Box.net Registration Closed? (Not really)

Box.net has closed their free registrations in several countries - in case you've tried to get an account and have been shown the door, here's a really easy way to get one anyway.

1. Install Windows Live Writer
2. Install the Box2LiveWriter Plugin

Start Live Writer and click on the Box.net link that shows up on the right. The login box pops up. Click on Register and enter an email address and password. 1GB allotted. Thank you very much.

A Smarter, Faster Add/Remove Programs Alternative

The Add or Remove Programs applet is an important component bundled with Windows. However, as you install more applications on your system it starts slowing down. On a fully loaded Windows machine it can take quite a while to start up. It provides limited (often faulty) information and for reasons best known to Microsoft, it is also not user friendly.

Enter MyUninstaller - a safe, free alternative to the rather clumsy Add/Remove Programs applet.

Here are some reasons why MyUninstaller is far superior to Windows' Add or Remove Programs applet:

• It loads lightning fast, no more irritating twelve second waits.
• It highlights newly installed apps, making them very easy to spot in the clutter.
• It even lets you sort applications in the order that they were installed, so you see the apps installed most recently right at the top. This is a real time saver, as most of the apps we uninstall are the ones we tried recently and didn't like.
• It shows you which uninstaller entries are obsolete and lets you delete them so you never have useless entries adding to the clutter.
• You can easily export a list of all your installed applications to a text or HTML file.
• If optionally lets you see extra information such as installer used, installation folder, uninstall string, registry key and more.
• Its columns are completely configurable and can be enabled or disabled, letting you see as much or as little information as you need, this makes it a great choice for both newbies and geeks.
• It lets you do a text search for the app you need to uninstall and lets you zero into it immediately, no more manually wading through a long list.
  

All in all, it's a great replacement for Windows' Add/Remove Programs applet since it has several useful features that should have come bundled with Windows in the first place.

Download MyUninstaller
MyUninstaller Homepage (Usage instructions and non-English version downloads)

Automatically Label Google Chat Logs in Gmail

Gtalk sends chat logs to your Gmail account after every chat session. You can get Gmail to automatically label these mails so they are more organized and can all be accessed in one place.

1. In your Gmail account click the Create a filter link located to the extreme right of the Gmail logo.

2. In the filter box that shows up, type gmail.com in the From field, type your own Gmail address in the To field & type Chat with in the Subject field. Click the Test Search button and you should see just the Gtalk chatlog messages in the list below. You can also single out messages from specific contacts, just type in the full email address for a contact in the From field to perform actions only on chat logs relating to her/him. Click the Next Step button.

3. Select the Skip the Inbox (Archive it) & Apply the Label check boxes. In the drop down box next to 'Apply the Label' click New Label... & enter Gtalk (or any other descriptive name) as your new label name. As you can see you can also perform other actions on the messages like delete them straight away or forward them to another address. Check the 'Also apply filter to x conversations below' box to apply these actions to the existing chatlog messages and click the Create Filter button.

AxCrypt - Encryption Made Easy

There are tons of ways to encrypt your personal files and protect them from prying eyes. These range from using simple methods like creating password protected archives using an ubiquitous app like Winzip to using programs specializing in encryption like PGP to using alternative encryption techniques like steganography. No matter how we protect our data, most of us would agree that encryption is an extremely essential tool that one needs to possess.

While all the above mentioned methods get the job done, nothing quite beats shell context based encryption utilities for sheer convenience where all you have to do is right-click a file(s) or folder(s) anywhere in Windows and simply select encrypt to get the job done. I'm covering two shell context encryption utilities in this post, one is full-featured & versatile, the other deserves atleast an honorable mention. Besides being explorer shell extensions, these utilities share one more thing in common, both of them are free.

AxCrypt is definitely the more
complete utility covered here. Besides the usual encrypt & decrypt functions it lets you
'encrypt a copy' meaning, the original file is left untouched and an encrypted copy of it is created. It also lets you shred any file. Files deleted in Windows can often be recovered even after the Recycle Bin is emptied, Windows doesn't offer you direct access to these files but all or part of the data they contained is not physically removed from the hard drive and can be recovered by someone using the right tools. Shredding is a secure deletion technique used to ensure that the files are deleted in the true sense of the word. AxCrypt will optionally remember a password for encryption and/or decryption if you ask it to. It will retain the remembered password till you restart Windows or ask it to stop remembering it. When you click on an encrypted file, it will ask you for the password (assuming you've chosen not to have it remember a default decryption password); once you supply it with the password the file opens with its associated program. You can edit the file and when you close it the file goes back to its encrypted state. This whole process is completely seamless. AxCrypt even lets you create encrypted standalone .exe archives to send files to somebody who doesn't have AxCrypt installed on their system. The receiving party only needs to know the password to access the files. It has a 'Rename' function which changes a file's name to something random, the original name is restored automatically on decryption. It also lets you use a keyfile instead of a password. And all these functions are easily accessible directly from any file's right-click menu. All files encrypted are automatically compressed. A progress status is shown during encryption/decryption. AxCrypt even possesses a versatile command line interface for advanced automated encryption. To say that AxCrypt is full-featured would probably be an understatement. The clincher is that AxCrypt is an Open Source utility, which means you'll never have to worry about backdoors. It uses AES encryption with 128-bit keys .

AxCrypt is as close to perfect as a utility can get in its category. So why am I covering another utility? In one word: speed. Because AxCrypt is so thorough about what it does, it is slightly encumbered. It would not be fair to describe it as slow but if you need to encrypt and decrypt a whole lot of data on a regular basis, you will feel the pinch.

Cryptext is a no-frills utility that relies on a combination of SHA-1 and RC4 to encrypt files using a 160-bit key. It offers nothing much besides blazing fast encryption & decryption. Though it has not been updated for several years now, there are people who still swear by this utility, yours truly included. For a quick encryption fix, nothing quite beats Cryptext.

AxCrypt Home --- Download v1.6.3 [1.01 MB]
Download Cryptext v3.4 [188 KB]