bobbyblue's blog

Online death

2010-01-22T22:44:00.001-08:00

This column is not about how you can remove your online persona. That, honestly, is extremely difficult. You need an e-mail account much like you need roti, kapda aur makaan and increasingly you need to be on a social network of some sort or another, which is usually Facebook. But just like going online is a certainty of life in the modern age, a much older certainty of life trumps that. Death. So, what happens to the online life of a family member or a friend you have lost to the Grim Reaper?

Well, the "Terms of Service"(TOS) for most online services are quite clear: An account is non-transferable and there is no "right" of survivorship. That is to say that the legal heirs of a deceased individual have no "rights" to the deceased person's account and its contents. Yahoo!'s TOS clearly states. "Upon receipt of a copy of a death certificate, your account may be terminated and all contents therein permanently deleted."
However, some large Internet e-mail providers can make exceptions (like they do for law enforcement, apparently). Google offers something like this for Gmail, where if you have a legal need to access the contents of a deceased individual's mails, you can contact Google, but only through fax or snail mail.
There is a help page for this in the Gmail "Help" section, but, to cut a long story short, you have to send Google proof that you are the person's lawful representative along with a copy of the death certificate. You also have to show them a mail that you received from the e-mail account you wish to access.
Of course, there could be a simpler way around this if someone who knew the deceased person was also in possession of their access password. But that goes against the very grain of having a password in the first place. Usually, most people do leave their passwords with at least someone they trust implicitly. However, do keep in mind that trusting someone with your password is not a foolproof idea.
E-mail is one thing, social network is another ballgame altogether. In fact, many smaller social networks do not have any method of removing a profile. Orkut allows one to request that a profile be removed upon death. If you make such a request, you have to upload a death certificate and Orkut promises to take action within three business days.
Facebook, on the other hand, does not "remove" the profile (it can, if you want) but "memoralises" it. "Memorialising the account removes certain sensitive information and sets privacy so that only confirmed friends can see the profile or locate it in search. The Wall remains so that friends and family can leave posts in remembrance," the company explains. Again, one has to provide proof of death. Both networks allow one to report death through help pages on their sites.
Death is not easy to deal with, but it is a fact of life and like it or not, we will increasingly be dealing with the issues that we discussed in this column as our lives become digitally connected.

The ten most commonly used internet passwords you should never use

2010-01-22T22:41:00.000-08:00

A data security firm has unveiled the ten most commonly used passwords on the web.

To reach the conclusion, Imperva analysed around 32 million passwords that had been exposed in a recent hack of the RockYou website.
Last year a hacker had breached the site's company database, gaining access to the unencrypted usernames and passwords of all its 32 million users.
Now, after studying the breach the firm has come up with a list of the most commonly used passwords which website users should avoid, reports The Telegraph.
"Everyone needs to understand what the combination of poor passwords means in today's world of automated cyber attacks: with only minimal effort, a hacker can gain access to one new account every second-or 1000 accounts every 17 minutes," said Amichai Shulman, Imperva's chief technical officer.
"Employees using the same passwords on Facebook that they use in the workplace bring the possibility of compromising enterprise systems with insecure passwords, especially if they are using easy to crack passwords like '123456'," he added.
"The problem has changed very little over the past 20 years. It's time for everyone to take password security seriously; it's an important first step in data security," he said.
The ten most commonly used passwords analysed in the study were:
1. 123456
2. 12345
3. 123456789
4. Password
5. iloveyou
6. princess
7. rockyou
8. 1234567
9. 12345678
10. abc123

How to download music for free without P2P software

2009-10-05T09:03:00.001-07:00

If you want to download songs of your favorite bands, but don’t understand how all peer-to-peer software works or you are worried about facing legal consequences by downloading from P2P networks, then you might want to use a program called Clickster.

Clickster uses Google and other search engines

to find MP3’s, which have indexed more MP3’s than the P2P networks, so that means you can find just about every song and not have to worry about illegal downloads. The music industry does not seem to care (or does not know) that Google has more MP3’s indexed than all the P2P networks combined.

Clickster is a freeware program and is really easy to use. Once you have it installed, it loads up with a simple interface where you type in the name of the song or artist and the search begins! You can download the files directly or you can play them through the interface by double clicking on the song name.

Pretty sweet! No need to worry about downloading bloated P2P software that might have spyware if you just want to listen to a little music while working on your computer!

Source: http://www.ghacks.net/2007/03/22/search-for-and-download-mp3-with-clickster/

How to find the name or title of a song by lyrics

2009-10-05T09:01:00.001-07:00

Most people listen to songs from bands they like and sometimes search for the lyrics of a song if they can’t quite make out what’s being sung. However, for those of us who happen to listen to the lyrics of a song and want to find out who sang it, there are some useful lyric search engines

that do just that. Frankly, this happen to me all the time!

It’s amazing how many times I’ve jumped into my car and turned on the radio, really liked the song that was playing, but at the end of the song there was no announcement by the DJ of the artist or band! I understand the whole “back-to-back” song broadcasts on radios these days, but it would be really nice if there was a quick mention of the song name at the very end!

Anyway, so if you know some of the lyrics for the song you’re looking for, you can try out a few of these lyric search engines to try and find the band or song name. Actually, there are quite a few of them out there, but only a few really have large databases of song lyrics. So I put a couple to the test to try and find a fairly new song by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers called Californication with the query “the sun may rise in the east”.

These are the search engines that actually found the song:

1. Get Lyrical – You can also search by Artist, by Song, or by Album.

2. Search Lyrics – This site also has some non-English lyrics and you can translate any of the English lyrics to another language on the lyric pages. Get Lyrical finds an exact match for your lyrics whereas Search Lyrics searches for those words anywhere in a particular song and will return a result even if the words are all not together.

3. LyricsFly – Found my song also, but make sure you click on Lyrics first and then perform a search.

How to add Delicious bookmarks to Facebook?

2009-09-28T08:18:00.001-07:00

Do you want to share your Delicious bookmarks with your Friends?

Login to your Delicious account.
Go to Settings
Choose Facebook Application

Delicious Settings

Now you will be redirected to Facebook where you will be asked permissions.
If you want to add Delicious to Facebook, click allow

Delicious in Facebook

Once you allow permissions, set the required permissions

Delicious Settings in Facebook

UPDATE:Shutdown ur pc using cellphone

2009-09-28T04:53:00.001-07:00

Shortcut Key To Flip The Screen In the Windows TO 180 Degree..

2009-09-28T04:17:00.001-07:00

The shortcut is

for normal windows : Ctrl + Alt + <Up arrow>
and for 180 deg it is : Ctrl + Alt + <Down arrow>

How ever you should know that these are default shortcuts for Intel Extreme Graphics Controller, and you can change them. To check / change or disable these keys go to control panel–>Intel Extreme Graphics–>Hot Keys.

How To Query Google.com Instead Of Local Google Search Engine

2009-09-28T04:10:00.001-07:00

If you are a serious Googler, then you will know the fact that indexed data for the same search terms will vary depending on the Google server that’s queried.

If you are searching for a particular thing in India, the query is automatically directed to Google.co.in servers and the data indexed in Google.co.in will be different from the data that’ll be indexed in Google.com . The results returned from Google.co.in will be localized and hence the difference.

All your queries, by default will go to your local Search center and if in case you want to query to base Search Center then use this link.

Shutdown ur pc using cellphone

2009-09-28T00:58:00.001-07:00

Prerequisites :
1> Should have a PC / Laptop / Desktop with internet connection
2> An account in twitter (you can get one from here : http://twitter.com/),
3> A cell phone / mobile phone that supports internet via GPRS .

Here’s how you can possiby try and succeed to shutdown, restart or logoff your windows system from a cell phone / mobile phone:

1> Set up your cell phone to send and receive messages from twitter. Follow these steps.

2> Install TweetMyPC and learn how to run TweetMyPC.

Use both the features to shut down your PC / Laptop from your cell phone !

Check if windows is activated or not…

2009-09-28T00:56:00.001-07:00

Heres a simple way to check if you're version of Windows has been activated.
XP:
Start->Run
Type:
oobe/msoobe /a
then press enter.
Vista:
Start Orb->Right Click Computer->Properties
Scroll down to "Windows Activation"
It will show Product ID and if you're activated.

Bypass 140 Character Limit in Twitter

2009-09-27T23:51:00.001-07:00

Twitter is an awesome tool which increases your site reader but one thing which I don’t like about Twitter is that it has a 140 characters limit. So using this loop-hole of Twitter another site called PageTweet , will help you out to bypass 140 character limit. What it actually does is make you enter your message along with your url and nickname and then gives you a short url for that message. You can actually add the shortened url in your Twitter feed along with some another message.

How is this different from other url shortening services?
After reading the above lines, this would be the first question that generates in your mind. The url shortening services may help you to shorten your url but the url which this site will provides will make your viewers to your targeted site, which now has a PageTweet bar along the top that displays the message that you have typed in PageTweet site. It also shows a mini hit-counter for your shortened URL. Below is the example how this happens.

Convert an Ebook to Audio Book

2009-09-27T23:48:00.001-07:00

Now in this Electronic going world, people are shifting towards E-books and Audio books, as they are portable and available Free on site such as Project Gutenberg. Recently , I was reading some E-book and found that it will effect my I eyes, as I was watching it on my PC. So, I thought of a way to convert an E-book to Audio book and Googled it out.
I found that a small utility "TextAloud" from NextUp will do my work, it is used to convert an eBook to an Audio Book and that can be put into mobile or a player and listened any where, the most portable way..

Get Windows 7 in you Windows XP

2009-09-27T23:46:00.001-07:00

After monotony of default Windows XP/ Windows Theme, it is the time to change yourself and try something new. After windows 7 beta has been released, its time to try the latest Windows Looks and Feels. So just grab the latest Windows 7 Theme (Transformation Pack) which will give a fresh look to your computer.

Seven Remix is a completely free transformation pack which lets you enjoy the look and feel of windows 7 very easily. Seven Remix transformation pack is designed by niwradsoft
Seven Remix transformation pack is made to work on following versions of windows vista, Windows Vista (all editions, SP1), Windows 2008 (all editions, SP1), All Language Versions
Note: This transformation pack is not supported on 64-bit versions of Windows Vista or Windows XP.
Link:- Download Seven Remix Transformation Pack For Windows Vista

React OS – Alternative to Windows

2009-09-27T23:41:00.001-07:00

I am using windows operating system for last decade and also sometime install Linux based distributions for testing purposes, this time I’ve found something really amazing to test operating system on my PC, and this amazing thing is React OS. It is Windows NT based open-source operating system, which supports Windows binary (exe) to run in it.

React OS is still under heavy development and is in alpha stage of development. The developers itself recommend not to use for daily purposes, till some more improvements are made; but if you are a computer geek and love to try out different OS, then you may give it a try. You can download React OS by various means-

Download React OS as Installation CD, Live CD
You can also run it virtualized using VMware virtual machine or QMenu
You can also get the source code of React OS

You can get to downloads page of React OS at here.

offline browser-HT Track

2009-09-27T21:18:00.001-07:00

HTTrack is a free (GPL, libre/free software) and easy-to-use offline browser utility.

It allows you to download a World Wide Web site from the Internet to a local directory, building recursively all directories, getting HTML, images, and other files from the server to your computer. HTTrack arranges the original site's relative link-structure. Simply open a page of the "mirrored" website in your browser, and you can browse the site from link to link, as if you were viewing it online. HTTrack can also update an existing mirrored site, and resume interrupted downloads. HTTrack is fully configurable, and has an integrated help system.

WinHTTrack is the Windows 9x/XP/Vista release of HTTrack, and WebHTTrack the Linux/Unix/BSD release. See thedownload page.

Automatic lyrics display for your favorite track!

2009-09-27T21:10:00.001-07:00

MiniLyrics is a fascinating lyrics viewer for synchronizing and displaying lyrics of the currently playing song in Winamp 2.0/3.0, Winamp 5.x, Windows Media Player, itunes, matchbox, Quintessenial Player, foobar2000. RealOne Minilyrics makes your music come alive with streaming lyrics that are timed with the song.

You can follow along with the artist and catch every word,and even sing along like a Karaoke machine. Minilyrics is an application that helps you to view lyrics of your favorite songs. Minilyrics is fully compatible with all major music players, like Winamp, Windows Media Player, etc. As the easiest-to-use Lyrics viewer software, Minilyrics only needs a few steps to install and take you less than 5 mins to have a full version ready for use. Whenever you launch the any of the media players, the software will automatically get started. Minilyrics lets you select your favorite skins, fonts, colors and minimize the viewer window to whatever size that you feel comfortable with. The karaoke mode brings you tremendous joy in learning a song by moving the lyrics word by word.

Some key features:
- Automatic lyrics display for your favorite songs
- Never expired trial version
- Cool skins
- Wild compatibility for 13 players

MiniLyrics supports:
· Winamp
· Windows Media Player
· Foobar2000
· Apple iTunes
· RealPlayer
· Quintessential Player
· Musicmatch Jukebox
· MediaMonkey
· The KMPlayer
· JetAudio
· Yahoo! Music Engine
· J. River Media Center
· J. River Media Jukebox
· XMPlay
· BSPlayer

MiniLyrics 6.6.320
New: Support VLC media Player 1.0.
New: New local hotkey settings.
Improved: Optimized the lyrics display CPU cost.
Improved: Lyrics editor.
Fixed: Lyrics displaying fade out bug.

Skins：http://www.crintsoft.com/mlskin.htm
Changes：http://www.crintsoft.com/mlwhatsnew.htm；http://www.minilyrics.com/msg.htm
Home：http://www.crintsoft.com/；http://www.minilyrics.com/

Official Download：
http://www.crintsoft.com/download/MiniLyrics.exe

Prevent Cut – Copy – Paste – Delete – Renaming of Files and Folders

2009-09-27T21:00:00.000-07:00

If you don’t want others to use your computer, copy data and modify your files and folders, Try Prevent. It is a freeware app which prevents others from copying anything from your computer along with blocking access to cut, copy, paste, rename or delete files and folders.

You can download and install Prevent. You can use your own keyboard shortcuts to stop the application. If you want to activate Prevent, Just start the application and it prevents any unauthorized modifications. You can stop this application to get all the functions to work normally.

Here is the list of functions Prevent can be used for,

Stops Cut
Stops Paste
Stops Copy
Stops Delete
Stops Copy To
Stops Move to
Stops Send To
Prevents renaming
Disables Task Manager’s End Process button.
It even prevents you to right click on process name and click on end process. It also grays out the context menu items, disable Ctrl+C, Ctrl+X and Ctrl+V and/or stops the process.

Get this handy application from this link.

Flash Cookies? What are Flash Cookies?

2009-09-11T06:46:00.000-07:00

Flash cookies are a new way of tracing your movement and storing a lot more information about you than with normal cookies. One major disadvantage of flash cookies is that you can’t locate them in your browser. They are not shown in the list of cookies that you can see when you take a look at the cookies that are currently saved in your web browser. Normal HTTP cookies can’t save more than 4 Kilobyte of data while Flash cookies can save up to 100 Kilobyte. If you want to try out how they work you could do the following.

Go to Youtube, increase or decrease the volume of the videos and delete all cookies afterwards. You will notice that the volume level is still at the same level when you close your browser and open it again. This is done with so called Local Shared Objects, better known as Flash cookies. The main question is of course how a computer can be checked for Flash cookies and how it would be possible to delete those cookies again.

Turns out that web site operators can use Flash applets embedded on their site to write information into a preference file stored on the computer that visits the site. One thing this preference file can be used for is recreating a browser cookie that may have been deleted, or to store other tracking information. The idea of using Flash as a means of hiding a tracking cookie on a machine bothers me because it is insidious. There are clear interfaces built into web browsers for managing regular cookies, and users can delete or reject them as they choose. Flash Cookies are hidden in user libraries and preference files, and to manage them you have to burrow into Adobe’s support site to find the applet that will manage the privacy settings for the Flash Player installed on your computer. Did you catch that? To manage the privacy settings of a program installed on your computer, you have to go to an external web site. That bothers me on a fundamental level. I should be able manage the software on my computer using tools on my computer, without having to go to a vendor’s web site.

Because Flash Cookies use preferences written elsewhere on the computer, they aren’t tied to a single browser. I visited the Adobe page containing my Flash privacy settings with 2 different browsers and saw the same list of sites that are storing information on my machine. So, in that way, Flash Cookies are even better than regular browser cookies for advertising use, because they can affect every browser you have installed. A Flash Cookie could identify you to an advertiser, even if you’ve never visited the site with this specific browser before!

go to settings manager
to change settings

HOW TO MAKE GREAT PASSWORDS

2009-09-09T20:36:00.000-07:00

Think of a memorable, eight or nine-word sentence like “Fred is a bad ninja but has 3 nunchucks”.
Take the first word of every sentence to turn it into a password. Result: “Fiabnbh3n”
Test your password using Microsoft Password Checker

That’s it. You’re done! You’ll find that this method results in remarkably easy to remember and strong passwords.

Prevent keyloggers from grabbing your passwords(VESIK METHOD)

2009-09-09T20:25:00.000-07:00

Vesik method revised

Suppose your password is Jk5pGHmY9
Type three random characters into the password field (say, Wv5)
With your mouse, highlight those random characters and type three more random characters right over them (say, aUJ). Repeat this step a few times (the more you repeat, the harder it is for someone looking at a log of your keystrokes to figure out your true password)
Highlight the last portion of gibberish you typed and input a segment of your true password (say, pGH)
Place your cursor to the left or right of the correct portion of your password and repeat steps 2 to 4
Once your whole password is contained within the password field, click the “Submit” or “Log in” button

This is effective because a keylogger would register something similar to the following set of keystrokes:

click Wv5 click d3i click M%f click pGH click Opl click 37s click Jk5 click rF9 click 1N8 click mY9 click

Your true password is contained in those keystrokes, but neither a computer program nor a human looking at them would know which strokes are legitimate and which aren’t. Most thieves would move on to an easier target if they ran into a mess like this one. However, if the thief was persistent, he could probably find your true password by trial and error. But his chances for each attempt are low, at around 1 in 10 million.

Google unveils the Plus Box

2009-09-04T07:16:00.001-07:00

Google just released a new feature called the Plus Box, which will allow you to see more information about individual search results. When you click the “plus” box, you’ll get rich set of extra data right below the search result itself. Here’s what the new plus symbol will look like:

Currently, the new feature is only supporting stock information and maps . If you search for a company listed on the NYSE or if it’s web site comes up in search results, you’ll be able to click the plus box and get information on the current stock price, chart, and company information.

MS Office 2010 beta 1 leaked

2009-09-04T07:08:00.000-07:00

It’s probably the hottest news.MS Office 2010 beta has been leaked by wzor and is available for download in both x86 and x64 flavours..The file name is MICROSOFT.OFFICE.2010.v14.0.4302.1000.BETA.1.VOLUME.X86-64.ENGLISH-WZT and the size of 32 bit is 761 MB and for the 64 bit,the size is 852 MB

The leaked build is MICROSOFT.OFFICE.2010.v14.0.4302.1000.BETA.1.VOLUME.X86-64 which has many differences from the build 14.0.4006.1010 primarily a new purple shaded color scheme.

The build is available on various torrent trackers and I’m in the process of downloading it right now. I’ll post more details as soon as I test drive it.

screenshots :

DOWNLOAD LINK : MICROSOFT.OFFICE.2010.v14.0.4302.1000.BETA.1.VOLUME.X86-64.ENGLISH-WZT

Fedel - I Live (2008)

2009-09-04T03:02:00.000-07:00

Artist: Fedel
Album: I Live
Release Date: 2008
Quality: VAR kbr

Track Listing:

01.Intro
02.Tell A Friend
03.Walk it like I'm Changed
04.Get Live
05.Keep On feat Sarah Sanders
06.Proverb
07.In the Church
08.Old Things
09.One by One feat Sean Johnson
10.Out the Crib
11.Get it feat Knin and Viktory
12.On Mine
13.I LIVE feat Cam
14. Time and a Season
15.Get Down feat Dre Murray

DOWNLOAD

Kutless - What Faith Can Do [Single] (2009)

2009-09-04T03:00:00.000-07:00

Artist: Kutless

Album: What Faith Can Do
Release Date: September, 2009
Quality: VBR @ 112 Kbps

DOWNLOAD

Avalon - Reborn [Unofficial EP] (2009)

2009-09-04T02:56:00.000-07:00

Artist: Avalon
Album: Reborn
Release Date: September 15'th, 2009
Credit To: Pamjrp
Quality: 192 Kbps

Seems Avalon is in a big change not only of members but the style too. Check this out.

Track Listing:
1. Reborn
2. Alive
3. Arise

DOWNLOAD

Abel - The Honest Love (2009)EP

2009-09-04T02:53:00.000-07:00

Artist: Abel
Album: The Honest Love (EP)
Release Date: 2009
Quality: 240Kbps

Track Listing:
01. Dressed Like a King (3:48)
02. Song of Simon (4:44)
03. The Honest Love (4:17)
04. My Melody (4:46)
05. The World Sings (6:08

DOWNLOAD

Booting Windows XP with USB Flash Drive

2009-01-02T04:13:00.000-08:00

Almost everyone who has worked with computers for any length of time at all has run into at least one situation in which a problem left a PC unbootable. What if you could return the machine to a bootable state just by inserting a USB flash drive though? Believe it or not, it is actually possible to install a bootable copy of Windows XP onto a flash drive and then boot a PC off of the flash drive. From there, you can use applications that you have installed on the flash drive (anti virus, anti spyware, disk repair, etc.) to fix the PC’s problem. In this article, I will show you how.

What’s the catch?

As with most cool new techniques, there are a few catches. For starters, not every PC is capable of booting from a USB flash drive. For the most part, computers manufactured within the last two years are generally able to boot from a flash drive. Older systems may require a BIOS update, or might not be able to boot from a flash drive at all.

Another catch is that not every flash drive will get the job done. The primary factors that limit your use of a particular flash drive are capacity and speed. Technically, speed isn’t really a limiting factor, but booting Windows will be painfully slow unless you use a flash drive that supports USB 2.0.

The flash drive’s capacity is actually a limiting factor though. Surprisingly though, there are size limits on both the upper and lower end. Your flash drive can’t be too large or too small. There isn’t really a documented minimal size for a flash drive. You just need something large enough to hold Windows XP and a few applications. As you probably know, Windows XP normally consumes over a gigabyte of disk space. Later I will show you how to use a free utility to trim the excess fat off of Windows XP and make it a whole lot smaller. Even so, I still recommend that your flash drive be at least a minimum of 256 MB in size.

As I mentioned, there is a maximum size for the USB flash drive that you can use. Currently, USB flash drives exist in sizes of up to 4 GB, and 8 GB flash drives are expected to be available by the end of the year. As nice as it would be to have 8 GB to play with, the flash drive that you use for this project can be no larger than 2 GB. The reason for this is because you will have to format the flash drive using the FAT-16 file system, which has a 2 GB limit. Presently, you are stuck using FAT-16 because most computers will not recognize a flash drive as being bootable if the drive is formatted with anything other than FAT-16.

Preparing your Windows installation CD

One of the requirements for creating our bootable USB flash drive is a Windows XP with Service Pack 2 installation CD. If your Windows XP installation CD doesn’t already include Service Pack 2, then you will have to make a CD that includes Service Pack 2 through a technique called slipstreaming.

Other requirements

In addition to your Windows XP installation CD, there are a couple of other things that you are going to need. For starters, you will need the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool. You can download this tool for free.

Another utility that you are going to need is Bart’s Preinstalled Environment Bootable Live Windows CD / DVD, or BartPE for short. You can download this utility for free from the BartPE Web site.

In addition to the software requirements, you must verify that the PC that you will be using to create the Windows deployment has 1.5 GB of free hard disk space (minimum) and supports booting from a USB device. I also strongly recommend that the PC be running Windows XP Service Pack 2. Prior to Service Pack 2, Windows XP sometimes had trouble interacting with USB storage devices.

Formatting the flash drive

Now that you have all of the prerequisites taken care of, it’s time to actually start setting up our flash drive. The first step in doing so, as strange as it sounds, is to format the flash drive. Windows will actually let you format a flash drive in the same way that you format a floppy disk. However, formatting a flash drive in this way will not work for this project. Furthermore, using Windows to format a flash drive directly has been known to destroy some types of flash drives.

Instead, you must format the flash drive by using the HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool that you downloaded earlier. To do so, simply open the utility, select the device followed by the FAT file system option and click Start.

Once the device has been formatted, you must make it bootable. To do so, you must copy the BOOT.INI, NTLDR, and NTDETECT from the root directory of your PC’s boot drive to the flash drive. These files are hidden by default, so you will either have to configure Windows Explorer to show hidden files (including protected operating system files) or you will have to open a Command Prompt window and use the COPY command to copy the files.

If you choose to use the Windows Explorer method, then open Internet Explorer and enter C: into the address bar so that you are looking at your local hard drive. Next, select the Folder Options command from the Tools menu. When the Folder Options properties sheet opens, select the View tab. Now, just select the Show Hidden Files and Folders and deselect the Hide Extensions for Known File Types and the Hide Protected Operating System Files check boxes. Click OK to continue.

Booting from the USB flash drive

Now that you have formatted your USB flash drive and installed the boot files onto it, the next thing that you must do is to configure your PC to allow you to boot from the flash drive. This is all done through the computer’s BIOS Setup. I can’t give you specific instructions for this part, because every computer is different. I can give you a few pointers though.

You can access your computer’s BIOS by pressing a specific key immediately after you turn the PC on. The key varies, but it is usually either [F1], [F2], or [Delete]. Once you are in the BIOS Setup, you should verify that all of your computer’s USB options are enabled. This might include things like support for legacy USB devices or support for USB 2.0. If there is a time out setting for USB devices, you should set it to the max to insure that the system doesn’t time out while waiting on the USB device to boot.

Next, find the section on boot device priority. Normally, a USB flash drive (which is usually listed as USB-HDD, but may be listed as a removable device) will have a very low boot priority. If the USB flash drive’s boot priority is lower than the hard disk (listed as HDD) then the only time the computer would ever boot off of the USB flash drive is if the system were to fail to boot from the hard disk. You must therefore rearrange the boot device priority so that the flash drive has a higher priority than the hard drive.

Configuring Windows

Now that we have finally made it through all of the prep work, it’s time to start setting up Windows. As you have probably already guessed, the process of installing Windows to a flash drive is quite a bit different from your normal, run of the mill installation. There are a couple of reasons for this.

For starters, a full blown Windows XP deployment takes up over a Gigabyte of hard disk space. When you are installing to a flash drive, disk space is a scarce commodity. Even if you have over a Gigabyte of space on your flash drive, you probably don’t want to use it all on Windows. It would be nice to have room to install a few applications. Therefore, you need to trim the excess fat off of Windows.

The other reason why the installation process is so different from the usual Windows installation is because Windows Setup is not designed to install Windows to a flash drive. You therefore have to configure Windows using an alternate method.

The PEBuilder utility that you downloaded earlier can take care of both of these issues. PEBuilder is designed to create a build of Windows XP (or Windows Server 2003) that does not take up as much space as a full blown installation. Once you create this new build, you can copy it to the flash drive. For right now, I will show you how to create a basic Windows build and copy it to the memory stick. Unfortunately, it’s rather difficult to install applications once Windows is up and running. Therefore, after I show you how to create a basic Windows build, I will show you how to create a build that includes some applications.

Begin the process by opening PEBuilder. When you open PEBuilder, you will see a screen similar to the one that’s shown in Figure A. Simply enter the path to the Windows installation files (the ones from your Windows XP with Service Pack 2 installation CD). Next, verify that the Create ISO Image and the Burn to CD check boxes are not selected and then click the Build button. PEBuilder will now create the new Windows build.

Figure A

You must use PEBuilder to create a Windows build that will work with a flash drive.

Now, it’s time to copy Windows to the flash drive. To do so, you will have to use a special batch file that’s included with PEBuilder. Open a Command Prompt window and navigate to c:\pebuilder313\plugin\peinst. Now, insert an empty flash drive into the computer’s USB port and then execute the file PEINST.CMD. You will now see a menu appear as shown in Figure B.

Figure B

PEBuilder uses a batch file to install Windows onto a flash drive.

Type 1 and press [Enter] and you will be prompted to enter the path to the build that you have created. Enter C:\pebuilder313\BartPE. Now, type 2, press [Enter], and you will be prompted for the target path. Enter the drive letter that Windows has assigned to your USB flash drive. After doing so, the menu is updated as shown in Figure C. The menu now displays the source path and the destination drive. Type 5 and press [Enter] to install Windows to the flash drive.

Figure C

Use menu option 5 to install Windows to the flash drive.

Installing applications

Now that I have shown you how to create and install a basic Windows build, I want to talk for a moment about how you can add an application to the build (prior to creating it). The PEBuilder program comes pre-configured to support a number of common Windows applications, but does not come with the applications themselves.

The reason why installing applications can be a little bit tricky is because most Windows applications modify the Windows registry. The build that you are creating is basically a collection of installation files, and the build itself does not contain a registry (the registry gets created when Windows is installed onto the flash drive). As such, PEBuilder uses a sort of registry emulator.

If you go to the C:\PEBUILDER313\PLUGIN folder, you will see sub folders for a number of different applications. If you open one of these application folders, you will see that the folder contains an INF file and a FILES folder. The INF file contains all of the information that would normally go into the registry, and the FILES folder stores all of the program’s files.

To see how this works, let’s install an application that I’m sure most of you are familiar with; Nero. Begin by installing Nero onto the machine that’s running PEBuilder, as if you planned to run Nero locally on that machine. When the installation completes, copy all of the files from C:\Program Files\ahead\Nero to C:\pebuilder313\plugin\nero burning rom\files. In this particular case, the nero burning rom folder is the folder that has been set aside for the Nero application. The Files sub folder is intended to store Nero’s system files.

Now, you must take care of Nero’s registry entries. To do so, go to the C:\pebuilder313\plugin\nero burning rom folder and open the PENERO.INF file using Notepad. As I explained earlier, the INF file in an application’s folder is used to store the application’s registry entries. For Nero and all of the other applications that PEBuilder predefines, the INF file is pre-configured. You just have to make a few changes that are specific to your system.

In this particular case, the PENERO.INF file is designed to support both Nero versions 5.x and 6.x. Initially, the lines for both versions are commented out. You must therefore determine which version you have and then remove the semi colon from the beginning of the lines that apply to that version. If you look at Figure D, you can see how the two versions are separated.

Figure D

An application’s registry entries are stored in an INF file.

Once you uncomment the appropriate lines, just replace “Your Name”, “Your Company Name” and “Your Serial Number” with your name, your company’s name, and your Nero product key. Save the file, and your set to go. The next time that you click the Build button, Nero will be included in the build.

Putting XP in your pocket

Running Windows from a flash drive isn’t an exact science. Sometimes the process just doesn’t work and there is no good reason why. As more PCs start to support booting from USB devices though, USB boots should become more standardized, and the technique should become more reliable.

Access Data of a Password Protected User in Windows XP in Case the PC Fails to Boot

2009-01-02T04:12:00.000-08:00

You may come across a situation in which your windows XP PC fails to reboot, and the most accepted solution to that problem is to re-format the Hard Disk. Before formatting, you should backup your files. If your computer is password protected, you won’t be able to access them from outside, so here is a method for getting around this.

Steps :

Boot the machine from Windows XP bootable CD.
At the setup screen, select R to repair using Recovery Console.
Now the console program will prompt you to select the Windows folder (eg. C:\WINDOWS) where the Windows is installed (you need to enter a number from the list of folders shown to you).
Type ‘HELP’ (without single quotes) and press enter for available commands. This is like a DOS program, but some features are not available
Change the current directory to the user’s directory where you want to backup.
Type ‘CD “C:\Documents and Settings\X”‘ (without single quotes) and press enter. Where X is the username.
Now the current directory will change to “C:\Documents and Settings\X”.
Now change the directory to Desktop by entering ‘CD Desktop’ (without single quotes) and press enter to go to the desktop folder.
Type ‘DIR’ (Without single quotes) and press enter, you will be listed all the available files in Desktop.
Type ‘COPY a.doc D:\BACKUP’ (without quotes) and press enter, where a.doc is a file available in Desktop and the folder D:\BACKUP available to copy the files.
As in step 7,8,9,10 you can backup other folders like “My Documents”, “My Music”, etc.
Note that you cannot use wildcards for COPY, i.e. you cannot copy all the files in a folder at once. You must copy one file by one.

Tips :

Before doing this, try changing the password to blank so that you can access the data from another machine to easily drag and drop to copy your data.

Warnings :

Any data not backed up will be permanently deleted when you re-format the hard drive, so make sure you back up any thing you want to keep.

Things You’ll Need :

A Bootable Windows XP CD

How to Hack Into a Windows XP Computer Without Changing Password

2009-01-02T04:05:00.000-08:00

There is a far better way to get into Windows XP. It is easy and it does not reset the password. Hack into a computer running Windows XP without changing the password and find out all and any passwords on the machine (including admin accounts). You do not need access to any accounts to do this. Of course, do not do this on anyone elses computer without proper authorisation.

Steps to Hack into a Windows XP Computer without changing password:

1. Get physical access to the machine. Remember that it must have a CD or DVD drive.
2. Download DreamPackPL from Official website or from Rapidshare.
3. Unzip the downloaded dreampackpl_iso.zip and you’ll get dreampackpl.ISO.
4. Use any burning program that can burn ISO images.
5. After you have the disk, boot from the CD or DVD drive. You will see Windows 2000 Setup and it will load some files.
6. Press “R” to install DreamPackPL.
7. Press “C” to install DreamPackPL by using the recovery console.
8. Select the Windows installation that is currently on the computer (Normally is “1″ if you only have one Windows installed)
9. Backup your original sfcfiles.dll by typing:
“ren C:\Windows\System32\sfcfiles.dll sfcfiles.lld” (without quotes)
10. Copy the hacked file from CD to system32 folder. Type:
“copy D:\i386\pinball.ex_ C:\Windows\System32\sfcfiles.dll” (without quotes and assuming your CD drive is D:)
11. Type “exit”, take out disk and reboot.
12. In the password field, type “dreamon” (without quotes) and DreamPack menu will appear.
13. Click the top graphic on the DreamPack menu and you will get a menu popup.
How to Hack Into a Windows XP Computer Without Changing Password - www.crack$hack.ws
14. Go to commands and enable the options and enable the god command.
How to Hack Into a Windows XP Computer Without Changing Password - www.crack$hack.ws
15. Type “god” in the password field to get in Windows.

You can also go to Passwords and select “Logon with wrong password and hash”. This option allows you to login with ANY password.

Note: I was unable to bring up the DreamPackPL for the first time because I have Kaspersky Anti-Virus already running in background. I believe most antivirus already labelled this tool as a Hack-Tool. A Hack-Tool is NOT a virus. DreamPackPL helps you bypass the Windows Login screen and it is not destructive.

Terminate Crashed Applications faster

2008-10-10T03:31:00.001-07:00

Terminating crashed Applications quick will not make you wait until the it closes by itself, you can change the wait time in system registry. To do this, Open Regedit and navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktopand change the value of "HungAppTimeout" key to 500 or 1000500 = .5 seconds

Keep your windows XP updated

2008-10-10T03:30:00.002-07:00

Keep your windows updated to the latest service pack available. Current windows XP Service Pack available is 3 and can be found on below link.http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/windowsxp/sp3/default.mspx

Power-off after Windows Shutdown

2008-10-10T03:30:00.001-07:00

There are some computers that does not Turn off completely when you shutdown windows. If your computer is one of them, Try this tweak, it works on some computers.Go to Start -> Run and type Regedit and press enter. Wait for the Registry Editor navigate to the below path.HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktopand edit the key PowerOffActive and give it a value of 1, do the same inHKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop

Hidden FDISK Switches

2008-10-10T03:29:00.002-07:00

Here are a few additional switches that can be used with FDISK: /Status - Give the status of the partitions. Similar to option #4 /FPRMT - FAT32 in drivers smaller than 512 MB /MBR - Fix master boot record /PRI:xx - Primary partition of size XX in megs /EXT:xx - Extended partition/LOG:xx - Logical drive in extended partition

Fast recovery if your windows are hung.

2008-10-10T03:29:00.001-07:00

If the windows on your computer are hung and gone irresponsive Press CRTL+ALT+DEL, go to the 'processes' tab and right-click explorer.exe and then click 'end process. After explorer.exe is gone in the task manager click New Task in the File menu of Task Manager and then type explorer.exe and enter This method is useful only when explorer is frozen.Note: This applies only for explorer.

Reducing Viruses in E-Mail (Outlook)

2008-10-10T03:28:00.003-07:00

You can greatly reduce the amount of viruses you might get through e-mail attachments by simply installing the free Outlook E-mail Attachment Security Update from Microsoft. You should also have a good virus protection program installed. This update strips out any attachments where, if you click on them, they will automatically run on their own. Examples of restricted extensions are: .exe, .com, .bat, .vbs, .scr This will work for Outlook98 and Outlook2000. OutlookXP has it already built in as part of the product.

Saving Desktop Settings

2008-10-10T03:28:00.001-07:00

If the desktop or folders on your computer does not retain their settings, follow the below steps to fix it:Go to Start -> Run and type Regedit and press enter. Wait for the Registry Editor navigate to the below path.HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Program Manager\RestrictionsCreate or edit the DWORD value NoSaveSettings and give it a value of 0.

Viewing Installed Drivers

2008-10-10T03:27:00.003-07:00

If you want to see a list of installed drivers, you can run the driverquery program in windows XP There are a lot of available switches to view different types of information. One use can be to export to a CSV file for viewing in Excel An example would then be: Driverquery /v /fo csv > drivers.csv

Stop Windows Messenger from Auto-Starting

2008-10-10T03:27:00.001-07:00

If you're not a big fan of Windows Messenger, simply delete the following Registry Key after closing Messenger completely: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run\MSMSGS

Group Policy for Windows XP

2008-10-10T03:26:00.000-07:00

One of the most full featured Windows XP configuration tools available is hidden right there in your system, but most people don't even know it exists. It's called the Local Group Policy Editor, or gpedit for short. To invoke this editor, select Start and then Run, then type gpedit.msc, after you hit ENTER, wait for Group Policy Editor, here you can change the entire behavior of your Windows XP.

Quickly start browsing the internet.

2008-10-10T03:25:00.000-07:00

You can start browsing internet without opening browser, windows will automatically open your default web browser and open your web page. You can do this if you put an Address Bar on your Taskbar. Right click on your system taskbar -> Toolbars and then click on "Address" option ("Address" should be checked). After this a Address Bar will appear on your system Taskbar, you can open any web page by typing URL name here and press Enter, Windows will automatically open your web page in be default set browser. You can also browse files and folders on your computer by using the Address Bar. simply type drive letter like C:\ , D:\ in Address Bar and Press Enter.

Copy the contents of iPod to another iPod without computer.

2008-10-10T03:24:00.002-07:00

miShare is a smart little gadget for sharing files and playlists between iPods. No computer or cable is needed, and it's easy to use. Just attach the two iPods to miShare and press button to start the transfer.

Network Connection Always Shows Access Denied

2008-10-10T03:24:00.001-07:00

If you are always getting Access Denied errors when trying to connect to a XP computer in the network, and you know you have the correct user names and passwords on the computer, the solution may be a simple registry edit. Start Regedit and navigate toHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/SYSTEM/CurrentControlSet/Control/LsaChange the value of a key named "restrictanonymous" to 0 instead of 1 Don't change "restrictanonymoussam" value. Reboot computer for the changes to take effect.

Identify Faulty Device Drivers

2008-10-10T03:23:00.001-07:00

If you are having problems with lockups, blue screens, or can only get to safe mode, often the problem is due to a faulty device driver. One way to help identify them is through the use of the Verfier program Run "Verifier" in the start - > Run and follow the steps.Keep the default of Create Standard SettingsSelect the type of drivers you want to confirm A list of drivers to be verified on the next boot will be shown. Reboot If your computer stops with a blue screen, you should get an error message with the problem driver To turn off the Verifier, run verifier /reset at start - > Run

Application and Boot file Defragmentation

2008-10-10T03:22:00.001-07:00

Defragmentation pushes all commonly used programs and boot files to the edge of the hard drive for faster access. Windows XP normally schedules this every three days when it is idle, however you can force it to do this by using the b switch anytime Ex:- defrag C: -b

IP Command Lines

2008-10-10T03:21:00.000-07:00

Ipconfig is small utility that come with Windows XP. This utility provides you with diagnostic information related to TCP/IP network configuration. Ipconfig also accepts various Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) commands, allowing a system to update or release its TCP/IP network configuration, and so on.
To run the Ipconfig.exe utility, at a command prompt, type ipconfig, and then add any appropriate options.
ipconfig /all - Display full configuration information. ipconfig /release - Release the IP Address for the specified adapter. ipconfig /renew - Renew the IP address for the specified adapter. ipconfig /flushdns - Purges the DNS Resolver cache. ipconfig /registerdns - Refreshes all DHCP leases and re-registers DNS names ipconfig /displaydns - Display the contents of DNS Resolver Cache. ipconfig /showclassid - Display all the DHCP class IDs allowed for adapter. ipconfig /setclassid - Modifies the DHCP class id

The Print Screen Key

2008-10-10T03:20:00.002-07:00

If you want to save an image that is being displayed on the website or an application that is protected from being copied, Press the "Print Screen" button on you keyboard, now the entire screen of your computer will be copied to the clipboard, you can now paste the content of the clipboard (screenshot of your desktop) into paint or any image editing software and save it.

Defragmenting the Swap File

2008-10-10T03:20:00.001-07:00

Normally when you use Windows95's Disk Defragmenter, this will not defrag the swap file. To defrag the swap file: Open the System Properties dialog box (right click on My Computer and select Properties) Click on the Performance tab Click on the Virtual Memory button Check Let me specify my own virtual memory settings Check Disable virtual memory (Note: This will cause the system not to use a swap file) Click on the OK button Answer Yes to the warning, Click on the Close button Reboot when prompted You system will reboot. Check to see that there is no swap file. If one still remains (WIN386.SWP), you can safely delete it. Defrag your system as you usually do Now reset the swap file to your previous setting and reboot. (Note: Do not leave your system running without a swap file)

Quick Zoom in or Zoom Out in Web Browsers

2008-10-10T03:19:00.002-07:00

If your mouse has a wheel for scrolling, you can change font size or the entire web page in your web browser. To do this, hold the Control key on your keyboard and then roll the wheel forth to zoom in and back to zoom out. Almost all the web browsers have this option.

Turn off CD Auto Play

2008-10-10T03:19:00.001-07:00

Turn of CD Auto Play Open My Computer Right click on your CD ROM and choose Properties Click on the Auto Play tab In the drop down box you can choose the Action for each choice shown in the drop down box or Go to Start -> Run -> gpedit.msc Computer Config -> Administrative Template -> System Double click Turn off Autoplay Enable it.

Save space on your taskbar

2008-10-10T03:18:00.001-07:00

If your monitor is not big enough to provide enough space on the taskbar, you can free some space by hiding the icons in the notification area that you don't use frequently. To to this : Right-click on your taskbar -> Properties -> and then check the "Hide inactive icons" checkbox, you can also which icon to hide or show by clicking on the customize button.

Disabling or Enabling Balloon Tips

2008-10-10T03:17:00.004-07:00

If you are annoyed by the Balloon tips that are shown in the tray area of the taskbar, you can turn it off by following the below steps :Go to Start -> Run and type Regedit and press enter. Wait for the Registry Editor navigate to the below path.HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced\Create a DWORD value of EnableBalloonTips and give it a value of 0 to disableGive it a value of 1 to enable.

Hide or Show Windows Version on the Desktop

2008-10-10T03:17:00.003-07:00

If you want to show or hide the version of your Windows XP on the desktop, follow the below steps:Go to Start -> Run and type Regedit and press enter. Wait for the Registry Editor navigate to the below path.HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\DesktopEdit or Create a DWORD entry PaintDesktopVersion. Give it a value 1 to show the version on desktop or give it a value 0 will hide.Note: Logoff or Reboot for the changes to take effect.

Save files with different extensions in Notepad

2008-10-10T03:17:00.001-07:00

To save a document with an extension other than the one a program wants to use, enclose the entire name in quotation marks. For example, if you run Notepad and save a file under the name file1.dba, it will actually be saved under the name file1.dba.txt. But if you type "file1.dba" (with quotes) then the document will be saved under the name file1.dba. Note that a document so-named cannot be opened via double-clicking since the extension is no longer ".txt"

Disable The Right Click on the Taskbar

2008-10-10T03:15:00.002-07:00

It is possible to disable right clicking on the taskbar. Start regedit and navigate toHKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorerand Modify/Create DWORD Value of Data type REG_DWORD Named "NoTrayContextMenu" Setting for Value Data: 0 or 1 (0 = Enabled / 1 = Disabled) Close regedit and reboot computer.

Enabling or Disabling Task Manager

2008-10-10T03:15:00.001-07:00

To enable or disable Task Manager, follow the below steps :Go to Start -> Run and type Regedit and press enter. Wait for the Registry Editor navigate to the below path.HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\SystemCreate a DWORD value DisableTaskMgr and give it a value of 0 to enable itGive it a value of 1 to disable.

Rename Multiple files at once in XP

2008-10-10T03:13:00.001-07:00

It is possible to rename more than one file at a time in windows XP, to do this, select all the files that you want to rename and right-click on any one file and rename it, all other files you selected will be renamed to the same name that you renamed with an incremental number added to it.

WinXP Clear Page file on shutdown

2008-10-10T03:12:00.000-07:00

It is possible to retrieve your personal through the pagefile.sys file located in system drive (usually C:\Pagefile.sys). This file can only be accessed in DOS mode or a different operating system. It's safe to clear pagefile when you shutdown your computer, to do this navigate toHKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Managementand then change the value of ClearPageFileAtShutdown to 1 ie:- dword:00000001

Resolving Inability to Add or Remove Programs

2008-10-10T03:11:00.000-07:00

If a particular user cannot add or remove programs, there might be a simple registry edit to be done. Open Registry Editor and Navigate toHKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Uninstalland change the DWORD NoAddRemovePrograms to 0 disable it.

How to extract audio from AVI, WMV, MPEG, FLV, MOV video files for free

2008-10-08T20:35:00.000-07:00

One handy utility that everyone needs nowadays is a software program that can extract audio, sound, or background music from home movies, YouTube videos, or any other video file. In this article, I’m going to give step-by-step instructions on how to use a free program called AoA Audio Extractor. Using this nifty little application, you can extract audio from AVI, MPEG, MPG, FLV, DAT, WMV, MOV, MP4, and 3GP and save them into MP3 format or WAV and AC3 format also!

The program is extremely simply to use with the ability to drag and drop files right onto the interface. AoA Audio Extractor also includes a media player, so you can preview the video files from the program itself, saving you the hassle of making sure it’s the right video by playing it in Windows Media Player, etc. It also allows you to control the audio bit rate, audio sample rate and the channel type (mono or stero) for the output file.

However, one of the nicest features of the program that I really thought was quite useful is the ability to extract audio from only a portion of the video clip, instead of the entire file. This is a very basic editing feature, but it’s really helpful because you don’t have to download any sound editing software if you want only some parts of the audio.

To get started using AoA Audio Extractor, download and install the program. Open the program and click the Add Files button to select the video files. You can add more files if you want and they will be processed in a batch.

The videos will show up in the main window along with basic information such as the Start, End, Source Format, and Output Format. You can change the output format under the Output Options section below the main list. Select a video and click on Movie Clip if you want to extract audio from a specific time segment in the video. Before clicking Start, click on Browse and choose the location for the output MP3 file.

Now, go ahead and click Start and the extraction process will begin. The program is pretty fast, it took only 1 minute to extract audio from a 19 minute video clip.

You should now see your audio file at the location specified! I checked the sound quality between the video and the audio file and they were exactly the same, so you’re not going to lose any quality in the extraction process.

A-Z Blocks Helping the Planet

2008-10-08T00:41:00.000-07:00

Avoid bagging clippings from lawn mowing

Clippings won’t damage the lawn. In fact, mulching the grass clippings are good for lawns. And avoiding those bags of grass clippings will reduce the amount of trash that gets dumped in landfills.

Buy products made from recycled materials

Did you know that you can buy toilet paper, paper towels and stationery made from recycled paper, tile from crushed light bulbs, garden hoses from used tires and yard furniture from recycled plastic bottles? Look for the recycle symbol and buy smart.

Create a compost pile in your yard

Pick a corner that’s out of the way and start your own “garbage garden.” Put fresh soil over grass clippings and food scraps (egg shells, apple cores, coffee grounds, etc.). Then, once or twice a week, turn the whole pile over with a shovel. This lets air into the soil to grow rich and healthy composting material for gardens and lawns.

Discard plastic beverage rings ONLY AFTER cutting open all of the loops

These six-pack plastic rings are harmful to birds and other creatures that often get caught in the plastic loops. If you have a choice, buy soda six-packs made from biodegradable plastic.

Encourage adults to drive at posted speed limits

Driving at posted speed limits is not only safer, it saves gas. Using less gas helps reduce air pollution, called carbon dioxide emissions. Try to drive at a constant speed; pumping the accelerator pumps more fuel into the engine.

Fix leaky pipes and faucets

One tiny leak can waste up to 50 gallons of water a day! Save water by taking short showers and washing only full loads of laundry.

Grocery shop wisely

When your family shops, avoid buying things with layers of packaging. Buy the largest sizes possible. You won’t have to shop as often, and you won’t have as much to throw away.

Hang clothes out to dry

By hanging your clothes outside, instead of using gas or electric dryers, your clothes will last longer and you’ll save energy that is costly and difficult to produce.

Invite a bird to lunch

Bring nature’s beauty to your yard and get rid of insects by caring for the birds. Make birdfeeders from recycled milk cartons and plastic food containers. Once you start feeding them, feed the birds all winter long because they’ll come to rely on you.

Join an environmental club or group

You can learn more, work toward helping the planet and sometimes make new friends in an environmental club. Look in the library for a list of groups.

Keep the refrigerator door shut

Only open it to take food in and out. Close the door while you’re filling ice cube trays and while you’re unpacking all your groceries.

Lower the heat

By turning the heat down just a few degrees, Americans could save more than 500,000 barrels of oil a day. If you’re chilly, put on a sweater instead of turning up the heat!

Make every day Earth Day

Hang this A-to-Z checklist in your home to remind you of what you can do to help save the planet. There are way more than 26 ways to get involved, but this list is a great start.

Never throw toxic materials into the trash

Things like paint, household cleaners, and motor oil need special disposal. Call 1-800-CLEANUP or visit Earth 911 to learn where special disposal sites are located.

Organize a neighborhood clean-up

Suggest that your classroom, scout troop, Sunday school class, or neighborhood friends host a neighborhood clean-up day to pick up litter. It’s a great opportunity to promote recycling in your community.

Properly inflate your car tires

Remind the drivers in your house to “check the air” each time they fill up with gas. Driving on under-inflated tires wastes gas and wears out tires.

Quit throwing away batteries

Used batteries from toys, tools and appliances leak dangerous chemicals into our water supply. Buy a battery recharger and rechargeable batteries and feel like a hero.

Reduce, Reuse and Recycle

Remember the three R’s and you’ll have all the information you need to help the environment. Reduce your use of things like water and energy, reuse products before you throw them away and make sure you’re recycling as much as you can.

Save energy in the bathroom

Turn off the water when you aren’t using it! Take short showers instead of baths (showers use less H2O), brush your teeth with the water off, and buy a “flush saver” for your toilet (or put a brick in the tank).

Turn the air-conditioning thermostat up or off

Save valuable energy by keeping AC above 75 degrees in your house. Turning off the AC in your car will increase gas mileage and save valuable energy.

Use and re-use cloth bags at the grocery store

Instead of carrying groceries in paper or plastic bags that get thrown away, take your own cloth bags to the store. Even paper or plastic bags can be used several times, and some stores offer a discount for re-using their grocery bags.

Visit the library or surf the Internet

The library has many books that are full of valuable information on the environment. Or check the World Wide Web. Once you’ve read about the environment, spread the word!

Wrap presents with imagination and recycled materials

Use the Sunday comics, samples from old wallpaper books, fabric remnants or recycled wrapping paper so you’ll get more than one use out of this paper.

eXercise your rights

The first amendment to the Constitution of the United States guarantees all Americans the “freedom of speech.” If you see something that is harming our planet, speak out. It is not only your right, it’s your duty. Make phone calls and write letters.

You make a difference!

Anything you do can help. You can help prevent air and water pollution by recycling your soda pop cans. It takes less energy to recycle a product than to create one from scratch.

Zoom to the zoo

See who else lives on the planet! Animals have needs and rights too, so learn more about them and then spread the word about endangered species, the rain forests, and the importance of our friends in the animal kingdom.

Cloud computing is ’stupidity’ says GNU guru Richard Stallman

2008-10-07T20:40:00.000-07:00

I just ran across an article in the Guardian (UK) in which GNU creator (and founder of the Free Software Foundation) Richard Stallman minces no words about the cloud computing phenomenon, calling it a “trap.” TechRepublic bloggers have written skeptically about the concept, especially where it concerns privacy and security issues, and others have reported on particular cloud initiatives such as those of Google and Amazon.

Stallman’s comments to the Guardian go beyond merely skeptical, however: “‘It’s stupidity. It’s worse than stupidity: it’s a marketing hype campaign.’”

The article also quotes the equally underwhelmed Oracle founder Larry Ellison:

“The interesting thing about cloud computing is that we’ve redefined cloud computing to include everything that we already do,” he said. “The computer industry is the only industry that is more fashion-driven than women’s fashion. Maybe I’m an idiot, but I have no idea what anyone is talking about. What is it? It’s complete gibberish. It’s insane. When is this idiocy going to stop?”

Maybe it’s just the effect of the U.S. election season on me, but I find it so refreshing when people just say what they really think, in no uncertain terms. What a concept! Here is Stallman’s advice for the computing public, which for anyone who is feeling a little mistrustful of the powers-that-be these days, is bracing:

“One reason you should not use web applications to do your computing is that you lose control,” he said. “It’s just as bad as using a proprietary program. Do your own computing on your own computer with your copy of a freedom-respecting program. If you use a proprietary program or somebody else’s web server, you’re defenceless. You’re putty in the hands of whoever developed that software.”

animated label cloud

2008-10-07T01:28:00.000-07:00

Go to Layout>Edit HTML in your Blogger dashboard, and search for the following line (or similar):

Immediatly after this line, paste the following section of code:

Then preview your template. If installed correctly, you should see the tag cloud appear in your sidebar. Then you are free to save your template, edit the colors and dimensions as required, or move it to a different location. That's all!

drive letter limits

2008-10-06T07:57:00.000-07:00

Actually, it goes into config.sys.

Type at the DOS prompt:
CD\
EDIT CONFIG.SYS

at the end of the lines of commands, in about the same order, you can put:
LASTDRIVE=Z

From there, press the Alt key, press enter,

highlight save, and do so. Then exit.
That should do it.

LASTDRIVE=Z equals to LASTDRIVE=26

LASTDRIVE=32 is the max

what would be the names of drives 27 to 32?

Drive 1: A:
Drive 2: B:
...
Drive 25: Y:
Drive 26: Z:
Drive 27: [:
Drive 28: \:
Drive 29: ]:
Drive 30: ^:
Drive 31: _:
Drive 32: `:

Note: This only works in DR-DOS 7+ & MS-DOS 7+.

There are other options; one of these is to follow the How to create and manipulate NTFS junction points knowledge base article at http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=205524

There is some additional information as to why this limit exists in an article on the Techtarget website http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/...tml?bucket=ETA

If you actually have more than 26 drives or volumes, you can mount a letterless drive/volume to an empty folder on another drive/volume. This is done through Disk Management.

The Mobile Gaming

2008-10-06T07:09:00.000-07:00

When you develop your game or application you should target to develop 3 separate versions – one for low end phones (known as 40 series - smaller screen size less power phones), one for higher end phones (60 series - larger screen size, more power) and one for very high end phones (known as a QVGA version - very high end phones with high graphics (320 x 240) and power, top of the line). These 3 versions will be your base reference builds that you will submit to a Publisher or 3rd party that you contact to help you put your game into the market.

The Publisher will be the one who picks up the tab to “port” your game into all the popular (500 to 1000) handsets available in the global market. They will also attach a brand to the game – if it fits in. Getting signed up with a good Publisher is not easy and your content needs to be of stellar quality. Publishers put a lot of money in packaging, branding, deploying and marketing your game at a global level through Wireless Carriers located in countless countries – so they need to be sure they invest and risk in a game that is of very high quality. Wouldn’t you do the same?

Prior to submitting your game to a Publisher, make sure you have the following ready to submit -

(a) Three versions of your game - as mentioned above

(b) A video of the game in play

(d) A good one paragraph brief spiced up write up about the game, instructions and gameplay control key information.

Self Publishing

If you are deciding to self publish, then you are up against a mammoth task. You will have to invest a lot of money in porting your game or application to all the popular global handsets that carriers support.

You will also have to “build” a network of contacts at various Wireless Carriers located globally and this is just not feasible for one single title. Simple emailing does not work. You will have to travel globally to be present at the various Wireless Trechnology conferences and do a lot of business networking in an effort to meet the right people in these companiesin an effort to get a shot at putting your content on their content portals (”game decks”).

If you insist, and are determined to self-publish and believe you have the capacity, bandwidth, money and capability to achieve this - then a quick way to overcome the porting hurdle, would be to pick up the porting costs by approaching a well established porting company like The Porting Lab - and get a quote for devices you would like your game to be compatible with. Then decide if its in your budget, and if it isn’t try and narrow down and cut down to the popular devices or limit yourself to specific regions (eg. USA only or Europe only etc).

Going The Aggregator Way

Once your porting is done - you get all your ported builds and files from the porting company. If you find that the aproach to directly go to Wireless Carriers is just not working for you – you can approach mobile content “Aggregators”.

Aggregators are exactly what they sound like. They “aggregate” content from various people. They put them all together, and then supply their portfolio directly to Wireless Carriers, through a direct relationship wioth them. The Carriers ofcourse have the final word on which games to put on their “Game Decks”.

A “Game Deck” is essentially the digital mobile page a subscriber or customer of the Wireless Carrier sees in their phone browser when they want to download various games. The Game Deck shows up on the mobile screen exactly like a mini-browseable directory. So, for example, the first screen may display a list of clickable links like –

New Games
Popular Games
Action
Strategy
Adventure
Trial Games
…etc.

The user selects the appropriate category and clicks to access info listed in that category, and the list of games in that category are displayed.

Now, obviously the games on the top or higher up in the list are going to do better than the ones much lower down. This is exactly like the early days of the Yahoo! Web directory. Space higher up on the lists, are as important as prime physical shelf space in brick-and-mortar stores. Some Carriers are slowly moving into providing search boxes to cater to the large varied user preferences, and thus allow the The Long Tail phenomena to kick in and increase their VAS revenues. (Value Added Services - this is all services other than the basic voice and SMS services offered by Carriers. It includes ringtones, wallpapers, games, internet browsing etc. …anything that is not voice and SMS related - which is the primary service carriers offer).

Carriers often have an in-house team that evaluate your content and decide where to put it up on their Game Deck based on its quality and potential.

So, how does one get on top of your category on the Game Decks?

Many Carriers make additional money by charging you a fee to get “higher up - on top”. Yes – you need to pay them a monthly fee to get on top. This is a model that many Carriers are moving towards in an effort to squeeze out even more money from the system.

An Important Observation

Since users see only a few text based words prior to downloading – a branded game that shows a title like “Spiderman 3” or “Lord Of The Rings” is definitely going to be downloaded (and thus sell) higher than a game with a title like “Alien Attack”. This is the reason why most Carriers openly welcome branded content.

Different Revenue Models

The current model practiced by most Carreirs is a download and pay model. Users simply download payable versions and are billed for the download every month. All the billing and tracking is done by the Carriers.

Some Wireless Carriers are moving into the try-before-you-buy model - with some games only). With this model, users can download one free level of the game to “try” and get a feel of. Read this interview where I also speak about other alternate models adopted by Wireless Carriers.

Now back to marketing of your game…

There are other alternate ways to get your mobile game or application out in the market. D2C (Direct 2 Consumer) portals is one. These are rapidly springing up all over the Internet. They allow anyone to download games by browsing the site with a browser and then providing an SMS number to send the game to, after the purchase is made. Most of these portals allow mobile game develoeprs to submit their content for inclusion at no cost. This channel of game distribution is gradually gaining momentum (although, the Carrier Game Decks remain the most popular). The advantage with the web channel is that consumers can actually see the screenshots, videos and detail write up and reviews and ratings before spending $3 or however much to purchase and download the game. This automatically weeds out all the bad games and content. The web medium also gives wings to The Long Tail concept and surfers can conduct site searches for specific genres that they like and content they are looking for.

Many of these web browser based models also have WAP browsing systems by which users can directly fire up their cell phone browser like Mini-Opera and surf to wap.thegamesite.com .

Since this competes with content found of the users Wireless Carrier’s game deck, the Carriers are setting up “walled gardens” and blocking access to these sites and downloadable content. This however, is a very short term strategy and in the future Carriers will have to break these walls, and start being happy in making money on the ‘data – transfer” charges. They will be forced to allow anyone to make their content (sites, games, ringtones etc) available to all subscribers - in return for signing up more users rather than loosing them because of the Carrier blocking and limiting entertainment content offerings.

Imagine your local ISP blocking your favourite websites! Wouldn’t you sign up with someone else?

A few popular D2C websites

Handango.com is a very popular site for downloading applications for mobile devices. They have trial versions available for a lot of their content.

GameJump.com is a new site that provides free games – that are ad supported. The user sees a small graphical advertisement before the game starts up and on closing the game. Gamejump is basically of aggregated mobile games that developers have submitted to be listed. You can even submit your own game to GameJump catalogue through Greystripe, the company behind the system. They also have an interesting “white label” solution through which anyone can setup a website (exactly like GameJump.com) - and thus offer free mobile games to their community. In return webmasters stand to earn a % revenue share from Greystripe - for the in-game ads and wap portal ads.

There are other interesting ways of marketing mobile content to users, and you could approach some of the companies foraying into these alternate channels…

+ Mobile Kiosks in malls – doing direct bluetooth transfer of game into phones.

+ Off-the-shelf purchasable game packs in Retail Stores – these have scratch cards inside them with “pin keys” that can be SMS to a number in order to download the game(s)

Revenue Share… how much can you expect?

The amount of money and revenue share you can expect from Wireless Carriers varies a lot from Carrier-to-Carrier and geographical regions. In China, for example, developers and publishers can get as much as 90% of the game’s selling price. With some Carriers in India however, this is reversed, and developers and publishers get as little as 10%. Although there are other Carriers that give 40%, some 30%, some 50%. Remember this is the money they give to the party (aggregator, publisher) who supplies them the game and signs the contract. So if you go through another channel, your % revenue share deal with this in-between party, will be based on what they get. So, if you strike a 50-50 revenue share deal, you will essentially get 50% of the amount the Carrier gives your distributor. So if for example the game sells for $2 to the end user, and the Carrier gives 40% revenue share - you will get 50% of 40% of $2 which is - 50% of 80 cents, or 40 cents per sale.

Going Direct to Wireless Carriers with your content

Many Carriers are have stopped entertaining direct developers and small players – and prefer to deal with only the prominent publishers and aggregators that are reputed. This is naturally, because of the various overheads incurred to keep these channels open. They naturally prefer to deal with the larger companies and build a strong relationship through which quality games can be funneled. So, if you are just starting out – you can drop the idea of trying to approach a Carrier directly. You will have to go through a publisher or aggregator. Of course if you have $10 million in funding and in the bank, you can go out and pick up a handful of known global or local big brands (movies, celebs etc) and build stellar games around them, port them over to 500 handsets, sponsor the big global and local wireless trade shows and conferences (CTIA wireless, GSM, GDC etc), and buy a few full page centerfold advertisements in LINK – mobile-ent.biz Mobile Entertainment Magazine. Do all this to get your name out there and in front of the gatekeepers in charge of content acquisition at Wireless Carriers. And of course, if they still ask you for $1 million to be placed on the very top of their gamedeck for one month, heck why not do it?

Top Mobile Game Publishers (2007)

EA
Vivendi Games
Mobile
THQ Wireless
Gameloft
Hands-On
Oberon Media
Infospace
Glu Mobile
Real / MrGoodliving
Digital Chocolate
Eidos
Codemasters
Konami
Namco
Sega
Player One
In-Fusio
Twistbox
Indiagames
Superscape

Top Aggregators (2007)

PlayerX – 85 direct carrier deals
Selatra – Irish company in 50 countries
Airborne – Canadian company, well positioned in North American market
Telcogames – good with off-portal distribution, representing over 100 companies
Upstart – pushes Japanese games in Europe

How to setup multiple home pages in Firefox and IE

2008-10-04T07:32:00.000-07:00

How to setup multiple home pages in Firefox

First off, go to Tools, and then Options from the top menu. Click on the Main or General tab.

Now there are two ways you can setup multiple home pages in Firefox, an easy way and a more manual way. The manual way is to simply type bother URLs into the Home Page text box and separate them with the “|” or pipe symbol. The pipe symbol is usually above the Enter key on the keyboard.

So if I wanted to have Google.com and Yahoo.com both set as startup home pages, I would type in the following:

http://www.google.com|http://www.yahoo.com

So your screen should look like this with the multiple URLs in the Home Page box:

And that’s it! Now when you open a new instance of Firefox, both of the tabs will appear! Sweet! Now there’s also an easier method of doing the same thing and that is to Use Bookmark.

Basically, if you have a folder of bookmarks in Firefox and you want to set all of them as your startup home pages, just click the Use Bookmark button and select the entire folder.

Whichever bookmarks you have stored in that folder will automatically be placed into the Home Page text box separated by the pipe symbol. So you can use either method to get multiple start pages in Firefox!

How to setup multiple home pages in IE

Adding more than one site to your start up home pages in IE is also super easy! Basically, go to the site you want to add and then click on the down arrow next to the Home Page icon in IE that’s to the right hand side:

When you click on that, you’ll get the option to change your current home page to the new page or to simply add this webpage to your home page tabs.

Obviously, choose the second option and now you’ll get multiple tabs appear when you start up Internet Explorer also!

Remove or hide any part of a webpage

2008-10-04T07:31:00.001-07:00

Have you ever visited a website and wished you could completely remove some annoying aspect of the site, such as an annoying image or a giant header, etc? Well if there’s any element of a webpage you want to hide permanently, you can do so using a Firefox add-on!

RIP, aka Remove It Permanently, can remove just about any HTML element from a webpage, including image, forms, headers, tables, flash content, videos, ads, and lots more.

So you can read the New York Times without the New York Times header across the top!

Now take a look at the New York Times web page without the top header:

Pretty sweet eh! Any other items you think clutter up the display of a web page or mess with the flow of the site? Well simple remove it using RIP! So how do you use it?

Well first go ahead and install it in Firefox and then restart Firefox. If you are using Firefox 3, the plugin will not install because it has not been updated. However, you can fix that by adding an entry into the Firefox configuration that ignores the compatibility check.

Open a new tab in Firefox and type in about:config. You’ll get a warning, just click I’ll be careful, I promise!

Now right click in anywhere in the white space and choose New and then Boolean.

Name the new config variable extensions.checkCompatibility and set it to false.

Now restart Firefox and install the plugin. Now when you right click anywhere on a web page, two options appear, Remove This Permanently and RIP Advanced.

The first option will remove an item from only the current page. So if you remove the New York Times header off the front page by choosing Remove This Permanently, it will still show up on other pages. To remove something from all pages for an entire domain, you would go to RIP Advanced and choose from Remove From All Similar Pages, Remove From This Website, or Remove From This Domain.

Once you select the option, right click on the element again and choose Remove This Permanently. You can also remove similar items, the parent item, or all parent items. Finally, you can remove all IFrames or Google AdSense.

The only trouble removing items comes when trying to remove Flash items. When you right-click on a Flash box, a different menu appears and you can’t remove it. The only way to remove Flash is to click somewhere right next to it and remove that item. So if the Flash is within a DIV or in a table row element, you would need to remove that in order to remove the Flash.

Also, if you remove too much and the website no longer loads correctly (as I did with the New York Times!), don’t worry! Just right-click and go to RIP Advanced and choose RIP Options.

You’ll see a list of web sites on the left hand side. Click on that site and a list of “RIPS” will appear that are currently being applied to the site. Simply click on them and choose Remove XPath.

Just remove them all and start over until you get it right! Have fun with removing items from your favorite web pages. But before you decide to remove AdSense ads for everyone’s site, I would ask that you take into consideration that it is my income and it’s what pays for my work! I know those ads can be annoying, but it’s the only reason why there is so much free stuff on the web. Enjoy! Source: Ghacks

Will this game run on my computer? CanYouRunIt will tell you

2008-10-04T07:26:00.001-07:00

If you’re a big time gamer or like to play games on your PC sometimes, then you might want to check out CanYouRunIt.com before buying your next game. The way it works is that you pick a game and the website will inspect your computer’s hardware configuration and compare it the the system requirements of the particular game.

CanYouRunIt is quick and will give you a full summary and detailed analysis of your computer’s hardware system. Once it compares that to the minimum requirements of the game, it will determine whether your system can handle it or not.

Create interactive presentations and tutorials using Flowgram

2008-10-04T07:23:00.000-07:00

Every once in a while, there is a Web 2.0 tool that really excites me because it’s something I have never seen before, never thought of and it’s cool. That’s exactly what Flowgram is, a cool new tool you can use to create a new type of screencast which includes live web pages, photos, voice, documents, RSS feeds, and lots more.

Flowgram is a great tool for creating a combination of a screencast and a Powerpoint presentation. It’s a mix of various types of content like I mentioned above linked in a chain along with your recorded voice and annotations.

For an example of what a Flowgram looks like and what you can do with it, check this out below:

Pretty cool eh!? It’s very easy to create a Flowgram and once you’ve made it, you can share it via email, on your own site, on social networking sites like Facebook, on YouTube, or anywhere else you can think of.

However, that is not what makes Flowgram interesting. When viewing a Flowgram, the web page is live and you can actually interact with the site while the narrator is speaking and while annotations are shown on the screen. In the background, Flowgram actually loads up the current site just like a web browser would bring up the page.

Flowgram excels for those who are frustrated or limited by the current methods of sharing information with people, i.e. Digg, Flickr, StumbleUpon, etc. If you want to explain a concept that require multiple sites, photos, documents, audio, and stuff to be pointed out with arrows or annotations, it’s possible with software such as Camtasia, but Flowgram not only makes it a hundred times easier, it also gives you more options.

When you sign up for an account, you can start creating your Flowgram by picking to add some content:

If I add a web page, for example, it will load up the live site and I can then record audio, add annotations, highlight text on the webpage, or add media, such as music, etc.

Flowgram is not complicated to use and even a person with very little technical knowledge can make a Flowgram. It’s a wonderful tool for those who really want to capture some sort of insight, make a commentary, or provide a viewpoint. It allows you to walk people through doing something online step by step.

The only downside to Flowgram is that you can interact with the live web page, but if you click on a link, etc, the browser will navigate away from the Flowgram and load the page instead. It would have been nice if the Flowgram simply continued and left the webpage in some kind of frame window so you can click on links, etc without navigating away from the current Flowgram.

Other than that one downside, I find creating a tutorial about a web site is much easier than using Camtasia. Unforunately, you cannot record your computer desktop screen with Flowgram yet, otherwise you would totally not need something like Camtasia Studio. You can also use Google Docs to create online presentations, and you can create interactive tutorials similar to Flowgram using Wink. Enjoy! Source: CNET

Defrag pagefile and registry in Windows XP

2008-10-04T07:16:00.000-07:00

If you’re run the default Defragmenter program in Windows recently, you may have not realized that the program cannot defrag any file that is currently open, which includes all system files, the Windows page file, and the Windows registry.

However, if you truly want to optimize the speed and performance of your computer, defragging those three aspects of the operating system are the most important! If you think about it, the system files, the page file and the registry are constantly being accessed by Windows in order to complete any task.

So if Windows does not allow you to defrag these areas, then how do you go about doing it? Well, Microsoft has a free product called PageDefrag that will defrag your computer during the system boot up so as to avoid any files being locked up by Windows.

The program will even defrag your event logs! The list shows how fragmented the paging file is and all of the various registry hives (SAM, Software, System, etc).

Choose Defragment at next boot and then restart your computer. First CHKDSK will make sure there are no errors on your hard drive and then the defragment process will begin.

Overall, the program is very useful for increasing the smoothness and speed of your computer. I would recommended only running it once every month or two, not on every boot. Too much defragmenting can actually cause more problems.

There are also other freeware applications that do a great job of defragmenting your hard drive, such as SmartDefrag, a tool that lets you defrag multiple drives at once.

PayScale.com - Compare your salary to what others actually make in the same position

2008-10-03T07:58:00.000-07:00

You give your current position and salary and that gives you access to pay information that others have posted in the same way.

It’s really grown and now there is enough data to be of value. There are enough salaries posted in the major cities that you can get a good idea of what other people are making in your same position in your city! Here are a couple of graphs:

Median Salary by State or Province:

You can also narrow the results down on company size, city, experience, skills, and degree. So if you want to compare what small companies are paying for your position and compare that to what larger companies pay, you can do that very easily!

Here’s an example of Median Salary by Years Experience:

The one I liked the best is the Median Salary by Employer Type, so if you’re open to working for the Federal Government, etc, you might find it better for you.

PayScale.com also has a “Top Jobs” section which shows the jobs that it has the most amount of data on, so you can check these titles first to see if you fit into one becuase you’ll get a better idea since there’s more data.

Visual CD - Free CD catalog software

2008-10-03T07:45:00.000-07:00

Imagine this kind of situation: every few months, you transfer seldom used files onto digital media by burning them into CDs or DVDs. A year later, you need to recover one of the files from a pile of unmanaged CD collections. Can you find it quickly?

The normal way to solve this problem is to insert all of them one by one and try to search for the files. You may argue that you can solve this by carefully labeling your CDs but I bet that you can’t write all of the file names on its surface. A good way to proactively handle this hassle is to use digital catalog software such as Visual CD; where you can download and use free of charge.

Visual CD is a digital cataloging software that allows you to index all of your digital files. I find it most useful for cataloging removable medias such as CDROM and DVD ROM. How Visual CD works is pretty easy. Each time after you burn a media, open Visual CD to read the media and index its contents. You can also add comments or labels to your media that reflects its contents.

When the need arise in the future, you can search all your digital collection without having to insert/connect them physically to your computer; thus speeding the search for a particular file.

Visual CD Features

Easy to use with Explorer like interface that gets you started in no time.
Catalog media from various sources - CD, DVD, HD-DVD, BlueRay disc, USB thumb drive, hard drive and even folders.

Advanced Search - quickly search for a file from one of multiple catalogs using various of options and filters without the need to insert your media.

Option to index the dimension and duration information from video and music files.
Option to extract and store thumbnails of digital images, icon, video and executable files.

Able to index files inside compressed files; support for 7Zip, RAR, CAB and ZIP file format.
Support MP3 music file ID3v1 and ID3v2 tags.
Password protect catalog to prevent unauthorized access to private file information.
Flexible - easily move, copy, delete, migrate and rename catalogs.
Favorites Manager allows you to find your frequently used media quickly from the interface.
Verify and update catalogs easily - useful if you are adding new files to a multisession disc.
Save directory structure to a text file.
Export / batch export your catalog to HTML, XLS, RTF or text format.

Comes with loads of useful extra tools - MP3 playlist generator, Advanced Rename tool, Duplicate File Finder, File Splitter, NFO Reader, Photo Rename tool and Thumbnail Maker.

aTunes - Free audio player and music manager

2008-10-03T07:38:00.000-07:00

aTunes is one of the free audio players out there with decent music capabilities .

aTunes defines itself as full featured audio player and organizer . It has a cool looking interface with three different columns. The left most column is where you can browse and select songs to play, the middle is your playlist and audio player while the right most column shows you the the extra details on what’s being played.

Once aTunes is installed, it will ask you to add music folders that you want to be added to its repository/library. To make things much simpler, you can select “My Computer” to instruct aTunes to automatically find and index all of the music files inside your hard disk.

aTunes Features

Intuitive, three column “Navigator” interface makes it easy to quickly access music files by categories.
Drag and drop support between Windows Explorer and aTunes.
Supports for various music formats including mp3, ogg, wav, wma, flac, mp4 with karaoke function and on-screen display of song titles.
Able to play online radio - comes with a few default internet radio stations.

Manual and automatic tagging support - read and writes tags for these audio formats: mp3, ogg, mp3, wma, ra, rm. You can also search for music files using specific tags.

Able to display pictures inside ID3v3 tag format.
Filter support for quick, accurate music file search.
Able to cater multiple playlist at one time with thousands of songs each.
Able to save and open m3u based playlist format.
Portable device support - open, save and sync music files between your audio players and aTunes seamlessly.
Favorites - mark your favorite tunes to find and play it quickly later in the future.
AudioCobbler - get similar artist / other tracks / album cover from the web based on current songs played in aTunes.

Last.fm integration - automatic update of your Last.fm profile with songs played in aTunes.
Search video for songs being played in Youtube or other video sites.
Podcast support - subscribe, download and play audio podcast directly into aTunes.
CD ripper tool via Tools -> Import CD function.
statistics tells you about your listening habits based on songs played, songs that never played, most played songs, most played artist and more.

Can be minimized to system tray or viewed full screen.

Beam It Up Scotty - Send files to a cell phone

2008-10-03T07:34:00.001-07:00

Search the Internet for a few minutes and you’ll come across thousands of applications that will give you a chance to access a home or office computer while traveling. If you are a mobile person that likes to travel around extremely light, then you’ll want an application that lets you download a file directly to your cell phone.

Beam It Up Scotty is just the application you need for sending a file to your mobile device. As long as you have an Internet connection and text messaging feature for your cell phone or mobile device, then you’ll be able to download a file. One of the best features of using this service is that there’s no complicated setup process. It’s very straightforward and easy to use. Within a few short minutes, a file will be sent directly to your device.

In order to get started, upload your desired file to the Beam It Up Scotty homepage. The file types that can be downloaded include music, videos, photos, or virtually any other file. Most iPhone users will enjoy using this service because their device has a large display. Viewing a downloaded document or photo can be done comfortably on the iPhone’s display screen. Video and audio files will be limited to 5 minutes of playing time. This will only give you a snippet of multimedia fun, instead of its entire length.

The entire process for using the Beam It Up Scotty involves three easy steps. Upload your file by browsing all available files on your computer, select a compression type, and then enter your cell phone number. You’ll receive a text message with a URL link to download the sent file. Depending on the type data connection on your cell phone or mobile device, it will take a few minutes to download and open the file.

Beam It Up Scotty is a useful tool for accessing your documents while on the go. Instead of carrying a notebook computer with you everywhere, just use your cell phone or mobile device to download an important file. The service is completely free to use, but you are still responsible for any charges associated with your cell phone carrier. Beam It Up Scotty is definitely a simple service with great potential.

ArtWeaver - The best free alternative to Photoshop

2008-10-03T07:29:00.000-07:00

If you don’t want to spend the money for Photoshop, and you’re not a big fan of other photo editing programs like The Gimp or Paint.NET, then you might be happy about a new open source program called ArtWeaver, which is completely free and looks just like Photoshop!

ArtWeaver is a freeware Photoshop alternative that, while lacking the advanced features of Photoshop, has many of the same basic image editing tools as Photoshop and a very similar interface. Check out the image below of the ArtWeaver main GUI:

It’s even got a very similar set of menus to Photoshop at the top. So if you’ve used Photoshop before, you won’t have any trouble using this. And if you start off with this program, rather than the GIMP, you’ll be able to use Photoshop later on without much relearning.

Even though ArtWeaver is a good image editing tool, it’s main strength is in simulating natural brush tools, such as pencils, chalk, oils, sponges, air brushes, calligraphy, and many other digital brushes. You also have a large range of adjustments you can make to the current brushes or you can create a new brush.

The standard image editing tools include cropping, text overlay, gradient fill, sharpen tool, eye dropper tool, lasso selection tool, and lots more. They program has a good number of filters (emboss, mosasic, blur) that you can apply to your pictures and you can add as many layers to your photos also, just like in Photoshop.

The program supports a wide range of file formats including PNG, JPEG, GIF, BMP, PCX, TGA, TIFF, and even PSD. The only thing I wished was that it supported layers in PSD files! Right now, if you have a PSD with layers, the layers will not be visible.

The program has other cool features, though, like support for pen tablets, so if you are into drawing, you’ll like this feature and a history function to undo/redo your previous actions.

What I also like about this open source app is that it can be extended by third party developers using plug-ins, which is very cool. So if there’s a feature that is missing from the program, someone can write a plugin and all you have to do it install it to gain that functionality. You can download the current plug-in pack for ArtWeaver that adds more filters.

Finally, the last cool thing about ArtWeaver is that you can download the portable version of the software! Yes download the Portable-ArtWeaver.zip file and run it from your USB drive or external hard drive. Now you can take your photo editing program with you wherever you are and run it off any computer! Pretty cool.

Send compressed voice recordings via email using JDVoiceMail

2008-10-03T07:24:00.000-07:00

If you have a microphone on your computer, why not send a voice message instead the next time you want to send an email? Well I usually don’t simply because it’s a pain in the butt and the file is usually too large if I want to attached a proper length voice message to an email. Using a free file compression utility also requries the reciever to unzip the file, too much trouble.

Using JDVoiceMail, you can easily send friends and family full length voice messages via email that are super compressed and therefore very small attachments. The cool thing about the program is that it can reduce the size of a normal audio file by 10 to 16 times.

The program is very easy to use. Click the Rec button and begin recording your voice email message. Click Stop when you are done. Now you can either press Send and JDVoiceMail will open a new email using your default email client or click Save and save it on your computer as a MP3 or WAV file.

You can also choose the codec you want to use for compression by going to Configuration and then choosing Codec Options.

Click on Mail Options under the same menu and you can change the default Subject tex tand Body text when a new email is created.

By default, JDVoiceMail adds a little by-line at the bottom of each email you send, but you can remove it if you like by clicking on the option “Do not send JDVoiceMail notice with email”.

The program works with Outlook, Outlook Express, Thunderbird, Eudora, and other email clients. The compression codecs can really reduce the size of files, for example:

30 seconds of audio with the DSP True Speech Codec is only 32 KB

30 seconds of audio with the GSM 6.10 is only 50 KB

Since the output of the file is in MP3 or WAV format, the receiving party does not have to have any special software, they can play the audio message via Windows Media Player or any other media player.

Overall, a cool program that makes sending voice messages via email a lot easier and more fun!

hide files in JPEG pictures

2008-10-03T07:23:00.000-07:00

Hide File in Picture

In order to accomplish this task, you will need to have either WinZip or WinRAR installed on your computer. You can download either of these two off the Internet and use them without having to pay anything. Here are the steps for creating your hidden stash:

Create a folder on your hard drive, i.e. C:\Test and put in all of the files that you want to hide into that folder. Also, place the image that you will be using to hide the files in.

Now select all of the files that you want to hide, right-click on them, and choose the option to add them to a compressed ZIP or RAR file. Only select the files you want to hide, not the picture. Name it whatever you want, i,e. “Hidden.rar”.

Now you should have a folder that looks something like this with files, a JPG image, and a compressed archive:

Now here’s the fun part! Click on Start, and then click on Run. Type in “CMD” without the quotes and press Enter. You should now see the command prompt window open. Type in “CD \” to get to the root directory. Then type CD and the directory name that you created, i.e. “CD Test“.

Now type in the following line: “copy /b DSC06578.JPG + Hidden.rar DSC06578.jpg” and press Enter. Do not use the quotes. You should get a response like below:

Just make sure that you check the file extension on the compressed file, whether it is .ZIP or .RAR as you have to type out the entire file name with extension in the command. I have heard that some people say that they have had problems doing this with a .ZIP extension, so if that doesn’t work, make sure to compress to a .RAR file.

And that’s it! The picture file will have been updated with the compressed archive inside! You can actually check the file size of the picture and see that it has increased by the same amount as the size of the archive.

You can access your hidden file in two ways. Firstly, simply change the extension to .RAR and open the file using WinRAR. Secondly, you can just right-click on the JPG image and choose Open With and then scroll down to WinRAR. Either way, you’ll see your hidden files show up that you can then extract out.

That’s it!

Use Animoto to create your own professional looking music videos and movie trailers

2008-10-03T07:18:00.001-07:00

Using Animoto, you upload your pictures, choose your music, and using it’s advanced Cinematic Artificial Intelligence technology, the program will produce a fully customized composition of your images and music in widescreen format that has the visual appearance and energy of a music video and movie trailer. Here’s the video I created in 8 minutes!

The technology analyzes your photos and music and combines them with the same techniques and skills used in the film and television industries. The service is very cool because it takes into account every aspect of a song including the genre, song structure, rhythm, vocals, instrumentation, and much more. So if you pick an alternative rock song for your video, you can expect that it’ll be fast-moving, shaky, etc.

Another really cool feature is that you can share the videos via email, embed them into your blog or web site, or post them onto your social networking site of choice, such as MySpace and FaceBook. Creating a video takes just a few minutes because all you have to do is choose the images and pick the music, everything else is taken care of by Animoto. Each video is a full 24 frames per second, so you can be assured the quality is good whether you play it on the computer or on a TV. Anyone can create a 30 second video for free as many times as they like. If you want to crate a full-length video (longer than 30 seconds), you can buy credits.

Also, it’s even easier to create a video if you pictures are stored on an online photo management site. Animoto can connect to Picasa, Flickr, FaceBook, Smugmug, and Photobucket to retrieve images! The max size for a photo is 1MB, so if you have high resolution photos, you will need to reduce them in size first.

To get started, click Create Video at the top left and register on the site. Next, choose whether you wan to create a Animoto Short or Full-Length video.

Next, choose whether you want to upload pictures or retrieve from another site as mentioned above. I use Picasa Web Albums, so I chose to grab them from there. Simply grant access to the service and your pictures show up in Animoto. Painless!

Next, go through your images and rotate them, delete them, or spotlight them. Spotlighting a photo means you want to give it more emphasis in the video than others. You can spotlight as many photos as you like. A free video will only require about 15 to 20 images, otherwise it’ll be considered full-length.

Next you need to choose your music. You can either upload from your computer or choose from their online collection. They only have three genres as of now, Indie Rock, Electronica, and Hip Hop. Finally, give your video a title, description, producer name, etc.

Click Create Video to make your personalized music/movie video. It takes about 5 to 10 minutes to create it, so be patient. Luckily, they have a nice progress bar by which you can watch what is happening:

That’s it!

Edit right click

2008-10-03T07:16:00.001-07:00

Edit right click menu for files

There is a right-click menu for files and another for folders. To get to the one for files, head over to this registry key:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\*\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\

You should now see a listing like this:

All the folders listed under ContextMenuHandlers are applications that show up when you right click on a file in Windows. You can either delete the folder to remove the option or simply disable the folder, which is better in case you want to bring it back later on.

You can disable an application by clicking on the folder in the left pane and then right-clicking on the key value in the right pane and choosing “Modify“.

All you need to do is add a minus (-) in front of the key value like shown below:

Click OK, then the refresh button at the top and then try right-clicking on the file! The program should now be gone from the context menu.

Edit right click menu for Folders

You can follow the same steps as shown above for folders also, it’s just a different registry path. In order to edit the menu options for right clicking on folders, go here:

HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Folder\shellex\ContextMenuHandlers\

You’ll have to scroll quite a bit, but once you get there, it should look something like this:

Again, you can either delete the folders under ContextMenuHandlers or you can simplt disable them by editing the key and putting a - in front of the value.

How to connect your Laptop/PC/Computer to your TV

2008-10-03T07:14:00.000-07:00

1. S-Video - This is probably the most common method out there currently because an S-Video cable is cheap as heck and just about every TV under the sun has a S-Video port. You’ll have to make sure you laptop is equipped with this port. Remember, there are two types of S-Video cables: 4-pin and 7-pin. Most laptops and PC’s are equipped with a 7-pin port, so if your TV only has a 4-pin S-Video port, then this method will not work.

2. VGA - If you have a HDTV, then you will be better off connecting using a VGA cable. It gives much better quality than S-Video and as with S-Video, the cable is very cheap. You usually won’t find a VGA port on regular TV’s though, so this option is if you have an HDTV.

3. DVI - DVI stands for Digital Visual Interface with “digital” being the key word there. The digital signal will give a higher quality picture than either S-Video or VGA. Of course, your computer will need to have a DVI connection and your TV will need to be an HDTV. This cord is definitely not cheap, it ranges anywhere from $40 to $80.

4. HDMI - Using HDMI will give you the best quality by far. No computers that I know of yet have HDMI ports, but you can get a DVI to HDMI cable to connect it to your HDTV. HDMI is compatible with DVI.

5. Scan Converter Box - This is the last method that I could think of and it involves using a scan converter box, which takes a VGA signal and converts it into S-Video or component video.

Here’s a graphic I created with some pictures of the various cables:

LogMeIn: Remote Access and Desktop Control Software for Your Computer

2008-09-15T08:54:00.000-07:00

LogMeIn is a suite of software services that provides remote access to computers over the Internet.

LogMeIn remote access products use a proprietary remote desktop protocol that is transmitted via SSL.

An SSL certificate is created for each remote desktop and is used for cryptographically secure communications between the remote desktop and the accessing computer.

The service connects the remote desktop and the local computer using SSL over TCP or UDP and utilizing NAT Traversal techniques to achieve peer-to-peer connectivity when available.

LogMeInPro and LogMeIn Free provide end users remote desktop access with optional remote sound, file management, printer access, and online chat features through a web browser. The LogMeIn Ignition product is an optional add-on that provides access without a web browser.

LogMeIn IT Reach is a system admin tool to help IT professionals maintain computers remotely.

LogMeIn Rescue provides professional help desk personnel remote access to fix problems on an end user's desktop machine. The optional LogMeIn Rescue+Mobile is an add-on that provides remote support to mobile devices.

LogMeIn Hamachi is a separate product that provides remote VPN access. See Hamachi.

LogMeIn Backup is a separate product that provides an online backup service.

source:wikipedia

search google in hell

2008-09-14T07:26:00.000-07:00

GOOGLE HELL is a private parallel web.

There is no access via web browser

this is no game

a promise broken

yesterday is over

this is the way things turned out

you are late

the question is in the answer

it is not the same

no there is no satan

ur expectations..?

why now

better than u imagined

this is it

things will does'nt go back to the way they were

no nothing is for sale

TO GO TO GOOGLE HELL..........PROCEED

note:enter at ur own risk.....my blog does'nt hold any responsibility for this.....sionara

Virus-Based Batteries | micro battery from virus

2008-09-14T07:17:00.000-07:00

Virus-Based Batteries: Tiny, Flexible, Cheap?

A virus-ridden computer without a noticeable battery might not sell on Ebay, but that's exactly what researchers at MIT could build, thanks to a new advance in battery technology.

By pouring a mixture of the harmless, genetically engineered M13 virus and the metal cobalt over stamped silicon film, Angela Belcher and her colleagues created a flexible, microscopic battery that could be cheaply mass produced.

In theory, it could turn virtually any surface -- from large computers to tiny implanted detectors for cancer or heart disease -- into an energy-storing device.

"The idea of using stamping technique to produce a battery is pretty different," said Belcher. "We can make the batteries really small, which lets us put a power source on all sorts of tiny sensors."

Belcher and her colleagues created the first virus-powered battery in 2006. Since then they have been refining their viral battery while working to create other novel energy-storing devices that could be woven into fabrics or poured into containers.

Their most recent advance, detailed in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, involves stamping a base material, in this case silicon, so that the negatively charged M13 virus and positively charged cobalt can self-assemble based on their relative charges and the pattern of the stamp.

Stamping the base materials, which can theoretically be nearly any surface, means that the batteries can be produced more cheaply and efficiently. With silicon as the base material, flexible and curved batteries can be created as well.

SOURCE:discovery news,google news

Fedora 10 (Cambridge) to be released in November 2008

2008-09-14T07:07:00.000-07:00

Red Hat and project contributors have released the alpha for Fedora10.

The next version of the community-supported, free and open source Linux distribution features enhancements to the audio, security and wireless-connection features of the operating system.

Fedora 10 (Cambridge) is due out in November 2008.

Get involved in testing the new features – check out the Fedora 10 Alpha release notes and then download the Alpha.

D (programming language)

2008-09-14T06:45:00.000-07:00

The D programming language, also known simply as D, is an object-oriented, imperative, multiparadigm system programming language by Walter Bright of Digital Mars.

It originated as a re-engineering of C++.

D has redesigned some C++ features and has been influenced by concepts used in other programming languages, such as Java, C# and Eiffel.

D compilers:

A stable version, 1.0, was released on January 2, 2007.

An experimental version, 2.0, was released on June 17, 2007.

DMD: the Digital Mars D compiler, the official D compiler by Walter Bright. The compiler front end is licensed under both the Artistic License GNU GPL; sources for the front end are distributed along with the compiler binaries. The compiler back end is proprietary. and the
GDC: A front end for the GCC back end, built using the open DMD compiler sources. Development snapshots also support D version 2.0.
LLVMDC: A new compiler, also based on open DMD sources that uses LLVM as its compiler back end. It's in early development.

DOWNLOAD DIGITAL MARS D COMPILER 2.0 HERE

D logos:

create a ubuntu add-on cd

2008-09-14T06:40:00.000-07:00

LIKE EDUBUNTU WE CAN ALSO CREATE A UBUNTU ADD-ON CD......

1. First download the packages with dependencies in your hard drive. One way to do this is using apt-get with -dy switch. For example you want to add eclipse in the addon cd. Then


$sudo apt-get install -dy eclipse eclipse-cdt
$sudo apt-get autoclean

By default these files are stored in /var/cache/apt/archives.

2. Now execute this script


#!/bin/sh

mkdir -p addon-ubuntu/dists/fiesty
cd addon-ubuntu/dists
ln -s fiesty/ stable
ln -s fiesty/ unstable
cd ..
mkdir pool
cp `find /var/cache/apt/archives/ | grep deb | grep -v /partial/` pool

dpkg-scanpackages pool /dev/null | gzip -9c > dists/fiesty/Packages.gz
gunzip -c dists/fiesty/Packages.gz > dists/fiesty/Packages
dpkg-scansources pool /dev/null | gzip -9c > dists/fiesty/Sources.gz
gunzip -c dists/fiesty/Sources.gz > dists/fiesty/Sources

echo "Origin: Ubuntu\nLabel: Ubuntu\nSuite: feisty\nVersion: 7.04\nCodename: feisty\nDate: `date -R`\nArchitectures: i386\nComponents: main restricted\nDescription: Ubuntu Feisty 7.04" > dists/fiesty/Release

apt-ftparchive release dists/fiesty >> dists/fiesty/Release
mkdir .disk

echo "Ubuntu 7.04 "Feisty Fawn" - Release i386 (`date +%Y%m%d`)" > .disk/info

cd ..
genisoimage -o ubuntu-addon.iso -r addon-ubuntu
#end of script

3. Now burn the ubuntu-addon.iso into a blank CD/DVD

4. Put the newly burned CD/DVD into the desired PC's CD/DVD drive. Open Synaptic Package Manager. There from the Edit menu selec Add CD rom and Press OK.

Now you can install all the new packages from the CD/DVD you just created. No need to download them from the net!

source:a blogspot...

Smallest PC From Dell, Runs Ubuntu

2008-09-14T06:35:00.000-07:00

Dell has unveiled the Inspiron Mini 9 -- a small, easy-to-carry device perfect for surfing the Web, chatting with friends, blogging, streaming content, uploading photos or enjoying favourite online videos, music and games.

digital nomads will value the Inspiron Mini’s durable design, with sealed keyboard and reliable solid state drive (SSD) memory storage.

weight of 2.28 lbs

A bright 8.9-inch glossy LED display (1024x600)

Mini 9 can have up to 1GB 2 533MHz DDR2 SDRAM

built-in Webcam

bundled with Dell Video Chat

ipod's new flavour-120GB

2008-09-14T06:32:00.000-07:00

Starting with the device which actually puts Apple in a dominant position, iPod, Apple has discontinued the 80GB and 160GB iPod Classics in favour of the new 120GB iPod Classic.

This iPod is sleeker and slimmer than the previous generations. But was there anyone who was awaiting the monster 320GB iPod?

Well, you will have to settle with only 120GB, too bad for those who are hooked to 160GB.

NOKIA SECRET PROJECT-N99(another i-phone killer)

2008-09-14T06:17:00.000-07:00

Nokia N99 = Cell Phone + PDA + UMPC

According to Nokia, the N99 comes equipped with 7.2-MP digital camera, 16GB of internal harddrive, 3.2″ TFT LCD Screen with 1.6millions color, innovative 9 ways joystick for better browsing experience, WLAN and GPS ready. Besides that, the Nokia N99 also supports DIVx movies and MP3/ACC/WMA music playback.

There isn’t much word about price and when the Nokia N99 will be sold.

create windows XP live CD

2008-09-14T06:12:00.000-07:00

A live CD or live distro is a computer operating system that is executed upon boot, without installation to a hard disk drive.

It just involves adding of some plugins. One of the easiest ways to do this is using a software called pebuilder. Using it, you can create an XP Live CD.
Here’s all the software you’ll need:

pebuilder3110a1.exe, which can be downloaded from
ftp://dl.xs4all.nl/pub/mirror/nu2files/pebuilder3110a.exe
Plugins: xpe-1.0.7.cab (the GUI shell) from http://tinyurl.com/2ct72t and Other plugins from www.bootcd.us/BartPE_Plugins_Complete.php
Nero Burning ROM
A (bootable) XP CD

Thw XP live CD can be created by the following steps:

Step 1: Download pebuilder3110a1.exe and install it.

Step 2: For the wallpaper, replace C:\pebuilder3110a\bartpe.bmp with the image you want as your wallpaper. You can
find the default XP wallpaper at C:\WINDOWS\Web\Wallpaper\bliss.bmp.
(Both these, of course, assume the C drive as the installation location.)

Step 3: Download the plugins:

xpe-1.0.7.cab: This will create the XP start button and taskbar. It is the GUI shell of the XP Live CD.
Network Driver Plugin Pack: This provides many network card drivers
FreeAV Virus Scanner: This integrates FreeAV
diskexplorer_for_ntfs.cab: A very good file explorer And more you can choose what you want to download to add functionality. There are 537 plugins right now to choose from!

Step 4: Open pebuilder. Specify the source path to the Windows installation file. This should be your Windows XP installation bootable CD, where the i386 folder resides.

Step 5: Click Plugins and add the plugins you’ve downloaded. Since you’ve included xpe-1.0.7.cab, disable nu2shell and the startup group.

Step 6: Specify the ISO image file, and click Build.

Step 7: After that’s done, use Nero (or any other burning software) and burn the image file to a CD. You’re done!

source:pcs place

google Gphone-iphone killer

2008-09-14T03:20:00.000-07:00

The Google phone or Gphone might reach markets within a year.

The gPhone might be a iPhone killer .

The gPhone will have Gmail, Gmail and Search all preloaded.

E-Mail Icon Generator

2008-09-14T03:11:00.000-07:00

creates an image of ur e-mail address...

E-Mail Icon Generator turns your plain and ordinary email address into a sweet and stylish email badge using the appropriate logo for your email service.

why e-mail icon generator---to reduce spam

click here to get it

peter guttman method of deleting files(35 passes)

2008-09-13T19:59:00.000-07:00

Securely deleting files and wiping your HDD

You have multiple files that you decide you want to get rid of. So, you right-click and select 'Delete' and then it's gone, right? Wrong. This is because files on your computer are accessed through a file allocation table, which tells the operating system where in your disk a file can be found. These are marked on the file allocation table by it's identifier. When you delete a file you are not really deleting it off your computer, but are instead simply removing it's entry on the file allocation table so that the computer can no longer access it.

The process securely removing information happens when you can remove it and write it over with bits of random data multiple times. However, it is difficult for the average uneducated computer user to differentiate between how many is not enough.

7 passes is the national standard for the U.S. government.

8 passes is the national standard for Canada's government.

Britian's national standard for overwritting files is 38.

The Gutman Method just not only overwrites data with 35 passes, but it does much more than that.There are a number of applications you can use to securely erase files, and yes, even your entire hard drive. The best option to erase files is a nice program called "Window Washer". With Window Washer you can select between Quick method(1 pass), DoD(7 passes), NSA(14 passes), Gutman(35 passes), and Random(you select your own number of passes manually). Window Washer also gives you the option of creating a bootable disk to wipe your HDD with the same methods listed above. However, I highly highly recommend something called "Darik's Boot and Nuke" or DBAN. This is a boot disk that gives you the passes mentioned above, while giving you different methods of magnetic wiping methods.

Send Your Name into Space

2008-09-13T19:51:00.000-07:00

Send Your Name into Space with the Kepler Mission

and u can get the following certificate.....

just follow the link here

STANDARD ANTI-VIRUS TEST

2008-09-13T19:37:00.000-07:00

To test an anti-virus copy the following code(without quotes) and paste it in notepad and save it....then run a scan on the file if it detects ur software is working well.......

"X5O!P%@AP[4\PZX54(P^)7CC)7}$EICAR-STANDARD-ANTIVIRUS-TEST-FILE!$H+H*"

this is a STANDARD ANTI-VIRUS TEST file

svchost.exe

2008-09-13T19:27:00.000-07:00

svchost.exe is a system process belonging to the Microsoft Windows Operating System which handles processes executed from DLLs. This program is important for the stable and secure running of your computer and should not be terminated.

Note: svchost.exe is a process registered as a backdoor vulnerability which may be installed for malicious purposes by an attacker allowing access to your computer from remote locations, stealing passwords, Internet banking and personal data. If unaccounted for, this process should be removed immediately.

Note: svchost.exe is a process which is registered as a trojan. This Trojan allows attackers to access your computer from remote locations, stealing passwords, Internet banking and personal data. This process is a security risk and should be removed from your system.

Note: svchost.exe is a process belonging to Microsoft Service Host Process. This could also be a stealth monitoring software that sits in the background and tracks all activities such as keyboard input (including websites visited, passwords etc.) This information can be sent to third parties through email or ftp uploads. If you did not intentionally install this program make sure you remove it to protect your privacy.

Determining whether svchost.exe is a virus or a legitimate Windows process depends on the directory location it executes or runs from.

It is strongly recommend that to run registry scan to identify svchost.exe related errors.

firefox Shiretoko alpha 2

2008-09-08T07:45:00.000-07:00

Monday, September 08, 2008: Mozilla, the creator of Firefox, has released the second alpha of Firefox's new version -- code named Shiretoko. The new browser is available for Linux, Mac and Windows. Looks wise, there is a big facelift in the new browser. Although it looks close to IE 7 or 8, but it is not as innovative as Chrome. Shiretoko is built on the pre-release version of the Gecko 1.9.1 platform, which forms the core of rich Internet applications such as Firefox.

But, keep in mind, this is a bleeding edge release intended for developers and testers only. Current users of Mozilla Firefox should not use Shiretoko Alpha 2. If you want to only try this out then only download it. This Alpha of Shiretoko, Gecko 1.9.1, introduces several new features which include support for the HTML 5

review of google CHROME

2008-09-08T07:41:00.000-07:00

Google Chrome is a web browser project by Google. It was leaked yesterday, and Google held a press conference to announce the launch of Chrome. With Chrome, Google hopes to bring the best of various browsers and code, like Firefox and WebKit (WebKit is used by Safari too).

Google may well have been forced into a damage control mode, as the first bit of news that we knew was Chrome’s information being leaked. Furthermore, Linux and Mac versions have not been launched - that leaves a large number of Google fans displeased.

First impressions

Chrome is smooth, well refined (as of limited usage I have done) and manages the migration process flawlessly by importing every bit of important data from IE or Firefox. The innovative placement of tab bar, lack of title bar (that’s right, no title bar for Chrome), omnibar (that is what Google calls Chrome’s search-cum-address bar) are all a fresh breath of life in an otherwise plain browser. Did I tell you Chrome follows Firefox shortcuts (mostly)?

I had upgraded to WordPress 2.6 today (late, I know), and clicking on the Turbo link did not prompt me for any annoying Gears installer - Gears is built into Chrome.

Currently, there are no extension capabilities to rival those offered by Firefox, and that is one reason why Firefox users will not hurry to Chrome full time. Notice that I say “full-time”, because Chrome makes a very compelling case as a casual browser - lack of extensions notwithstanding.

If Google’s promises of fast Javascript rendering, security, extensions etc. is delivered, Opera, Firefox and several other browsers could have one very interesting competitor to deal with. None of the other browsers have the backing of a company as large as Google (Microsoft and Apple do not count, as one suffers from lack of quality and the other suffers from lack of quantity). Whether Chrome and Firefox would coexist in Google’s future plans also has to be seen.

API support is coming, says Google. APIs will enable developers to write extensions, though the effectiveness of future extensions will have to be seen to be believed. We do have the example of Opera widgets failing completely, now don’t we?

Google Chrome: Screenshots

The installer file downloaded from Google Chrome website is only ~500 KB in size, but launching it downloads the actual Chrome installer (~7MB) from Google servers.

Importing settings is very straightforward, and reminds the import process of Firefox.

Starting up the browser gives you a page like this:

And here I am, writing about Google Chrome (this post) from within Chrome.

How has your experience of Google Chrome been? Will you switch to it as a default browser, or will you use it only partially (for casual browsing)?

IE8 Beta 2

2008-09-08T07:39:00.000-07:00

IE8 Beta 2's Most Useful Features

Smart Address Bar: IE 8 beta 2 includes a Smart Address Bar, that, like Firefox 3's "AwesomeBar," drops down suggestions as-you-type a web site URL gleaned from your favorites, feeds, and history. Unlike Firefox, IE 8 includes headers so you can see where each suggestion comes from.

Tab Grouping: Ever open a bunch of links from a single page in new tabs, and then lose track of which tabs came from what page? IE8's got a nifty "tab grouping" feature that colors your tabs based on their source. Here's what a few tab groups—one from Lifehacker, one from the MSN homepage—look like.

InPrivate Browsing: What with the Smart Address Bar pulling up every site you've visited recently in plain view in its History suggestions, there may be times when you visit a site and have the browser forget it ever happened. IE 8 beta 2's "InPrivate" browsing mode adds an icon to the address bar, and forgets you were ever at a web page when it's enabled.

Tab Crash Resolution: Several commenters point out that IE8 offers a feature no other browser has—the ability to restore a crashed web site on a tab by tab basis. In my tests, no site crashed so I didn't see this in action.

Favorites Bar: Getting to your bookmarks and feeds is a little easier with a button to expand your Favorites bar, a one-stop bookmarks shop. In the Feeds tab (not shown), any feeds you're subscribed to with new items show up in bold, and any "Web Slices" with new content also appear in bold.

Favorites Bar: Getting to your bookmarks and feeds is a little easier with a button to expand your Favorites bar, a one-stop bookmarks shop. In the Feeds tab (not shown), any feeds you're subscribed to with new items show up in bold, and any "Web Slices" with new content also appear in bold.

Favorites Bar: Getting to your bookmarks and feeds is a little easier with a button to expand your Favorites bar, a one-stop bookmarks shop. In the Feeds tab (not shown), any feeds you're subscribed to with new items show up in bold, and any "Web Slices" with new content also appear in bold.

free PDF to WORD converter software

2008-09-06T00:31:00.000-07:00

CTFMON.EXE

2008-09-06T00:24:00.000-07:00

What is CTFMON.EXE

If you have opened the Windows Task Manager or used Hijackthis to track down a problem, you have probably run across a file called CTFMON.EXE. Disabling it from MSCONFIG doesn't make it go away and it definitely feels like a virus, so what exactly is this file?

It turns out that CTFMON.EXE is a file that is installed with Office XP applications. It activates the Alternative User Input Text Input Processor and the Language Bar. The program monitors the active windows and provides text input service support for speech recognition, handwriting recognition, keyboard, translation, and other alternative user input technologies. It also starts the language bar that appears next to the system tray (shown below).

A Hijackthis log will show CTFMON in this way

O4 - HKCU\..\Run: [ctfmon.exe] C:\WINDOWS\system32\ctfmon.exe

How to Disable the Language Bar and Remove CTFMON.EXE

Follow the directions below to disable the Advanced Text Services to remove the Language Bar

1) Open the Control Panel
2) Double-click on Regional and Language Options (if you are in Classic View)

or Double-click on Date, Time, Language, and Regional Options in Category View

3) Click on the Languages tab, then click on Details

5) Click on the Advanced Tab
6) Finally, place a checkmark in the box "Turn off advanced text services" and Click Ok

The language bar next to the System Tray should disappear, and CTFMON.EXE will unload from memory.

If you wish to bring back the language bar, simply follow the procedure above and UNCHECK the box to turn off advanced text services.

Microsoft has more information and a Frequently Asked Questions document about CTFMON.EXE, click on the link below to review it.

Therefore, CTFMON.EXE is not a virus or a piece of malware, but its also not a program that you NEED running, expecially if you don't use Microsoft Office XP applications.