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Is it Bad to Shutdown My Computer Regularly or Leave It On All the Time?

2012-09-06T02:05:00.000-07:00

Shutting Down Regularly

Shutting down regularly is the practical option, but it's not without its downsides. Let's take a look at the pros, cons, and what you can do to remedy the disadvantages.

Pros

Lower energy costs - Computers can draw a large amount of power, especially if you're running a high-end desktop. Shutting your machine down when it isn't in use will prevent excessive and unnecessary use of power, wasting less energy and saving you money on your electric bill.
Fewer temporary system issues - Those who keep their machines booted up indefinitely are familiar with the little problems that crop up when a computer is in use for a long time. Strange little problems occur and they're often solved by a reboot. If you're essentially rebooting every day, you're giving your machine a fresh start. This helps avoid minor system issues.
Quiet hours - When your machine is running, it's capable of making noise. The sounds of the fans can be bothersome if you're sleeping in the same room, but you also run the risk of the computer playing and alert or other sound unexpectedly. This is easily rectified by muting your sound every night, but you run the risk of forgetting. (Of course, you can automate that process on Windows and OS X pretty easily.)
A longer-lasting machine - While you can never really know when your computer is going to fail, less stress placed on its components will contribute to a longer life. You still have to keep it clean, dust-free, and well-maintained, but less activity can help your hardware last longer.

Cons

Inconvenience - The biggest disadvantage of shutting down and booting up on a daily cycle is that it's inconvenient. You have to get everything in order to shut down each night and wait to start up in the morning. On top of that, if you forget to boot up and need to access your machine while you're, say, at the office, you won't be able to because it's offline. This problem is easily solved by automated the shut down and start up process. Doing so puts your computer on a schedule so you won't have much of an inconvenience at all.
Energy used for nothing - While you certainly save energy by shutting down your machine, it'll still draw power when off. While an operating desktop would draw a lot more, it would, at least, be capable of doing something while you're away. This problem is easily remedied, however, with a power-regulating socket like the Belkin Conserve ($10). Alternatively, if your desktop supports it, you can use it as a USB device charger overnight so that small power draw isn't going to waste.
You can just hibernate instead - Why shut down when you can hibernate? Hibernation draws about as much power and saves the current working state of your machine so you can resume right where you left off. This is a standard operation for Windows machines, but OS X can use it, too. Apple calls hibernation "Safe Sleep," and it's only regularly employed to laptops when the battery levels are critically low. You can enable this feature at will, however, with apps like SafeSleep and SmartSleep. You can also save power by simply sleeping your computer, which has the advantage of waking up faster (although if you're using an SSD that gain is negligible), but the power consumption is considerably higher. To get a specific idea of how your devices consume power in their various modes, check out this comparison table.

Never Shutting Down

Keeping your computer powered on is the more convenient option. It offers a few distinct advantages that can save you a bit of time and frustration, but also has a few major downsides of its own.

Pros

Your machine's always ready to go- It's nice to be able to sit down at your machine and just start working without any setup necessary. Such a luxury comes at a cost—a higher electric bill—but that may be worthwhile depending on your needs.
Your computer can work while you sleep - There are plenty of ways your computer can work while you sleep. It can perform tasks like backup, system maintenance, video encoding, software updates, downloading, uploading, and virtually anything else it can do without your presence. This is a great opportunity to perform intensive tasks when they won't encumber your work.
Run a server - If your computer's on all the time, you can use it to serve up whatever you want. Perhaps you just want the machine to be remotely accessible while you're away from home, or you'd rather host a web site from your house. Whatever the case may be, if you're computer's always online you can serve up most anything.

Cons

Heavy power usage - Running your computer 24/7 draws a lot of power. If there's any reason to turn your machine off with any regularity, it's to avoid wasting resources and saving some money on your electric bill.
Rebooting can be a pain - If you're not accustomed to shutting down regularly, the rare reboot can be pretty annoying. Aside from just feeling more like an inconvenience, you'll never be prepared to shut down. If you have several documents, browser windows, applications, and services running, you probably do not have a process in place to easily suspend everything when necessary. OS X Lion (and Mountain Lion) users have the advantage of the Resume feature, which allows you to restore the computer to the working state it was in before shutting down, but that only works perfectly if all your apps support it. Rebooting isn't some horrible, horrible thing, but it is an inconvenience if you're not used to it.

As you can see, each option has its advantages and disadvantages. What works best for you will depend on your needs.

Source: lifehacker

RightInbox Adds Reminders to Gmail and Notifies You When Email You Sent Is Read

2012-07-25T14:41:00.001-07:00

Firefox/Chrome: RightInbox is an awesome tool for boosting Gmail's capabilities. The extension when it first launched was designed to schedule email for sending later, but RightInbox since then has added even more useful features: email tracking, link click tracking, and email reminders.
Once you connect the add-on to your Gmail account, you'll find new buttons in Gmail for scheduling an email to be sent later, tracking an email you compose, and adding reminders to an email.

With the tracking, you don't have to rely on read receipts. RightInbox sends you an email telling you when the recipient opened your message and if any links in your email were clicked. It'll even tell you where the person was when your email was opened.
The email reminder feature lets you add a handy reminder at a specific time or if you don't get a response to your email. You can also set the email to go to the top of your inbox.
With these new features and the send later feature, RightInbox really improves how you can work with Gmail. (Of course, the Sparrow development team working on Gmail will probably enhance Gmail quite a bit too.)
Like similar service Boomerang, RightInbox is freemium: The free plan limits you to 10 emails a month for each feature, while the unlimited plan is $4.95 a month or $39 a year.

RightInbox Adds Reminders to Gmail and Notifies You When Email You Sent Is Read

Install Mountain Lion on As Many Macs As You Want Without Purchasing Additional Copies

2012-07-25T14:34:00.001-07:00

One of the upsides of OS X Mountain Lion's already low purchase price of $20 is that one copy can be re-downloaded and installed on any other Macs that you own for free. The downside, of course, is that if another Mac in the household doesn't share the same Apple ID as you, the buyer, you have to get another copy. As it turns out, there's a very simple solution so you can just reinstall from the same copy as many times as you need to.

Aside from making an external installer and using that, there's a simple workaround to officially download Mountain Lion and install it the way Apple intended. Just follow these steps:

Open System Preferences on the Mac you want to update, then go to the Users & Groups section.
Press the + button to add a new user, and create an administrator account. (Don't worry, you can delete it later.)
Switch users and sign into this new account.
Open the Mac App Store and sign in with the Apple ID you used to purchase Mountain Lion.
Download Mountain Lion and install it.
Delete the new user account.

That's all there is to it. While you could technically use this technique to install Mountain Lion on the Macs of everyone you know, you shouldn't go that far. We're posting this tip to give you a way to install Mountain Lion on household Macs that may be in use by various people who don't share the same Apple ID. At a very reasonable $20, it's a negligible price to pay for a nice upgrade. That said, you're supposed to be able to install it on all your Macs. If you can't because of varied Apple IDs, use this method to get around the problem.

Install Mountain Lion on As Many Macs As You Want Without Purchasing Additional Copies

Facebook Adds “Good Enough” File Sharing To All Groups. Dropbox Should Worry About Growth

2012-05-11T05:51:00.001-07:00

Today Facebook begins rolling out file sharing to all Groups, and while it’s got many restrictions, it could be good enough to limit the long-term growth potential of cloud storage / file sharing services like Dropbox, iCloud, and Google Drive. Music and any copyright files aren’t allowed and file size is capped at 25mb, as Mashable first reported. But this is just the first version, and you can be sure Facebook will keep hacking away at it.

Last month, the social network started letting users share files within Groups for Schools, but now we confirmed with Facebook that within a few days all Facebook users should have the option to upload and share files from the Groups post composer.
Facebook users often talk about downloadable files, but now they’ll be able to share those Word docs, images, e-books, PDFs rather than having to upload them elsewhere. The addition of file sharing has been a long time coming, as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had previously worked on a peer-to-peer service called WireHog, which was shut down due to concerns about copyright infringement. It also comes after Facebook’s acquisition of New York City-based file sharing Drop.io in 2010, which brought Sam Lessin on board.

File sharing could help Facebook fight its public image as a distraction from getting real work done. If you already have a Facebook Group to organize discussion about a class, work project, or vacation with friends, file sharing will fit right in.
You’re not going to be able to share huge home movies or zip files of photos, and sadly amateur musicians won’t be able to share their own creations with friends. But Facebook file sharing could be good enough for a lot of people, especially if it ups the file size limit, creates perma-URLs for files, and creates a tab in groups specifically showing shared files. Most important it would need extend file sharing to the general news feed to really become competitive. If it makes these improvements though, it could pull market share from other file sharing system by focusing on convenience.

There’s still plenty of use cases for the big cloud storage / file sharing services…such as sharing copyrighted files. Plus people might feel like their files will be more private on a dedicated service, even though Facebook Groups are quite secure. Products specifically for file sharing might always rule for business, but free personal usage that Facebook could chip away at has been a huge lead generator for enterprise sales. That’s why Facebook moving into the space could limit their long-term growth potential — something investors who sunk $257 million into Dropbox don’t want to see.
Let me be clear: this won’t kill Dropbox or reverse its stellar growth. We’re fans of the service and it won the TechCrunch Crunchie for overall startup of the year. But Facebook could make it hard for it become so popular that it could deliver to investors a serious multiple on the huge amount of funding its received.
The “good enough” approach is becoming a Facebook staple. It’s asymetrical, interest graph follow feature Subscribe was late to the game by years, but because it lives in the news feed where 900 million people already spend their time, it could stunt Twitter’s growth. The same thing could happen here. Facebook’s popularity and how deeply it’s ingrained our lives give it a big advantage. Power users may always crave specialized products, but for average joe, the option to send a file from the Facebook account they already have might be enough to stop them signing up somewhere else.

Source: techcrunch

Samsung Galaxy S III owners to get 50GB of free Dropbox storage

2012-05-04T09:05:00.001-07:00

HTC One customers aren't the only people getting free Dropbox space to sweeten their smartphone purchase. Samsung has announced that anyone who buys and registers a Galaxy S III will have their Dropbox accounts expanded to 50GB for two years.

We're not sure whether buyers will see any special deals after that, but it's a good offer at least for the length of the standard smartphone contract.
What does make this slightly odd is that with Google Drive out, one of the best-known new Android phones is essentially coming bundled with a competitor's service. If the free storage trend keeps up, we'll have to see if Dropbox continues to be the tool of choice.

Source: theverge

Samsung Reveals Galaxy S III

2012-05-04T03:19:00.001-07:00

We’ve been hearing the rumors for months, and now Samsung has gotten official with the newest member of its Galaxy line of smartphones, the Galaxy S III.

Samsung announced the most anticipated Android handset of the year Thursday at an event in London. The phone is the third-generation in a line of popular smartphones created by Samsung.
The phone has a 4.8-inch touchscreen, 8-megapixel rear-facing and 1.9-megapixel forward-facing camera, and comes running the latest version of Android — Ice Cream Sandwich. Much like the HTC One X, the camera has zero shutter lag so you can capture photos instantly. The camera is also capable of taking 20 photos at once in burst mode, and a feature called “Best Photo” will pick the best shot out of a group of eight.
The NFC-capable Galaxy S III has a Super AMOLED HD (1280×720) screen, offering more subpixels than other screens, resulting in improved colors as well as better visibility in bright situations.
“With the GALAXY S III, Samsung has maximized the consumer benefits by integrating superior hardware with enhanced smartphone usability,” said JK Shin, President and Head of IT & Mobile Communications Division at Samsung. “Designed to be both effortlessly smart and intuitively simple, the GALAXY S III has been created with our human needs and capabilities in mind. What makes me most proud is that it enables one of the most seamless, natural and human-centric mobile experiences, opening up a new horizon that allows you to live a life extraordinary.”
The phone is powered by a 1.4GHz Samsung Exynos 4 Quad processor (see video below). The Exynos 4 has twice the processing capability of the older Exynos 4 Dual used in previous Galaxy phones, and it consumes 20% less power. To achieve this level of efficiency, Samsung has implemented on-off switching as well as dynamic voltage and frequency scaling for each core. All that means the processor will consume exactly the amount of power it needs under any given workload.

A new feature called ‘Smart Stay’ on the phone detects your voice and motions, and recognizes how you are using the phone –for instance reading an e-book or browsing the web –and keeps the phone on while you’re using it. So, if you’re reading a book you don’t have to worry about having to constantly wake the screen up.
If you’re texting someone and decide to call them instead, a feature called ‘Direct Call’ will call that person as soon as you lift your phone to your ear.
A new feature called ‘S Voice’ enables the phone to listen an respond to your words, and provides Siri-like search and voice control. You can ask the phone to “snooze” when your alarm goes off in the morning and you need a few more Zs, can be used to play your favorite songs, turn the volume up or down, send text messages and emails, organize your schedules, or automatically launch the camera and capture a photo.
A feature called Buddy Photo Share will recognize your friends faces in a photo, and offer to send them the photo automatically.
With the Galaxy S III Samsung is unveiling a new ‘S Beam’ which expands on Android Beam, allowing you to share a 1GB mobile file with a friend in just 3 minutes, or transfer a 10MB music file in just 2 seconds—without using WiFi or a cellular signal – by tapping your phone together with another Galaxy S III.
A feature called “AllShare Cast” lets you connect your Galaxy S III wirelessly to your television to view content. The service can also be used to share files between your Galaxy S III and your tablet, PC, and televisions regardless of the distance between the devices.
The Galaxy S III will be available in 145 countries, on 296 mobile operators around the world, making it the largest launch in Samsung history. Available in ‘Pebble Blue’ and ‘Marble White,’ the phone will be available from the end of May in Europe before rolling out to other markets globally this summer.
Update: We originally misidentified the spec for the front-facing camera. The correct spec is a 1.9 megapixels. Also, Samsung describes the screen as “HD Super AMOLED,” with no “Plus.”

Source: mashable

Amazon rolls out nifty Cloud Drive desktop apps for Windows and Mac

2012-05-03T00:51:00.000-07:00

Amazon is making its Cloud Drive service, which is primarily for storing media and document files that live on your hard drive, easier to use.

The company announced Wednesday that it is rolling out new Amazon Cloud Drive desktop applications for both Windows and Mac. The apps function very similarly to cloud-storage service competitor Dropbox’s desktop clients. Amazon’s Cloud Drive app allows you to seamlessly drag and drop files from your computer to the cloud with little work. Files are downloaded and uploaded in the background, but can be paused and restarted again should the need arise.

Amazon’s Cloud Drive service, which debuted last year, provides users with 5GB of storage for free. They can purchase more space at the rate of $1 per additional GB, per year.

With the recent launch of Google’s long-hyped cloud storage service Google Drive, Amazon will need every advantage to keep current Cloud Drive users from leaving. The new desktop apps also makes the Amazon Cloud Drive experience much more fluid, but nothing new in terms of what’s available by other competing services.

The new apps are available to download today on Amazon’s website, but you’ll need to sign up for the Cloud Drive service to gain the storage functionality.

Source: venturebeat

Otixo Is a Convenient File Manager for Dropbox, Google Drive, SkyDrive, and All Your Other Cloud Services

2012-05-01T09:52:00.001-07:00

If you're using more than one cloud storage service (hard not to, with all the free space being thrown around), managing your files between them can be tricky. Otixo gives you a centralized view of all your online files for easy copying and pasting between accounts from the web interface or through a mapped drive on your desktop. Otixo currently connects to Dropbox, Google Docs, Box, SkyDrive, SugarSync, Picasa, MobileMe, and Amazon S3. You can also add your own FTP or WebDav servers to connect to. Otixo doesn't store your files on its servers or save your login credentials—in most cases, that is (the SugarSync API seems to work differently than Dropbox, Google, and SkyDrive, but you can choose not to have your password saved in the service).
Once you connect your accounts, you've got an Explorer- or Finder-like view of all your files and can drag-and-drop them at will, as well as rename files, download to disk, share, and, for PDFs and images, preview the files online.

As a centralized manager for online files, Otixo is similar to previously mentioned Primadesk, with a couple of advantages or differences: The support for adding FTP or WebDav servers and access to all your online files as a drive on your Windows or Mac desktop. With the latter, once you add Otixo as a WebDav drive, all your online accounts will appear as folders under the new Otixo drive. Another unique feature, in beta, is Otixo Workspaces, where you can add files from any/multiple services to a workspace and share those folders with others.
The service might be most helpful for getting all your online files organized and accessing them on the go—you can login from anywhere to this one site to access all your files.
The free plan offers 250MB of bandwidth usage (the amount of network traffic used copying files or moving them around, for example) a month; for unlimited bandwidth usage, upgrade to the $9.99 plan.

Thanks EternalCharax!
Source: lifehacker
otixo

Drag-and-Drop To Automatically Encrypt Files in Google Drive Using Automator on Mac

2012-04-29T00:42:00.001-07:00

OS X: Google Drive is finally here, promising awesome Dropbox-like online storage and file syncing, but also the same security and privacy caveats that come with storing information on cloud servers. Macworld offers this handy file encryption tool that works with Google Drive for drag-and-drop encrypting on your desktop.

It's an Automator action from Armin Beigel called "Create Disk Images From Files." Once you download the script and unpack the zip file, all you need to do is launch Automator on your Mac then import the action and drag it into the Automator workflow area. Select Google Drive as the folder in the options settings by browsing to the folder in Finder. To make this a password-protected file in Google Drive, click the checkboxes to compress and encrypt the image. Then in the file menu, save the application to your desktop (I named my shortcut "Encrypt File on Google Drive").
Now every time you drag a file to that shortcut, you'll be prompted for a password and the file will be encrypted and saved to your Google Drive folder on Google. Neat, right?
Below is the Macworld article with more information and the download link.
Other options, for Mac or Windows users, are to use Truecrypt to encrypt your files or use password-protected zip files before storing them on Google Drive (or Dropbox or elsewhere) for the ultimate in security.

Automatically encrypt files for your Google Drive | Macworld
Link to download page: automatorworld

Google Drive Launches - For Real!

2012-04-28T16:04:00.001-07:00

After weeks of speculation, Google Drive launched today. As if trying to quell the disbelievers, Google's announcement blog post read "...yes, really" in the title. The long-rumored "cloud" based storage officially launched this afternoon, touting the ability to keep all your stuff in one place.

What is Google Drive?

In essence, Google drive is the rebranding of Google Docs. It's being positioned to compete against similar storage services like Apple’s iCloud and Microsoft's SkyDrive. Because Google has always allowed you to share documents with others, Google Drive can also compete against services like Dropbox. If you're currently a Google account user, just go to drive.google.com/start to get started.
The files you use are stored in your account on Google's servers. Your files are available only to you and can only be accessed by others if you share with them. Since the files are stored on Google's servers, they are always available, provided you have an Internet connection.
Google is adding the ability to integrate Google Drive seamlessly with Macintosh and Windows-based PCs, effectively integrating it into the operating system. Google previously had an Android app for accessing Google Docs, which was recently updated to allow offline caching of your Docs.
Today, the Google Docs app has been updated once again sporting the new name and logo. The Play Store also indicates improved support for additional file types, sharing integration and background syncing. An iOS version has yet to be released, though Google says it's coming soon.

Google Drive – The Service

Google Drive is touting the ability to view over 30 different file types directly within your browser. This includes Adobe products like Illustrator and Photoshop, even if you do not have those applications natively installed on your computer. Google Drive will also track versions now. As you save a file, it creates a revision that you can go back to view for up to 30 days.
As part of the service, Google gives you 5 GB of storage for free. However, there are several levels of service to choose from, if you don't mind a monthly payment for more storage. You can upgrade your Drive space to 25 GB for $2.49/month. 100 GB will run you $4.99/month. Or get an entire terabyte (1 TB) for $49.99/month. The space you purchase counts against Google Drive and Picasa. Google Music, however, has not been listed. As an added bonus, when you pay for a Google Drive account, your Gmail storage will also increase from 10 GB to 25 GB.
Businesses using Google Apps aren't being left out either. Google is offering business pricing in nine different tiers ranging from 20 GB for $4/month (€3,00) to 16 TB for $1,430/month (€1068,00). Google Drive is available for the Free, Business and Education editions of Google Apps. Each require SSL connections and Single Sign-on. Various other features vary between versions.
Other Google Apps are being created and updated to integrate with Google Drive so that you can save your work directly to it. The Chrome Web Store has a concise listing of the apps that are designed to integrate with Google Drive.
On the surface, Google Drive doesn't look like much. However, its business applications are far-reaching. Companies like Carbonite and Mozy charge $5/month for backup services. Business-class online backup services are more expensive. For $60/year, you can have 100 GB of online backup, powered by Google's massive redundant data centers. The average small business owner would be nuts to not jump at this.
This will change things in Google's business model. Do you see yourself using Google Drive?

Source: searchenginewatch

Lovers by Winux

2012-04-25T00:01:00.003-07:00

Lovers is an extremely gorgeous and adorable Theme by winux for all true lovers. This theme comes with a glossy color icon set and two elegant home and menu backgrounds. To see more HQ screenshots visit the support website.

Proudly presented by winux

Features:

*Beautiful & stylish icon set by winux.

*Glossy buttons

*High quality details

*Beautiful HQ wallpaper.

*extremely beautiful colour scheme, highlights & ...

Investigate memory usage with Windows 7 Resource Monitor

2012-04-14T11:15:00.001-07:00

Memory basics

Without getting too technical, let’s take a moment to briefly look at memory management in Microsoft Windows 7. Doing so will help you to interpret the information displayed on the Memory tab.
To begin with, Windows 7 operating system’s memory manager creates a virtual memory system that is made up of available physical memory and a page file system on the hard disk. Using this virtual memory system allows the operating system to allocate fixed-length blocks of memory, called pages, that are contiguous in both physical memory addressing and virtual memory addressing.

Getting started

To get started with Resource Monitor, click the Start button, type Resmon.exe in the Start Search box, and press [Enter]. When you see the Resource Monitor user interface, select the Memory tab, as shown in Figure A.

Figure A

The Memory tab in Resource Monitor provides detailed information about Windows 7’s memory usage.

The Processes table

On the Memory tab, the Processes table, shown in Figure B, lists all the currently running processes and breaks down each process’ memory use in several categories.

Figure B

The Processes table breaks down each process’ memory use in several categories.

Image

Of course, the Image column shows the process’ executable file name. As you can see, Processes that represent applications are easy to identify. For example, it’s easy to tell that the notepad.exe process corresponds to Notepad. Processes named svchost.exe represent various services being run by the operating system. You can find the name of the service enclosed in parenthesis adjacent to each instance of svchost.exe shown in the Image column.

PID

The PID column shows the process’ Process ID number, which is simply a number that uniquely identifies a process while it runs.

Commit

The Commit column shows the amount of virtual memory in kilobytes that the operating system has reserved for a process. This number includes the amount of physical memory that is in use as well as any pages that have been saved in the page file.

Working Set

The Working Set column shows the amount of physical memory in kilobytes that is currently in use by the process. The working set can be broken down into Shareable and Private categories of memory.

· Shareable

The Shareable column shows the amount of physical memory in kilobytes that is currently in use by the process and is shared with other processes. Sharing sections or pages of memory for common processes saves memory space because only one copy of the page is required. More specifically, one copy of the page is physically in memory and it is then mapped to the virtual address space of other processes that need access. For example, system DLLs, such as Ntdll, Kernel32, Gdi32, and User32, share memory among all processes.

· Private

The Private column shows the amount of physical memory in kilobytes that is currently in use by the process that is not shared with other processes. This number provides you with a pretty accurate measure of the amount of memory that a particular application needs in order to run.

Hard Faults/sec

The Hard Faults/sec column shows the average number of hard page faults per second that have occurred in the last minute. If a process attempts to use more physical memory than is currently available, the system must write, or page, some of the memory contents to disk. If the process later needs and accesses the memory contents that exist on the disk, it is called a Hard Fault.

Watching Hard Faults

Now that you have a good idea of the memory information presented in the Processes table, let’s take a look at what to look for if you want to monitor memory usage. As you load applications and work with files, the operating system’s memory manager monitors the Working Set of each process and watches for requests for additional memory resources. As the Working Set of a process grows, the memory manager balances the process’ demand for more memory against requests from the kernel and other processes. If available address space becomes scarce, the memory manager must scale back the size of the working set. This typically means paging some of the memory contents to disk.
If that page must be read back from the disk, it causes a Hard Fault. While Hard Faults are a pretty normal occurrence, multiple Hard Faults typically require additional time so that the system can read pages from the disk. When Hard Faults occur too frequently, the resulting disk reads will decrease system responsiveness. If you have ever been working on your system and suddenly everything seems to run in slow motion and then just as suddenly comes back to regular speed, chances are good that your system is busily swapping memory around so that it can continue working.
As such, if you notice an excessive number of Hard Faults related to a particular process on a regular basis, chances are your system needs more physical memory.
To more closely watch processes that are encountering a large number of Hard Faults, you can use the Filtering system built in to Resource Monitor. Select the check box adjacent to that process, and it will move to the top of the list. You’ll then see those Hard Faults appear in orange in the graph.
(Keep in mind that there are many other factors that come in to play when it comes to memory usage and that monitoring Hard Faults isn’t the only or the best way to monitor memory use. However, it does provide you with a good starting point.)

The Physical Memory table

While the Processes table provides you with a more granular view of memory usage, the Physical Memory table gives you a global view. The main feature of the Physical Memory table is a bar graph that lets you see a unique view of memory usage, as shown in Figure C.

Figure C

Physical Memory table’s bar graph provides you with a global view of win 7’s memory usage.

As you can see, each section of the bar graph is labeled and represents a list of pages of memory. As you use your system, the memory manager is at work in the background moving memory back and forth between these lists in order to maintain a delicate balance between using physical memory and the hard disk in order to allow your system to work efficiently and effectively. Let’s take a closer look.

Hardware Reserved

Beginning on the left, in gray, is the Hardware Reserved list, which shows the amount of memory reserved for hardware. This list represents the amount of memory that the various hardware devices installed in your system have reserved so that they can communicate with the operating system. Of course, memory reserved for hardware is essentially locked and as such is not available to the memory manager.
Typically, the amount of Hardware Reserved memory ranges from 10MB to 70MB but can vary depending on the system’s hardware configuration and might be several hundred MB. Examples of components that can affect the amount of memory reserved include:

System BIOS
Motherboard resources, such as I/O advanced programmable interrupt controller (APIC)
Sound cards or any other devices that require memory-mapped I/O
PCI Express (PCIe) bus
Video card
Various chipsets
Flash devices

(Some folks have reported inordinately huge amounts of memory being allocated to the Hardware Reserved list. While I haven’t encountered this situation myself and can’t verify the suggested solution, many have reported that upgrading the system BIOS firmware solved the problem.)

In Use

The In Use list, shown in green in Figure C, represents the amount of memory being used by the operating system, drivers, and the various running processes. In Use memory is calculated by adding the sizes of the Modified, Standby, and Free values and subtracting this from the amount of recognized memory, which is listed as Total in the section just below the graph. The Total memory is calculated by subtracting any Hardware Reserved memory from the Installed RAM.

Modified

Shown in orange, the Modified list represents the pages of memory that contain data that has been modified but not been accessed for a while. As such it is not technically in use but can still be pulled into service quickly if needed. If memory in the Modified list has not been accessed in a long time, the memory manager will write the page to disk and then move it to the Standby list.

Standby

The Standby list, which is shown in blue, contains pages that have been removed from process working sets but are still linked to their respective working sets. As such, Standby list is essentially a cache. However, memory pages in the Standby list are prioritized in a range of 0-7, with 7 being the highest. Essentially, a page related to a high-priority process will receive a high-priority level in the Standby list.
For example, processes that are Shareable will be a high priority and pages associated with these Shareable processes will have the highest priority in the Standby list.
Now, if a process needs a page that is associated with the process and that page is now in the Standby list, the memory manager immediately returns the page to that process’ working set. However, all pages on the Standby list are available for memory allocation requests from any process. When a process requests additional memory and there is not enough memory in the Free list, the memory manager checks the page’s priority and will take a page with a low priority from the Standby list, initialize it, and allocate it to that process.

Free

The Free list, shown in light blue, contains pages of memory that have not yet been allocated to a process or were previously allocated but returned to the memory manager when the process ended. (While “not yet been allocated” and “previously allocated” memory both show in the Free part of this bar graph, the “not yet been allocated” pages are actually part of another list called the Zero Page list. These are so-called because they have been initialized to zero and are ready for use when the memory manager needs a new page.)

The question of Free memory

Now that you have a good idea of how the memory manager in Windows 7 works on a global level, let’s take a few minutes to discuss a common misconception with Windows 7’s memory management scheme. As you can see in Figure C, Free memory is the second smallest list in the graph. The misconception is to look at that small value and think that Windows 7 is a memory hog and that a system cannot run effectively when there is hardly any Free memory.
But just the opposite is true, in the case of Windows 7’s memory management scheme, Free memory is wasted memory. The more memory that Windows 7 keeps in play, the better. By keeping memory full and juggling pages between the various lists along with using its Standby priority system, Windows 7 improves efficiency and does its best to keep memory pages from hitting the page file where Hard Faults and sluggish performance are more likely to occur.

Watching memory use

Do you want to see Windows 7’s memory management scheme in action? To do so, restart your system. As soon as you get logged in, launch Resource Monitor, select the Memory tab, and immediately take note of the size of each of the lists shown on the Physical Memory bar graph.
Then begin loading applications — lots of them — the bigger, the better. As each application is loading, switch over to Resource Monitor and watch the size of the lists on the Physical Memory bar graph change. Once you have loaded as many applications as you want, begin closing them. As each application is closing, switch over to Resource Monitor and watch the size of the lists on the Physical Memory bar graph change.
Once you go through this exaggerated scenario, you’ll have a good, front-row idea of how Windows 7’s memory management scheme works on your system. Now that you know what to look for, you can use Resource Monitor to keep tabs on memory usage as you use your system during the course of a normal computing session.

Source: www.techrepublic.com

TimelineRemove: Hide Facebook Timeline For All Profiles

2012-03-16T16:34:00.002-07:00

If you don’t like the new Timeline feature on Facebook and want to view profiles in the old style, then TimelineRemove is the perfect Chrome extension for you. This tiny, but handy tool disables the new Facebook timeline feature and restores the classic look, without changing the timeline behavior for other visitors of your Facebook profile. The extension basically works by hiding the timeline, so you can view your own and others’ profiles in the old style. TimelineRemove works automatically once installed, and a button is added to the toolbar that lets you toggle the timeline on and off, whenever you want.

As soon as you install the extension, the Facebook timeline feature is disabled automatically, and a toggle is added right next to the URL bar.

With it, you can view Facebook profiles in the classic style without a timeline and cover photo.

A button is added to the toolbar that allows you to toggle the timeline feature on and off. Click this button and the Status will be displayed in a pop-up. Click the TimeLine Remove option to enable or disable it. A red cross is shown when the Timeline feature is on, whereas a green tick means the timeline feature is off.

TimelineRemove is a pretty slick extension, and all those who would like to view profiles in the classic style will definitely love it. Install it from the link below and enjoy browsing Facebook just like you used to.

New iPad Teardown: 'It's Really Just a Giant Battery'

2012-03-16T16:24:00.002-07:00

You may be busy preparing your line-waiting strategy for a new iPad on Friday morning, or plotting the fastest route to your local Wal-Mart to pick up a new iPad at midnight.
But the guys at iFixIt have trumped us all — by flying to Australia, where the tablet is already on sale, and proceeding to tear one apart.
iFixIt’s CXO Luke Soules was first in line to pick up the new iPad at the Telstra store in Melbourne, Australia.

He promptly took the device apart to find out what’s inside, with the help of heat, plastic guitar picks, and a plastic opening tool.
Curious about what’s going on under the hood?

Battery

The battery is perhaps the most notable thing Soules found in the teardown. The new iPad rocks a 42.5 watt-hour battery, a dramatic increase over the iPad 2′s 25-watt-hour power provider. The iPad is going to need all that power to truck along on 4G and support the extra RAM and improved graphics in the tablet, and battery life is still rated at right around the same amount as its predecessor.
“Its 3.7 volts and estimated 10 hours of use (9 with cellular data network) are comparable to that of the iPad 2, but we assume the extra 17.5 watt-hours are put to good use powering the extra RAM and greatly improved GPU,” says Soules. “As is the case with most tablets, the iPad 3 is really just a giant battery.”

Processor

The new iPad comes rocking a A5X processor manufactured by Samsung. “Like the A5, the A5X system features a 1GHz dual-core CPU. The upgrade that earns it an ‘X’ is the new GPU, which Apple claims outperforms even Nvidia’s Tegra 3 processor.” notes Soules.

Screen

The newest iPad’s screen is what has many clamoring to get their hands on one, and iFix it echoed some of the same points early reviews have made about the screen. “Even turned off, the 2048×1536 pixel ‘Retina display’ seems to radiate with colors one could not begin to imagine,” Soules said during the site’s live teardown of the tablet. The model numbers on iFixit’s iPad make Soules believe that the screen — at least on its model — was made by Samsung.

Google Search: Change is Coming

2012-03-15T16:51:00.002-07:00

Google is the midst of overhauling its search to make it more intuitive and provide more relevant answers to queries, but if you’ve been reading Mashable, you knew that already. As Google Fellow and SVP Amit Singhal explained to Mashable last month, the shift attempts to go beyond mere words and into the world of entities, attributes and the relationship between those entities. In practice, that means that over the next few months you will begin to see subtly different results to searches. (Singhal also mentioned Mashable‘s story in a post he wrote on his Google+ page on Thursday explaining the ongoing changes regarding Google’s search.)

As further outlined in a Wall Street Journal story on the subject on Thursday, a search for “Lake Tahoe” will produce “key attributes” that Google knows about the lake, including its altitude, location, salt content and average temperature. The query “What are the 10 largest lakes in California?,” meanwhile, would yield an answer instead of just links to relevant sites.
Some of the search changes are already visible. From our earlier post:

“Type “Monet” into Google Search, for instance, and, along with the standard results, you’ll find a small area at the bottom: “Artwork Searches for Claude Monet.” In it are thumbnail results of the top five or six works by the master. Singhal says this is an indication that Google search is beginning to understand that Monet is a painter and that the most important thing about an artist is his greatest works.”

The effort is part of a longstanding push by Google to evolve its search into something resembling artificial intelligence. The company hastened that evolution with the 2010 purchase of Freebase, a community-built knowledge base packed with some 12 million canonical entities. Doing so allowed the search engine to recognize that words that are grouped together have different meanings than the words would separately. For instance, a Google search can distinguish a search for “New York” as opposed to one for “New” and “York.”
It’s unclear how the plan overlaps, if at all, with Google’s other recent search initiative, Google plus Your World, which integrates Google+ results into standard searches.

Download New Dropbox Beta For Android v2.0.9 With Automatic Uploads, Get Up To 5GB Of Extra Storage For Free

2012-02-03T12:06:00.000-08:00

The guys behind the official Dropbox Android app have an enticing present for everyone to check out. They just released an experimental beta v2.0.9 that includes a brand new automatic Camera Upload feature. There are definitely third party apps out there that offer this same service, but it's nice to see the official version updating with some fresh new features.

Here's what you'll find:

The app can now automatically upload photos and videos in the background using Wi-Fi or your data plan.
No more size limit. So upload to your hearts content.
If there are network issues, the upload will resume when those issues are resolved.
Some performance improvements and bug fixes.
You'll also get 500MB of free space on your first automatic photo upload.

If you allow automatic uploads via your data plan, there is a setting to limit the file size to 25MB (files over this limit will wait for Wi-Fi) or set it to unlimited.
Unfortunately, there's currently no way to add and configure multiple sources and destinations like you can with DropSync, so there is definitely still some room for improvement.
But wait, that's not all! During the beta period you can rack up some more free storage. The first sync gives you an instant 500MB bump, and for every 500MB of photos and videos you upload automatically, you'll receive an additional 500MB of free storage, up to 4.5 more gigabytes. That's 5GB just to help test out the new Dropbox, all for free.
I should also mention that this free space isn't separate from any free space you may have earned from the desktop client beta they announced yesterday.
What are you waiting for? Click or scan the QR code below to grab the experimental release APK. Who knows how long the beta will last...

Be sure to hit up the Dropbox forum as well to join the conversation, report any bugs, or make suggestions.

This Is How Our Sun Will Look When It Dies—Yes, the Eye of Sauron

2012-02-02T13:18:00.000-08:00

In a few billion years, our dear Sun will look like this, a beautiful glowing eye of spent starstuff trash in the shape of Sauron's Eye. And no ring is going to save us from this one.

It's the Helix Nebula, NGC 7293, 700 light-years away from Earth. Once upon a time it was a star like ours. As it died, it expanded engulfing everything around it. The gas cloud was created at the end. At the center, the stellar core "glows in light so energetic it causes the previously expelled gas to fluoresce."
This picture was taken using "three colors on infrared light by the 4.1-meter Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) at the European Southern Observatory's Paranal Observatory in Chile." The gas knots that you can see on the inner edge are of "unknown origin."

Hopefully Humanity would have went to other star systems by then. If it can survive itself, that is. [APOD—Thanks Mark!]

Windows Phone 8 Details Leak: Bigger and Faster

2012-02-02T13:10:00.000-08:00

Windows Phone 8 Details Leak: Bigger and Faster

While Microsoft is still trying to get people to care about Windows Phone, details of the next big version are already nailed down, claims Pocketnow. The site says it's acquired a Microsoft video spilling the beans on Windows Phone 8.
So what should we expect from Windows 8 "Apollo"? Will it fix everything that's bothered us about WP7? Will it be enough to make people buy a Windows Phone, or even know they're in existence? We hope so—and it looks promising:

Faster Processors

The next wave of Windows Phones will finally support multi-core processors—breaking from Microsoft's iron grasp on specs. No word on just how many cores will be allowed, and at what speeds, but this will keep Windows Phone in the running with Android and iOS devices that sport two or four cores.

Better Screens

Every Windows Phone is stuck with the same decent resolution—but Pocketnow says that'll change with 8: "Apollo will add support..new screen resolutions (a total of four, although actual pixel counts weren't specified). This is excellent news. Phones like the Titan, with giant, gorgeous screens, have been held down by a pixel paucity that pales compared to the iPhone, or LG's 720p Spectrum. Windows Phone is a wonderfully graphical OS, and software so beautiful deserves higher resolutions. We just hope Microsoft mandates things upwards, rather than allowing watered down resolutions lower than the current status quo.

More Apps

Easier said than done. Microsoft "expects 100,000 apps to be in the Marketplace (tipped for imminent worldwide availability) at the launch of Windows Phone 8," according to Pocketnow. That'd be a nice bump from the currently mediocre crop, but again, it's easy to expect anything.
Great (rumored) bonus: more camera customization. That's been a sweet spot for the iPhone app menu, and would make WP a hell of a lot more attractive for mobile photogs.

Miscellaneous Perks

NFC mobile payment support—swipe your Windows Phone to pay for groceries. An SD card slot for added storage. Perhaps most interesting of all, an Amazon Silk-style browser proxy, which does part of the work remotely before beaming websites to your phone—MS claims it'll squeeze data by 30%.

Is this good?

Mostly, yes. With the exception of handset standouts like the Titan or Lumia 800, the OS' phone selection is like a dull high school hardware cafeteria. Every phone has more or less the exact same innards. Offering the chance to actually differentiate—a Windows Phone for the everyman, a Windows Phone for the power lusty—will draw attention to a platform that desperately needs and deserves it.
But please, please Microsoft—don't allow your newfound interest in Windows Phone diversity as a means of stumbling into the Android fragmentation canyon. Selection is good, but a dizzying and arbitrary spectrum of phones helps nobody. We want phones that are clearly better or worse in obvious ways, not an XL, HD, SE, and Turbo version of everything. Keep it clean—it's what you've been spectacular at so far.

X-Ray X-Mas Tree Is X-tra Neat

2011-12-23T17:08:00.000-08:00

Nick Veasey is a mad scientist-photographer who x-rays everything that falls onto his hands, including a Boeing 777. He did a new series for these holidays: gifts and Christmas trees photographed with his giant x-ray machine.
With this artwork you will never have to wait again for December 25 to find out what is hiding under the tree.
The artist Nick Veasey from Kent, UK, has a penchant for X-raying inanimate objects to find out what is inside.
"It's probably every child's dream to be able to have X-ray vision and see inside the presents before the big day,” Nick told the Daily Mail.
"I suppose it's better than shaking them to listen to what they sound like, as that can cause problems."
Using a scanner ten times more powerful than those found in airports and hospitals, he created these intriguing shots of Christmas gifts.
From high heels to iPhones, dolls to spanners - with Nick around, you never have to be surprised again.

Artist Nick Veasey's X-Rated version of Christmas. Picture: Nick Veasey / Caters / Picture Media

X-Ray X-Mas Tree Is X-tra Neat

Surgeons Extract Pen In Woman's Stomach 25 Years After She Swallowed It

2011-12-21T01:09:00.000-08:00

This woman swallowed a felt-tip pen in 1986. Back then, she told the doctor and her husband what happened, but they didn't believe her. Now, 25 years later, she went to another doctor and they found the pen intact inside her stomach.
In fact, the pen was still working after they surgically extracted it, using a "combined endoscopic and ear, nose and throat procedure under general anaesthetic."
The doctors detected the pen following an MRI examination prompted by another stomach illness.
The MRI clearly showed the writing utensil, perfectly preserved in her body. Apparently, plastic pens don't care about being submerged in acid for two decades and a half.
But how the hell did she swallowed the pen, you ask? According to her, she was poking her tonsils it near the stairs when she fell, swallowing it entirely. Why would you do this, I don't know. And how can you swallow a pen unless you are a sword swallower or Linda Lovelace, anyway? I would have died right there.
What is more worrying is that, back then, the doctor that examined her x-rays didn't see any objects at all. The pen was perfectly hidden. According to the doctor who published the case in the British Medical Journal Case Reports, "his case highlights that plain abdominal x-rays may not identify ingested plastic objects and occasionally it may be worth believing the patient's account however unlikely it may be."
It also highlights how stupid people can be. [BMJ via The Body Odd]

Surgeons Extract Pen In Woman's Stomach 25 Years After She Swallowed It

Mammoths May Be Roaming the World In Five Years

2011-12-05T10:58:00.000-08:00

Scientists have been trying to clone woolly mammoths for years, but now they're really close. So close that in five years you may see herds of this gigantic beast—one of the favorite extinct prehistoric animals of the all-time.
Scientists from Japan's Kinki University and the Sakha Republic's mammoth museum have discovered well preserved marrow in a thigh bone discovered in Siberia, buried under the permafrost. The marrow is in such good condition that its cells' DNA could be used to replace the nuclei of elephant egg cells. This will allow scientist to create mammoth embryos.
The team wants to plant these embryos inside the wombs of elephant mothers so they can grow until birth. Although bigger than elephants, both animals are similar enough for this to work. This is a similar technique used in current cloning processes. The key is that the DNA has to be intact in order for this process to work. This discovery is their chance to achieve their objective.

Bring'em on

Some may say that we should leave woolly mammoths rest in peace, that we shouldn't play with nature. However, some theories say it were humans who actually drove the woolly mammoth to extinction. Shouldn't we get it back? I say yes!
Every kid in this world, myself included, would love to see these beasts roaming the tundra once again, along with bisons. In fact, I think we should bring more species exterminated by humans back to life. We can start with dodos. As long as we don't bring a group of T-Rex back, we will fine.
Extra points: grilled mammoth chops. [Kyodo News via Daily Mail and AFP]

Science News, Videos, Reviews and Gossip - Gizmodo

StatCounter: Chrome Grabs 25.7% Of Global Market, Overtaking Firefox

2011-12-01T23:42:00.000-08:00

According to Web analytics company StatCounter, Google Chrome has surpassed Mozilla Firefox to become the second most used Web browser in the world after Internet Explorer.

I’m always a bit wary about StatCounter’s claims, but I would be very surprised if Chrome didn’t overtake Firefox at some point.
In the UK, Chrome bumped Firefox to the third place back in July 2011 (also according to StatCounter).
Indeed, the trends are crystal clear. StatCounter’s research arm, StatCounter Global Stats, reports that Chrome took 25.7 percent of the worldwide market last month (up from a mere 4.66 percent in November 2009) compared to Firefox’s 25.23 percent.

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer maintains a strong lead with 40.63 percent globally (and even 50.66 percent in the United States), but the graph below shows both IE and Firefox declining fast.
StatCounter says its statistics are based on aggregate data collected on a sample exceeding 15 billion page views per month (4 billion from the US) from a network of 3 million+ websites.

StatCounter: Chrome Grabs 25.7% Of Global Market, Overtaking Firefox | TechCrunch

Dreamy Christmas

2011-11-29T14:42:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas!

Get into the Holiday spirit with this fantastic Christmas theme! Dreamy Christmas gets you in the winter mood with Santa, Christmas Tree, Snowman and a beautiful landscape.

Features:

*Beautiful & stylish icon set by winux.

*snowy soft-key buttons

*High quality details

*Beautiful HQ wallpaper.

*extremely beautiful colour scheme, highlights & ...

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Pisa by Winux

2011-11-29T14:29:00.000-08:00

Pisa, the new outstanding work of art by Winux, is a stylish top quality Premium Theme.

Features:
*Excellent Premium Theme for Symbian Os.
*Beautiful HQ wallpaper.
*High quality details, 9-piece svg elements.
*Anna Icons.
*Fits both landscape and potrait modes.
*extremely beautiful colour scheme, highlights and ...

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Summer Love By Winux

2011-11-29T14:04:00.000-08:00

Summer love is an extremely gorgeous and bright theme with a great quality. Summer love is designed for Symbian Anna, Symbian^3 and S60 5th Edition phones.

Features:

*Excellent Premium Theme for Symbian Os.

*Beautiful fantasy wallpaper.

*High quality details. *Elegant music player background design for S60 V5 devices

*Default Icons.

* Fits both landscape and potrait orientations.

Proudly presented by winux.

Download from Ovi Store

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