Technology freaks me out!!!

SimpleText : An online notepad

noreply@blogger.com (Tyrant) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:21:00 +0000

SimpleText.ws stores your text and keeps it synced between your work, home, and devices like the iPhone. Unlike manual syncing, SimpleText.ws merges your changes so you'll never lose data. It uses your google username and password to log in.

Things to be noted.
SimpleText is not a file sharing platform. You can write notes or todo lists, but not sensitive data like credit card information. WriteRoom for iPhone fully syncs with your SimpleText.ws documents.

Click here to access the home and for source code, visit this page.

RocketDock : An Mac-style application launcher for Windows

noreply@blogger.com (Tyrant) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 17:50:00 +0000

RocketDock is a smoothly animated, alpha blended application launcher. It provides a nice clean interface to drop shortcuts on for easy access and organization. With each item completely customizable there is no end to what you can add and launch from the dock. With its taskbar support your minimized windows can appear as icons on the dock. This allows for better productivity and accessibility.

Features

Minimize windows to the dock
Real-time window previews in Vista
Running application indicators
Simple drag-n-drop interface
Multi-monitor support
Supports alpha-blended PNG and ICO icons
Icons zoom and transition smoothly
Auto-hide and Popup on mouse over
Positioning and layering options
Fully customizable
Completely Portable
ObjectDock Docklet support
Compatible with MobyDock, ObjectDock, RK Launcher, and Y'z Dock skins
Runs great on slower computers
Unicode compliant
Supports many languages and can easily be translated
A friendly user base :)
And best of all... its FREE!!!

Oxelon Media Converter helps to convert media through Context Menu

noreply@blogger.com (Tyrant) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 17:47:00 +0000

Oxelon Media Converter is one of the few video/audio encoding tools that can use four threads to take advantage of quad-core multi-processor systems. It integrates seamlessly with Explorer and allows you to keep working with files as usual.

How to use.
Right-click on the any files and choose "Oxelon - Convert to Video" or "Oxelon - Convert to Audio" from the menu, and select the media format. In this way you can quickly launch Oxelon Media Converter with the specified files and with the defined destination format. After that, you just click "Conversion" and the process is started!

[image from http://www.oxelon.com]

Click here to access the media converter page.

Cocodle : One smile Per Search

noreply@blogger.com (Tyrant) — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 17:00:00 +0000

Cocodle is a search engine that contributes towards helping disabled and orphaned children across the world. They guarantee that we will get the same search result quality as we get from Google as their search is powered by Google itself (Google Custom Search).

Their Objective

The search that we do through Cocodle.com will contribute towards helping disabled and orphaned children across the world. They emphasize on helping differently-abled and underprivileged children, first locally and then globally.

You can access their homepage here.

Have a nice search!

norbt : Tool to pass information securely.

noreply@blogger.com (Tyrant) — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:22:00 +0000

A norbt (short for no robot) is a web page with encrypted text. The key to encrypt and decrypt the text is the answer. When you create a norbt you decide the text, title, question and answer(key) for your norbt. Anybody can create a norbt. Evey norbot has a unique link that you can put any where.

Where it comes handy?

If you want to share information over the internet.
Protect the personal information from Web Crawlers.
Just as a game

Click here to access the homepage

Funny postgres query

noreply@blogger.com (Tyrant) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 17:02:00 +0000

Two days back I was facing a problem from one of the live server. The data entered by user with a minute difference, entered database with a difference of one hour. I burned my midnight oil, to figure out the reason and then to find a solution.

Finally I found the culprit. It was a funny postgres sql query. :-). Are you able to find the difference between the two queries?

insert into testtest values (to_timestamp('2009-11-11 05:32:46','yyyy-MM-dd
HH:MI:SS'))

insert into testtest values (to_timestamp('2009-11-11 05:32:46','yyyy-MM-dd HH:MI:SS'))

Actually both the queries are same, but in first query there is a line break in the format.
Query 1
On executing the first query the data inserted was "2009-11-11 02:46:00". Difference of seconds, shifted to minutes and that of minutes to hours.

Query 2
On executing the second query, I got the expected normal result. "2009-11-11 05:32:46".

I felt this little bit weird, but so relieved after finding the problem. We were storing all the queries in XML file and did a XML formatting of the file. So every query was indented with proper line breaks.

jPlayer : jQuery audio player plugin

noreply@blogger.com (Tyrant) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:23:00 +0000

What is jPlayer
jPlayer is a jQuery plugin that allows you to:

play and control audio files in your webpage
create and style an audio player using just HTML and CSS
add sound effects to your jQuery projects
stream faster using HTML5 and alternative ogg format support

All of this with HTML5 support for compliant browsers that allow mp3 or ogg format, while supporting other browsers using mp3 format with no visible Flash.

Click here to access the web page.

Advanced SystemCare PRO Edition: The free giveaway as a ThanksGiving gift.

noreply@blogger.com (Tyrant) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 09:04:00 +0000

Advanced SystemCare by IOBit is an application to speed up and protect your PC. It has performance tune up, spyware detection and cleaning functions. This powerful and award-winning precision tool fixes stubborn errors, cleans out clutter, optimizes internet and download speeds, ensures personal security and maintains maximum computer performance automatically. Advance SystemCare comes in two versions.

Advanced SystemCar Free
Advanced SystemCare PRO

Click here to view the comparison chart and to download.

As a ThanksGiving gift, IOBit is giving Advanced SystemCare Pro as free giveaway. It will be available within 24 hours randomly from November 20 to 27.

The giveaway page can be found here.

Get your photos into cartoons

noreply@blogger.com (Tyrant) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 07:13:00 +0000

Are you flexing your muscles to get an ArtWork done in Photoshop? No need, BeFunky will do it for you. BeFunky is a web application, that can create various kinds ArtWorks. Below are the some screenshots taken from BeFunky.

Tab Progress Bar 0.6 : A Firefox addon

noreply@blogger.com (Tyrant) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 16:57:00 +0000

Firefox 3.7 comes with a page-loading progress bar on each tab. Those who want the same feature on their Firefox 3.5, there is an addon called Tab Progress Bar.

If you want to change the color of progress bar, please follow the steps.

Open your chrome folder. If you don't know where that is, read this: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Firefox Once you're in the profile folder, open the chrome folder :)
Make a new file called userChrome.css
Paste the following code into that file (be sure to replace YOURCOLORHERE):

@namespace url("http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul");
.tab-progress > .progress-bar { background-color: YOURCOLORHERE !important; }

If you are not sure how to type a color, check this out.
Restart Firefox.

Click here to install the addon.

Download SnagIt 7.2.5 with free license

noreply@blogger.com (Tyrant) — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 05:03:00 +0000

SnagIt is one of the famous screen capturing tools available in the market. Using SnagIt you can capture a region on screen, or a web page or even a scrolling window. SnagIt is powerful enough to edit the screenshots taken in its studio, you can add blur effects or torn edges.

But SnagIt comes with a price. Here I will explain how to get it free. Currently it’s 9.1.3, but the 7.2.5 give you almost similar features without any cost.

How to download it free.

Visit the Avanquest Advent Calendar 2008 offer page.
Click on date numbered 13.
Click on Télécharger gratuitement button and fill out the form that pops up.
Click Continuer when done.
A serial key of SnagIt 7.2.5 will be displayed on the screen.
Download SnagIt v7.2.5 from the developer’s website and Install it.
When you Run SnagIt, you should be prompted with a window telling you to either use the trial version, purchase it, or unlock it. Click “Unlock” and fill in your registration information.

You can read the original post from Technically Personal here.

Folder Vanity Remover

noreply@blogger.com (Tyrant) — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 15:56:00 +0000

Folder Vanity Remover is a small utility to remove empty folder. This is a quite simple program to use. Select the folder either by typing or selecting by a folder dialogue box or drag and drop a folder.

How it works

Given folder and all sub-folders will be checked recursively for contents. Those that are empty will be deleted.
Number of scanned and deleted folders will be reported.

Note: The given folder itself will also be deleted if it ends up being empty.

Click here to visit the homepage.

FileHippo helps you to update your softwares

noreply@blogger.com (Tyrant) — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 11:08:00 +0000

Have you installed many softwares? Did you ever struggle to find the updates for your softwares? FileHippo is here for you. FileHippo is a small utility that can scan your computer for softwares and find their latest updates.

How it works
FileHippo update checker will scan your computer for installed softwares, check the versions and send the information to the server to find if there is any new releases. The results will be displayed on your browser. FileHippo finds the updates for the softwares that are known to FileHippo server. But they have details of most commonly used softwares.

FileHippo get installed on any machine that runs on windows Vista, XP, 2003, 2000, ME or 98. You need to have the .NET framework 2.0 or later.

In action

FileHippo pops up, when it finds the updates on server.

The results are shown in your default browser.

To visit the homepage click here.
Click here to download the software.

GMinder : A gentle reminder for Google Calendar

noreply@blogger.com (Tyrant) — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 06:19:00 +0000

GMinder is a small program done by Reflective Code. As the name suggests, GMinder is reminder utility that integrates with Google Calendar. It is a small program that runs in your system tray and pops up a reminder if any due occurs.

GMinder is very easy to configure and use. After downloading you have to set the username and password to your google accout.

Event List

Double clicking on the system tray icon will open this window where you can see all your events.

Clicking on the event will take you to Google calendar where you can see the details.

How to set up

Once GMinder is running, right click on the system tray and select Calendars. On loading it will be empty. To add new calendar, provide your google account details by clicking on 'Set' Button.

Login Window

Once username and password is set, click on the download button and wait for the calendar to download.

Option Window
[Note : If you face any problem with connection or error, please refer the screenshot below]

Quick View

Once installed, Single click on the GMinder icon on system tray and it shows a summary of events.

Tip: For faster GMinder startup time, run ngen.bat (found in the installation directory).

PhotoJoy : Helps your photos turn to PhotoToys, 3D Screensavers and Wallpaper Collages

noreply@blogger.com (Tyrant) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 06:24:00 +0000

PhotoJoy is a cool application that turns your photos into 3D Screensaver or Wallpaper Collages. PhotoJoy uses Flickr API, so you can set wallpaper or screensaver using Flickr API.

What PhotoJoy can do

Wallpaper Collages – The perfect way to relive your favorite moments
3D Screensavers – Make your photos look spectacular
PhotoToy Widgets – Display your photos in fun ways
Professional photos – 1000’s of them
So much fun and so easy to use

Collages

You can make Collage wallpapers in Collage Section. Choose from different templates shown. By default, PhotoJoy comes with first two templates, rest we have to download.

PhotoToys

PhotoToys are cool gadgets shown on your desktop.

Screensavers
PhotoJoy also provides nice Screensavers.

Conclusion

I am not impressed with the PhotoToys. They are nuisance at times. Whenever they are refreshed, immediately they will be on top of all windows and becomes a distraction factor. Another thing I hated is the online installer. PhotoJoy do not have an option for offline installer.

PhotoJoy is absolutely free and comes from Incredimail Ltd.
Visit Home page http://www.photojoy.com.

How can you remember passwords easily?

noreply@blogger.com (Tyrant) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 15:38:00 +0000

Today internet is robust and a playground of phishers. Each and every people are part or users of various services like email, file sharing or social networks. Most of the people are following / using a single password for every account, thus making themselves vulnerable.

How can you have a multiple password and remember them easily. There are lot of ways you can achieve this. But I follow the below.

A pattern that you remember always.

Let us divide the password into three parts.

Part 1: Some food / place you like most.
Part 2. Word to make a sentence.
Part 3: Service you are about to use.

Most Secure password should be a mix of Upper and lower cases, special Characters and number. So use them to make a proper sentence.

Let us consider Part 1 as 'Hotdog', Part 2 as 'is password for' and Part 3 as service say 'gmail'. Now the completed sentense is 'Hotdog is password for gmail.'. After replacing with symbols and numbers, it is 'Hotdog$password4gmail.' (Hotdogspassword4gmail, s being replaced with a look like '$'). A hard to guess phrase.

This method is good for remembering the password recovery questions also. Questions like 'who is your favourite author?' can be answered as 'Hotdog$answer4author.'.

Hope this will help you to create a strong and hard to guess password.

Firefox addon for TinEye Image Search

noreply@blogger.com (Tyrant) — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 07:55:00 +0000

Tineye is an reverse search engine. It helps you to find the details of an image. You can submit an image to TinEye and they will provide you the results like the source of image, where it is been used, how many different version of it exists irrespective of the resolution.

Now they have released plugin for Firefox and IE and you can find it here.

How to use
After installing, right click on any image, select the 'Search Image on TinEye'.

The results will be opened in a new window.

To know more about TinEye or Image searching, please read this.

Twitter for firefox

noreply@blogger.com (Tyrant) — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 06:33:00 +0000

I used to tweet lot of information whatever I see in internet. So every time it was tough to short the URL by going bit.ly (which I prefer) and open twitter and paste the short URL. These are the following addons I am using to tweet in different manner from my Firefox.

Echofon (Formerly TwitterFox)

here

Easy updation of status to twitter.
Shows unread tweet count on firefox
Multiple accounts can be added

InstantTweets

here

Shorten URL

Long URL Please

here

Hope you will also have good time in tweeting with this Firefox addons.

Why 'No' to Google Chrome Frame?

noreply@blogger.com (Tyrant) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 11:56:00 +0000

What is Google Chrome Frame?

Recently Google released one more product called 'Google Chrome Frame'. Google Chrome Frame is a plug in developed by Google to bring Google open web technologies and speedy JavaScript engine to IE. Google Chrome Frame replaces the IE rendering engine with Google Chrome engine. Thus the web sites you visit, will decide which render engine to use. There are mixed responses about the Google Chrome Frame in the industry. Many forums and discussion threads, I saw large number of people supporting Google chrome frame as it makes IE work faster. But I cannot agree with that argument.

What Google wants?

Its pretty clear that Google is not keen on making IE a better browser, but trying to kill it by slow poisoning. What benefit it brings to Google by replacing the rendering engine? Its nothing but, slowly gaining control over the browser market share once owned or ruled by IE.

An end user's perspective

With Google Chrome Frame, the web is going to be more confusing to an end user. It will be really hard to maintain the information. One set information he saved will be in one engine, and some are in Google chrome. It could even lead to a confusion as your browser behaviour is controlled now by web sites, not by you. You will feel embarrassed to see none of your settings like passwords, security setting and other things are working when you visit a site that uses different engine. It will be really hard to an end user to maintain the information across the rendering engine.

A Developer's perspective

A never ending problem of a web site / web application developer is to make it a cross browser site / application. In this regard Google Chrome is a good concept. While developing the site / application, I could make my site to always load in Google chrome engine if installed otherwise ask the user to install it.

But at the end of the day, I am an end user who have a lot of information bundled into my browser. Why should I take my chance?

Convert your favourite youtube video into audio using Dirpy

noreply@blogger.com (Tyrant) — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 06:36:00 +0000

Have you ever wanted to rip the videos from youtube? There are lot of utilities that help you in this regard, but Dirpy is little different. Dirpy is an online studio for ripping the youtube videos. Open any youtube video in Dirpy and convert it into an audio file of high quality.

Highlights of Dirpy

You can specify the time frames, so dirpy will exactly cut in between the times.
You have an option to specify the quality of ripping.
Above all, Dirpy comes with an ID3 tag editor.

You can try it yourself, here.

Have a nice ripping experience.

URL Shortners - The risks involved

noreply@blogger.com (Tyrant) — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 06:43:00 +0000

Most of the people on twitter, tweets with shortened URLs. Have you ever thought of the risk involved in those links? Since the shortened URLs won't give you much details about the page you are about view, you might be fooled. We cannot blame twitter or shortened URL providers for the cause, so be cautious rather than be a fool later.

What should I do

Avoid clicking
Long URL addons

Long URL Please

Click here to read what Symantec says.

Google Sidewiki - Pros and Cons

noreply@blogger.com (Tyrant) — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 06:55:00 +0000

Google added one more feature to their basket, "Google Sidewiki". Google Sidewiki is a browser sidebar to put comments or annotate on web pages. All the annotations or comments are public and can be viewed by any user who has installed Google Sidewiki. Comments can be shared using twitter, Facebook or by mailing.

What I like

if you want to comment on a particular line on a page or a blog, rather than putting a comment after the post.
Comment on a page, where comments section is not available

What I hate

If you want to use Sidewiki, you have to install Google Toolbar. I felt like you are buying an apple tree just for an apple. Amit of Digital Inspiration explains how to install Sidewikiwithout Google Toolbar. Click here to read it.
Google tries to centralize the comments into their cloud. They are kind of taking comments on my blog to Google cloud.

What I don't understand

As I said earlier, Google centralizes the comments to their cloud, making me lose my control over the comments on my page. How can I moderate the SideWiki entries on my page? Should I go to Google and say this particular comment hurts my feeling or insults me?

History Tree addon & Application Launcher for FireFox

noreply@blogger.com (Tyrant) — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 06:52:00 +0000

History Tree

here

How To

[Screen Shot used from addon site]

External Application Buttons mod for Firefox

How to

here

Note : This is an experimental Addon.

Add Events to your Blogger

noreply@blogger.com (Tyrant) — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 06:48:00 +0000

Do you have an event you'd like to invite your readers to? Blogger has released a new Gadget one of the feature as a part of 10 anniversary. The new gadget is available as one of the featured gadget.
How to use
Goto Customize, then Layout. Click on Add a widget. Now you can find Events under google featured gadgets.

The gadget syncs with your google events and displays as free or busy with any other events.

The gadget allows your readers to indicate whether they are going to attend the event, and lets them see which of their FriendConnect friends will be there too. In addition, anyone with a Google Calendar account can simply click a link to have that event added to their Google Calendar.

Shows as I am free.

Conflict. I already have an event on the same day.

Facebook allows you to tag friends in Status & Post

noreply@blogger.com (Tyrant) — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 11:24:00 +0000

Facebook already have the feature to tag your friends in Photos and Videos. Now they are about to roll out a new feature where you can tag your friends in Status and Post.
While posting the Status and you want to add a friend's name, just add an '@' symbol.



Going for a shopping with @friendName.

It will bring down the menu of your friends, pages, events, applications or groups and add them. Currently there is no support for Friends from applications. Note that the '@' symbol won't be present in the Status or post.
The tagged from will be notified with an email or by post on their wall. This feature is not yet moved to live version. But may be in a couple of week, it will be ready.