Pallab dot Net

New Theme for Pallab dot Net

Pallab — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 17:55:36 +0000

This blog is now powered by the Hybrid theme framework and I am using the Hybrid News Theme. I had been using True Elegance theme for more than a year. While it’s an excellent theme it is no longer supported by the developer and was fast becoming outdated.

Hybrid Theme Framework is a highly flexible and powerful theme framework, and is among the best free frameworks available. Hopefully you would like the new look of the blog. Do let me know if you spot any bugs or rough edges.

And before I forget I must thank the folks at BloggingTips forum (especially Sarah) for helping me sort out the initial problems I faced. I posted my problem at a number of places including official (Wordpress support forums), but Blogging Tips was the only place I got a reply from.

Uniblue Registry Booster 2009 – Review and Benchmark

Pallab — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 16:53:46 +0000

Registry Cleaner’s are the topic of intense discussion among tech gurus. Do we need a Registry Cleaner? The opinion is certainly divided. While many Windows Gurus dismiss Registry Cleaners as unnecessary and dangerous, there are others who swear by it. I would probably fall in the later camp. I am a huge fan of TuneUp Utilities and its built in registry cleaner. I have seen it work wonders. Its registry cleaner once repaired an un-bootable system (after Windows Startup Recovery had failed) and on another instance fixed my friends frequent system freeze-ups at startup. Uniblue Registry Cleaner first attracted my attention when I chanced upon a review by WhatTheTech. They went from criticising Registry Cleaners for being fickle natured and dangerous to recommending Uniblue Registry Cleaner.

Interface and Features

Uniblue Registry Booster has a simple and attractive interface. It immediately gives you an overview of your current system status and allows immediate access to all the necessary functions. Scanning speed of Uniblue is mediocre. While not being terribly slow it is slower than TuneUp Utilities. You also have the option of going for a complete scan, which is considerably more time consuming. On first scan it detected 384 invalid registry entries. Uniblue prompted me to take a registry backup and fixed (deleted) all the invalid registry entries.

The other core feature of Uniblue Registry Booster is the registry defragmenter. The defragmenter compacts your registry and is supposed to make system startup faster. Once again, there isn’t really much to write about here. You click on a button and Uniblue does its job in the background. I wish there as some sort of an after-optimisiation report telling me how much registry compaction was achieved.

Performance

So, how does Uniblue Registry Booster perform? I measured my system’s boot time before and after performing the registry repairs in order to get an idea about the performance impact of Registry Booster. I used the average of 5 trials:

Before: 53.316s After: 50.748s

This amounts to a 4.8% gain in boot speed, which is fairly impressive if you take into account that my machine is probably better tuned that most. I had cleaned my system with TuneUp Utilities approximately two weeks before performing the test. WhatTheTech had experienced 12.9% improvement in Windows Vista and 14.4% in Windows XP.

While choosing a registry cleaner one must be extremely careful, as there are plenty of rogue software around. Registry is an extremely critical component of your system and an ill-designed registry cleaner can mess your system up badly. Uniblue seems to be a safe bet since it is a Microsoft Gold Certified partner. I didn’t notice any adverse impact on system stability since performing the registry cleanup.

Final Words

While it is hard to accurately review the efficiency of a registry cleaner Uniblue Registry Booster definitely does improve your system performance. In my tests the Windows startup time on all 5 occasions after using Uniblue was less than the average of original startup time required. By default Registry Booster configures itself to automatically launch at windows startup which is both annoying and stupid. You don’t need to clean your registry everyday and there is no need for software like Registry Booster to run in the background. Thankfully, it is easy to change this setting. I can’t really say how Registry Booster performs when compared to other similar software, since carrying out that kind of comparison isn’t possible for me. However, I can confidently say that Registry Booster does its work well and makes a positive impact on your system performance.

Registry Booster 2009 Download (3.97 MB)
Registry Booster 2009 Webpage
Platforms Supported : Windows 2000, XP, Vista and Windows 7
License : Commercial Software – $29.95
Version Reviewed : 2.0.998

Opera – Still The Speed King

Pallab — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 15:45:28 +0000

You must have come across one of the many browser comparisons which rely on benchmarks like Dromaeo, Sunspider, V8 and Peacekeeper. The main problems with these synthetic tests are that they simply measure the JavaScript rendering speeds. While rendering JavaScript is one of the more time consuming aspects of page rendering, js rendering speed tells only a part of the story. There are various other aspects like HTML/CSS rendering that must be taken into account in order to truly judge a browsers rendering speed.

Frustrated with artificial and misleading tests, a blogger took it upon himself to measure the real rendering speed of browsers. In order to achieve this he utilised offline copies of popular websites including Baidu.com, Blogger.com, Facebook.com, Google.com, Havenworks.com, Live.com, Myspace.com/tom, Reddit.com and Wikipedia.org. The average time taken to render each of these pages by all popular browsers (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera and Chrome) was noted. And here are the results:

Opera - 204
Safari - 205.2
Chrome - 205.5
Firefox - 416
Internet Explorer - 556.8

You can find a more detailed results table here and download and run the tests yourself from here.

The biggest surprise here is Firefox’s rather shabby performance (it’s nearly as bad as Internet Explorer). These results validate what I have been saying for a long time and are consistent with my own experience. In fact I remember proving to my friends (in a rather unscientific test) that Neowin.net forum loads faster in Opera than in Firefox. Opera has traditionally been the speed king. It’s only in during the last year or so, with the advent of native js rendering that Opera has fallen behind. But, this data does illustrate that thanks to its superior rendering of HTML/CSS Opera still renders a normal webpage faster than its competitors. Although initially reluctant (due to increased CPU resource consumption), Opera has decided to implement native code compiling and is working behind the scenes on a new engine codenamed Carakan. That should help Opera perform well even in vanity tests. For now, there is little difference between Opera, Chrome and Safari as far as rendering speed is concerned.

Dasient Web Antimalware Prevents Websites From Getting Blacklisted

Pallab — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 10:20:06 +0000

More and more cyber-criminals are using websites as a vehicle to deliver trojan horses and other malwares. Often they insert malicious codes into innocent websites run by unsuspecting webmasters. Detecting a malware infection is relatively easy (as long as you have a top class antivirus) if all the pages of a website is affected. However, the real trouble is detecting a single infected page when you have hundreds and thousands of webpages. Due to the rapid rise in the number of malware infected websites most modern browsers (including Internet Explorer, Firefox and Opera) include a built in blacklist of infected websites. Getting blacklisted by any of them can be a nightmarish experience. Besides causing immediate fall in the popularity of your website it will also dent your credibility. Even search engines like Google use third-party services for warning visitors of malware infected websites. Getting tagged by Google can be a torturous experience since most webmasters heavily depend on Google. The main problem with Web Malware Infections is that most webmasters aren’t even aware of the problem until it’s too late.

Dasient is a new service co-founded by Neil Daswani and Shariq Rizvi (ex-Google employees) along with Ameet Ranadive (from Yodlee). Dasient provides three features:

1. Blacklisting Monitoring - This service is available for free and anyone can use it. Once you signup Dasient will periodically check your website’s status in Google, Firefox, Chrome, Norton Safe Web and McAfee SiteAdvisor and alert you if your website has been blacklisted in any one of them. While this doesn’t protect your website against malware infection or from getting blacklisted, this allows you to minimise the damage by acting quickly.

2. Malware Monitoring – This is not available to free users. Dasient will periodically scan your website and alert you if any malicious code in found. They will also provide you with helpful diagnostic information that will help you to quickly remove the malicious code. This solution doesn’t prevent your website from getting hacked, but allows you to act quickly and prevents getting blacklisted.

3. Quarantining - This is the highest level of protection offered by Dasient and as you would expect it isn’t free. Webmasters are required to install a simple module provided by Dasient on their server. This module will scan all your pages and automatically quarantine any malicious code. This stops any malware in its heels and prevents cyber-criminals from exploiting your website. This is currently in private beta and is available only to webhosting providers or folks with dedicated server.

Dasient is an extremely valuable and a unique service. The premium products from Dasient provide a layer of security that anyone who is dependent on their website for making a living should consider purchasing. At $49.95 per month it isn’t cheap, but can prevent disasters and offers peace of mind. Wordpress blog owners who can’t afford Dasient can use Wordpress Exploit Scanner to keep their blogs safe.

Backup Data Online with Mozy – Review and License Giveaway

Pallab — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 19:09:53 +0000

Continue reading to find out how you can win a MozyHome Unlimited license worth $54.45

I have already reviewed the much acclaimed Carbonite Data Backup and Synplicity Data Synchronisation solution. Today I will take a look at Mozy Backup – which is one of the most popular data backup solutions. Mozy has different solutions for home users (called Mozy Home) and enterprise users (called Mozy Pro). In this article I will be focusing on Mozy Home. You can learn about the differences between the two here.Mozy Home is available as a free download for Windows and Mac and provides up to 2GB of backup space for free. You can increase your online storage size by referring friends and relatives (1GB extra storage for referring 4 users) or by upgrading to Mozy Unlimited. Mozy Unlimited provides unlimited storage space and costs $54.45 per year.

Installing and setting up the MozyHome backup client is extremely simple. After installation, it will prompt you to backup pre-configured folders and objects including Firefox and Internet Explorer Favourites, Music, Document and Pictures folders. One of my complaints with Carbonite as well as Synplicity was that they didn’t really provide a very intuitive interface for manually selecting files to be backed up. MozyHome’s inbuilt File System Explorer solves this problem and allows me to quickly backup selective files spread across multiple folders. Mozy definitely trumps the previously reviewed alternatives in this department. Additionally, Mozy allows you to backup external devices like USB hard disks. This wasn’t possible in Carbonite and is definitely another big positive for Mozy. However, unlike the other two Mozy doesn’t integrate itself with the right click context menu and you can’t directly mark a file or folder for backup from Windows Explorer. Another big disadvantage of Mozy is that if you delete any file on your computer, Mozy will automatically delete the remote copy of that file after 30 days. This seems an extremely strange thing to do since purpose of Mozy is to backup data. The one month backup does offer some protection against accidental data prevention, however ideally Mozy should keep the data in its servers till I manually delete it.

Mozy automatically encrypts your data before storing it. You can specify your own encryption key or allow Mozy to pick one for you. I would strongly recommend using your own key for privacy and security purposes. Restoring Data with Mozy is fairly easy, however it may be very time consuming if you are dealing with large amounts of data. You can use the Restore function present in the MozyHome client or restore data from the web. If you are looking to restore large amount of data using the Web Interface is recommended. Once you select the files you want to download Mozy will send you an email containing the URL of a temporary zip file containing your files. While downloading a zip file is more convenient the downside is that Mozy takes some time to prepare the file. Mozy also integrates with your explorer shell and displays your remote backup folder as a virtual drive. If you enable the Overlay Icons feature Mozy will make use of tiny icons to indicate the current status of a file (backed up or pending backup).

While Mozy is simple to use and has an intuitive interface it will also please the geeks. It provides plenty of options to tinker with. It supports automatic as well as scheduled backups along with bandwidth throttling. In my testing I never experienced any problem with Mozy; I have had an account for nearly a year now. However, I have seen people complaining about the MozyHome client’s impact on their computer performance. If this happens try reducing the backup speed and using scheduled backups instead of automatic backups. The best option is to simply download and install the MozyHome client and to check it out before upgrading to Unlimited. Based on my personal experience I won’t hesitate to recommend MozyHome. It makes backing up simple and painless. The client is lightweight and intuitive. And most importantly Mozy is owned by Decho Corporation, a subsidiary of EMC Corporation. It has over a million customers and also has a multi-million dollar contract with GE. In short Mozy has the financial might required to survive during tough times and isn’t likely to disappear all of a sudden.

Download MozyHome (9.21 MB)
Mozy Backup Website
Version reviewed : 1.14.1.16
Platforms Supported : Windows Xp/Vista, Mac OS X 10.4 and higher
License : Freeware with 2GB space limitation.
Cost : MozyHome Unlimited – $54.45/year or $4.95/month/machine
Purchase MozyHome Unlimited at 20% discount

Mozy Backup 1 Year License Giveaway

Offers.com is sponsoring a 1 year license of MozyHome Unlimited. MozyHome Unlimited gives you unlimited storage space and normally costs $54.45/year.

Participating in this contest is extremely simple. All you need to do is to leave a comment to this post. You will be granted 1 entry in our random draw (to be help using random.org). You can gain additional entries by
i)Tweeting about the contest (1 additional entry) - Your tweet must contain a link to this post. You are free to use a custom message or use this message. You must post the link to your tweet here in order to be counted.
Blogging about the contest (2 additional entries) - Blog about this contest and include a link back to this post. After publishing the post let me know by leaving a comment.

The last date for participating in this contest is 13th July. Contest closes at 12:00 AM IST (or 6:30 PM GMT).
Offers.com is also giving a 20% discount on the retail price of MozyHome Unlimited. That means you save $10.88 if you order through them. On top of that you get 1 month extra for purchasing an annual license of Mozy Backup. Offers.com is a bargain hunters dream come true. They offer exclusive discounts on a wide range of products. You can find attractive deals on everything from Vacation Packages and Credit Cards to Audio Albums and Software.

Ten Add-ons That Will Make Songbird Rock

Pallab — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 06:53:52 +0000

I started using Songbird when I began using Linux (again). I wanted something with a powerful library and an intuitive user-interface. Amarok just didn’t feel right on GNOME and although Exaile was pretty brilliant I still felt something was missing. That was till I tried Songbird. I had last tried it on windows a long time back (when it was initially released). But Songbird had improved vastly since then. Songbird isn’t perfect but combined with the awesome add-ons – it soon became the media powerhouse that I was looking for. In fact now Songbird is my default media player even on Windows (replacing Windows Media Player).

Songbird is a great media player in itself and the latest release adds a few much needed (equaliser) and much requested (library management) features. However, what makes Songbird really stand out from the crowd are its add-ons and web-integration. Songbird makes use of the Gecko (Firefox) engine to allow tabbed web browsing right inside the player. Without much ado here are ten add-ons you must install if you are a Songbird user.

1. mashTape – This is one of the first things that made me fall in love with Songbird and remains one of my favourite add-ons. mashTape fetches relevant information about the currently playing track from the web. The main pane shows artist biography, members of the band, discography, and related links fetched from last.fm. It also displays album reviews from Amazon and latest info related to the singer fetched from a number of sources including Google News, Yahoo! News, Google Blogsearch, HypeMachine and Digg. But my favourite feature is the cool slideshow composed of related photos from flickr. And oh yeah, before I forget mashTape also fetches relevant videos from YouTube and Yahoo! Music.

2. Now Playing List - Songbird doesn’t contain a Now Playing list (like Windows Media Player or Winamp) that allows you to quickly drag and drop songs and create custom temporary playlists on the fly. This can be a deal breaker for some (including me). Thankfully, there is an add-on that allows you to add a Now Playing List pane.

3. MediaFlow - I love the iTunes like Filter View present in Songbird. However, if you prefer the flashier Coverflow then MediaFlow is the add-on you are looking for. However, this plug-in does have some performance issues.

4. Equalizer Presets - Songbird finally got an equalizer with its latest release. And it’s a pretty good one. Unfortunately it doesn’t include any presets. Manually tuning a 10-band equaliser according to different types of music is just too much work for me. Thankfully for lazy bums like me GeekShadow has done all the hard work. Go ahead and install this add-on to get some much needed equaliser presets.

5. Minilyrics - This is more of a separate software than a Songbird add-on, but never the less this is a must have in my opinion. Minilyrics is simply the best lyrics plug-in. It’s not free, but the shareware version doesn’t have any feature or time limitations. You can use it for free as long as you want to, if you are willing to accept a nag screen at the beginning of the program. Minilyric’s biggest strength is support for synchronised lyrics (LRC). Songbird does have another free add-on that supports synchronised lyrics – scrolling_lyrics. However, I found its song database to be smaller than Minilyric’s. Also another limitation is that it integrates itself with the Songbird GUI. This means that you need to have songbird window on top in order to view the lyrics. On the other hand Minilyrics can display floating lyrics in a transparent, click-through (i.e. you can click the background objects) window. This allows me to glance at the lyrics and sing along while doing something else. Check out the full review of Minilyrics to learn more about this fantastic piece of software. If you don’t want synchronised lyrics and don’t mind having to keep songbird window always on top Lyrics Master is another option you can try.

6. Aero Bird Pro - This is a purely personal recommendation. Aero Bird Pro is a dark, shiny blue and black skin (called feather) for Songbird. There are plenty of skins available for Songbird but Aero Bird Pro is my current favourite. This screenshot shows it in action. It’s surprisingly polished and professional looking. This. in my opinion, is the best skin (feather) for songbird.

7. AlbumArtPreferences - This add-on allows you to specify which files names to import as album artwork and also modify the file fetcher properties.

8. Metadata Tools - This add-on comes in handy when you are tagging your files. Metadata tools add the option to automatically fill in metadata from filenames. Another nice thing about this tool is that is adds an additional filter to the Filter View – Album Artist. I prefer using this over individual artists as a filter.

9. The Exorcist - The Exorcist allows you to locate broken and missing tracks as well as duplicate tracks. It uses track name, artist name, length and other metadata information to locate duplicate tracks. This is a pretty handy add-on to have and is useful if you want to clean up your media library.

10. Song Notifier - Just as the name suggests this add-on displays a little notification window (toaster) whenever a new song starts playing. Additional options include ability to include album cover and specify the icon used in Song Notifier.

These were my favourite Songbird add-ons. I couldn’t include a few other awesome add-ons as they don’t work properly with the latest build of Songbird and some editing is required to get them to work. I am sure that I have missed out on a few other useful add-ons too due to the sheer quantity of add-ons available for Songbird. If you are a Songbird user don’t forget to share your favourite Songbird add-ons. And if you aren’t using Songbird do give it a try. It is a bit heavy on the system but provides features that make up for it.

Switcher Brings Expose To Windows

Pallab — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 16:50:08 +0000

Windows task-switcher (Alt+Tab or Win+Tab) sucks. It’s as simple as that. The much hyped Flip-3D (first introduced in Windows Vista) may look cool but is practically worthless. It definitely doesn’t make switching do another window any easier. I don’t know anyone who actually finds Flip-3D productive. The task-switcher found in Mac Operating Systems – called Expose, is a much better option. It displays all open windows as thumbnails on the screen. I had written about a free application (XNeat Windows Manager) to get Expose like task-switcher in Windows. However, recently I came across a better alternative called Switcher.

Switcher features 3 main modes –
Tile - This mode is similar to Expose and shrinks the windows until you can see all the Windows.
Grid - This is my favourite mode. Its similar to Tile and shrinks the windows to make them fit inside the screen. However instead of scattering them all over the place arranges them in a neat grid. In fact even Apple decided to implement a similar feature in its upcoming operating system Snow Leopard.
Dock - In this mode the maximum screenspace is dedicated to the active window and the other windows are displayed as think strips that occupy the top edge of the screen.

Take a look at the video to get an idea about each effect.

Video by DownloadSquad

What I love about Switcher is that it numbers each window and you can select any window by simple pressing the appropriate number. You can also select any window by typing in its title. Switcher includes a handy search funtion that will automatically highlight the appropriate window. Switcher comes with a predefined set of hotkeys which can be customised according to your comfort. You can also change the styling of windows when displayed in overlay mode. As an added bonus switcher works even with multi-monitor setups.

Switcher is a fantastic application. What impressed me about switcher is its usability. Its head and shoulders above other similar freeware alternatives and even puts premium software like Top Desk to shame. The only drawback of Switcher is that it requires Aero. Hence it will only work with Windows Vista and Seven computers that have Aero enabled. In case you are using an Aero enabled computer running Windows Vista or Seven give this software a try. Its a boon to all multi-taskers.

Download Switcher (397 KB)
Platforms Supported : Windows Vista and Seven with Aero Enabled
License : Freeware
Version Reviewed : 2.0

Blog Comments Fixed

Pallab — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 16:40:12 +0000

For the greater part of this week the comment system of this blog was broken. It was due to an incorrect setting in my anti-spam plugin. Any attempt to leave a comment would have returned an error – “failed to add your comment”. I have fixed the issue now. Thanks to Andre for bringing this to my attention. I apologise for any inconvenience caused by my gaffe.

Blog Action Day 2008 – Five Ways You Can Make A Difference Today is B

The Ultimate List of Best Free Games

Pallab — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 19:54:16 +0000

Making a game is an expensive affair, often costing millions of dollars. Half Life 2 cost Valve in excess of $40 million. Considering the amount of effort and money it takes to create a game, it’s not surprising that high quality free games are few and far in between. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t exceptions. I present to you ten truly awesome free games. Some of them were initially released as commercial ventures and were later re-released as free downloads. But many of the games are freeware in the true sense of the term. Some of these games are in fact so good that you would have a hard time believing that they are free. Here are my top ten free games:

1. & 2. America’s Army 3 and Area-51 (Action)

Choosing the best game for this category was fairly easy. Released earlier this month America’s Army features high quality visuals delivered by the Unreal 3 engine. The games release itself was plagued with problems and mired in controversy. The huge demand clogged up Steam’s servers and many people weren’t able to download it on the day of release. On top of that the game servers also had issues coping up with the demand and often took as long as a day to update your status. A patch has been issued to bypass these initial problems. Ignoring these initial hiccups, America’s Army is a fantastic shooter for its price. It is developed by the US Army and features realistic team based gameplay. Be careful while shooting because, as in real life friendly fires are scorned upon and result in serious penalty. Like the previous instalments AA3 is mainly an online game and online multiplayer is where all the fun is. Head over to the official website to enroll yourself and download the game.

Download Trailer

If you are disappointed by the lack of single player gameplay in AA3 and are looking for a solid free single player action game then Area-51 is made for you. This game was initially a commercial release however was later on released as a freeware with the backing of US Air Force. As the name suggests this game puts you inside the secret US Government complex – Area 51. An unknown virus has been released inside the complex that has been mutating people into killers. And it’s up to you to stop the mutants. The story isn’t the best and neither is its presentation. But Area-51 more than makes up for the lacklusture story with action packed gameplay. Download the game from here or check out IGN’s review to learn more about it.

Download Trailer

3. The Suffering (Horror)

The Suffering is a fast paced Action Horror game that has usual elements like darkness and truckload of monster to ramp up the scare factor. It was initially released in 2004 but was re-released last year as an ad-supported free game. The Suffering is an entertaining game that manages to keep you interested for pretty much the entire duration of the game by intertwining puzzle elements among all the action. Another nice addition is the insanity mode in which you can temporarily become a monster and pick off your enemies. While playing the game you would often stumble across trapped guards and inmates. You can choose to either save them, or ignore them or kill and loot them. Interestingly enough the game has three endings and which ending you get is determined by how you behave within the game. Download The Suffering from here or check out IGN Review for more details on this game.

Download Trailer

4. Dirty Split (Adventure)

Choosing the best free game in this category wasn’t easy. I was torn between Dirty Split and Sam and Max: Abe Lincoln Must Die (Season 1 Episode 4). In the end I went with the former mainly because in order to enjoy Sam and Max fully you would need to play all the episodes in a season in correct order (remaining episodes are commercial releases). Also, I feel that Dirty Split will appeal more than Sam and Max to the casual gamer. It is an ingenious game with visually refreshing and unique graphics. Its distinctive art style stands out throughout the game and along with the jazzy soundtrack complements the overall 60s setting perfectly. The premise is rather simple – you are a detective and your job is to crack a murder mystery. You are hired by a certain Mrs. Vanderbuilt because her son has charged with murdering his sister’s ex-fiancé. Obviously things aren’t as simple as they appear to and it is your job to get to the bottom of the mystery. The puzzles are interesting enough without being too tough and are coupled with humorous dialogues which makes playing the game a lot of fun. But don’t rush through the game. Instead take your time and enjoy this fabulous game as it is rather short. Most people would finish it in less than four hours. Adventure gamers shouldn’t miss this great game. You can grab it from Dreammagination’s website.

5. Crayon Physics (Puzzle)

Crayon Physics may not be a World of Goo or a Braid but it’s still pretty damn awesome (in fact the Deluxe edition won the Grand Prize at Independent Games Festival defeating The World of Goo). This game was developed by Petri Purho within 5 days and instantly received critical. This is a game that is truly hard to describe in words. The objective of the game is to touch all the stars present in the level with the ball that is provided at a predetermined starting point. You have to guide/move the ball in accordance to the laws of physics by drawing and creating objects like hammers, levers, pulleys etc. You can download Crayon Physics from here. And if you really fall in love with Crayon Physics and its awesome puzzles go ahead and buy the more polished and feature rich version – Crayon Physics Deluxe, which allows you to draw objects of any shape and not just squares.

6. Volvo – The Game (Racing: Simulator)

This game is made by SimBin – the guys behind the famous Race and GTR series. And as you would expect, Volvo features high quality gameplay. The cockpit view is extremely detailed and the overall handling of cars is excellent. Considering its price the game’s graphics are more than decent. However, the main problem with Volvo – The Game is its lack of content. It features only 2 tracks and 7 cars. Even game modes are few and nothing exceptional. Hence, chances are that you are going to get bored very soon. You can head online and face-off against other players around to world to extend the game’s appeal, but there isn’t any extra content in the multiplayer modes either. The multiplayer mode supports up to 12 cars and features ghost mode – i.e. other cars can not affect you in anyway (car’s can’t crash with each other). All in all it’s a decent game with good gameplay but extremely limited content. Volvo the game can be downloaded from here or here.

Download Video

7. TrackMania Nations Forever (Racing: Arcade)

If realism isn’t what you are after then this game is made you. TrackMania Nations Forever is truckloads of fun. TrackMania is all about driving at crazy speeds and performing incredible stunts in carefully constructed stadiums. It also features a puzzle mode but that’s not the real reason for playing this game. TrackMania is a simple yet dangerously addictive game. You would almost certainly find yourself playing the same track over and over again just to better your timing. And timing those jumps, drops and stunts definitely takes some skill. This is where TrackMania excels : it is a simple game without any learning curve, yet there is enough depth in the gameplay to make you want to play it again and again. Once you have tested the waters with single player mode you should definitely head online. If the single player mode is fun the online multiplayer mode is just plain crazy. You play against competitors who can’t crash with you (i.e. like Volvo – The Game, TrackMania also employs ghost mode) and this is definitely a good thing considering that you can have in excess of hundred cars racing on the same track (they created Guiness World Record by having 250 players simultaneously race on the same track). Check out the EuroGamer’s review here and download the game from here. This game is highly recommended. Just have a look at the trailer and you would know why I love this game so much.

Download Trailer

8. Iffermoon (Role Playing Game)

This is one genre where I had trouble finding good free games with decent single player missions. Finally I settled upon Iffermoon. You play the role of Silence who has been adopted into the Kingdom of Dinost, an ancient land full of mystery. And your objective is to save the kingdom from a creature called Cosmose that emerged from the mechanical menace that crashed – Iffermoon. The game is a 2D side-scroller with well-detailed worlds and excellent music. The gameplay is surprisingly good and rarely gets dull. There are plenty of mini-missions to keep you busy through the game. Everything about the game seems right – from the storyline and characters to dialogues and ambient music. This is definitely a game RPG fans would enjoy. Read a review of Iffermoon here and download it from here.

9. Runes of Magic (MMORPG)

Runes of Magic is often criticised for being similar to World of Warcraft. And in fact it is. But being similar to the best in your genre isn’t such a bad thing. Runes of Magic features six classes of players – Knight, Mage, Priest, Rogue, Scout, and Warrior. Each player can also select a secondary class which provides certain additional benefits. He can swap between secondary and primary class anytime he wishes. Each class has certain special attributes that are enabled only when it is used as primary class. The worlds are fairly expansive with each area being visually distinct. Graphically this game is similar to most other games in this category. It’s not spectacular, but not shabby either. There are plenty of missions and side-quests to keep you busy. Runes of Magic gets its basic gameplay aspects correct and this makes it an enjoyable experience. Runes of Magic plans to become financially viable by selling cosmetic upgrades and diamonds. These are totally optional items and enough care has been taken to ensure that you will enjoy the game even without purchasing anything. Although there are plenty of free MMORPGs, Runes of Magic is probably the best. For more information check out IGN’s review. You can signup and download the game from here.

Download Trailer

10. Command & Conquer : Red Alert (Strategy)

Creating a good strategy game is never easy. Even the smallest thing can be the difference between a rich enjoyable experience and an annoying and boring chore. It all about maintaining a proper balance between various gameplay aspects and make them work in tandem. Command & Conquer : Red Alert is more than a dozen years old, yet very few games since then has managed to do the balancing act so well. This game is now available as a free download and if you haven’t played it before its still worth giving a shot. C&C takes place in a mythical alternate universe that was inadvertently created by Einstein when in attempted (unsuccessfully) to prevent the Second World War. Germany has been taken care of but Soviet Union has managed to take its place due to unchecked growth. C&C:Red Alert focuses on the battle between the Soviet Union and the allies (various nations of Europe). You can read the review here and download the game from here.

UxStyle Makes Skinning Windows Easy And Painless

Pallab — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 19:10:30 +0000

Although Windows has included visual styles (also known as MSStyles) since Windows XP, they only support official themes digitally signed by Microsoft – which are few and far in between. Bypassing this built in limitation and enabling support for third-party themes in Windows XP was easy. It only involved patching a single dll file (uxtheme.dll). However, things got much more complicated in Windows Vista and Windows Seven. What was initially just a matter of modifying a few bytes of code in a single file now became a matter of patching multiple files spread across the system. This often created security and stability issue and degraded system performance. This prompted Rafael Rivera – the Windows Guru and the guy behind the original UxTheme patches to envision a solution that won’t involve patching multiple system files. The result of the labour of Rafael and his friend Max is UxStyle.

At the moment, UxStyleis still in its infancy. In its current form it is just a driver that employs kernel level access to enable support for third-party themes in Windows XP, Vista and Seven. It doesn’t include any theme manager or theme installer. You would still have to use the interface provided by Microsoft for applying your themes and visual styles. However, in upcoming beta releases Rafael does plan to provide a fully functional UI for applying themes. The GUI version is expected to be provided under UxStyle Premium package. It won’t be free and would also feature live/automatic updates. The UxStyle Core (containing necessary code for enabling third-party themes) will however be provided for free.

If you are the adventurous type go ahead give UxStyle a try. But as Rafael warns, it may blow up your system, so don’t forget to backup and take other necessary precautions. It did run and work as expected on my system (Windows Seven RC), however that doesn’t guarantee that it would work on your machine. Final build of UxStyle is expected towards the year end and I would advice waiting for it if your system has critical data.

Download UxStyle (217 KB)
UxStyle Release Information
Version reviewed : Ux Style Core – June 19th Release
Platforms Supported : Windows XP, Vista and Seven (x32 and x64)
License : Core – Freeware, Premium – To be paid : Pricing undisclosed

Download Fully Synchronised Song Lyrics with MiniLyrics

Pallab — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 12:40:26 +0000

While there are hundreds of applications that are capable of displaying lyrics very few support synchronised lyrics and karaoke mode. MiniLyrics belongs to this rare category of lyrics plugins. It supports an insane number of applications (21 in all) including Windows Media Player, Winamp, Foobar, The KMPlayer, VLC Player, Songbird, iTunes and RealPlayer. And since it works through its own unique interface rather than integrating itself with the application interface it works very well irrespective of the player you are using.

That brings us to the lyrics display part. The default MiniLyrics skin displays scrolling lyrics with the current song line highlighted. Album art as well as basic playback controls are also integrated into the MiniLyrics interface thus ensuring that you won’t really need to use the player once you start playing the songs. If you find this too bloated you can switch to the single line mini-mode or use any of the 9 skins that the software comes with. However, I prefer to use the alternate interface that MiniLyrics provides – floating lyrics.It is the best thing about MiniLyrics. The Floating Lyrics window displays scrolling lyrics in a selected portion of the screen. This region is transparent in appearance as well in behaviour. You can actually click through this region and access any object beneath it. Thus ensures that no region of your screen is blocked and allows you to work without having to deal with the Lyrics window interfering.

MiniLyrics automatically searches and download lyrics for the song you are playing. When an exact match is not found it will prompt to select the correct result. MiniLyrics’ database may not be the largest but is fairly large. In fact it even includes lyrics for many recently released Hindi film (Bollywood) OST. You can configure MiniLyrics to store the lyrics in a separate folder or to store it in the same folder or even insert the lyrics in the id3 tag of the files. MiniLyrics also allows you to easily resync any out of tune lyrics. You can even create and upload new synchronised lyrics for any song using the handy lyrics editor.

MiniLyrics can be a bit buggy on occasions; however it is under active development with new versions released frequently. For most of the part it works as it should. The support for LRC (scrolling lyrics) files and floating lyrics display mode makes MiniLyrics the best lyrics display plugin I have come across. It supports as many as 21 players so chances are that it’s going to work with the player that you use. Heck! It even supports Windows Mobile. Unfortunately it’s not free. However, the trial version never expires and if you don’t mind a nag-screen at start-up you can use MiniLyrics for free.

Download MiniLyrics (1.61 MB)
MiniLyrics Website
Version reviewed : 6.5.281
Platforms Supported : Windows All versions
License : Shareware – Nagscreen
Cost : $19.95

Hide Any Window With Chameleon

Pallab — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 16:05:43 +0000

Imagine this scenario: You are wasting time browsing YouTube or chatting over Yahoo Messenger where as you should be working on your spreadsheet. Suddenly you see your boss approaching ; leaving you short of time to close all the open instant messenger and browser windows.
Whether you are in school or in home or in office – we have all been there. At some point or the other we have used our computers for tasks were are not supposed to do. And invariably we have been in situations where the boss/guardian/supervisor turns up all of a sudden.

Chameleon is a software tailor made for situations like this. Chameleon allows you to instantly hide any open window. With the press of a button (rather two buttons: Ctrl+Win) it can hide of the undesirable Windows from the screen. You can bring back hidden windows later using the same hotkey. Chameleon allows grouping several windows into a Hide Group. All windows in this group are hidden when required. Additionally Chameleon also allows you to alter the transparency level of multiple windows. You are free to set any desired transparency level that will be applied to all windows in this group.

Chameleon is an ad-supported freeware. Chameleon displays unobtrusive ads powered by Google Adsense in the application window. It doesn’t attempt to install any additional toolbar or other annoying ad-serving software. The ad themselves are fine however the software encourages the users to click on the ads. This of course is a clear violation of Google Adsense TOS. Hopefully the developer will fix this asap.

Chameleon is a wonderful Boss-key application. It worked well with all the applications I tested it with. It removed the taskbar entry of the application also while hiding. However, for Opera it wasn’t able to remove the system tray entry. It’s an aid to time wasters and is a nice utility to have if you want to avoid prying eyes.

Download Chameleon (393 KB)
Chameleon Website
Platforms Supported : Windows XP/Vista/Seven
License : Free (ad supported)
Version Reviewed : 2.6.4

Get System Wide Mouse Gestures in Windows with StrokeIt

Pallab — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 06:27:14 +0000

A lot of Opera users would be familiar with the concept of mouse gestures. It’s one of the many awesome features available in Opera. Simply told mouse gestures allow you to perform specific predefined tasks by simple movements of the mouse. For e.g. if you right click on a link and drag is slightly downwards it will be opened in a new tab in opera. Or if you right click anywhere in the page and drag your mouse left Opera will open the previous page (same as back button). I hope you get the idea. Mouse gestures work wonderfully well during browsing and people who have got used to it just can’t go back to a life without mouse gestures. This can be guessed from the popularity of Mouse Gesture extensions like Mouse Gestures Redox for Firefox.

With StrokeIt you can now use Mouse Gestures across your system. Stroke it fully supports Windows Explorer and Windows Desktop along with a host of other applications like Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, Chrome, Safari, Winamp, Windows Media Player, Photoshop etc. StrokeIt has an extensive list of built in gestures that should help you get started. You can view the full list over here. But don’t let yourself be limited to only the built-in set of mouse gestures. You can easily create your own gestures to carry out a task.

A software like StrokeIt takes some getting used to since it changes the way you fundamentally interact with the operating system and support. Instead of moving your mouse to the top of the screen to click the back button every time you can simple flick your cursor left to do the same. However, once you get the hang of it, chances are that you would love it. I can’t go without StrokeIt if I have to use a 3-button mouse and have been using this software for years. StrokeIt is not just fun it is a huge productivity booster. And the best thing is that it’s free for commercial use and very light-weight. Go ahead and give it a try.

Download StrokeIt (136 KB)
StrokeIt Website
Platforms Supported : Windows – Every edition from 95 to Seven
License : Free for Individual Users
Version Reviewed : 9.6

[video by Immow]

Syncplicity – Making Data Backup Simple

Pallab — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 07:24:21 +0000

Don’t forget to read my review of other databackup softwares including Carbonite and Mozy

Sometime back I had reviewed Carbonite – Data Backup Software. This time I will look at another popular option for databackups : Syncplicity. As you can guess from the name Syncplicity’s main aim is to make databackup as simple as possible. Syncplicity has comes in two flavours. The free edition supports two computers and allows you to store upto 2 GB of data. The pro edition which costs $9 per month supports unlimited computers, allows you to store 2 GB of data. This is technically less than Carobonite (which offers you unlimited space), but should be more than enough for almost everyone. Free users can add upto 3GB and premium users can add upto 6 GB of storage space by inviting their friends.

Synplicity’s client is available for Windows and Mac. Unfortunately no Linux version is available. After installation the client will offer to automatically synchronize your Documents. You can manually add any folder you want to be backed up by adding them to the list either from the client or from the right click context menu. Surprisingly enough I couldn’t find a way to directly backup selected files. The only way to selectively backup a file seems to add the folder to the list and manually exclude all other files from being backed up. Like Carbonite Data Backup Syncplicity makes use of little icons to inform you about the synchronisation status of the file.

Although I have been referring to Syncplicity as a data backup program, its actually much more. It goes beyond what a traditional backup software would do. Syncplicity can be used for syncing as well as sharing data. You can easily make any data public and share it with others. Undoubtedly, the biggest asset of Syncplicity is to keep a folder located on different computers in sync (synchronised). Another very unique ability of Syncplicity is to associate itself with online apps like Facebook, Picnic, Google Docs, Scribd and Zoho. With Synplicity you can keep your offline documents and online documents (in Zoho or Google Docs) in sync. Just select a folder to be synced with Zoho or Google Docs from the right click context menu and Syncplicity will take care of the rest. Besides this you can preview any document in Scribd or edit any image in Picnic. I loved how Syncplicity merges the online and offline world and makes effective use of 3rd party online applications to increase value.

It is these small niceties that make Syncplicity a winner. I would have loved to be able to just select single files to be backed up but that is my only real grudge. Syncplicity works perfectly and has many small unique touches that makes it better than others. If you are looking for a simple online data backup service using Syncplicity makes a lot of sense.

Syncplicity Home Page
Platforms Supported : Windows Xp/Vista/7 and Mac Leopard (Intel Only)
License : Free (2 GB Storage Space – 2 computers) and Premium (50 GB Storage Space – Unlimited computers for $9 per month)

Microsoft’s Free Antivirus Software Leaked – It’s Called Microsoft Security Essentials

Pallab — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:40:00 +0000

The secret new free antivirus software from Microsoft, that a lot of people have been waiting for has been leaked. Until now it was known only by its codename Morro. However, it seems that Microsoft has settled on Microsoft Security Essentials as the final name of the product.

Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) is currently in private beta and not ready for consumption. However, being the inquisitive kind, I decided to have a look. Morro or MSE is a really tiny package and the setup occupies just 4.7 MB. This is significantly less than most other products in its category. Immediately after installation MSE prompted me to update the antivirus database. In fact it refused to work before updating! This is because MSE comes without an database. The first update was a whopping 31.2 MB download. Besides the update option MSE also comes with a separate Upgrade option, that is indented to install the latest version of the client.

MSE is a simplistic solution with a very simple interface. It has two components – a real time scanner and an on-demand scanner. Besides these two it provides the user with very little options to tinker with. And this is good. MSE is mostly targetted at the average PC user. While I definitely appreciate the flexibility of Kaspersky and their likes, they may confuse a lot of people. I feel that Microsoft has got the design aspect just right. There are 4 tabs – Home, Update, History and Settings.

The home tab shows a quick overview and provides access to the on-demand scanner. Three scanning profiles are available – Quick, Full and Custom.

As the name suggest the Update tab allows the user to update the program database.

The history tab allows the user to keep track of all deleted and quarantined items as well as trusted items.

The settings tabs is for the various configuration options. There isn’t much over here. You can specify the default actions for various level of alters raised by MSE and list the excluded processes, files, folders and filetypes from here.

MSE looks to be promising. Its a light-weight simplistic antivirus solution thats meant to just do its job. However its impossible to judge a security product merely by its looks. We shall have to wait till MSE has been put to the test by the likes of Av-comparatives.org and Av-test.org. But that will have to wait, since the final release of Microsoft Security Essentials is still quite a distance away. If you feel like trying out MSE before that you can easily find the download links via Google Search. However, keep in mind that this is a pre-release software and may have undesirable effects on your system.