'Bunch of me

Quiz-b-gone: No more 'Quizzes' on your Facebook frontpage

2009-04-23T13:06:00.007+06:00

I came across this amazing Greasemonkey script for Firefox today that blocks off all those pesky quizzes and 3-rd Party application updates that your friends are littering your frontpage with. No more would you have to tolerate mindless questionnaires like "Which herbivorous rodent were you in your past life?" or front-page updates that involves a contact of yours finding which movie villainess she resembles.

What this script does is it filters your front-page news items, strips them off the 3-rd Party quiz/apps nuiscense and leaves you with news items of/related to original Facebook apps (like status updates,photo uploads,event updates etc ).

Here's what you should do:

* Install Greasemonkey.
* Install "Facebook Purity". Don't worry it's a harmless javascript file. Tested and cerfied.
* Browse Facebook minus the annoyance.

Power Tip: The author of the script suggest you keep an eye on the script homepage for regular updates. I know I sure will.

* Update: It turns out, "Facebook Purity", the above mentioned blessing of a Greasemonkey script even goes as far as showing how many 'app msgs' has been blocked ! Neat, right? The blocking notification is available on the top-right corner of your FB frontpage. Here' s a screencap under my A/C:

Posted via email

Downloading books from "Google" for free, and a few casual words

2009-03-25T01:19:00.002+06:00

First of all, first thing first , from now on I'm going to discontinue my previous 'formal' attitude towards blogging . I've had it with long, arduous and boring blog posts that stresses over and over again the more 'subtle' aspects of the subject in question and experiments with English lit. The NEW ME would post short, possibly humorous posts. These so called 'short stints' would be far more casual and 'regular' ( I must stress ) than before.

Ok, onto the actual jig. The other day I was looking for a way to download "Spell of , an awesome book on the Sundarbans. After a number of nudges here and there, I was left with a few options. The first 'obvious' choice was the Google Book Downloader. Then I found out that I had to install the latest version of the .NET framework which I was somewhat allergic to. So scratch that.

Then I did what I always do when left with no other option with which to exploit/manipulate web-service like "Google Books", turn to Greasemonkey. It turns out that there's a very potent GS script out there (also ironically called Google Book Downloader ) that might help freeloaders like myself to do our bidding. Here's how you can use Greasemonkey and a compatible script to download your favourite book from Google Books :

1) Install Greasemonkey if you haven't already.

2) Install the Google Book Downloader script. Don't worry, this piece of JS-code is fang-less.

3) Browse to the book of your choice in Google Books. A "Download this Book" dialogue (shown below) will become visible. Click that fat, pale button.

4) The dowload will progress (shown below). Once done, you can now download individual pages as .png files or use the FlashGot extension to download all pages at once.

Productivity Tip: If you want to make a nice PDF file out of the image files downloaded, I recommend using doPDF which happens to be an excellent 'anything to pdf converter' and its totally free!

Phew, who knew writing 'small' can be tiresome as well :(

Posted via email

Crank that UDMA setting to boost-up your pc

2009-02-12T14:10:00.002+06:00

Experiencing violent upsurge in the CPU usage characteristics of your PC ? Browsers, word processors and other everyday applications/softwares taking days to start up or respond ? Chances are, you haven’t unleashed a special, ‘superpower’ tucked hidden in the architecture of your hard disk drive. Its called the UDMA (* U stands for ‘ultra’, how trite, right?) mode. It should’ve been the ~~default~~ only option automatically selected by Windows XP during a fresh installation due to its vast superiority in direct memory access & bus speed support of over 16 Mbit/sec, but unfortunately they had to include an exception. Whenever you install a Windows OS and it decides (with great margin of error) that your ATAPI drive is not suitable for UDMA (when in actuality every HDD built after 2002 is), the OS would revert back to the ancient PIO ( Programmed Input / Output ) mode . Now, there’s nothing wrong with PIO except the fact that its slow as a slumdog trillionaire (not to be mistaken with an analogous movie title) and as mr duck puts it “Nothing built this century should be using PIO.”

Anyway, if you are experiencing mysterious cpu-hogups download and run Process Explorer, a free diagnostic tool from Microsoft SysInternals, which happens to be a much more potent tool than the windows task manager (what are the odds of that, right?…plenty). After running process-exp, look for a process called ‘hardware interrupts’ on the left hand bar of the screen. If the process is present on the 1st column and eating up a lot of memory (see the 3rd column titled ‘cpu’), then ‘presto’- thats your problem .

There are some registry hacks available on other sites that requires you to delete a few key registry entries, but my personal recommendation is that its better not to mess with the registry unless absolutely necessary . The registry is a fragile thing and can break down easily. So here’s a totally safe way to do the good deed:-

1) Go to device manager (right click on the My computer icon> Properties > Hardware.

2) Expand the IDE ATA/ATAPI controller section ( press the + )

3) Right click on the Primary IDE channel (if you want to enable UDMA in your secondary drive too, you can repeat this process) and go to Properties > Advanced Setting

4) Now here’s the trick, regardless of what it says in the “Transfer Mode” section (even if “DMA if available” option is displayed ), you’ll have to manually reset and force XP to use UDMA. To do that, first select PIO only in the box for transfer mode for both Device 0 and Device 1. Then confirm by pressing the ok button

5) Then go back to the device manager screen again, right click on Primary IDE channel as before and go to advanced setting once again. Only this time, select “DMA if available” in both transfer mode boxes. Confirm your selection by pressing ok. You’ll see “Ultra DMA Mode 2” appearing in the current transfer mode box.

6) Restart and bask in the glory of your faster, more responsive system :)

This hack was extracted from an official Microsoft bulletin addressing the PIO/DMA issue (or as it is known in popular folklores, the “XP DMA BUG”)

Tags :Windows,Microsoft,XP,DMA,UDMA,PIO,HDD,Hack,Process,Explorer,performance

Posterous is awesome

2009-02-05T18:22:00.008+06:00

Thanks to Posterous, I can now update my blog-posts/status messages/twits/flickr-posts/tumbles and anything else with a simple email. Even raw markup used in the mail would get converted to actual HTML, posterous would also host any and I mean "ANY" media file attached with it :) Images, mp3s,videos,pdfs,documents you name it. They'll host all your files without (and I quote) "..you moving even a finger". They also have a sweet email syntax recognition system. For example, any email sent to #{text}@posterous.com would get posted on the services with url that contains that specific text. Like #mybd@posterous.com would get posted to my Flickr account ( http://flickr.com/photos/mybd ) but not to my Facebook profile. RAD! This means I can finally compose blog posts from my mobile with custom HTML. Not that it was impossible before, just not as effortless :)

Also in the review queue was Woopra, a new gen website analytic service. I got an exclusive beta invite couple of weeks ago and decided to check it out today. Their 'free' package is still down and undergoing updates, however what I was able to find out was that they do mean business. This is what they had to say in their FAQ section , I liked the fact that they weren't being vague about the whole 'beta-testing' fad.

Ask and receive answers in your inbox with Snap Ask

2009-01-04T21:18:00.002+06:00

Imagine a situation when your internet connection is recovering from a chronic phase, the bandwidth is still dwindling, but your boss/engineering-course demands an article on Puritanical Analysis of the Mughal Empire. Now in normal times, we would not hesitate frolicking here and there (i.e., Wikipedia) for writing materials. But remember, your internet is down, or at the very least in ‘rehab’. Now you are truly in a fix right?

What about the time you’ve come across a colloquial figure of speech and want to know if the Irish drunkard beside you called you ‘mighty’ or just cursed your entire family tree (READ: Urbandictionary), but hey you only have a mobile phone and that special page on Urbandict isn’t loading quite well. Is that frustrating or what?

Well, just Snap Ask your questions then. Snap Ask is a web service that delivers freshly baked answers to your dire questions in a jiffy. All you got to do is send them a mail at Ask@SnapAsk.com with a proper subject line. In a prompt reply-mail you’ll receive your desired answer. They’ve introduced a technique that involves putting special ‘commands’ or ‘’key word(s)’ in your mail’s subject. These commands are ‘service specific’, meaning to use a different service like Wikipedia or Urbandictionary or perhaps Google Define, you’ll have to use different command lines. The format of your subject line would be something like < command > + subject/question/query

Where the command section (without < > signs) is to be replaced by ‘wiki’ (for wikipedia) or ‘news’ (for news articles). The whole list of commands is available on the homepage.

Neat eh? Who says ‘Email’ is a dead technology? Evidently, Snap Ask can prove to quite the friend when you are down at home with heaps of homework and a sick sick internet connection.

>> Visit Snap Ask.

Tags :Snap Ask,Webapp,Google,Wikipedia,Services,Urban,Information

JPGmag is going down

2009-01-02T18:03:00.005+06:00

Just breaking my ‘blogger’s block’ to announces that one of my all time favourite photography sites, JPGmag is going down the drain. Apparently it seems, the economic downterm in the U.S has started to bite the world wide web hard. Today around 1:10 pm I received an email, a particularly grim one, from Laura Brunow Miner, the editor in chief of JPGmag. In the text that followed was the sad tale of a publishing company who tried to make a difference in the photography community by making this art form something that even commoners like myself can take a muck at and receive humble words at the end of the day. But with the whole economy in shambles, it was not long before they started realizing he inexplicable truth that they to let their venture go.

JPG is offering a chunk of their old archives for download. You can visit the archive here and relive some of the memories. There’s also an old, unofficial Flickr group for the JPGers that you can take an account of.

* Update: Official announcement and goodbys are on the blog

* Update 2: Hey, there might be hope for JPGmag after all. They're currently considering a few acquisition offers. If the deal seals off, we can hopefully see a few more issues of JPG.

Tags:code,photography,jpgmag,magazine,ezine,economy,USA,U.S economy,WWW,web-meme,photos,camera,Nikon,Canon

Annoyed by Imageshack's free Torrent downloader ?

2008-11-22T20:00:00.002+06:00

Ok first things first, I’m back..from the dead..again..after a hefty battle with term projects and presentations. Sorry for all the, err.. ‘disappointments’ when you found that your feed reader didn’t contain fresh new content from ‘Bunch of Me’. I promise to be a good boy from now on.

Now onto my new post. Some of you are already familiar with Imageshack’s o-so-awesome torrent downloader service, right? If not, let me explain in short what it is then. “Tor”- is the answer to the prayers of many internet users out there whose bandwidth scales never venture into the Mbit/sec mark. Who have to wait for hours, or even days to download a single..AHEM! “New Movie Release”. Anywho, TOR brought sanity back into the world of torrent downloads. With imageshack’s fast servers, it would download any big torrent file in and instance and then offer you a nice, high speed, resumable http link. Sounds oddly humble right?

Wrong.

There are always catches with things that glitter. TOR too had (or still ‘has’ to be precise) its downside. After going through the delusional phase when you are just getting ready to stop praising the CEOs of Imageshack and start your first actual download, the service presents you with a screen that I’d like to call “The insanely irritating Nag-screen no 1”.

What this window basically tells you is that, your ‘free’ account has limits, you should realize that and wait for a decent/off-peak hour to start your downloads when the paid members aren’t busy downloading ~~you know what~~. Offcourse a fast solution to your headache is to buy an actual ‘Paid Monthly Package’’ that would, in their words ‘Prioritize your downloading needs’.

But hey, we are cheapskate, blood-sucking nerds, right? Why spend when we can bend the rules of the consumerist cy-economists ? If you believe in the same, then hop on.

The trick to bypass this screen (not really, ‘bypass’ .Its more in the line of ‘get rid of’) is to keep refreshing the page until grumpy gnomes in charge of keeping the servers tidy give up and lets you in (meaning, allows your download to start). However, at times it can take over 20~22 reloads/refreshes to get er’ done, which to be frank, becomes quite annoying after a awhile. What to do ? Why not take help from our good ole’ extendible buddy , “Firefox’? As it turns out, FF has an extension called “Reload Every” that lets you automatically reload any given page after a preset time. You can customize the “Time to wait before a reload”. Just install the extension and when the so called ‘ Insanely Irritating Nag-Screen no 1” appears, simply right-click > select reload every___ (fill in the blanks with the time-lag you wish) > sit back and relax. (see the screen-caps below for reference)

In due time your downloads would resume :) Everyone’s happy now right ?

E.T.A of death for this trick, “VERY SOON!” Hope no one from Imageshack reads my blog.

Links:

Download Reload Every 3.0.0 [ Direct link ]

Reload Every on FF Addons page.

Explanation of Imageshack’s Torrent Downloader [ via :TorrentFreak ]

Reddit should've "made my day" a month ago

2008-10-11T18:11:00.001+06:00

This comment on a popular reddit article published a month ago about a NSFW posts not being properly tagged made my day :)

Dang, I wish I had seen it in due time . That almost had me rolling in the floor. The whole thread is full of nerdy, web-memes and pop-culture references like the now legendary trend of “ Rickrolling ”

Click here to read the SFW reddit post about a possibly NSFW tagging rule violation (You’ve been warned! Its fully of Über-nerdy web-antics and memes).

Tags :web-meme,rickrolling,rick astley,pop-culture,reddit,nsfw,sft,tagging,nerdy

Track your favorite Tv-Show releases with MyTv RSS

2008-10-04T20:02:00.001+06:00

Want to know if Family Guy has a new episode out ? What about that new season of Southpark that starts this fall ? Nothing sucks more than watching the season pilot (or perhaps any new episode) of your favorite shows at a days (or two) delay. That is where mytv rss comes into effect.

The site lists a growing number of popular tv-shows that you can select to get notified of whenever a new episode is on air. Just check the box next to your favourite tv shows and then click the “Create Feed” button at the bottom of the page. A rss feed would be generated that you can subscribe to and receive periodical updates on episode releases. Have fun.

LINK: MyTV RSS

Tags :Southpark,episodes,tv-show,Familyguy,ATHF,RSS,release,soap

Boost your torrent downloads with some tracker juice

2008-09-19T22:51:00.015+06:00

Everyone uses p2p networks these days. There's hardly a soul out there who haven't taken advantage of this, err..'controversial' technology to get hold of their favorites. Softwares, movies, music, ebooks you name it and the world of Bit-torrent has them in store for you. One of the terms closely associated with bit-torrent is "BitTorrent Tracker". These are servers that "Assist in the communication between peers using the BitTorrent protocol." In short, the bigger the number of active trackers, the smoother and faster your torrent downloads would be.

However, torrents have not been a pleasant source to scour for those suffering from bandwidth deficiencies like myself. To add insult to an injury, popular torrent files these days are riddled with Fake IPs/trackers jamming your peers. Sponsored by draconian media authorities like the MPAA and RIAA, they can cripple your download speed in a matter of minutes. What to do ...what to do?

Thankfully, there's a cleaver way to dodge some of these big-torrent smut. Basically, our technique would consist of finding extra trackers for our designated downloads and verifying which of them actually work. At the end, we'll end up with a sleaze-free torrent file filled with healthy, high-speec, active trackers :D Here's what you'll have to do:

1) Download your favorite torrent file. I recommend searching in hybrid indexers like Scrapetorrent that automatically searches several torrent hosts at ones and catagorizes the results according to the number of seeders:leechers (or whatever you wish).

2) Once the .torrent file is downloaded, head over to BtReannouncer. Upload the previously downloaded torrent file in the upload section. What the site does is find alternative trackers for your torrent meta file. These trackers are then shown along with the original trackers. Select the extra trackers you'd like to add to your new metafile on the screen shown below. Then press the "Reannounce" button.

3) Download the reannounced torrent file on the next screen

4) Now head over to Torrenteditor. This site does the hard work of finding obsolete trackers for you. Upload the reannounced torrent file in the first page and press the edit button. On the next screen, the "tracker verification" would start. Bad trackers are demarcated by a red highlight. Cross off bad-trackers on this step

5) Scroll down and click 'update'. After the good trackers are loaded onto your new torrent file, download the final fruit of your labor by pressing the "Download" button.

Thats it. Now you are left with a healthy torrent file free of all the scum of the world wide web. A disease free .torrent file like this can do wonders to your download speed.

Happy downloading !

Friend Feed grinds my gears, finally

2008-09-08T22:54:00.008+06:00

Friend feed has been on the web 2.0 scene for sometime. When it first came out, I was resentive of its services as it appeared to be "just another web-aggregator yearning for attention". The mantra of 'owned and operated by former Google employees' have all but died out (every other random startup these days have propritors of or formerly related to the Google empire) . However, since then..weeks have passed, and recently due to some peripheral coercing from a friend of mine, I finally did sign up.

After bits of mawing, I came to the conclusion that friend feed does hold some potential for the apparently "active" users of the web. For starters, it gives a decent effort to sort, categorize and label your erratic web-antics. Say for example you are a member of countless number of popular social networking sites/experiments/abominations like Facebook, Flickr, Blogger, Youtube, Twitter, Del.icio.us, Furl and what not. Keeping track of all these sites everyday and sharing updates with friends and foes alike becomes a major pain after a little while. That is where Friend Feed extends its helping (!) hand.

After signing up, you are asked to add "Services" to your page. These services are shown and categorized in your personal Friend Feed page. Later on, you can share this page with your friends or ask/request/plead to them to subscribe to your regular updates via email or RSS. This way, all your shananigans stay in one, single, fluid page instead of being scattered all over the world wide web.

Like the idea of Friend Feed? Sign Up for an account today.

Oh, and I almost forgot...DO SUBSCRIBE TO MY FRIEND FEED...arrr

Tags : friend feed,feed,subscribe,web app,web 2.0,youtube,facebook

Backup your Flickr collection with "Flickr Down"

2008-08-14T14:25:00.001+06:00

Lets say you've built a formidable collection of photographs on your Flickr gallery and suddenly, due to an awkward rift in the global IT-conspiracy, your photographs get sorted/categorized under a new , suspicious T.O.S and you are forced to move your flickr-collection elsewhere . Or, alternatively, lets say you've lost all your precious hard-disk backups of you past works and want to download your whole Flickr collection and start over. By a strange twist of fate the latter happened to me as I was left with a broken heart and a burnt, 250 GB SATA HDD with most of my photographs inside. I desperately needed to download my flickr gallery by somesort of a " Batch Downloader " as individual downloads would probably drive me crazy.

On came, "Flickr Down", by Greggman. This tiny (~378 kb) app lets you download all your flickr photos in a batch, and at their largest size/resolution. Once the app is installed, you just have to authorize its use first after entering your user name. After the download location is selected, press the small download button and a window like the one on the screencap will appear. You can select individual photographs to backup or select all of them at once. Thats about it :)

Note that, you must have Microsoft .NET 2.0 framework installed beforehand. If you don't have it installed (most folks do these days), then download it from here.

Productivity Tip: Even if you are not planning to backup/download your Flickr collection in a jiffy, you can still download the galleries of your favorite photographer/artist at a single click. Just remain loyal to creative and artistic rights, that's all.

Link: Download Flickr Down | Alt Link.

Tags : Flickr,Microsoft,batch,backup,yahoo,google,photography,gallery

Free your PDF documents from the shackles of all restrictions

2008-08-13T19:19:00.001+06:00

With the onslaught of ebooks,ezines, online documents and web-backups, Portable Document Format or PDF by Adobe has become the become the preferred modus operandi for thousands of e-publishers. Students these days download pdf versions of their text books from the internet (both legally and il-legally, btw) at a mad frequency. That's why a group of very shrewd software developers introduced the idea of protecting pdf documents so that opportunists and poor lowlifes like you and I are barred from printing or copying the content within pdf files. The otherday I came across a situation like that where I just had to print a page off a pdf file, but the integrated restrictions were preventing me from doing so.

What did I do then?

Why took help from the Big G himself (or herself for my women-lib readers) offcourse. After 5~6 minutes of searching I discovered "Freeware PDF Unlocker" that does just what I was looking for, unlocking pdf files. Just download and install FPU and you'll see two new icons on your desktop. The rest of the process is pretty self explanatory. One would say "PDF unlocker, drop PDF files here", you just have to drag and drop your locked pdf file onto that icon and wait for a few seconds while the black command screen does its job. A new pdf file will be created minus the restrictions on printing,copying or editing. Thats about it.

Tip: FPU can also be used to password protect your pdf files to prevent unauthorized access. But that kinda defeats the whole purpose, doesn't it?

Link: Download Freeware PDF Unlocker

[Via: GHacks]

Tags : pdf,adobe,unlock,hack,portable,ebook,document,freeware,free

Take control of your...err.. "Cookies"- with Cookie-Pie

2008-07-24T00:24:00.006+06:00

Yes, I'm finally back from the dead..with more spunk and a drastically low GPA in my last semester :D Now, that smiley represents a very oxymoronic grin...something lies beyond its actual facade.

Onto the topic of technological discussion now. How many times in your browsing endeavor have you come across the situation where you need to open more than one of your Gmail, or Yahoo or perhaps Facebook account(s) ?....and in the same browser! Plenty right? Man's urge to retain a peripheral sense of " Multiple Personality Disorder ", even ONLINE, has proven to be quite indomitable. The only solution so far has been to either open a different browser and browse to your second-existence there, or logout of your current account and sign back in with a whole new personality.

But wait, now you can play doctor jekyll and mr hyde right inside your Firefox browser window, without opening or experimenting with other browsers. Check out "Cookie Pie" , an ingenious Firefox extension that lets you maintain different cookie storage for different tabs, thus enabling you the comfort of spoiling your subconscious disorder..aaaahhh. Opening multiple GMail®/Yahoo Mail®/Hotmail® accounts in different tabs and windows simultaneously has never been more fun. No seriously, before Cookie Pie, it used to be a major pain in the pelvic region.

They even have an instructional video on the extension installation and use, swell.

Download Cookie Pie [Drag and Drop this link directly to your FF extensions window]

Word nerds ahoy, counter your vocab confusion with “Confusing Words”

2008-06-19T12:18:00.001+06:00

You know those times you are writing an essay or a review and you come across a jumble of confusing vocabulary and you don’t know what to use where and how? Like if its going to be it’s or not ? This is one problem a simple web search might not relieve. Enter ‘Confusing Words’ , a website (more like a web service) that lets you search through their database of so called ‘Confusing English vocabulary’. Which means, its just not ‘Another online dictionary and annoation service’. The site helps you with pairs of confusing words like capital and capitol , affluent and effluent etc which appear like bad itches whenever you’re writing a long, arduous article. Thanks to ‘Confusing Words’ (damn these oxymoronic domain names are freaking me out), you might not be troubled by ‘wordly paradigms’ any more (*bad pun intended). Confusing words currently supports ‘English’ abnormalities only.

Visit Confusing Words

Tags: words,vocabulary,dictionary,online,tool,web-service,language,English

The real life, 'Low res' dog

2008-06-19T10:52:00.003+06:00

Its amazing what the human cerebellum can cook up . I came across a ripe example of subtle, marketing brilliance the other day while strolling through tEh interweb.

This here is an ongoing ad-campaign for the 'Leica D-Lux' camera. They made a real looking low res dog out of paper cutouts, son ! And it looks amazing, don't you think? Now, that is what I call a real opt-out for "Seeing it in more detail".

[Via: Core 77 ]

Firefox Download Day 2008: Pledge your allegiance today

2008-06-05T00:58:00.001+06:00

Calling all Firefox users,fans,well-wishers and patrons..mozilla needs your help to set a new Guinness World Record for " Most software downloads in 24 hours " on the launch date of the much awaited Firefox 3 . The official date for the launch would be announced here soon.

Firefox has served us well for over 5 yrs, constantly reminding us the horrors of IE...and even persuading Microsoft to incorporate/copy much needed security features in their 'once dominant' web browser. Now our lovable little fox has reached a new milestone, the soon to be announced Firefox version 3.0. Being a shameless caterer for the cause of open-source, I must confess that like its predecessors, Firefox 3.0 packs enough heat to make your jaw drop. Its faster, sleeker, more secure and like always, flawlessly customizable with a plethora of extensions and themes. Now its time to pay your debt back. Make your favorite browser stand out, preach its verses, support Firefox 3.0 on its launch date by downloading it and by informing /coercing/ forcing/ influencing your friends and family to download it on the very same date as well ;) If you want to promote Firefox in your university, school or college campus, you can do that too. Just head over here for more info on how to contribute.

Finally, if you are a lonely, self-centred geek like myself then there's something for you do...pledge your allegiance personally. Head over here.

Make Firefox 3 Download Day 2008 a complete success. Pave the way for better, cleaner browsing.

Tags: firefox,google,microsoft,windows,internet explorer,browser

Major makeover coming up for Facebook

2008-05-10T01:42:00.004+06:00

Here we go, straight from the horse's mouth (in this case, that would be Justin Smith, a developer for Facebook) :

This spring, Facebook will be launching a redesigned profile aimed at making things simpler, cleaner, and more relevant, while still giving you control over your own profile. We want profiles to be a destination to learn about and interact with your friends.

Its about damn time too. Those incessant applications and the whole 'bushwacking' look of Facebook was getting pretty annoying. Apperantly, as the developer(s) claim, our dear ole' FB is going to have whitespaces this time, lots of it ( Screencap, please).

The navigation system is going to go through some swell redesigning too. Instead of the ugly, ugly profile section, the site will divide its existing profile applications into five default tabs, including Feed, Info, Wall, Photos, and Boxes. That means no more scrolling down through thousands of lines of javascript powered cra* to write on the 'normal' wall of your friends. Amen to all that. In the mean time, for a quick sneak peak of the whole shananigan, keep your eyes peeled on the page of Facebook profile preview page and its albums(didn't know any such thing existed).

[Via : Appscout]

Tags: facebook,orkut,myspace,social,networking,redesign

PC Power tip: Spring cleaning your system

2008-05-01T23:43:00.001+06:00

Those who are unaccustomed to the slob-like ways of students such as myself often feel uncomfortable at the sight of heaps of junk lying around. These earthly nuisances might be easy to detect and get rid of, but what about their virtual brothers? Your pc is a magnet for virtual junk. Left-away pieces of softwares, previously installed driver files, old chkdsk reports/logs and what not. These things not only make your system run like a hog, but also eats up your HDD space (which you could be using to store an otherwise huge amount of downloaded youtube videos). So what can you do to recover some of your precious HDD space without deleting heaps of data-files or multimedia from your pc? Here are a few alternatives:

Tip-1: Turn off "System Restore"

Unless you feel that using the "System Restore" feature of windows is absolutely necessary to your everyday life, my suggestion is, 'Get rid of it'. System Restore eats up a hefty amount of hard disk space, and lets face it..it has never proved to be as vital anyway. To turn of 'System Restore', go to Control Panel > System > System Restore tab > Check the 'Turn of System Restore on all drives' check box.

Tip-2: Run the 'Disk Cleanup' utility

Unbeknown to the technologically native, Windows XP has a very nifty tool preinstalled in its accessories folder. Its called ' Disk Cleanup Utility ' which become a peeping tom only when your HDD-drives have almost run out of physical space. However, you can manually launch this small application anytime you want and give your system drive a nice, safe, thorough cleanup. To do this, go to Start Menu> Accessories > System Tools > Disk Cleanup. Scroll down and make sure the box next to ' Compressed Old File' is checked. Its apparent from the screencap below that the majority of my physical HDD-space on the system drive was being taken up by unnecessary Compressed Old Files.

Tip-3: Use 'Portable' softwares

Portable softwares are the things of ~~yesterday~~ tomorrow. The software industry was jolted forward a few years when someone came up with the bright idea of solving external dynamic lib-dependencies and creating the first piece of portable code. The result was the slew of portable apps ( like those available here ) we see today. I use portable versions of popular desktop applications like VLC media player, utorrent etc all time. While, these softwares might not solve your disk-space problem in a jiffy, they'll certainly help you get organized and get a hold on your HDD-space. Portable apps rarely invade any external directories or files because they are independent of library packages. That is why, only deleting the folder with the software is enough to get rid of the software for good, you won't have to worry about the app installing junk files on a hidden system directory or anything.

Tip-3: Use a safe desktop cleaner

I ,like many other bloggers out there have been a die hard fan of Ccleaner for a long time. Ccleaner is simply the best out there with its simple architecture, safe sorting performance and frequent updates. So I recommend you to download this amazing piece of software and run it at least 3 times a week to get your pc squeaky clean on the inside :)

Tip-4: Buy a brand new Hard Disk Drive

If all else fails, and you really are running out of alternatives...use your tiffin-money to buy a bigger hard disk :) If you are a few bucks short, then start saving right now.

Technorati Tags: space,hdd,hard-disk,cpu,pc,windows,xp,system,hardware

LINA- Run Linux application natively on OSX and Windows

2008-04-22T08:08:00.002+06:00

Although it can arguable be claimed that there are some irresistible softwares out there which were natively built for running on Linux environment, an initiative to make them compatible for Windows or OSX has rarely been taken. Master coders and uber-software gurus have often taken the liberty to port the software on their own, manipulating a string of code here and a string there. However, there is an alternative for the ultimate noobs (like myself) too. Its called LINA, and as the developers claim,

With LINA, a single executable written and compiled for Linux can be run with native look and feel on Windows, Mac OS X, and UNIX operating systems..LINA brings Linux everywhere, from the command line to GUI and web applications.

Those who have dug a little deeper into the world of Linux are pretty familiar with WINE, or Windows Emulator For Linux (the creators of WINE, however called it ' Wine Is Not an Emulator ', thus the peculiar name ). LINA does the exact same thing for Windows or OSX, it lets you run Linux applications natively on your OS of choice ( I'm not going to argue about which OS is better though). Its as simple as that. Interested to try out some of those elusive, 'still yet to be ported to windows'- linux apps (ex: amaroK) ? Then give LINA a whirl.

Download Lina

How to hide the taskbar (aka Gnome panel) completely in Ubuntu

2008-02-19T23:06:00.009+06:00

This tutorial is for those users who , like myself, incessantly cherish the habit of having a hidden taskbar and in term, a cleaner desktop. ' Why?', a few curious onlookers might ask. Lets just say, the rule of thumb is, the more the viewing area the more visually soothing our experience with the tech-infused world we live in, becomes.

As you can guess from my previous post, that my infatuation for Ubuntu has somewhat rekindled in the last couple of weeks. However, this time I'm a man on a mission; that of finding out what drove me off Ubuntu last time and how I can choose a safe detour this time. One of these "draw-backs" of Ubunu was its inability to minimize the taskbar (Gnomebar) completely. Even if you choose "Auto Hide" from the panel properties, the hidden panel would still show up as a tiny strip like eyesore.The solution? Why use the good ole' gconf-editor offcourse. Here's how to do that:

1) While in Ubuntu press Alt+F2. This would bring forth the "Run Application" dialogue.

2) Write ' gconf-editor ' (without the quotation marks) and press run.

3) What opens in the new window looks kinda like the registry editor from (gasp) Windows right? This is the Gnome equivalent of the registry-editor. Anyhow, once there navigate to apps/panel/toplevels/[your panel name]. Here the panel name corresponds to either the lower or upper Gnome-panels. You can however, edit both.

4) On the right pane, double click on the line that says auto_hide_size and write the new value as 1 (replacing the default, 6px). Presto! Now you have the whole screen-area of your monitor to exploit.

Productivity Tip:
For the medium to advanced users, I also recommend playing around with other panel options like autohide delay. That might improve your Ubuntu experience by a greater margin.

Tags: linux, ubuntu , debian , taskbar , hack , gnome , autohide

Linux Redux: Use your GPRS phone as modem in Ubuntu

2008-02-09T00:01:00.000+06:00

I had been living under a self-imposed hiatus from Linux (namely Ubuntu) for a couple of months. But last week, as I was painfully recovering from yet another crashed Windows installation, I did the unthinkable (gasp!). Got my hands dirty and myself knee deep in unix land, as I decided to install Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn once again :)

This time, however, I had figured out a key advantage of using Ubuntu. Unlike previous installations, I was able to setup my EDGE enable Nokia 6630 as a modem under the Linux environment. That removed one of the major annoyances I had with every Ubuntu installation, "Not being able to setup a smart phone as a modem".

Nokia and other GPRS enable sets that also double as modems have no convenient, intermediate interface in Linux. No one bother to create one either. As a result, on first impression, adding your phone as modem in Ubuntu might appear to be quite a pain in the a**.

Wrong! Let me try to ease that...err...pain a little bit. Here's a small step-by-step tutorial on "How to set up your GPRS mobile phone as modem in Ubuntu (for dummies & nOObs) " I'd try to be as straightforward as possible, so bear with me closely:

Step-1: Connect your phone with your PC/laptop via the data cable (DKU-2 in my case). For newer Nokia’s the phone will ask you for mode. Choose PC Suite

Step-2: Go to System > Administration > System Log (try to perform this step as quickly as possible after Step-1). This would open up a new window (the System Log window, to be precise).

Step-3: Scroll down to the very end of the window. You'll see a few lines like:


Jul 31 08:41:25 ubuntu-laptop kernel: [ 330.168000] cdc_acm 1-1:1.8: ttyACM0: USB ACM device
Jul 31 08:41:25 ubuntu-laptop kernel: [ 330.192000] usbcore: registered new interface driver cdc_acm
Jul 31 08:41:25 ubuntu-laptop kernel: [ 330.192000] drivers/usb/class/cdc-acm.c: v0.25:USB Abstract Control
Model driver for USB modems and ISDN adapters
Jul 31 08:41:25 ubuntu-laptop kernel: [ 330.220000] usbcore: registered new interface driver cdc_ether

See that word in red before "USB ACM device"? Note that down for the time being.

Step-4: Open up a shell window and type sudo pppconfig . This will open up the shell-PPP configuration window. Select "Create a connection" on the first options menu. Press enter.

Step-5: On the next window, you'll be asked to define a new name for you connection. Type down something small and convenient, something you can easily remember later on (that doesn't include your social security number). Lets call it "tt" (no obscene pun intended offcourse).Then select Dynamic IP and PAP as connection type.

Step-6: On the next two screens, you'll be asked to enter you user name and password. Much like other ISPs, my ISP didn't assign any user-name/pass for their unlimited GPRS connectivity. But, Ubuntu won't let you leave these fields empty either...what to do, what to do :( Solution: Just put a blank space (press the "Space" button once) in both user-name and password field for this time. We'll see what we can do later.

Step-7: Choose the port speed on the next window. The default is 115200. On the next screen choose "Tone" as a dialer type.

Step-8: On the next screen you'll be asked to enter the number to dial during establishing connection through your phone/modem. Generally, the number is set as *99# . Just to be sure, you can check with your service provider. Choose "Manually set port address" on the next screen.

Step-9: Remember the identity of the modem we identified earlier in the message log (marked in red) ? Its time to input that on the next screen. The format would be /dev/*** where " *** " should be replaced by the port-location. In our case that was ttyACM0. So type/dev/ttyACM0 and press enter. Choose "Finish" to complete the basics.

Step-10: Now its time to get a little geeky :) It shouldn't be too hard to recollect that we put a blank(_) space in the place of user-name/password while we were setting up the modem, right? Its time to fix that up. Open up another shell window and type sudo gedit /etc/ppp/peers/*** . Again, "***" here is to be replace with the connection name we define at the very beginning. In our case that was "tt" so the actual command would be sudo gedit /etc/ppp/peers/tt

Step-11: A new window will now open, with bunch of geek words and esoteric phrases. Nothing to be afraid though, you just need to edit a small section. Note where it says "User" and there is a blanks space inside the double quote like this " ". Delete that space inside the quotation mark and save the file.

Step-12: Finally, open up your trusty shell window once again (make sure your phone is connected to your pc during the whole time) and type pon ** , where ** should be replaced by the connection name like pon tt. You can also disconnect your connection any time using the command poff tt.

That was swell wasn't it? Now you can use GPRS-modem based internet on your Ubuntu installation too. No fancy Windows Magic required. Thats one more reason to cross-off the most buggist (yet, arguable, the most useful) OS in existence from your list.

Qtrax finally brings free, legally stained music download to your desktop...for, umm...?

2008-02-01T00:04:00.000+06:00

In simple words, Qtrax is a p2p platform/application for downloading free music off the internet. Whats new about that, right?

Wrong. This much anticipated service has been on development for some years (eight to be precise) and is now finally ready for launch. What makes its gears grind though? Why its allegiance from top-notch music groups and record labels like EMI, SonyBMG, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group off course (Don't you dare say OMG). After years of fighting legal battles concerning copyright issues, these record labels are finally feeling the fatigue and the becoming wiser by the moment. They are finally starting to realize the figure-of-speech in redux "If you can't win em' join em", meaning they will start providing free music...for, err..a small interference to your eyes. By interference I mean 3-rd party ads. That is not a big deal anyway..who wants to "WATCH" music tracks on their pc, I don't.

Things you have to do to listen to free music via Qtrax: Download their custom, gratis, based on the Mozilla powered "Songbird" media player (here we go, another multimedia player to add to our list). Now the real let down about this whole idea is that to stream music directly unto your desktop, you must, and I repeat, you "MUST" use their media player only . There is no alternative available for the time being (but I hope our Russian/Chinese brethrens would find one out soon). You are also prohibited from downloading any song and they still don't have some of those crazy artists like "The Beatles" on their list/archive because of ongoing legal restrictions. As for OS dependencies, Qtrax currently support PCs, no MAC love yet. Apple would have to wait.

What to do, what to do...My suggestion is, if you have a nifty connection at home which comfortable streams music/videos at your disposal, then go download Qtrax and try it out. After all, its a fruit that you, as an internet user and a soldier of "Free music on the WWW" movement, is obliged to taste every morsel.

Download : Qtrax Beta.

Annoyance-b-gone: Ignore all Facebook apps invites with one click

2008-01-25T17:07:00.001+06:00

How many time have you went over the thought of having yourself de-Facebooked (namely, deleted) just because your inbox was full of application invites like "Join the red baroness raccoons on a fight against nano scale deus ex machinas " ? I've been close to that edge a couple of times myself. There is no denying the fact that stupid, worthless invites are evil...down to their bones. As much as all these invites from ignorant Facebook contacts pissed you off, what is even more frustrating is that you have to "Ignore" each and every request manually. Unlike email services, Facebook invites window doesn't have any "Ignore All" button.

Enter Ignore All, your knight in shining, blue armor. Its basically a website hosting a bookmarklet that lets you do the unthinkable, cut your Facebook annoyance to a mere ghost of its former self, yes with this you can finally ignore all invites with one click. Now what do you have to do to receive its aid? Just go to the Ignore All homepage, save the Ignore All link as a bookmark, and next time when you have tons of useless invites piled up on your Facebook "Requests" window, just hit the magic button (by that I mean the bookmark you just saved). But make sure you have javascript enabled in the browser (which should be the default setup,btw), otherwise rest assure this bookmarklet won't work ever. For Firefox users, I'd also recommend disabling the "Ad Block/Ad Block+" extension while doing this.

There is also a video showing Ignore All in action. Check it out too.

[Via : DI]

Tags: myspace , social networking , web 2.0 , youtube , internet , technology , yahoo , social networks , privacy , google

Its Air-O-Rific..but will you/I/anyone be able to savor it?

2008-01-17T17:44:00.001+06:00

At $1799, chances are..you won't. Not everyone out there is prepared to make a deal with the devil just because they were tempted by a Persian magician, but damn I wish I could. Because this baby is might fine, at least as far as ergonomics is concerned. The new MacBook "AIR", is a thing of beauty all right, right down to those curvaceous, silvery edges. But is it almost as worthlessly bad in taste as soya-steaks? I for one, might never be able to come close enough to say "I jumped a lot of AIR last fall", but there are a few (if not a lot) apple fanboys out there who are already sniffing out its every bits. Can't wait for the reviews to come pouring in. The specs are impressive indeed. The 13.3-inch LED display might appear a little small for regular views, but this ultrathin ( 0.16 to 0.76 inch )notebook more than makes up for its demand by being so thin, its almost Bulimic. No wonder they are spelling "SleeK" with a capital "K" (They aren't? Well they should, I can tell that). I just hope "AIR" doesn't literally prove to be "Full of air" and no real material to drive its gears at all. With that much dough at stake, I doubt even apple fanboys would take mechanical/electrical repercussions solemnly.

Tags: apple , mac , macbook pro , intel , hardware , macintosh , ipod , laptops , laptop , software