Digistrom

Social Networking 101

2011-10-11T07:21:00.001+05:30

(http://www.pidjin.net)

Meanwhile, in America…

2010-07-30T00:32:00.001+05:30

Say “Cheese!”

2009-07-02T20:32:00.002+05:30

Cursed with a strong sense of morbid curiosity and an ill-timed SMS from a friend mocking something she heard on the show, I had the misfortune of tuning into NDTV Imagine’s recent hit “Rakhi Ka Swayamwar” for around three minutes before becoming violently ill.

Welcome to the brainfuck that is Indian Television!

Moovie of the Year

2009-06-01T13:35:00.002+05:30

Just when you thought Hollywood couldn’t sink any deeper than Snakes on a Submarine…

Just when you thought Operation YouTube was this year’s EPIC WIN…

Just when you thought the planet and your brain were saturated with WTF…

MAD COW – THE MOVIE

Intrigue, Romance, Cattle…

The question is not whether the planet can deliver. The question is – Can you handle it, bitches?

Two excellent fitness blogs

2009-05-06T15:08:00.002+05:30

There are a lot of fitness blogs out there. Here are two that I read regularly and can recommend:

Fitsugar is geared towards women but it has excellent advice on fitness and diet that is applicable to either sex. With regular updates and genuinely useful tips, Fitsugar is a one of the best fitness blogs out there.

The Fitness Black Book is written by Rusty Moore who caters to, in his words, “people who would rather look like a Hollywood Sex Symbol -VS- a massive bodybuilder.”

If you prefer a lean look to a beefy one, The Fitness Black Book has some great advice for you.

Ghostery watches the sites that watch you

2009-05-06T14:37:00.004+05:30

Ghostery is a Firefox extension that may appeal to those who are concerned about online privacy. It shows you the hidden scripts that track your behaviour (click tracking) running on the site you’ve visited.

This is a screenshot of a tech blog, Labnol - as you can see, the author is running seven different scripts.

Terror Strikes Bombay (A different perspective.)

2008-11-28T18:14:00.001+05:30

Got this in my e-mail.

Search multiple Rapidshare search engines with a single Firefox keyword

2008-09-12T18:58:00.002+05:30

1. Create a new bookmark in Firefox

2. Cut and paste the following javascript in the Location field

3. Assign a keyword to the bookmark, something like rapid or rapidshare

4. In the address bar type your keyword followed by the search terms (Eg: rapid ebook ) and press enter, hit the go button. The search engines should open up in multiple tabs (or windows if you haven't got single window mode (recommended) enabled).

The same technique can be used to search any category of bookmarks. The example below searches three leading medical information sites:

javascript:void(window.open('http://vsearch.nlm.nih.gov/vivisimo/cgi-bin/query-meta?v%3Aproject=medlineplus&query=%s'));void(window.open('http://www.webmd.com/search/search_results/default.aspx?query=%s&sourceType=undefined'));void(window.open('https://ssl.search.live.com/health/results.aspx?br=hv&qu=%s'))

Let me know in the comments if there's a better way of doing this, add-ons that use Firefox (Mycroft Project) search engines are not an option as they add to clutter and engines are not available for all sites.

PS: I urge you to use this only to download legit stuff... perhaps mayonnaise recipes?

Pornanalysed!

2008-06-30T14:45:00.001+05:30

[If anyone knows the original source, please let me know and I’ll put in the credits]

Yahoo Messenger Beta v.9.0.0.1389 - [Ads Removed]

2008-06-03T15:12:00.002+05:30

Here's the Ad remover for the latest Yahoo! Messenger Beta v9.0.0.1389 :

Instructions:
1. Make sure the installer is in the same folder as YahooMessenger.exe
2. If your version shows up as 0.0.0.0 click "Fix version"
3. Use at your own risk! ;)

The patch also removes chat room ads & has a fix to enable multiple instances.

Thanks to tim2679 at WackyB.co.nz

Yahoo! Messenger Beta [13.79 MB] Ads Fix [320 KB]

Damaged file recovery that actually works.

2008-01-27T19:14:00.001+05:30

JFileRecovery is a tool that lets you recover files from corrupted media, mainly CDs and DVDs and in less frequent instances, hard disks and flash drives.

The principle on which it works is, when a file is reported as corrupt by the system it is likely that just small part(s) of it are actually damaged. JFileRecovery lets you recover the undamaged portions of the file and optionally retry recovering the damaged portions. It lets you set the size of data blocks it tries to recover, so you can start by setting a larger block size and then if block x is damaged and unrecoverable you can reduce the block size and rescan block x so you can recover any part of it that may be undamaged. It is even possible to eject a disk, clean it, pop it back in and continue scanning with a different block size. You can also set the error timeouts, the time before the software gives up on a block. Because of these caveats JFileRecovery works best with multimedia files... photos, videos, music. The author recommends you avoid using it on executable files.

JFileRecovery is freeware and has a very easy to use, no-nonsense interface. It is a Java app and you'll need Java installed on your machine to run it.

JFileRecovery Home (has a detailed explanation of what the software does)

Standalone Download [39 KB]

Webstart JFileRecovery (launch directly)

Yahoo Messenger 9 Beta (Official & Unofficial links)

2007-10-31T13:24:00.001+05:30

Version 9.0.0.797 Beta

Yahoo! Messenger Beta Home (Download)

Yahoo Messenger Blog (Review)

Patch to remove ads (made for an older version but seems to work well with the current release, use at your discretion.)

Happy Halloween!

Two Mini File Utilities for Geeks

2007-09-13T14:22:00.001+05:30

Here are two rather longwindedly named, but tiny & useful utilities for geeks. Each of these utilities enhances your file properties box with a tab of its own.

febooti fileTweak Hex Editor is a hex editor that embeds itself into every file's property box.

febooti fileTweak Hash & CRC lets you calculate CRC & several other checksum values right from a file's property box.

Both utilities are freeware. They don't seem to slow down the load of the properties box. The hex editor does not work on very large files but it loaded a 200+ MB file on my system fairly easily. Just remember - this is a very handy quickfix utility but not a full-fledged, specialized app.

febooti fileTweak Hex Editor [Home Page]

febooti fileTweak Hash & CRC [Home Page]

ReNamer - A fantastic file rename utility

2007-09-13T13:14:00.001+05:30

Cybernet recently reviewed ReNamer, a very impressive file renaming utility that definitely deserves a mention.

ReNamer (freeware) has the best interface I've seen in any utility in this category & is one of the few renaming utilities that lets you feel completely in charge of even very complex operations.

Full review at Cybernet

More Screenshots

Official Download Page

PC Chrono: Freeware Windows Stopwatch

2007-09-06T15:23:00.001+05:30

Windows Live Writer (which I use to publish this blog) was just updated, so this is more of a test post than a serious return to blogging.

I recently needed a stopwatch & countdown utility for my PC. After evaluating several freeware and shareware utilities I was surprised at how few really good programs I found in this category.

The only one that made the mark was a freeware app called PC Chrono, which incorporates a count down module, a stopwatch (count up) & a bigass (impractical) clock. The app could certainly be refined further but the count up and count down bits work well. You can have a sound file (.mp3, .wav, .ogg) play when the countdown ends and you can even have a synthesized voice say the time elapsed or time remaining during count up or countdown.

Unless I missed a really good piece of software, I think this category is wide open for freeware/ small shareware programmers looking for ideas. Hell, I may take it upon myself to code this one. ;)

PC Chrono Homepage

Box.net Registration Closed? (Not really)

2007-06-16T10:15:00.001+05:30

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

2007-06-16T10:06:00.001+05:30

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

2007-06-13T18:53:00.001+05:30

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

2007-06-02T18:20:00.001+05:30

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]

Windows Live Writer (Beta) 1.0 (12.0.1183.516)

2007-05-31T18:06:00.001+05:30

Major new features:

Cool blue look. And by cool I mean nauseating.

Real time spell check for rytards who can't spyll.

'Firefox' still not a recognized word in the dictionary, 'Microsoft' is legit. (Where's my knuckle-duster? I know I had it here somewhere!)

Image embedding still the worst on the planet. Auto-~~distort~~ resize still very much on.

Tables: Not bad.

Overall responsiveness of app: Tragic.

Memory Consumption: 60+!! MB (courtesy: www.wtf.com)

Overall rating: 3/5 (coz I'm a generous guy)

Worth the upgrade: Yes. But no! But yes! OK, go for it but think twice if you have a slow PC or get pissed off with cursors afflicted with Parkinson's disease.

Read a real post about this.

And The Best Desktop Search Application Is...

2007-02-02T18:32:00.000+05:30

I have compared the following Desktop Search programs for the purpose of this article: Copernic Desktop Search 2, Google Desktop Search, X1, Yahoo Desktop Search, Microsoft Windows Desktop Search and even the somewhat lesser known but reputed ISYS: desktop. All of these, with the exception of ISYS, are free. All have strengths and weaknesses - there is unfortunately no one program that "does it all" at this point of time. The best app for you will depend on your specific requirements and what ultimately feels right for you, so trying out more than one app would be a good idea. I'll point out some of the main pros and cons of these apps and close by declaring and briefly reviewing my personal favorite from this lot.

ISYS: desktop is more for corporates and its price tag is none too light either. I did not find anything exceptional about its performance on my machine and I hated the fact that its interface (like so many others, that try too hard) is non-intuitive. The last thing a user needs is a larger than necessary learning curve for what should be a relatively straight forward utility. But then ISYS doesn't claim to be for the average home user so I guess they can be excused. For the purpose of this article though, ISYS is eliminated.

Microsoft Windows Desktop Search
Let's face it - nobody knows Windows better than Microsoft. WDS is quite possibly the fastest app of the lot. What is not so good about it, is that it's very bare bones and has got a relatively ugly, non-customizable interface. If speed matters and speed is all that matters you should definitely give WDS a try.

Google Desktop Search
People have come to expect good things from Google. Google Desktop Search however, seems to be the most misguided utility of the lot. They have gone over-the-top in their quest for desktop search glory and it has misfired badly. First off it pisses me off that Google decided to bundle stuff like Google chat and a couple of other worthless utilities (a note taker? a "web clips" utility?) with their search app. All this junk, including their chat app get downloaded, installed and start off on their own. Shouldn't those tactics be left to Microsoft? Not only does GDS not have previews for picture or sound files, if your search brings back more than a handful results and you would like to see them all it'll open them in a window in your web browser rather than a window of its own. Was the design team at Google on crack when they thought out this travesty? Would you like to change your GDS settings? No problem - it'll just open another browser window and keep you on hold till the settings page loads from Google! It's so stupid, it actually makes you laugh! I still can't get over its infuriating reliance on web pages opening up in a browser when this is a client app running right from my desktop. The text file previews had a good look about them (just the right size font, number of lines) but that's ALL it seems to have going for it. Sometimes trying to be different can turn out to be a bad thing and this is a prime example. If you download GDS you get a half-assed desktop search app and a lot of other crap you didn't ask for. This app is a disgrace and the only reason you would use it is coz you didn't know any better.

Yahoo Desktop Search and X1 are quite similar, probably because a lot of what goes on under the hood is handled by the same code. X1 recently went free but in my experience, though the free version is more recent, their paid version works faster and feels lighter. X1 was my choice until a month back. It was not too heavy on resources and did a good job overall. The one drawback I found was, it didn't remember my column settings for different views but that was something one could live with. Yahoo Desktop Search will let you index 300+ file types if you install an optional (free) 4MB expansion pack. If you prefer to index the maximum possible file types for metadata then Yahoo Desktop Search is for you, needless to say you should install the expansion pack too.

Copernic Desktop Search 2
My choice, above all others at the time of this writing is Copernic Desktop Search 2 (currently in pre-release). It supports indexing over 150 file types on last count. Here are some of the most types of data it can index, mind you it can handle several more types than what you see below

Video: avi, mpg, 3gp, wmv
Music: mp3, wav, ogg, ra, rm, cda, wma, aac, au
Images: gif, jpg, bmp, png, psd, tif
Documents: txt, doc, xls, ppt, pdf, html, rtf, hlp
Email: Microsoft Outlook or Microsoft Outlook Express Data, including contact information
Browser History & Favorites: Internet explorer, Firefox, Mozilla, Netscape

One big drawback that could be a show stopper for some people is that Copernic is unable to list or index files inside compressed archives like zip or rar. It will index these file types (and any other file types for that matter) by their names but it will not be able to see and index the files that lie inside the archive. If you cannot do without indexing archived files, I'd recommend X1. I switched to Copernic for one really simple feature more than any other. Copernic shows you a page full of thumbnails in the picture search category and this makes a HUGE difference if you've got lots of pictures on your hard disk. It can even categorize and group the thumbnails by date, folder (as shown in the screenshot below), size, filetype and a few other criteria. When it comes to picture search CDS2 simply blows the competition away! Add to that its stylish looks, customizable interface and decent speed and CDS2 is quite a contender, easily my first choice.

CDS2 lets you index networked computers and shows you the number of hits for each category in the toolbar no matter what category you searched in. Its interface is highly customizable, I don't archive emails or contacts and as you can see from the screenshot above, it let me completely remove those categories from the toolbar. Less is more!

There's nothing less about CDS2 when it comes to options and features, though. Besides having all the options that one expects (like an option to remember or not remember previous searches) it also adds new features like query completion or query correction. It's completely flexible and lets you selectively archive (or not) any folder for distinct filetypes. You can select which files are simply to be archived for filenames and which should be scanned for their content, letting you add your own custom extensions to be indexed for content too.

Indexing utilities, as a rule, consume a lot of system resources and if badly configured CDS 2 could easily bring the rest of the PC to a virtual standstill. Configure it correctly and you'll hardly notice it's there till you actually use it. Here are some tips on using it efficiently.

Disable the "Display all item when no keyword is entered" option. It's a waste of resources and also compromises your privacy.
The query completion and query correction options are always running but hardly used. If after a few uses, you realise you're not really utilizing these options, turn them off completely.
Take a little time to figure out which folders you don't need to index. This can result in a huge saving of system resources and the app will function way more efficiently in all respects if you index in a smart manner and avoid redundancy.
The same rule applies when it comes to choosing the file types for indexing metadata. Copernic starts with indexing enabled for all supported file types. Disable extensions for those file types you know you'll never need to search inside. Your indexing will get done a lot faster.
Add the extension .* to the list of files to be indexed. This will make sure Copernic indexes filenames for every file on the PC. You can minimize using Windows inbuilt file search this way, CDS2 will find your files way faster, provided they're indexed, of course.
Indexing is the most important activity and must be configured right - make use of realtime indexing but let it run in passive mode. Make sure you leave the suspend indexing settings enabled! You can reduce the "Suspend indexing while I use my computer" setting to around 10 seconds without any adverse effect.

Copernic Desktop Search:
More info --- Download v1.7 --- Download v2 Pre-release (Recommended)
Google Desktop Search: Homepage
ISYS: desktop: Homepage --- Trial Download
Yahoo Desktop Search:
Info & download --- Expansion Pack Info & Download
Micosoft Windows Desktop Search:
Homepage --- Download v2.6.5 --- Download v3 Beta2
X1 Enterprise Client: More Info --- Download

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