Windows 7 contains dozens of hidden diagnostic utilities. In the past, we have shown you, how to quickly access some of those utilities. Today, we will take a look at another hidden gem in Windows 7.

Powercfg.exe is a command line utility which allows users to control power settings. It has been present in Windows for a long time. However, in Windows 7 Powercfg.exe includes some additional features. One of them, is the ability to create neatly formatted Energy efficiency reports.

In order to generate this report, start the Command prompt with Administrator privileges. The quickest way to do so, is to type cmd in the Start Menu and press Ctrl+Shift+Enter.

The Command Prompt window should point to the \Windows\System32 directory. In order to build the Energy Efficiency report, you need to simply type the following command and press enter.

powercfg -energy -output C:\Power_Mg_Report.html

Here C:\Power_Mg_Report.html is the location, where the report will be saved. Feel free to use any other location.

Windows will inspect your system’s behaviour for about a minute and then generate the report. The report will indicate all potentially problematic settings and recommend steps to improve your system’s battery backup time.

You might also like:

• Quick Tip, Windows Shortcut Keys
• Windows Control Panel Applet Shortcuts
• Disable Windows From Restarting After Automatic Updates
• View the Uptime since restart for windows

Twitter started rolling out the retweet feature on its website just last week. A lot of users still have not gotten the feature on their Twitter account and now the question is, when would they?

A lot of users who had gotten the retweet feature recently noticed that the retweet button had disappeared. Now, Twitter has also confirmed that they have temporarily disabled the feature. They have explained on their blog that they had to take down the feature due to some problems. Once they are resolved, the feature would be re-enabled for those who already had it and after that the incremental roll out would continue.

What do you think, is Twitter back to having problems again?

You might also like:

• Twitter Rolls Out The Retweet Feature, Finally!
• TweetMeme’s Competitor ReTweet.com Launches
• Retweet Chicklet For Your Blog
• Twitter’s New Retweet API

The Sun Oracle deal, which was supposed to take place long ago, is  still not finalized because of the European Commission and its antitrust issues with the deal. The deal, which was initially valued at $7.4 billion is fast losing value and is proving to be a loss, for both the companies.

sun_oracle

The European Commission is especially worried that the deal would discourage competition in the database industry, as both Sun Microsystems and Oracle currently own popular database product of their own, namely the MySQL and Oracle database. While the Oracle database is more popular for database servers and financial services in company networks, the MySQL database is extremely popular as a database for web-servers. They are vastly unrelated and cater to two different sections of database users.

In the midst of all this, Sun is cutting out on its services like Zembly, laying off employees(3000 of them planned for the next few days) and alike. Basically, it is doing everything it can to stay alive in the face of this disaster. Inspite of all this, investors and even customers are backing out of the company. This is pushing Sun Microsystems into even bigger losses.

All this fuss over a database which is Open Source! My question is, why is the European Commission so interested in a saving a database which is Open Source and can as well, survive with help from the much larger Open Source community? With Sun Microsystems going down so badly, will preventing the acquisition help MySQL in any way at all?  What is the open-source community’s response to this? Where are the MySQL developers and what is their take on this?

You might also like:

• Play Deal or No Deal Game in Excel
• Backup MySQL Database Automatically & Manually
• Open Source – Is It All Hype or Just Good Software?
• How To Repair Corrupted or Crashed MySQL Tables? [Hacks and Mods]

When you click a photo in this digital age, a lot of information gets saved, it’s not only the light that you have captured. Almost all digital cameras these days save extra information with your pictures. This extra information gives details about the type of camera used, exposure provided, focal length, white balance, shutter speed, aperture and several other tidbits about the picture taken. This information is called EXIF data which stands for Exchangeable Image File Format.

The EXIF data also contains the RAW conversion settings, stored when a photographers digitally process their pictures. These RAW conversion settings can contain details such as brightness, contrast, vignettes, white balance, temperature and several other options that can totally transform the images. So, if you copy this data from one picture to another, you can actually, in some way, give the second picture a similar ‘look’ like the first one.

Using this idea, photographer and web developer Joe Smalley created an easy to use tool that will allow you to give a particular ‘look’ to a picture, sourcing the EXIF data from a Flickr photograph. This is how he explains the process:

After quickly getting tired of copying settings across manually, I developed a tool which will output a Lightroom or Photoshop preset file based on the metadata found for that Flickr photo. Simply enter the full URL of the photo into the tool below and you’re away!

It is limited to photos which have metadata publicly available. Also custom point tone curve information isn’t converted- as the Flickr metadata page unfortunately doesn’t show all it.

The tool can be used to create dramatic transformations of pictures. If the look of the downloaded preset doesn’t suit the picture well, you can always tweak each individual setting manually.

Note: If the preset downloads as plain text or in a txt file, simply change its extension/save it as .LRtemplate (for Lightroom) or .ACR (for photoshop)

Convert Flickr Metadata to Lightroom/Photoshop presets

You might also like:

• How To Remove MetaData From Your Digital Images
• Download Adobe Lightroom 3 Beta For Free
• Optimize Photoshop Start Up Time With Photoshop SpeedUp
• Adobe Releases Photoshop.com App for iPhone

Zembly, a web-application to develop other Web 2.0 applications like Facebook Apps, Orkut Apps, RSS widgets and numerous other applications, will be shut down on 30th November, by Sun Microsystems.

The product, which aimed at social application development and was an amazing collaboration platform, never came out of beta. The application was totally browser based and needed a knowledge of JavaScript to create widgets and apps. The apps created by others could be used as a framework and other applications could be built upon the already existing ones. The management of source control and component sharing was left to Zembly, making development as the prime focus.

The letter from the Zembly team says:

We regret to inform you that on November 30th, 2009 we will be suspending this service.

More than three years ago, we started this project with the goal of making it easy to create next-generation Web apps. Our original tagline was “Build the web, using the web,” and the ideas we were incubating around platform-mediated Web applications, Web API mashups, and social programming were brand new.

We learned a lot along the way. Your confidence and enthusiasm helped us improve the project and do amazing things that we never imagined when we began this journey.

Thank you to everyone who’s been with us through the ups and downs. It’s heartening to see that many of the best ideas pioneered in zembly have started to appear elsewhere. With your support, we’re proud to have contributed to the DNA of the Web.

All the best,

– The zembly team

Sun Microsystems had a vision with the launch of Zembly which never delivered.  The project will shut down at the end of this month. Also, any application usingt the Zembly API or the Zembly client library will fail to work as desired, after 30th of November. Developers are allowed to save all their code and project works in this time.

If you are interested in web-development and have not tried it yet, head over to zembly.com to give it a last try before it shuts down.

You might also like:

• Nokia Announces Official Qt Port To Maemo 5
• Tilera Announces World’s First 100-core Processor
• Google Desktop 4 out of Beta, announces $8000 contest
• Wridea never forget your ideas

Acquisition of Open Source software based companies seems to be the current trend.

Sun started it with the acquisition of MySQL AB.

Oracle continued it with Sun’s acquisition.

Intel followed suit, only this time to buy one of the top Embedded Linux companies, WindRiver. Actually, it has been done before. WindRiver acquired FSM Lab’s RTLinux, the hard real-time OS, that was giving WindRiver’s VxWorks a run for their money.

Today, Cavium Networks has announced that it has signed a “definitive agreement” to acquire MontaVista for $50 million, comprising $16 million in cash and the remaining $34 million in Cavium Networks common stock.

MontaVista , a Santa Clara, California based company was the leading developer of embedded Linux software and tools in the automotive, mobile phones  and communications equipments space. MontaVista was a regular contributor to open source software especially in the kernel and PowerPC ports. Arguably, one of the most valuable contributions made by MontaVista’s Robert Love is the real-time kernel preemption patch , rendering the vanilla kernel with soft real-time capabilities.

Cavium Networks makes media, network and security processors based on the ARM and MIPS architectures. It too is a Silicon Valley based company. Interestingly enough, Cavium Networks, which is a publicly owned company was founded a couple of years after MontaVista.

Cavium Networks’ cloning of Intel’s move validates the relationship between processor companies and their attraction towards embedded Linux software companies. Another similarity in these deals is that both WindRiver Systems as well MontaVista will continue as separate operating unit retaining it’s brand name.

Syed Ali, President and CEO of Cavium Networks says “This acquisition will complement Cavium’s market leading processor portfolio with world-class software expertise and will enable us to deliver highly compelling and differentiated solutions to the market”.

Rusty Harris, President and CEO of MontaVista has the following explanation to offer “By becoming part of Cavium Networks, MontaVista can confidently continue to offer industry leading commercial grade embedded Linux, support and services to our customers and partners“.

The move for acquisition seems to be good news for all parties involved since the CEOs of both ARM as well as MIPS Technologies also seemed to be positive about the deal.

Any bets on what AMD might go shopping for ?

You might also like:

• AMD LLANO
• Acer And Asus Stop Production of Netbooks
• AMD, Intel to get a new competitor by 2012
• Breaking News: Nokia Acquires Dopplr

FileZilla, one of the most popular Ftp clients, has launched the latest version (3.3.0) which has some new features. These features were much desired and will surely be of great help for webmasters.

New Features in FileZilla 3.3.0

Tabbed browsing Support: Glad they have added this feature. The latest version of FileZilla has added tabbed browsing, so you can connect to multiple servers in the same window. The earlier versions required you to use two separate windows to login to two ftp accounts.

This would be a real time saver, as you can now browse different directories of your website easily. On a new tab, you can connect to the same server or connect to a different server. The tabs acts just like browser tabs:

• Double click in open tab area to open a new tab
• Middle click closes the current tab.
• Ctrl + T opens a new tab.

Bookmark important locations of your directories: Another much sought after improvement. You can bookmark an important location of your website so that you won’t have to manually navigate to the folder the next time you connect to the ftp server.

The bookmarks are arranged under the Bookmarks option in the menu bar.

Upgrading from a previous version

The newer version will preserve user settings if you are upgrading from a previous version. Download the latest version of Filezilla.

Techie-Buzz Verdict

Lots of improvements in the newer version, but I would like to see “Back up” options added in the next release. The ability to back up and restore ftp settings is much needed.

Techie Buzz Rating: 3/5 (Good)

You might also like:

• Close Multiple Tabs At Once In Firefox
• Monitor Website Uptime and Automatically Reboot Servers from the Desktop for Free [Featured Download]
• Upload Files Using A Web Based FTP Client
• WordPress 2.5 Released and Blog Updated

If you are a business, you know how important it is to have a presence on social media like Facebook and Twitter. But you also know that with thousands of businesses of Facebook, it is hard to get noticed.

One way to stand out from the crowd is to have a custom designed Facebook page that speaks up to the user. You can tweak your Facebook page in almost unlimited number of ways and design it however you want. If you don’t know where to start, take my advice and check out CustomFacebookPage.com

It is a great collection of some really inspiring custom designed Facebook pages. You can browse it by category such as Media, Auto e.t.c. or search by brand name. You can also browse through the pages of top brands by filtering the brands that have more than 1 million fans.

Techie-Buzz Verdict:

CustomFacebookPage is a great inspiration for people who are interested in having a customized Facebook page. The collection gives you plenty of ideas about different design elements including layout, color schemes, graphics, fonts e.t.c.

You might also like:

• Almost 95% Users Hate New Facebook Design
• Halloween Logos and Pages from Popular Brands
• Change Your Facebook Profile Layout With PageRage
• Exclude Pages in WordPress list pages

One of the many new features in Windows 7 is Aero Peek. Just hover the mouse pointer over the extreme right edge of your taskbar and Windows will reveal the desktop. To be honest, I don’t really like Aero Peek – in fact I find it pretty much pointless. But, a lot of people seem to love it. If you indeed find Aero Peek beneficial, here is a small tip to make it more convenient.

In order to avoid accidental triggering, Aero Peek doesn’t get activated immediately. Instead you need to wait for about half a second. This delay is mostly unnecessary and can be annoying. Fortunately for us, it is quite easy to make Aero Peek trigger instantly.

1. Type regedit in the Start Menu or the Run (Win + R) box. This will launch the Windows Registry Editor.
2. Now browse to the following location:

   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced

3. Create a new DWORD (32-bit) value DesktopLivePreviewHoverTime from the Edit Menu.



4. Double click on this entry to edit its value. Set the base to Decimal and enter 0 as the value. You can actually enter any delay value you wish. Just remember that the unit of time used here is millisecond (1000ms=1s).



5. That’s it. All you need to do now is logoff or restart to see the changes.

If you don’t want to go through all this trouble, you can also download this registry script. Simply double click on the script (.reg file) to apply the tweak.

Of course, if you don’t like Aero Peek and find it pointless, you should disable it entirely. Right click on an empty spot in the taskbar and select Properties. Uncheck the box next to Use Aero Peek to preview the desktop to disable Aero Peek.

based on Vishal Gupta’s Tweak

You might also like:

• Extend Windows 7 & Vista Battery Life By Disabling Aero Glass
• Enhance Windows Seven Taskbar With Taskbar Overlord
• Get Instant Access To Your Desktop With Desk Topmost
• Experience Aero Glass in Windows XP With Border Skin

On Tuesday, Google launched ‘Go’, an Open Source programming language which combines Python and C++. The applications developed on this platform will be for multi-processor systems. The Go programming language combines the power of a compiled language like C++, with the robust and fast application of an interpreted language, like Python.

Google-Go

‘Go’ is another brainchild of Google’s 20% free time. Rob Pike, a principle engineer at Google and a Go developer says:

I’ve never felt as productive as I have working with Go.

The Go Project actually began in 2007 and the reason for the open-sourcing, as Pike says, is:

We’re opening sourcing it now because we think it’s reached the point of being fun and useful and powerful

‘Go’, reportedly runs at the speed of C. Other existing languages have not been optimized to run on modern day multi-core processors. The learning curves of ‘Go’ are comparable to that of Java and the language is not too hard to learn as well. ‘Go’ should be a programmer’s choice over existing languages like C and C++, given its speed and optimal implementation on current day hardware.

‘Go’ will go a long way in  bridging the gap between compiled and interpreted languages. Pike gives an example saying, Google Wave currently uses a C++ backend and a JavaScript frontend. ‘Go’, if used in Google Wave can replace both the backend and the frontend equally effectively. Pike is also quoted to have said:

Go has properties that make it really nice for running inside the browser for your apps

Which is something web-developers will really like. I will give ‘Go’ a go from my side.

For the rest, we will see the developer community’s take on ‘Go’ over the next few months.

Visit the ‘Go’ homepage for more details.

You might also like:

• CodeFetch: Search Programming Books For Codes
• Free Desktop Language Translator
• Skype for Linux Going to be Open Source
• Google Search vs Yahoo Search