in MU.
• WP JS and WP CSS » Pack and concatenate multiple JS or CSS files into one, thus speeding up the page rendering.
• PHP Speedy WP » Compress CSS and JS in one - alternative solution. Read this post for great analysis of possible solutions to a problem.

Weird, advanced and probably not necessary

Plugins that improve a system in a weird way, that are somehow interesting, but probably will never have real usage.

• Regenerate Thumbnails » Regenerate thumbnails for all attachments, if you’ve changed your thumbnail dimensions after uploading images.
• MyCSS » Apply your personal CSS stylesheet to your blog, regardless of the theme you might be using.
• Time2Read » Average time a typical user will take to read an article.
• WP-Project » Complete project management solution.
• Thank Me Later » Automatically send a thank you email to readers, at specified period after they post a comment.
• External DB authentication » Allows the use of an external MySQL, PostgreSQL or MSSQL database for authentication.
• OpenID Provider for WordPress MU » Allow a users to use weblog as an OpenID when authenticating against third party sites.
• WP-GoogleTrends » Google search trends in your sidebar.
• UMapper » Universal mapping platform that makes it a snap to create engaging maps and add them to your blog posts. Very advanced.
• Ozh’s IP To Nation » Get your visitor’s Country from his IP, everything from local IP to Nation database.
• Piwik Analytics » Plugin for the excellent Piwik Web Analytics Tool (best to Google Urchin)
• What Would Seth Godin Do Wordpress Plugin » New visitors see a welcome message. You can customize this message, its lifespan, and its location.

Not sure if already implemented in Wordpress somehow

These functionality is so obvious, that I am curious why it’s not included already in base installation.

• Mail From » Change the default email address that WordPress sends it’s email from.
• pageMash » Drag-and-drop customisation of page order.
• Google XML Sitemaps » Create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap.
• WordPress MU Domain Mapping » Enables the user to have a blog at any domain, in Wordpress MU.

Unpack the archive (one PHP and two small GIF files) into the root directory of SugarCRM installation. Here it is, available for download.

Screenshot in Google Chrome