I recently realized that I had forgotten to change the copyright notice on some of my websites. I had changed it on all of my still and video cameras and in the metadata fields for Breeze Downloader Pro and Adobe Lightroom; I had even changed it on some of my websites. But somehow I missed a couple.

Instead of just fixing it now for the sites that I missed in January, I wrote some Javascript code to do it automatically based on the year. You can see the resulting text in the Copyright Notice for this site at the bottom of the right sidebar.

Here’s what the code looks like. Note that it automatically updates the year and it links to your email address from your name (in a method very unfriendly to spam harvesters). If you want to use it simply copy and paste into a widget or into your wordpress header or footer and it will start displaying.

NOTE – You must to update the 3 “var” fields to ensure that the code uses your own Name and Email address.

If you want to use this code in a post or a page then it will be much more difficult to make it work. You will have to refer to the WordPress Codex for information on how to use Javascript in a post or a page.

Dropbox announced today that they now have a free dedicated iPhone App to allow you to access your files at Dropbox directly instead of requiring you to go through the web interface. I’ve only recently started to use Dropbox, but this is definitely one feature that will make the service a whole lot more useful for me.

Instant access to my important files from anywhere is very cool. Of course there are already several other ways to use the iPod Touch or iPhone as a filing cabinet for key documents, but none of them are very convenient to access or to update. Because of that I simply haven’t used it for that purpose. But now I will!

If you’re not familiar with Dropbox, here’s a brief introduction:

Dropbox is software that syncs your files online and across your computers.
Put your files into your Dropbox on one computer, and they’ll be instantly available on any of your other computers that you’ve installed Dropbox on (Windows, Mac, and Linux too!) Because a copy of your files are stored on Dropbox’s secure servers, you can also access them from any computer or mobile device using the Dropbox website.

With Dropbox, your files are always in sync.
Let’s say you’re editing a document at home. As soon as you click ‘Save’, Dropbox will sync this same file to all your other computers (and now your iPhone!) instantly and automatically. It’s as if you saved the document to all of your computers. This gives you the freedom to work on any of your computers and always have the files you need.

Dropbox lets you share files easily.
You can easily share entire folders or photo albums with Dropbox. Simply put the folders you want to share in your Dropbox, and invite people to them. You can also send people links to specific files within your Dropbox. This makes Dropbox perfect for team projects.

With Dropbox, online backup is automatic.
Every time you put a file in your Dropbox folder it is automatically backed up to our secure servers. If your computer has a melt-down your files are safe on Dropbox and can be restored at any time. Our free 2GB account is perfect for backing up your documents. We offer larger accounts (up to 100GB) for backing up your music and video collections.

Dropbox lets you go back in time to undelete or undo changes to files.
Every time you save a file in Dropbox, Dropbox syncs it to our secure servers. Dropbox keeps a history of every change made so that you can undo any mistakes and even undelete files. By default, we keep the last 30 days of undo history for all your files. We also have an unlimited undo option called “Pack-rat”.

Every Dropbox user automatically gets 2 GB of storage for free. You can pay for extra storage, but you can also earn credits to increase your free allotment by referring other new users (up to a max of 3 GB). In fact if you use the following link, you can help me increase my free space… Thanks!

https://www.dropbox.com/referrals/NTI4MjQ1MzI5

I generally want my computers to automatically logon to my personal account when I turn them on (or when they restart in the middle of the night following an automatic Windows Vista update) so that I don’t have to waste any time logging in when I sit down to use the computer. This may not be the ideal thing for a computer shared by several users, but for a computer that has a single main user it is often very desirable.

I just got a new desktop computer and I’m in the process of setting it up with all my personal preferences.  This seems to take longer and longer as Windows gets more and more filled with bloat.  It seems to me that setting up automagic logons was a lot easier in Windows XP than it is in Vista, but I can’t actually remember how it was done there either. Maybe it was included as an option in the TweakUI Powertoy. Anyway I always have to hunt around to find the trick for Vista machines, so I thought I would write it down so that we can all find it easily the next time we need it.

Fortunately there are only a couple of easy steps:

1. Click Start and type netplwiz in the search field (or in the Run… dialog if you are using the classic menus)
2. Click Continue if one of those uber-annoying “User Account Control” windows appears
3. Select the user account to which you want to automatically logon
4. Clear the “Users must enter a username and password to use this computer” option box up above the User Accounts window
5. Click OK
6. When prompted, enter the password for the user account you selected in step 3

That’s it.  From now on whenever you start or restart the computer Windows Vista will automatically logon to your preferred account.  I assume that this method will also work for Windows 7, but I haven’t been able to test it yet.  I’ll get back to you sometime on or near October 22nd!!

UPDATE Oct 27, 2009 – This trick is definitely still applicable to Windows 7, and it works perfectly!