Techspace: January 2009

Windows 7 - A short review

I tried Windows 7 Ultimate pre-Beta version. Its still under testing. And it of course have some flaws which are getting better with every update.

I must say that this is not that bad. Windows after releasing Windows Vista might have realised that it was an extreme releasing making it unable to work on most of the PCs. Vista's requirements were quite high and non-economical. But people who were able to run on their machines said, its cool! And it was. Graphics, Speed, features were terribly good! Features like Ready boost were added.

To counter act the incompatibility of Vista, Microsoft came with Windows 7. Windows 7 is compatible even with some 5 year old computer. It runs with no graphics card. :) Requirements are optimal.
Looks of Vista with features of XP - This is how I can best describe this OS.
The traditional taskbar is given modification. No differentiation between the quick icons and the regular minimised windows. All look same. This new one actually sucks! Thank god we can change it to the traditional taskbar.
The glossy look of Windows Vista are restored.
Paint and calculators are given some modification too. (I thought Microsoft had forgotten those applications)
Best thing that I happened to see is the Action center. If something goes wrong, the OS can self diagnose the machine for troubleshooting. Its really cool!
The animations are simple and don't eat away your RAM as much as Vista did.
I heard that the Microsoft is going to give some good Bluetooth Support in its Beta version.
I still use my Windows XP as second OS.

Google Chat Bots - Language not a barrier anymore!

Here is something, not so new, but so useful. Google Chat bots! Chatting with people who don't know english was always difficult and almost impossible. But Google got a solution to this. Name of the solution is "Google Bots".

Google Bots translate languages. There are more than 50 bots that google has released. Add them as your friend on Google chat and while chatting with an alien who doesn't speak your language, add these bots and make it a conference chat. Thats it! Whenever you enter something, the bot will translate it to what it is supposed to. There are different bots for different languages.

The email addresses of the bots that you should add follows the following pattern.

[from language]2[to language]@bot.talk.google.com

For example, if you want to translate English to Hindi, you add the bot en2hi@bot.talk.google.com as your friend.

Other bots are -

ar2en (Arabic to English)

de2en (German to English)

de2fr (German to French)

el2en (Greek to English)

en2ar (English to Arabic)

en2de (English to German)

en2el (English to Greek)

en2es (English to Spanish)

en2fr (English to French)

en2it (English to Italian)

en2ja (English to Japanese)

en2ko (English to Korean)

en2nl (English to Dutch)

en2ru (English to Russian)

en2zh (English to Chinese)

es2en (Spanish to English)

fr2de (French to German)

fr2en (French to English)

it2en (Italian to English)

ja2en (Japanese to English)

ko2en (Korean to English)

nl2en (Dutch to English)

ru2en (Russian to English)

zh2en (Chinese to English)

Wow! I can speak Spanish now!
Las personas se divierten!

Multiple Logins in Gtalk

Ok! Here's something cool now. Suppose you have 2 gmail ids and you want to log into both the accounts using GTalk, how will you do??? You can't open multiple Gtalks in your computer. Clicking once on the icon will open Gtalk once. You login. And clicking again on GTalk icon brings you back to the logged Gtalk!

But not anymore! Here is a cool trick that allows you to login different Gtalks simultaneously.

Right click on the Gtalk Shorcut icon on your desktop (If you don't have shortcut icon, create one). Then in the Target function of the shorcut Tab, you'll find something like this in quotes.

"C:\Program Files\Google\Google Talk\googletalk.exe"

Now append '/nomutex' to this without quotes. That is, make it

"C:\Program Files\Google\Google Talk\googletalk.exe" /nomutex

And save it by clicking OK. Now you're done! :)
Now open Gtalk login window as many times as you want just by clicking this shortcut icon and login with as many accounts as you want.

Let Internet solve your mathematics homework

http://www.mathway.com

Now here is some thing like a boon for all the lazy goons who don't do their maths home work. This site is basically a calculator. But gives a complete explanation of a problem. Enter the math problem to be solved. Be it calculus, trigonometry, simple math or anything, mathway.com gives you step by step methods of solving the problem. Isn't that wonderful??? Its a teacher! It explains everything in words. Have fun doing your homework!

PS: Sorry, parents!

Know Your Death Date - FUNNY

He he! I got into this site somehow and this is seriously funny...

http://deathdate.info or
http://deathclock.com

Both the websites are do the same work. They are equally funny and good enough for a 2 year old to believe. Enter your information and it gives you back your death date. He he! Isn't that funny? :P

Along with that, check http://oracle.deathdate.info/reincarnation. This will take you to one of the pages where you enter your name and date of birth to know what you'll be in your next life. If you don't like to be that thing in your next life, then change your name(add initials or remove) and try again.

Tiny URL - Shortening Long Links for SMS or to use in Twitter

http://www.tinyurl.com

This is a URL suppressor. I mean if you have a URL to some article in some newspaper or in some blog and it has more than 30 or more characters, then you can just use this site www.tinyurl.com to suppress it and make it tiny. Go to the website. Paste the long link that has to be suppressed. And click submit. The site returns you with a link that in this format www.tiny.com/
where is a string of random characters and numbers.

With this feature, posting URL in twitter or sending SMS is easy and helps save time. :)

TinyURL needs no registration and its simple and cool. Try out!

Windows SkyDrive

This is pretty popular on the net yet most people are unaware of it. So this post if for beginners. This is an online file sharing web site. By Microsoft! Yeah! The "Microsoft" tag itself drives people insane.

Windows Skydrive : www.skydrive.live.com

All you need is a Windows Live account.

SkyDrive gives 25GB of space! What more? huh? its Almost 1/4th of my hard disk. Check it now! Since this is already popular, I have nothing more to say about this.

Self test your handwriting

Ever heard of Handwriting specialists? He is one who checks your handwriting and tells what kind of person you are. Yeah! This always amused me. Ever since childhood, I was fond of getting my handwriting to a handwriting specialist to check and to see how they do it. But never found one. But no worries! Here it is online too. I happened to stumble upon this website which says "Self test your Handwriting". Yeah. Link's here

http://www.handwritingwizard.com

Start the test by entering your name and the wizard starts by asking you a series of questions(contains pictures) related to your handwriting. You got to answer them. And you get the results mailed to you. As easy as that! Try it out and see what handwriting specialists have for you. ;-)

Windows Live Writer

Microsoft has answers to almost everything. This is one among the several thousand software released by Microsoft. Windows Live writer is a must have for a professional blogger. I must say.

Live writer is a blogging Client. Not just for Live Spaces, but for all. Just download this software from here and zoom into the software to see what magic this software can do. Posting was never so easy.

Install Windows Live writer. Type in the username, password and your blog URL when asked. The Writer automatically detects what kind of template you use and downloads the template. If you are using a custom template, then the writer writes a post by itself to detect what kind of formatting your blogger needs, and soon after that the temporary post created post will be deleted. Since the template is downloaded onto your computer, working offline is so easy and user friendly. Inserting Pictures, Tables, videos and tags is easier than ever. Extra plug-ins can be added. Check out!

Software can be downloaded from this page.
http://download.live.com/writer

Don't miss this.

Meebo - Online IMs

Meebo! How many of you have not heard of this?

Its a site where you can log into your various mail ids of various networks, and chat with all your friends at one place.
If you have a gmail account, a yahoo account and a facebook account and you want to use all of them at a time, and you find it irritating to switch from browser to browser to reply your friends, then log on to meebo. All IM's under same roof ;-). You can create your meebo account and save time in entering passwords and ids of all the accounts. Very useful site for those who use multiple IMs. Works very fine.
I give this a 9 on 10 rating.
All for its simplicity.

BS Player - Audio Video Player

For all the music lovers and who love keeping lot of music players in their stash, then they shouldn't miss this player.

BSplayer.

Its new and its versions are already on the net :) Only thing that sucks is their website which loads and loads and keeps loading. You'll feel that it'd keep loading forever. The free version is just no more than a simple player but the full version is lot better. One feature that its website largely claims to is the capability of the software to play and download youtube videos directly. I'm not sure if they know that its no big deal to download youtube videos for free.

I rate the free version 4 out of 10.

Download the software from their site www.bsplayer.com or www.bsplayer.org.

Photoshop.com - Web app

Adobe photoshop is now on web... :)

It cannot happen that you don't know Adobe Photoshop. But for those who operate more on the web and want to edit pics on internet, then this is the site.
www.photoshop.com
Provides you 2 GB of storage space. You can also login to your flickr, photobucket or picasa album and Copy pics directly from these sites on to your photoshop account by just drag-n-drop style! :)
Creating albums, watching slideshows and many more. Got all the features that you find in other such sites. But photo editting is one thing thats unmatchable.
Its elgant looks and great interface makes it better. Embeding slideshows into your website is just a click away if you have a photoshop account. Check it out today.

Online FLV to Other format converter

In my last post on downloading you tube videos, i gave a small tricky website that does all the job of downloading movies in .flv format. Downloading in .flv format is not always handy. And downloading in .flv and then converting it to other using softwares is lot of work. So here are 3 simple websites for your simple work. Clicks away are your videos in your desired formats.

http://www.flv2mp3.com/
Use this site if you only want the audio track from it. Enter the link and the website will give you back another link. Save that link and you will get that particular video's audio track only. That too in a convenient .mp3 format

http://www.videoconvertx.com/
Enter the link of the video that you want to download. Select the output format of that video. And you'll get that! As easy as that. Takes no time.

http://www.convertdirect.com/
This site is a combination of www.videoconvertx.com and downloadyoutubevideos.com which i told in my last post. You can either download video directly in .flv format or you can get it converted and download in your desired output. If you are downloading the converted video, then you need to give your email id to which the link will be sent to. Better hang on to the other 2 sites given above.

Isn't that easy?

Download Youtube Videos! http://downloadyoutubevideos.com/

Ever felt like downloading a youtube video and wondered how?

There are lot of software available on the net to download youtube videos. But the simplest and the online way is here :)

Go to

http://downloadyoutubevideos.com/

Enter the URL to the video that you want to download into the box given and press submit. It gives you the download link in return. As simple as that. No need of third party softwares. No need to register in that site. Works fine. :) Downloaded file will be in FLV format.

Note: Beware of the adult ads present in that site.

gAlwaysIdle - Be idle on google talk

Google Talk does not allow users to decide when their status changes to 'idle' and back. The result is that others can tell whether or not you're at your computer.

gAlwaysIdle adds two new options to Google Talk, allowing you to change your status to be 'always idle' or 'never idle'. When your status is set to 'always idle', you'll appear idle to your Google Talk buddies, even if you're sitting at your computer typing e-mails and sending IMs.

System Requirements:

Google Talk Client

Windows XP/Vista (no 64 bit operating system)

Screenshot:

<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">

Download Link:
http://www.4shared.com/file/79037493/5b12cef9/gAlwaysIdleSetup.html

eBoostr - Use Flash drive as RAM - Speed up your PC!

You might have heard of this Readyboost if you are a windows vista user. This is one technique by which you can use your pen drive as an extra random access memory (RAM) for your computer. When you insert a Pen drive into your Vista OS machine, you'll be given an option to boost your computer memory with USB along with other options like "Play media files", "Open folder to view files" and et cetera. This is one real helpful software. But people with windows xp need not worry.
Coz eboostr is here.
Yes, this new software is similar to ReadyBoost in Vista. It works in XP. And now you can boost up your XP OS computer's memory without much work.
You can boost up your computer using memory card reader also. Same application. Eboostr.

Requirements:

Microsoft Windows XP

USB 2.0 port version or external card-reader

USB flash drive or flash card with at least 64 MB free space

Download Link:
http://www.4shared.com/file/79035850/cdbde1a0/eBoostr.html

If you want to buy the full version of eboostr($29) check their site.
Site link: http://www.eboostr.com

Switch - Audio Conversion Software

Switch
Converting audio formats becomes often necessary. This is when this software comes in handy.
Its easy. Just drag and drop. Select the output format. And click Convert! Thats it.

Features:

Automatically normalise audio while converting.

Import multiple file formats at the same time and convert to one output format.

Ability to play tracks prior to conversion.

Import and convert a playlist (m3u and pls).

Import video files and extract audio (avi, mov, mpeg)

MP3 encoder supports constant or variable bit rates from 8 to 320kbps with optional error correction and stereo modes.

WAV encoder supports sample rates between 6000 and 196000Hz in PCM as well as a number of other audio codecs.

Allows up to 32000 files to be converted in one batch.

Can be run from the command line for automation with other applications.

Optimized CPU usage and efficient code allows for fastest conversion times.

Typical Applications

Convert wav to mp3 files to save hard drive space.

Convert mp3 to amr to load your own ringtones on your cell phone.

To open or convert strange or audio file formats not supported by other audio software you use.

Extract audio from video files (favorite sound bites) for your phone or other audio player.

Convert multiple format audio files to mp3 for your iPod, PSP or phone.

In professional audio studios to open formats not supported by your sound editor.

As a command line plugin for other software to convert or compress audio files.

For more information visit their website brought to you by NCH Softwares.
Link to their website: http://www.nch.com.au/switch/

Download the free version here:
http://www.4shared.com/file/79030755/8155a220/switchsetup.html

Must download these things for your computer

There are certain softwares without which your computer is no more than a dead machine.

When you first finish installing Windows XP and the drivers, your machine will be like a new born baby. You got to pamper it to grow it up!
Just download these things. Your computer will grow into one cool gadget machine.

Open Office
If you don't have Microsoft Office and you badly want to use your documents and excel sheets, then there is an alternate thing for Microsoft Office. Its Open Office. Open office being an open source is free to use and distribute and also to change its code. This is a real cool software which gives you all the features that are in MS Office and more than all that, it gives you peace. There can be no legal issues with the licensing and all that. This is free to use. You'll never have this guilt of using something pirated.
Link given below. Link directs you to their site. Open Office is brought to you by Sun Microsystems. Say thanks while leaving the site.
Download page:
http://www.openoffice.org/
http://openoffice.bouncer.osuosl.org/?&product=OpenOffice.org&os=winwjre&lang=en-US&version=3.0.0

Adobe flash Player
Flash animations are as common as texts in dictionary. With youtube.com growing into such a huge site, its impossible to stay on internet without a flash player. Adobe's flash player is a must download for every internet surfer. Download it here.
For latest updates on adobe flash player, check their official website.
http://www.adobe.com/products/flashplayer/

Download link:
http://www.4shared.com/file/79028740/10f066b1/install_flash_player.html

Adobe reader
No computer is complete without an adobe reader. Everything now comes in PDF formats. Be it your timetables or documents from some government site. Everything is in PDF formats. You need adobe reader to it. Download this from here. Do read the adobe's Terms of Service before downloading. There are certain restrictions on it. PDF's are meant only to be read. You are not supposed to manipulate any text in a PDF file. You can only read them. So don't expect text manipulating stuff from this Adobe reader.
For latest updates and their ToS, check their official webpage. Click on the link below.
http://get.adobe.com/reader/
Download from the same above site>

VLC media player
I guess there's no person who's not aware of this software. VLC media player just rocks. Its simple interface and extensive features make it more reliable than any other player listed below. This is in no doubt a best player i've ever seen. Download it from here.
Download Link:
http://www.4shared.com/file/79035050/c3aeb018/vlc-098a-win32.html

GOM Player
This one helluva player. For all the people who have sticked to VLC media player, check this player for a change. Its one easy looking software with some coolest tools. Program the player to switch off after playing or shut down the computer after playing, full screen stretched, full screen normal, change the size, add external subtitles are some features of it. It opens up pretty quickly and interface is cool. Download it from here.
Download Link:
http://www.4shared.com/file/79029269/e56d1919/GOMPLAYERENSETUP.html

KM player
This is yet another player that I love a lot. Its winamp like interface may look a bit eery. But its features baffled me. Got all the features that GOM player has got. So i give this also a "Must download" rating.
Download Link:
http://www.4shared.com/file/79037123/be2dd5d9/The_KMPlayer_1434.html

AVG Free
There was a time when parents used to tell their children "God is everywhere". But now, its the age when people say "Viruses are everywhere". Its very important to safeguard your computer. But no antivirus softwares come for free. But here is one. AVG has got its Free version out. Its cool. It heals pretty good. My personal best. No need to pirate. Gets updated by itself. No worries of getting black-listed. :)Download it from here and enjoy. Happy surfing.
Download it from http://free.avg.com/

Google Picasa 3
Coolest Picture editting and managing software. Make posters, collage, video or anything. Enhance the quality of pictures. Fill light. Give effects like sepia, black and whie, saturation, tint and many more. I love this "I'm feeling lucky." feature provided by this software that almost brings life to some pics. "Retouch" is a mind-blowing picture editting tool. So easy to operate. Upload pics directly to your Picasa web album with no much difficulty. Must download if you have lot of pics on your computer. Can't match Photoshop. But more than enough for medium users.
Download Link:
http://www.4shared.com/file/79033149/87c00c16/picasa3-setup.html

Free Download manager
As the name itself says, its free. If you are crazy downloading lot of things from net, then this software is for you. Pause, resume , stop. Do anything. Just drag and drop the links to its drop box which will be present on your screen always in the fore. Queue as many as you want. Download starts automatically when your computer starts. and pauses automatically when you shut the computer down. And the best part is, it supports torrents too. So no need to download seperate torrent clients for it. But keep in mind that its just a download manager and not a download accelerator and gives you considerably best rate your connection can. Its free to use. Download it from here.
Download Link:
http://www.4shared.com/file/79029911/a8a2e80d/fdminst3.html

Mozilla 3
If you are a browser junkie, then you should have Mozilla3.
Its free. Its available in their websit
e. Download link given below also. This is an open source and you can get its source code if you want to customize it. This is an easy to use web browser with built in download manager. Yet its not so good when handling files of sizes greater than 20 or 30 mb and when your download speed is below 30kbps. It sometimes fails to resume paused downloads. But browsing is faster than anything else.
Click on the link to download.
Download Link:
http://www.4shared.com/file/79026032/542ff0ec/Firefox_Setup_305.html
If link's broken, go to http://www.mozilla.org/download.html

Where to download audio songs from?

People ask me where to download songs from?

I say I just buy them.

But for those who are not bothered about piracy, visit http://123musiq.com or http://www.123musiq.com
This is one easy site where you get all the latest songs (english, hindi, tamil, telugu, malayalam and pakistani) for free. This site isn't that good. Their servers crash every now and then. So its recommended to use download manager to download.

For english songs, I prefer mp3000.net

Its a cool site except that you get bugged by some of the adult ads that site hosts. Beware of it when your parents are over your shoulders :P

Whats RSS?

RSS stands for really simple syndication. Its a way in which you can keep a track of whats new on websites you like. You just have to subscribe for it. Publishers can now easily manage to keep their visitors updated with the new contents of their site.

How to use it?
Download a feed reader. There are lots of it on internet. Install it. Now whenever you go to a website, you see this symbol which stands for RSS feeds. Most websites have RSS feeds.

Click on that icon and your feed reader will automatically open itself. So that you can subscribe to it through your feed reader. Then keep clicking ok. Now on, all the latest stuff happening in that website will be tracked by your feed reader through feeds sent by the site. It will just give you the headlines and clicking that will take you to the website.
Try google feed reader. Its an online feed reader with better interface and great features. :)

Heard of torrent downloads? What is that?

Torrents are specialized files utilized in peer-to-peer (P2P) network environments. P2P is a network of personal computers that communicate with one another by running proprietary P2P software. The first P2P software designed to utilize torrents was BitTorrent by Bram Cohen. Other torrent clients have followed.

Torrents are distinguished by a unique transfer process. To compare how torrents download to standard files, let’s first consider how normal files download off the Internet.

At any given website a user might click on a file to transfer it to his or her computer. Upon clicking on the file, the website’s server starts sending the file to the visitor in discreet data packets. These packets travel various routes to reach the user’s computer and are reconstructed upon receipt to complete the file transfer.

While this works fine for smaller files, it is cumbersome to transfer larger files this way. If the server is busy, download time can be very slow. Communication between your server and the computer can even crash, causing corruption in the transfer, or at best, delays.

Unlike downloads off the Web, torrents do not point to a single source on a P2P network when requesting files. Instead, torrents contain specific information that multiple computers in the network can read to send various parts of the requested file simultaneously and en masse. Torrents keep active track of which parts of the file are needed to complete the request. By downloading bits of the file from dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of sources, large files can download very quickly.

Working with torrents is also unique for another reason. At the same time the user is downloading file parts, the computer is also uploading parts already received to others. This decreases download time because users do not have to wait for file sources to have completed torrents before receiving needed parts of a requested file.

Once requested torrents have downloaded in full, you become a seed for those files. A seed refers to someone that has the entire file available. It is considered rude to download torrents and disconnect, referred to as leeching. Instead, users are encouraged to participate by seeding the file for others so that a minimal 1:1 share ratio is maintained. A swarm refers to the entire group of people transferring a file at any given time.

To encourage sharing, software used for downloading torrents keeps track of the share ratio. The torrent client will automatically allocate more bandwidth for downloading at faster speeds when a user shares more than he or she downloads. This usually means leaving the computer running while doing other things, as upstream bandwidth is much slower for most of us than downstream bandwidth. While it might take 40 minutes to download a 250MB freeware suite, it can take several times longer to upload that same amount of data.

Torrents are archived in libraries that are searchable with a Web browser. One cannot download torrents without installing a torrent client first. There are many free torrent clients available, some of which are open source. Once a desired torrent is found, clicking on it will open the torrent client to begin the download process. The user may have to configure his or her firewall to allow the use of certain communication ports.

Many types of files are shared as torrents, including software, music and videos. While P2P sharing is not illegal, sharing copyrighted material without permission from the copyright holder is illegal. The Recording Industry Artists of American (RIAA), and Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) have targeted some websites that cater to archiving illegal torrents.

Source: http://www.wisegeek.com/what-are-torrents.htm

Techspace