Amazon’s Simple Storage Service is designed to host data, not entire applications. It’s made to just serve as the backend to an app server — typically in Amazon’s cloud.

Tom Evslin has worked out a way to host dynamic Ajax applications directly in the storage, with no intermediate server. Very cool.

See Also:

• Is Facebook Planning To Offer Online Storage?
• Google Ups Online Storage Ante With Fee-Based Options

As anyone who’s ever tried to go from a Word document to the web can tell you, Microsoft Word outputs some of the most hideous and bloated HTML you’re ever going to see. So what’s a standards savvy developer to do when the client hands off a fifty page Word document with the instructions, “put this on the site?”

It turns out there are some better ways to get your word documents into snappy, relatively cruft-free HTML without resorting to hand coding. Productivity Portfolio has a few suggestions, including the ever-popular, make-Gmail-do-it-for-you technique. In other words, just e-mail yourself the Word doc and then use Gmail’s “View As HTML” option to generate some much better looking code than the standard Word output.

Also in the list of suggestions is the Word HTML to sane HTML converter Textism, which promises to strip “Microsoft’s proprietary tags and other superfluous noise from Word-generated HTML documents.”

There are some other methods and tips in Productivity Portfolio’s post, but many of them will require you to actually own Word, Dreamweaver or other software packages.

[via Lifehacker]

See Also:

• Industry Leading Publications Reject Office 2007 Documents
• Zoho Viewer: Spare Your Colleagues The Pain Of Bulky E-mail …
• Developers: Google Adds Docs & Spreadsheets API

HTML.net is a new site that offers very simple, free tutorials for people who are new to building websites. The content is really simple — one tutorial on HTML, one on CSS.

It’s from Copenhagen, Denmark, of all places. The avatars remind me of the Village People.

The most recent beta releases of Firefox 3 on the Mac have one annoying quirk — dragging a Jpeg image to the desktop from the browser results in the file’s extension being renamed. Instead of saving a jpg, you’ve got a jfif.

Jfif is the umbrella image format under which Jpg exists, but most applications can’t understand or open Jfif files. This issue will be resolved in a couple of weeks when Firefox 3′s code is finalized. Until then, you have to manually rename each and every Jfif, changing the extension to Jpeg in order to use them.

But why use the Finder when you can use Mac OS X’s Automator? This set of instructions was posted to the Mozilla support forums by an unregistered user named Kory. We’ve tried it and it works.

If you have any other suggestions, we’ve added a page about automating JFIF conversion in Mac OS X to the Wired How-To Wiki. Go ahead and log in to add them there. Don’t be shy.

How To Build an Automator Action to Convert Jfif to Jpeg (via Kory)

1. Open Automator and choose Custom.

2. Type "rename" into the search box.

3. Drag "Rename Finder Items" into the grey area to the right. Choose "Don’t Add" to the prompt that appears.

4. Change the first drop down box to "Replace Text".

5. In the Find box type in ".jfif" and in the Replace box type in ".jpg". Make sure the Ignore Case box is checked.

6. Click on the File menu and choose Save as Plug-in… Type in "JFIF to JPEG" and make sure the Finder option is chosen in the drop down box.

Now whenever you need to change a bunch of images to .jpeg, just select them in the Finder, right click, choose "More", choose "Automator", and click on "JFIF to JPEG."

With Wednesday’s introduction of a whole new developer API for YouTube, the site is continuing to offer some cutting-edge tools for independent video publishers. But many producers are still wary of using the site for any serious serving because of the relatively low video quality.

What many people are unaware of is the fact that YouTube is stepping up the quality of its videos. Select videos on the site are already available in 480×360
resolution — not HD, but better than the old 320×240
format. And sure, the videos still look compressed, but they aren’t nearly as crunchy and "Jpeggy" as their lower-quality brethren.

Also, YouTube isn’t serving the higher quality videos by default. You have to know how and where to find them. We’ve published a simple guide to getting better quality videos on YouTube at Wired’s How-To wiki. It’s remarkably easy. Check it out, and if you have extra advice, log in and add it to the wiki.

Wired How-To: Watch Higher Quality YouTube Videos

A nice, high-quality clip!

You’ve heard its name countless times. You’ve probably even tried to use it to download a file. But what exactly is Usenet, anyway?

Simply put, Usenet is a network of newsgroups with a built-in file sharing protocol. Content on the Usenet network is self-propagating, meaning that when you upload a message or a file to a Usenet server, that content is transferred from news server to news server until, eventually, every Usenet server contains a copy of that file or message.

Usenet has one main advantage over other P2P file-trading methods like BitTorrent and Kazaa, and that’s the fact that your download speed is only limited by the speed of your connection. There are no flaky peers or trackers to slow you down. Also, Usenet has a steeper learning curve and it has yet to hit the mainstream, so it isn’t in the public eye like BitTorrent or the other marquee names. OK, so there’s more than one big advantage.

To get started sharing files, check out our Usenet guide on the How-To Wiki. And yes, it’s a publicly-editable wiki, so if you have extra advice, you can log in and add it.

Illustration: Benjamin D. Esham

Laptops rarely, if ever, provide the trackpad equivalent of a middle mouse button, most models offer only two buttons, though some provide a way to simulate the middle button with software. For most people this may not be a problem, but if you’ve always wanted a middle mouse button on your laptop, we’ve found a solution for you.

Ryan Wagner over at CyberNetNews was missing the middle mouse button on his laptop so he created a quick little AutoHotKey script, which is actually just two lines of code:

• ~LButton & RButton::MouseClick, Middle
• ~RButton & LButton::MouseClick, Middle

The commenters on the original post have some other suggestions for achieving the middle button on your trackpad, including one person who suggests using a trackpad tap for the left button, the left button for a right click and the right button for a middle click.

Mac users are left out of the fun on this one, but it got me thinking, if two fingers on the trackpad + button click = right click, wouldn’t it make sense to have three fingers on trackpad + button click = middle click?

Anyone know a way to achieve middle button nirvana on a Mac? Post your solutions in the comments below.

The Flickr site is back up and functioning, which means you can try out our how to of the day: Flickr Set Manager. Flickr Set Manager is a handy web-based tool that allows you to create “smart” Flickr sets using a wide variety of criteria — very similar to smart playlists in iTunes.

Define your sets based on interestingness, date posted and tags, or generate a completely random set of images. There’s even an option to automatically regenerate your set once a day.

As with any Flickr tool, you’ll need to authorize Flickr Set Manager to access your account, but once you do, creating sets is just a matter of defining the criteria through a web form. The app isn’t the fastest site we’ve ever used (probably due to the Flickr API, not the site), so be patient when generating your smart sets.

If you’re wondering what you can do with this tool, here’s a tip: create sets based on multiple tags (the above screenshot is a set that combines the tags “Europe” and “night”).

There’s a myriad of Flickr tools out there if you’re looking to do a little more with Flickr. For a nice list of what’s available check out FlickrBits.

[via O'Reilly Radar]

See Also:

• Manage Flickr Uploads From Your Desktop With FlickrSync
• Flickr’s New Web-Based Tools Make Batch Uploads A Snap
• Give Your Photos Coffee Table Glory With Flickr And Blurb
• MarsEdit 2.0 Adds Flickr Support

If you’ve got a low-end Canon point-and-shoot you could have access to more features than you think. Most of Canon’s recent digital cameras, even the low end models, are based on the DIGIC II chip, and, as Linux.com points out there’s an alternate firmware for that chip that unlocks the features Canon disables in the low end models — including the ability to shoot RAW images.

The alternate firmware for Canon’s DIGIC II processor is known as CHDK. You can grab the firmware from the site, which also has a list of supported models and instructions for installation.

CHDK adds the following features to your supported camera:

• Shooting in RAW
• Live histogram (RGB, blended, luminance and for each RGB channel)
• Zebra mode (blinking highlights and shadows)
• DOF-calculator
• Battery indicator
• Scripts execution (exposure/focus/… bracketing, intervalometer and more)
• File browser
• Text reader
• Calendar
• Some tools and games

You’ll need to put CHDK on your memory card and then use Canon’s provided firmware update feature to launch CHDK, which means you’ll need an SD card reader to load the firmware files on to the card to begin with (though a couple of model have instructions for loading the firmware files straight to the camera).

By default the CHDK firmware will need to be manually booted each time you restart the camera, which, while it protects you from bricking your camera, is less than ideal. Fortunately, the latest version allows you to make CHDK auto-boot by locking your SD card. Instruction on how to set that up can be found on the CHDK wiki.

It’s also worth noting that SDHC cards (most SD cards over 2 gigs) are not supported.

Still, despite a few shortcomings, this looks like a nice way to add RAW support to Canon’s low-end line. Of course, RAW image support isn’t going to make up for the less than stellar optical components of low-end cameras.

This isn’t a way to replace your SLR, but for those times when you don’t want to lug an SLR, but you’d like to have the advantage of RAW images, this could be the solution.

Note that I don’t have a Canon digital camera so I haven’t tested the CHDK firmware, but unlike some things, such as replacement firmware for routers, CHDK is non-destructive so it’s worth a try. Of course, this is a hack, and even though you’re unlikely to damage your camera, if you are under a warranty, proceed at your own risk.

By now, we’re sure you’re totally enamored with the new Wired How To Wiki. If you haven’t seen it yet (what do you mean you haven’t seen it!?), then be sure to dig in and explore a little. It’s filled with dozens of instructional tutorials on a wide range of topics. Some of our favorites: How to run an efficient meeting, how to compile software from source code, how to make an iPod Nano case from a bike inner-tube and how to run Windows on a Mac. And the whole site a wiki, which means you can add your own expertise to make the how tos better.

Of course, we’re not the only ones providing resources of the hands-on variety. The web has always been well-steeped in DIY culture, so there are thousands of pages dedicated to projects, tutorial topics and helpful tips for using software and hardware of all stripes.

We’d like to ask you to nominate the best how to projects on the web.
Vote for your favorite resources below or submit your own to the list.
What are the destinations that really inspire you to roll up your
sleeves, grease your elbows and get your hands dirty? Once the votes
have been counted, we’ll contact the winning author and send them some
tchotchkes — and we’ll feature their tutorial on the front page of the
Wired How To Wiki site.

Photo: Scott Beale / Laughing Squid via Flickr

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