Virtual Tools and Computer Tweaks

FastStone Image Viewer

2005-09-08T15:25:00.000-07:00

Phew! Finally, I found an image viewer which is actually easy to use!

I've been searching for something like this for ages and ages. Something that will be easy for everyone to use. Not just for the geeks like me! And today, thanks to PC World, I found FastStone Image Viewer.

It has numerous options, without overloading the regular user. You can crop, resize, rotate, browse and watch a slide show all with the same application. And you can also play some nice music while watching the slide show! Fantastic.

There are other interesting tidbits which this application has. One is the quick zoom, which is amazing. (No magnifying glass to select!)

Plus the fact that all tools are available even in the full screen mode - just move the mouse cursor to the edges of the window, and depending upon which edge you go to, you're presented with the various arrays of tools.

And exceptional piece of software. Highly recommended. And of course, FREE! Dowload it here (2.8 MB)

The best organizer for your computer!

2005-05-16T09:09:00.000-07:00

This really beats every damned organizing tool I've ever used. I discovered it quite by accident via Lifehacker, which is one of my favourite sites to visit every day.

Before I get into the details, here's the webpage - It's called GTD TiddlyWiki. If you don't want to read any further, just go to the webpage and fiddle around; you'll get the idea.

Now, for all those who're interested to know why I'm so excited about this!

I've always been very intrigued by the concept of a Wiki. The idea is to have a website in which users edit the pages. Initially, I thought 'Ha! This is another of those gimmicks'. Then I came across Wikipedia. This encyclopedia has quickly overtaken the Britannica as the encyclopedia of choice of webusers.

After having proved it's success, it got applied to a number of places, most of them quite interesting. Jotspot is one of them. I'll talk about Application Wikis in details some other time, but today I just want to talk about TiddlyWiki and it's extensions!

TiddlyWiki is just a webpage stored locally which you can modify, edit, delete, do what you want, at whim.

And this ingenious guy, called Nathan Bowers of SnapGrid.com, created this amazing tool, called the "Getting Things Done" TiddlyWiki or the GTDTiddlyWiki.

The best part about it? Well, now you can store all your information on your USB flash drive, edit it, updated it and modify it on the fly.

You can download it here or if you're looking for an empty template, get it here

Now, all I need is this to be integrated into a Calendar and my life is fully organized!

Hack hotmail and increase the size of your hotmail account!

2005-01-22T20:21:00.000-08:00

When Hotmail announced that they will increase the account size for all users, I was very happy. I didn't want to lose my hotmail id just because it was always full! So, I waited eagerly but nothing happened. Then an idea struck me and I went and changed my profile to indicate that I was living in the US. Still nothing! Then after about a month, all of a sudden, my account size jumped to 250MB! I was very thrilled to say the least.

This happened a couple of months ago, but yesterday I came across this site which suggests something similar, but with immediate results!

First, log in to hotmail, and then go to Manage Folders. Here, create a folder titled Tempinbox.

Then, go to your Inbox and move all your mails to Tempinbox. You can do this in the Mail view, and selecting all mails - click on the checkbox next to From right on top of all your mails. Once all the mails are selected click on Put in Folder and select Tempinbox to move all your mails. Note: If your inbox spans across multiple pages, you'll have to repeat this until everything is moved over.

Next, go to Options, which appears on the top right side of your page. From here go to Personal (the first item on the left) and in My Profile, update the Country to USA, State to New York, Zip Code to 10028 and Language to English. Click on the Update button at the bottom.

This is IMPORTANT - Before you sign out, copy the following line into your address bar and press 'Enter' -

http://by17fd.bay17.hotmail.msn.com/cgi-bin/Accountclose

This will deactivate your account. To prevent your email id from getting reassigned to somebody else, log back in immediately into hotmail and login with your usual id and password. You will be given a message showing 'Activate Your Account'. So go ahead and do it and don't select any of the Newsletter options which you are given.

Now, go to your mailbox, and enjoy the bigger size of your account!!

Note: I tried this with my wife's account, and although the size didn't go up to 250 MB, it did increase to 25 MB. Well, that's better than 2 MB at least! Maybe, the account size will increase in a month's size like it happened to me!

Update: Paul V, a friend of mine I had posted this hack to, got his account increased as well, but being a much more diligent guy than I am, also read the 'Welcome Message' which hotmail sends when you reactivate your account. And this is what it says, regarding the 250 MB account size -

"You may notice that your storage meter for your e-mail inbox only says 25 MB instead of 250 MB. Please allow us at least 30 days for us to bump up your storage to the complete 250 MB. It is important to check your inbox regularly during this time."

Microsoft Word as a System Backup Utility!

2005-01-22T14:15:00.000-08:00

Can you imagine? Using a behemoth like Microsoft Word for something serious like backing up your system?

When I came across the article, I had to think twice before I could take it seriously! But it works!

The download is here.

via The Red Ferret Journal

Many uses of Microsoft Word

2005-01-22T14:14:00.000-08:00

We all know how big this software is. I mean, you keep Microsoft Word open and it seems to take your entire system resources. I always used to crib about this but recently I came across some redeeming articles.

Word Image Cataloger
Download it, unzip it, and place the resulting, unzipped DOT file in a handy location. When you need to locate image files, double click it to open it in Word, point it to any directory on your hard drive and let 'er rip. It'll insert any graphic (jpg & gif) images it finds in that directory, into a Word document. It'll then save the file as an HTML page so you can easily view all the graphics from that directory in your browser. Great for viewing those animated gifs!
Download it here

Word Font List Generator!
Well, I didn't know I could use Word for that! And it certainly helps to get everything nicely formatted into a Word document, ready for printing!
Of course, since it is written in Visual Basic, you have to open Word and then open it's Visual Basic editor. Here are the steps:
Download the FontSampleGenerator.zip file. Pay attention to where you download it!

Unzip the file. The resulting file will be called FontSampleGenerator.bas. This is a VBA code module. Open Word. Hit Alt/F11 to enter the Visual Basic Editor. Click on your Normal template project to select it. Then click File/Import and ferret around your hard drive to find this .bas file. Select it to add this code module to your Normal.dot template to make it available.

Note that you can also add it to a new template and then add that template to your ../Word/Startup directory to make it available, but not have it added as extra weight to your Normal.dot template.

Once the code is available to you in Word, through either method above, you can click Tools/Macro/Macro, locate the Font Sample Generator macro and click Run to get your sample.
Download it here

Word Program Lister
This is great as well! This will list all programs which you have added and are listed in your Start->Programs! Sure helps to know what all is loaded!

Download this here

Word File Cataloger
Great for having a list of all your files in a particular directory in a handy Word document. And this programs lists all those files as links, so clicking on them opens them directly! Convenient as hell, I say!

Download it here

Please Note: All these programs are copyrighted with MouseTrax

Firefox and Internet Explorer compared

2005-01-20T13:46:00.000-08:00

A very, very insightful comparison between the two browsers.

And the winner is...... (Well, you've got to read the article for yourself!)

via The Office Weblog

IT Conversations - downloads of presentations, interviews and discussions in MP3

2005-01-19T11:18:00.000-08:00

IT Conversations is a new discovery through one of my ever favourite blogs - Cool Tools.

IT Conversations lists many presentations, interviews and discussions of the movers and shakers of the IT industry. Very, very interesting hearing!

If you have'nt bought an MP3 player yet, this might be the best reason to get one!

Some of the people listed are - Tim O'Reilly, Steve Wozniak, Malcolm Gladwell, Lawrence Lessig among many, many others.

Some Quick Excel Formula Tips

2005-01-19T01:12:00.000-08:00

While you enter a formula in a cell, press CTRL+SHIFT+A to see the arguments in a formula. If you type =RATE, and then press CTRL+SHIFT+A, you can see all the arguments for that function–for example, =RATE(nper,pmt,pv,fv,type,guess). If you want more details, type =RATE, and then press CTRL+A to display the Function Wizard.

If you want to quickly enter the same text or the same formula in a range of cells, follow these steps:
1. Select the range of cells that you want to fill.
2. Type the text or formula but do not press ENTER. Instead, press CTRL+ENTER.
The data appears in the range that you selected.

Thanks to Daily Dose of Excel

A Musicplasma for Blogs - TouchGraph

2005-01-18T21:21:00.000-08:00

Well, I didn't know where to post this - whether I should post this in my other blog of Virtual Tools and Computer Tweaks (pctweaks.blogspot.com) or here, so in the end I decided to post it in both the places!

Just like Musicplasma is for music and helps in discovering new artists, new music, similarly, TouchGraph has created a visual browser for blogs and websites!

You key in a URL of one of the sites you visit the most often and like and it throws up other sites which are similar in nature!

Quite interesting really. I think slowly visual searching of the web is going to get smarter like this and browsing will be more of a visual experience than a textual one.

via BoingBoing

Free Backup Software!

2005-01-18T18:05:00.000-08:00

Yes, I know, it sounds crazy, but all the same there is this great software available for free! Well, considering that most of us don't bother to take backups, getting a software to do something as routine and important as that for free should certainly help!

And it is extremely, extremely easy to use!

Here's the main screenshot -

via The Red Ferret Journal

Musicplasma

2005-01-17T21:29:00.000-08:00

Musicplasma has been a favourite of mine ever since it came out. I've discovered numerous new artists through it. I key in one of my current favourite artists and then follow the threads across to many other musicians who's music is similar. The links are sometimes logical, sometimes musical, always enjoyable!

Besides just being a great service, it's has one of the best Graphical User Interfaces I've ever seen!

Desktop List View

2005-01-14T14:32:00.000-08:00

After a long time I came across a really wonderful piece of freeware. This one turns the view on your desktop to a 'List View' instead of the usual 'Icon View' (see image).

Needless to say, this increases your desktop real estate tremendously!

Go to the download site by clicking on the picture.

Thanks to theofficeweblog

Tech support for your parents

2005-01-08T15:14:00.000-08:00

If your parents use computers and you want to help them out, this is a must read.

Besides the usual advice, the ones I liked were on the last page -

Do no harm. You might be tempted to help them by tweaking their computer to work the way yours does. Don't. Your parents might have a reason for their different way of doing things, and even if they don't, they might just be used to it. To really help, adapt yourself to their computers and don't force them to work like you do.
Listen and learn. Your parents may do the same things with the computer or the Internet that you do but in a different way. And they may call it different things. Yahoo may be "the Web." Microsoft Word might just be called "Microsoft." This isn't the time to correct them. Learn their lingo and explain things in terms they already use.
Don't think you know more than they do. Age is not a handicap when dealing with computers. You may be surprised how adept an octogenarian is with instant messaging, Quicken, photo sharing, or even Doom 3. Experience and wisdom can breed stubbornness, and it can also breed flexibility. Just try to understand the issue from the other perspective.

Very important to remember! Especially useful for Indian techie chaps! The IT gap is way larger between generations!

And thanks to Rafe Needleman, a long time favourite, who writes Rafe's Radar, who posted the ZDNet Article

How to take 3D Photos with an ordinary Digital Camera

2005-01-08T14:44:00.000-08:00

Engadget again comes up with an excellent article about how to create 3D photos with a regular digial camera and some free software.

They not only do a great job explaining the how-to but also the theory behind 3D photography. Of course, you will need 3D glasses!

The 3D software used is called Callipygian 3D Photo Editing Software. It's free!

The complete how-to is here

Thanks to Engadget

I guess you can call me a nerd!

2005-01-07T07:53:00.000-08:00

Try this test to check (click on the image!)

Hey RIAA, here's a P2P program in 15 lines!

2005-01-06T21:01:00.000-08:00

Slashdot mentions the New Scientist article pointing to the World's smallest file sharing program!

The program is written by Edward Felten, Computer Science professor at Princeton and is called TinyP2P. He did it to show the futility of trying to stop P2P applications cropping up!! Wow!

What price security? (Google unsecured network cameras!)

2005-01-04T23:07:00.000-08:00

Can you imagine? Just go to the Google page and enter the following search query -

inurl:"ViewerFrame?Mode="

You'll get a list of unsecured network cameras from all over the world!

Just click on any of the results to get a view!! And get this - you can even control the camera! Wow!

And to think that these were put in there as a security measure in the first place!!

via BoingBoing

Free Online PC Magazine!

2004-12-31T10:35:00.000-08:00

Phew! Finally!

This was a long time coming. An online magazine, completely free, paving the way of what the future of publication will be.

And the best part? You can download it in both broadband and dialup modes! Besides that, you can even get it over on bittorrent! Need I say more?

(Click on the image to go to the website)

via The Office Weblog

The Perfect Desk Top Publishing Software - Ragtime

2004-12-26T17:44:00.000-08:00

Well, it's perfect because it's free! Besides that, it's a full fledged utility for publishing anything from brochures, to cards, to documents, to spreadsheets, to visiting cards, to anything!!

I got this link from The Red Ferret Journal and as it says there, here are the main reasons why you might want to use this:

Five reasons why you need RagTime Solo:
You don’t want to persuade your wordprocessor or spreadsheet program to do layout any longer.
You want to break the barriers of common wordprocessors and spreadsheet programs and handle everything on one page: Texts, pictures, spreadsheets, charts and drawings.
You have no fun with slipped pictures or pages added unexpectedly.
No surprises when printing, please!

The download page is here (or just click on the image)

Via The Red Ferret Journal

Another anti-spamming email Site - Jetable.org

2004-12-21T11:26:00.000-08:00

There are many ways to avoid spam! Things like compulsory registration is one thing I absolutely detest on free sites. I mean, what's the point? Of course, every once in a while someone you know you never want an email from asks for your email address!

For situations like all of the above, Mailinator is always there to give you a hand. In fact the post on mailinator was the second post on my PCtweaks blog (pctweaks.blospot.com) which is about free utilities that I've found on the web.

Unfortunately, because of Mailinator's popularity, the website is down for the rest of 2004, because it's attacked by a huge load of spam! So here's an alternative - It's called Jetable (Jetable.org) and you can create a temporary email id at their website for anywhere between 24 hours to 8 days!

Jetable forwards mails sent to this new email id to your actual email id for the period you specify! So, next time some website is asking you to to register for a newsletter just so that you can get to a particular article go Jetable!

Another way to use Gmail!

2004-12-17T13:01:00.000-08:00

So, you've got Gmail.

And what do you do with the 1GB space? Well, frankly, with Yahoo! and Hotmail upping their space as well, and with a little bit of cleaning up you really don't need 1 GB of space now, do you?

Contrast this with the list of files you use on a regular basic. Or maybe you want to share some files between home and office. So you rely on email, or you've gotten yourself a USB drive.

But Gmail Drive Extension gives us another option. With this, you can make your Gmail appear as another drive in Windows Explorer. So you can drag and drop files here to be accessed from any other computer you want!

A great way to get large files across to different PCs if you move around a lot. Sure beats lugging around CDs or any other form of storage!

Download it here

Design and Simulate Electronic Circuits

2004-12-15T08:56:00.000-08:00

Came across a software called TKGate (http://www.tkgate.org/) which can be used to design, test and simulate electronic circuits.

I think it'll be of tremendous use to hobbyists as complex projects are undertaken. Imagine testing the success of the whole project before buying a single resistor!!

via Slashdot

The OpenCD!!

2004-12-14T22:33:00.000-08:00

Finally, finally, a great CD with some of the best Open Source software!

This is absolutely a must have!

Just look at some of the programs included:

Productivity Software
OpenOffice, AbiWord, PDFCreator

Design Software
GIMP, Blender, ....

Internet/Networking
FireFox, Thunderbird, Mozilla suite, Gaim, TightVNC, ....

Go here for the complete list of programs or just click on the image above to go the website.

The Linux Rescue CD

2004-12-14T22:13:00.000-08:00

Well, sometimes things screw up. And that's when this Linux System Rescue CD would be of help.

The CD contains the following softwares:

GNU Parted is the best tool for editing your disk partitions under linux

QtParted is a Partition Magic clone for Linux.

Partimage is a Ghost/Drive-image clone for Linux

File systems tools (e2fsprogs, reiserfsprogs, xfsprogs, jfsutils, ntfsprogs, dosfstools): they allow you to format, resize, debug an existing partition of your hard disk

Sfdisk allows you to backup and restore your partition table

besides lots more!

Credit Card Mathematics!

2004-12-06T11:49:00.000-08:00

Usually, I only deal with PC tweaks and applications which help in the virtual world, but today I came across a freeware which might help even in the real world!

This particular software is a credit card calculator which gives you a single place to do all your credit calculations in. It tells you the duration of repayments and also suggests ways to make the most out of it, by making better repayments and consolidating all credit!

From their site,
"Credit Card Math will give you the knowledge you need to get yourself out of debt fast, save money and beat credit card issuers at their own game."

The download link is here

via The Red Ferret Journal

Aerial Photography for those who don't fly!!

2004-12-02T14:37:00.000-08:00

First there was the idea of putting a digital camera on a kite and then taking snaps! I found that itself very unique! And the snaps are quite amazing!

The How-To is in two parts - Part 1, Part 2.

All it takes is $1.50 chip from RadioShack and a soldering iron. Of course, you'll also need a digital camera (which you won't mind hacking!), a light one is an obvious choice!

In Part 2 of the How-To, you'll see a lot of other snaps as well. I was wondering if this could be used for other things as well. Like what about traffic monitoring, or taking pictures above a scene which cannot be reached manually. For a low cost option, I think this is truly remarkable!

And then today, I came across this site which tells how to put a digital camera on a remote controlled airplane to take photos! Of course, the control possible is more, so the quality of snaps are invariably way better!

Grouper & K:Drive

2004-11-28T09:48:00.000-08:00

I got to know about Grouper from Om Malik (He seems to get to know of some of the most amazing software!) as well as Slashdot. Around the same time I got to know about K:Drive, which was listed among the comments in Slashdot. I gave both a try.

Both are free and allow these functionalities:

Creation of a drive to share among friends. You can just add files into this directory (group) and then share the directory with everyone.
Password protect the directory
Browse through all the files before you download
Chat (IM) with the respective users

One thing that Grouper doesn't allow is download of music from these shared drives. K:Drive doesn't seem to have these limitations! Although, Grouper does allow the streaming of music across, which itself should be enough. Additionally, Grouper has a much slicker interface compared to K:Drive and makes the whole process of creating, managing and sharing files with friends way, way more easier!

The biggest advantage is of course, when sharing photographs, documents, music or files of any other nature, email is not the only thing that can be relied upon!

So, what the hell is a Pivot Table in Excel?

2004-11-19T23:14:00.000-08:00

Although I've written on Microsoft Excel tips earlier, I've always wondered what the hell a Pivot Table actually was.

It's a question I've been battling for ages. I'd start reading the help pages and soon fall asleep. So, today when I came across a Slashdot review of a book called "A Complete Guide to Pivot Tables", my curiosity was piqued!

Among all the comments in Slashdot, I found this excellent link to the introduction of Pivot Tables. Just copying and pasting the table displayed on the page into Microsoft Excel gave me a basic table to start with. And when I followed the steps, I was amazed to say the least. Quite an eye opener. Give it a shot!

Incidentally, the downloads page has some very useful stuff as well. Also, if you're a keyboard person like me and love shortcuts, you can also get the entire list of Microsoft Excel keyboard shortcuts here.

As an aside, OpenOffice, the free Office suite, also provides similar functionalities. Although the differences, quoting Slashdot, are -

"Granted, this book is specifically written for Microsoft Excel. However, OpenOffice, the free competitor from Sun MicroSystems, mimics most of the Microsoft Office suite. How does it compare, you ask? Well, OpenOffice has a similar facility to Pivot Tables, called DataPilot; however, DataPilot is primitive in comparison. For example, you must select the data to summarize, choose (from the menu bar) Data --> DataPilot --> Start, then drag the fields to the appropriate place in the diagram and click OK. Like Excel, you can freely move the fields between row, column, and data areas, and change the data operation from Sum to Min, Max, or a number of others. Unlike Excel, there isn't much more you can do. You don't have Page fields; you can't sort fields on their data; PivotCharts aren't represented; and there's no programming."

Do-It-Yourself Projector!

2004-11-14T20:32:00.000-08:00

This is a must-see for all those geeks who want to build their own Home Theater Projector -

Came across an excellent article from Tom's Hardware Guide on how to build your own DIY Projector. The whole thing, with the LCD and the overhead Projector works out to only $300!! That too with a lamp intensity of 3500 Lumens. Usually, the Home Theater Projectors available in the market start from $900, that too only for a 1000 Lumens. via Slashdot

But the whole thing got me thinking about having something like this even for schools! Usually schools in cities have an OHP lying somewhere, in which case the cost would go down even more. But even if it were to be built from scratch, then to get the whole thing as a package and done in bulk would reduce the cost.

Want to see Internet Explorer crash?

2004-11-09T22:04:00.000-08:00

Please, please! Too many questions get directed my way because of Internet Explorer. Why not just stop using it?

Here's one browser crash which was identified in March 1999 in IE 5.0. After all these years it has been fixed with a patch!

Of course, if you haven't patched up, your IE will still crash! To test, click here.

Switch to Opera or Firefox immediately!!

Thanks to Andrew.

Adobe Acrobat Speedup Tweak

2004-11-03T10:12:00.000-08:00

As we all know Acrobat Reader takes ages to open. This has been a pain ever since I've been using Acrobat!!

Today while going through one of the Slashdot posts, I came across this tweak for Acrobat.

Go to the Adobe Acrobat program directory (just do a Windows Search for the Acrord32.exe file and when you get the results, right-click on the file and select 'Open Containing Folder')

Create a folder called 'plug_ins_disabled' in that directory

From the folder 'plug_ins' remove everything EXCEPT the following to the 'plug_ins_disabled' folder

(If one or more of these files are not there don't worry!)

That's it!
Next time, your Acrobat Reader will open in a jiffy!!!!

Enjoy!

How to create your own Photomosaic

2004-10-27T14:59:00.000-07:00

Engadget has this great article about how to create your own photomosaic.

The program to use is Andrea Mosaic. This is a free tool which can create photomosaics out of all the snaps that is lying unused on your hard drive.

The complete article is here.

Microsoft Office Tips

2004-10-22T19:49:00.000-07:00

Microsoft Office Tips

Over the last many years, I've collected a bunch of links to which I keep referring to when it comes to Microsoft Office products.

This blog is a result of Siddharth Ghosh wanting a list of all Word Keyboard Shortcuts. But I'll list all Microsoft tips that I've collected.

The method to list all of Word's keyboard shortcuts is :

In Word, go to 'Tools -> Macro -> Macros' (or press Alt + F8)

In the Macros dialog box, from the 'Macros in:' dropdown listbox, select 'Word Commands'.

You'll get a list of macros in-built in Word in the box. Here scroll down to 'ListCommands', select it and click on 'Run' button.

You'll get a Message Box asking you whether you want the 'Current Keyboard Settings' or 'All Word Commands'. Choose your option and click 'OK'.

Word will create the document as chosen.

The best part about this is, you don't need to carry the printout all the time. Also, you can check not only the shortcut keys that you might have forgotten, but also the shortcut keys of the PC you're working on.

Now for the links:

Microsoft Word

Microsoft Excel

Stephen Bullen's Excel page

Microsoft Powerpoint

A Bit Better

numerous Powerpoint tips

PC Magazine provides lots of very interesting tips and tweaks at their Expert Advice Section. They relate not only to Office but to a whole lot of other things as well.

And lastly, Microsoft themselves provides a very, very useful place to dig out templates from. Whether you want to create business cards, letterheads, greeting cards, or any number of Microsoft Office objects, you'll find an enormous number of templates at the Microsoft Template Gallery.

Google for the PC (Although Blinkx does more!)

2004-10-14T13:50:00.000-07:00

Phew! Finally!

Google has introduced a search for the PC. This creates an index of all documents, which includes text files, Microsoft Word documents, Excel workbooks, and PowerPoint presentations, as well as email handled through Outlook or Outlook Express and AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) conversations & Web pages browsed in Internet Explorer! You can set it up in preferences as to what to search for.

One of the interesting things being that while doing a Google search on the web using Internet Explorer, you're also shown how many documents on your PC match the query!

The download link is here. And a review by O'Reilly here.

But honestly, I thought Blinkx already did all that, besides searching in News, Real media files and Adobe Acrobat documents.

My choice is still Blinx, because it's far more unobtrusive (I don't have to open a search window), as well as not needing Internet Explorer.

So, Google, I'll stick to Blnkx, thank you!

Some Simple Google Hacks

2004-10-08T23:48:00.000-07:00

Google has been doing some interesting stuff lately. There's plans of them coming out with a browser too. Hopefully in another couple of months!

They've already come up with a Google SMS feature, by which you can do searches through your cellphone. And besides SMS, the tools that have improved are Google Groups (beta). Information about the new Google groups is here

I find these more interesting & useful though -

Google Personalized Search
You create your profile, add your interests, and then Google filters search results to show items which match your profile first.

Site flavoured Search
If you have a website, then you can put a bit of html code in (given by Google) and then have Google searches in your website.

Search by Location (works only for USA). Just put in your zip code and give look for something interesting like 'single bars' or 'strip clubs'!! Also works for burger joints and laundromats.

Google Conversions
By the way, if you want to convert between units, like pounds to kilograms, or feet to meters, that works from the usual Google search page too. Like if you want to find out how fast you're travelling when you're going 70 mph, just enter "70 mph in kph". Or if you want to convert 7.5 inches to meters, try "7.5 inches in meters".

Google Glossary
This is the simplest and best of all. If you want the meaning of a word, phrase, acronym or abbreviation, just add the word 'define' in front of it and do a Google. The first result is your answer. Like put in the phrase "define double entendre" in the google search bar and click on search!

More interesting stuff at Google Labs

Getting bookmarks & favourites from one browser to another

2004-09-27T16:32:00.000-07:00

Maybe you use two browsers, one at work (because you have to) and another at home. Or maybe you still have some favourites left over at Internet Explorer before you discovered more interesting (and safe!) browsers. Whatever your reason, this site converts bookmarks from one browser to another easily. In fact it even adds the bookmarks to the browser window you're browsing from!

linkaGoGo

You can chose to transfer between any of these! - Internet Explorer, Netscape, Safari, Opera, MSN Explorer, AOL, Lynx & XBEL.

A slew of Open Source Software

2004-09-21T16:44:00.002-07:00

Open source software has been making quite a few inroads of late. They've also been increasing in their reliability and usability.

I discovered this PCWorld article which gives quite a list of open source software which can be used for every day tasks.

The list includes (Direct links here):
Mozilla - A complete internet application, with a web browser, eomail and chat client and HTML editing. (11 MB)

Firefox - A very good web browser which has been getting quite a few accolades of late. (4.5 MB)

OpenOffice - A complete Office suite including a Word processor, Spreadsheet, Presentation & Drawing software.

AbiWord - A very able Microsoft Word replacement.

Dia - A Microsoft Visio replacement.

GIMP - Adobe Photoshop Replacement

Filezilla - FTP Client

Jabberzilla - Instant Messenger

7-Zip - Winzip and WinRAR replacement

iPod Hacks (and one for the rest of us mere mortals!)

2004-09-18T20:21:00.000-07:00

A list of iPod hacks and tweaks -

Turn your iPod into a Universal Remote Control

Increase iPod battery life by 70%

Change your iPod battery easily (instead of sending it back to Apple!)

Turn iPod into your own private radio station. (This is especially useful when the neighbouring car at the lights is playing some horrible music on their radio and you can transmit your own music at that frequency so that your music starts coming from that car!!!)

And this is for those of us who don't own an iPod!!

Thanks to Engadget, Slashdot and Boing Boing

Vazu - Send phone numbers from your PC to your cellphone

2004-09-13T15:30:00.000-07:00

This is truly an amazing piece of software! You download this program called Vazu on your computer, and wherever you have a phone number appearing on your web page (sadly, Internet Explorer only!) you click on the Vazu icon next to it and the phone number is sent to your cell phone!

You can also select text from anywhere in your computer too! Just right-click on it and select 'Send selected text to my mobile phone'!! So if you've got directions in a mail, or some phone number that you want in a text file, you can send these too!

Needless to say, since this is a software which I'm recommending, it's free!!

As of now, it works only in the United States.

By the way, at the Vazu website, you can search for names of friends and give the city and state where they are staying to pull it up on the web page and have it sent to your phone. I tried with mine and it works!

Update: Vazu now also updates from Oulook Express. Additionally, it works in India too!

Del.icio.us

2004-09-13T11:17:00.000-07:00

del.icio.us

A long time ago (I think in the late 90s), there was all this talk going around how internet is going to change the world.

If you ask a dozen people what on the internet has changed their lives the most and name some names they would probably come out with three or four: Google, Ebay, Amazon, Yahoo & iTunes. Well, five years ago, Google was just beginning, and Ebay & Amazon were still not what they are today and it would have been Napster instead of iTunes.

Anyway, at that time, when all this talk was going around, one question that had popped into my head was: "What are the things you can do on the internet that you cannot do in the real world?"

And at that time, I didn't have any answers. Yes, there's a lot more communication happening because of the internet but is anything changing fundamentally?

Slowly, over the past few years I notice the real change happening. And it has to do with only two things - sharing and whittling information fast. And one seems to be tied to the other. Somehow, as more and more people share information, the whole becomes more than the sum of it's parts as links appear out of nowhere. Napster was the harbinger of bigger things to come.

As communication goes up, information sharing increases. Different organisations from the paleolithic era are trying to catch up with these technologies and are throwing everything they can get their hands on. Fortunately, they're losing.

Today, I came across another such beautiful example. A way of solving a number of problems at one shot.

One of the biggest problems I have when I move from computer to computer, is my 'Bookmarks' sections (or 'Favourites' for those using Internet Explorer). Every time I move to a new PC, I have to set them up all over again or import from my old PC. The bigger problem of not being able to use them when I'm on a public computer was to far out to be even considered!

del.icio.us solves this wonderfully. You register yourself, and from wherever you are, on whatever PC you're using, public or private, you can add and get to your bookmarks.

This, of course, is extremely, extremely, useful. But this is just the first step.

What del.icio.us also does is show how many other people share the same bookmark and you can view other's bookmarks as well! This might seem crazy at first, but as soon as you start using it, you realise how useful this is. You can get to more relevant information faster as you browser through other's categories which has the same bookmark as yours.

It's like pooling or resources and the overall outcome being more fruitful than all the individuals working independantly.

This has been done for internet radio as well, which provides a way you can select your type of music being broadcast by numerous people out there.

A similar thing happening on the internet telephony side is being done by Skype.

I think the true internet revolution is just beginning and it's happening in the background. As more and more people gain access to this wonderful medium this is going to become more valuable to each and every person dipping their toes in it!

Sequoia View and other Cushion Tree Maps

2004-08-03T09:32:00.000-07:00

Your hard drive space goes on decreasing and you're really wondering where all those bytes are disappearing. One way of searching for a big file would be to do a "Find" and give the size as greater than 5MB (for example) to search for big files. I prefer a different way of searching in terms of size, by something known as a 'Cushion Tree Map'.

Sequoia View is an example of 'Cushion Tree Map'. It's a different way of visualising data and information. For example, Sequoia View give a snapshot of any directory on your hard drive and lets you know how much space is taken by which files. You can add filters and colours to indicate only some kind of files. For example, you might only want to know the sizes of the documents, .doc files, on your drive, or the MP3s.

All the files get viewed as nestled rectangles. Clicking anywhere gets you down to the next level on the path. So, if you have a view of "c:\" first, when you click on a file, and it resides under "c:\windows\system\" then the click will take you to "c:\windows", and so on.

Sequoia View is, of course, free. But more importantly, it's a completely new way of looking at the same things, which was what attracted me to it in the first place.

Today, I came across a number of other cushion tree maps on the web. All of them give a very good visual representation of the world around us.

One of them is to see the current state of the markets. At the highest level it is by industry, and then you can zero down further.

Another one is of news around the world

And finally, this one is the best, it gives the map of the Current Google News. Clicking on a rectangle takes to to the corresponding article.

Teach your mouse some new tricks!

2004-07-29T18:01:00.000-07:00

I don't know how many of you are familiar with 'Mouse Gestures'. Users of the Opera browser will know about this. 'Mouse Gestures' is a new way of using the mouse. With your right mouse button pressed you write something on the screen. Depending upon what you write you can configure certain actions. For example, you can write 'E' by keeping your right mouse button pressed and Windows Explorer can open up. Or you can write 'W' and Microsoft Word can start. You can also close an application by writing 'C'. One of the most used mouse action is going back (previous page) and forwards (next page) in Internet Explorer. These can be done by writing a short hyphen going right (forwards) or going left (backwards). If all this stuff sounds Greek to you, I suggest you download this application and check it for yourself. I can guarantee that after a day of using it, you'll wonder how you managed so long without it!

Of course, the actions mentioned above are just some of the very, very basic things that can be done. And all actions are obviously configurable. You can also configure actions to be application specific, for example, writing an 'S' on the screen saves the document when you're in Word or Excel.

Mouse Gestures applications are many, but the most widely used is 'StrokeIt'. No, I'm not trying to be funny, that's what it is called! And it's free of course!

(an example of StrokeIt being used to open Microsoft Word by writing the letter 'W' on the screen!)

Softwares for Digital Photography...

2004-07-28T09:55:00.000-07:00

So, now you're thinking about buying a digital camera. Hmmmm. Have you thought of additional costs? Like more hard disk capacity on your PC, cost of a printer and lastly editing software?

Well, considering costs of hard drives having come down drastically, the first is usually not too much of a problem. Maybe your hard drive was getting full anyway. And as far as a printer goes, you can always have it printed from the neighbourhood print shop. But the biggest cost (besides these two) is getting a good photo editing software. And if you're not earning in Saudi Riyals, practically any of the top end softwares is going to cost you a pretty bundle.

The other cost which is hidden and people don't calculate up-front is the time you've got to be online just to upload the snap to your mail or your favourite website to be viewed by others. And for the others to stay online to download those huge snaps!

Well, there are a few softwares I've come across and have been using for some time which goes a long, long way in relieving these woes.

First, to view the snaps and to be able to do some minor editing, resizing and chopping, the best, the absolute best, software is called 'Irfanview'. Besides opening photos in practically any format, it's amazingly small and quick. The size of the file is just 803 KB, but the number of features it has is quite impressive.

By the way, if all that you want to do is resize your snaps and nothing more, the best is provided by Microsoft itself! It's Called 'Image Resizer', all you have to do is right-click on an image and choose what size you want to save in!

Now, that you're able to see what you've shot with your camera you want to do some major editing! You want to be able to put your snap in front of the Taj Mahal although you've never been there! Or you want to remove your mother-in-law from that wonderful snap of the two of you! Then you need that absolutely top quality software tool which only something like Adobe Photoshop can provide. But instead of keeping that niggardly guilt of having to get a pirated copy, you can use this wonderful software called GIMP. I am absolutely floored by this software. Besides being way more user-friendly than Adobe can ever wish to be, it's absolutely a pleasure to use. (Let me warn you though, while you're working on your snap, you'll have this DOS like window running at the back which shows what is happening. Don't panic though, just ignore it. It goes away when you close GIMP). GIMP requires that you have something called a 'GIMP runtime' on your computer, so here's a link to PCWorld's download site where it clearly puts these two downloads in sequence.

And finally, once you've made your modifications using Gimp and scaled your snap down to a manageable size using Irfanview or Microsoft Image Resizer, you want to upload your snaps. Of course, you can use Yahoo photos. But it is quite a problem to upload snaps one by one. So have a look at Photosite. This PhotoSite AlbumBuilder software allows you to add photos to your album, design your album layout, it's colours, it's fonts, practically everything! And once you're done, only then do you have to upload. So, you don't have to spend an unnecessarily long time online uploading snaps. The AlbumBuilder will take care of practically everything!

The other advantage of Photosite is that you get your own web address to which you can direct others too. Also, shared albums can be password protected so that it needn't be publicly shared. Also, you initially see only the scaled down pictures instead of the full sized ones.

The only catch that I can see with PhotoSite is that the free option allows you a maximum of 150 photos.

Here's the complete list of softwares I use...

Irfanview: The best image viewer available

Microsoft Image Resizer: The quickest way to resize images. (A lot of other interesting tools are also available at this site, if you are interested)

GIMP: The best image editing tool, in my opinion. PC World site for downloading GIMP runtime and installer.

Photosite

Is that your PC slowing down or your memory?

2004-07-25T18:40:00.000-07:00

Do you know what softwares are installed in your system? Yes? Think again. Maybe? Think some more! If you've had your system for over six months, there's every chance that you might not know what all has been installed; both by you and by others (which includes both people and software!).

I came across this utility today called Belarc Advisor and decided to install it and run it and see how well my memory serves me! I must be getting old, because my memory failed me miserably, when I saw the results! I realised I have many programs which I had forgotten I had installed but what was even worse, I couldn't figure out what some of the programs I had installed were there for in the first place! No wonder my system was slowing down! And all this while I was thinking that my reactions are getting faster with age! So I went into each of those pesky folders and deleted all those programs, which I couldn't remember having used in months.

Besides giving the details of the softwares and the ability of opening the folder in which they were lying hidden, I also got a plethora of information about my system. Really, really impressive, to say the least.

And of course, since it's a recommendation from a cheapskate like me, it's free!

Now I shouldn't forget that I've installed this. Maybe I'll tie a string around my finger.

Are you Gaim?

2004-07-24T01:33:00.000-07:00

You have numerous email ids, from the days when Yahoo had only a 6 MB file limit. And you've got numerous friends across different IDs. But if you want to chat with all of them you can't. Because Yahoo Messenger logs in only to one Id at a time. What a pain. And what about your MSN Messenger friends? Bigger pain. And what about your ICQ and AOL friends? Wow, the number of Messengers open could crash your system!!

The way out is by this ingenious program called Gaim. No, it's not an acronym, it's just Gaim.

After a disappointing stint with Trillian (another cross platform Chat utility), I was looking around for something for quite some time. Gaim accesses all your favourite messengers and even more than one of each Id. One of the most useful communication tools I've come across.

Plus, it being free helps too!

Better Browsing with Internet Explorer

2004-07-23T01:24:00.000-07:00

You only have Internet Explorer and you have your popup blocker but whenever you open some web pages, you have these horrendous flash movies distracting you to no end. Or your images are taking ages to download. Of course, there is a workaround - you can go to Tools->Internet Options->Advanced and deselect all the stuff you don't want. But what if you don't want all this to be disabled permanently? Just for that one offending page?

Bookmarklets to the rescue! These are small javascripts, which do whatever you want them to! So go over to Squarefree's Bookmarklets site and check them out. Especially, the 'Zap Bookmarklets' link. All the gray buttons you see will perform the necessary actions. All you need to do is either drag any of those buttons to your 'Favourites' or as I do, to my 'Links' (you need to have 'Links' enabled from View->Toolbars->Links. Internet Explorer will remind you of your insecurities but once you've overcome them, life's a breeze.

You can rename the links to your heart's contents. There are numerous bookmarklets available. Some of them are really useful, for example, selecting a piece of text and then hit the 'Google' bookmarklet and voila, you've got your Google search results!

Happy browsing!

How to install programs if you don't have Administration Rights on your PC at work!

2004-07-23T01:07:00.000-07:00

This is a trick I picked up today at office. I had a number of documents which I had downloaded (none of them illegal music, mind you!). And of course all of them during my lunch break (Yah right!). Anyway, I wanted to upload them to my Yahoo briefcase but because of the inherent 5 MB limit, I needed to zip them. Unfortunately, all zip softwares available for download for Windows have one major problem - they try to update the system registry and since I don't have administrator rights on my PC, I can't install them.

After scratching my head for quite some time to get around this conundrum and sifting through Sourcefourge, it came to me - I should use a Java based zip utility! Since they would be platform independent, they wouldn't need to do anything for which I would need administration rights!! Of course, the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) needs to be already installed, but hey that's usually on if your employer's are smart enough (or dumb enough!). So that's what worked finally. Here's the one I used - it's called 'BigZip'

Minimize Unnecessary Windows to System Tray!

2004-07-22T23:53:00.000-07:00

If you're like me and have lots of windows open, one of the biggest problems is that the Taskbar gets cluttered with bunches of windows being open. Additionally, Windows although the Taskbar has windows in the order they have been created, the Task Switcher (Alt+Tab) goes over the tasks in order of the windows that you have been working with. Which in my opinion is a major pain. So the easy way out is to be able to minimize the windows that you have currently put on hold into the System Tray near the clock.

The best utility (and free!) I've found is the '4T Minimize to Tray'. It's highly configurable with numerous options. You can put windows in the Taskbar; you can also hide windows that you don't want anyone to know you've got open! (Especially useful while updating your resume at work!)

Time Around the World

2004-07-10T21:26:00.000-07:00

How many times do you want to know the time in some other country? Maybe even at home? One of the most useful links that I always maintain on my 'Favourites' menu is Time and Date (www.timeanddate.com). I can also personalise this and get the time and date for the places I need to know regularly. Very useful!

Update: I recently discovered the Calendar feature which enables you to print calendars of the year or month in formats you can customize! You can also indicate holidays and phases of the moon!

BugMeNot - "Please Register to see contents" bothering you?

2004-07-06T20:25:00.000-07:00

There are numerous websites which ask for you to register before you can see the contents. So head over to Bugmenot, enter the URL and they will give you a userid and passwords for that site!! I tried a number of websites and they actually worked! What is more hilarious are the UserIds and the passwords!

If you don't want to bother going to bugmenot.com every time you need to do this, there is a link called 'bookmarklet' on the main Bugmenot page. DON'T CLICK ON IT. Just drag this to your Favourites in Internet Explorer, then once it's there it'll still show up as bookmarklet, so right-click on it and rename it to whatever you want. And the next time you're on a website which asks you to register, just go into your Favourites and select BugMeNot bookmarklet. Immediately, a new popwindow will appear with the UserId and password for the site you're at!!

Mailinator - A Simple Way of Avoiding Spam

2004-07-06T20:08:00.000-07:00

This is a brief from the Mailinator Main Page. It's self explantory, so no smart-ass comments required from me!

Get enough SPAM lately? Have you ever gone to a website that asks for your email address for no reason (other than they are going to sell it to the highest bidder so you get spam forever)?

Welcome to Mailinator(tm) - Its no signup, instant anti-spam service. Here is how it works: You are on the web, at a party, or talking to your favorite insurance salesman. Whereever you are, someone (or some webpage) asks for your email. You know if you give it, you'll be on their spam list. On the other hand, you do want at least one message from that person. The answer is to give them a mailinator address. You don't need to sign-up. You just make it up on the spot. Pick jonesy@mailinator.com or bipster@mailinator.com - pick anything you want (up to 15 characters before the @ sign).

Later, come to this site and check that account. Its that easy. Mailinator accounts are created when mail arrives for them. No signup, no personal information, and when you're done - you can walk away - an instant solution to one way spammers get your address. Its an anti-spam solution for everyone. The messages are automatically deleted for you after a few hours.

Let'em spam.

SnipURL - Tired of Long URLs?

2004-07-06T20:00:00.000-07:00

So, every time you send a link to somebody, your email smartly chops it up, so that when your friend actually sees it, (s)he sees some other Godforsaken page.

One easy way out - SnipURL. Just put in the long URL and give it a nickname (if you want to), or othewise just snip the URL. A nice, short URL will appear which can be sent, even memorised easily!

If you register, you can save your snipped URLs as well. An example of one of the great uses would be to giving directions to your place to your friends! Just get to the corresponding address using Yahoo Maps or Mapquest and once you've zeroed in on your place, snip the URL which appears in the addressbar using SnipURL and give it a nickname like address or some such. You can then just give the URL, even over the phone!