Hmm .. Google Music, Amazon Cloud Player, Spotify, Rdio … quite a few ‘(legal) music on the cloud’ options out there. What have you tried … and how do you like it?
Here’s my two cents
- Google Music – As I understand it, allows you to upload 20,000 songs for free. Do not know what will be their ‘subscription’ charges/model?
- Amazon Cloud Player – Allows you to upload 5GB for free (at an avg or 3Mb per song, it would be about 1700 songs). Amazon mp3 purchases do not count towards the space.
- Spotify – Allows you to listen to 10hours of music per month for free (after 6 months with unlimited listening). Then they have $4.99 and $9.99 per month plans.
- RDio – Haven’t tried it yet. They have a $14.99 per month plan – don’t know if they have a trial period and/or free-per-month option (like spotify)
Freeware list, that I have not tried before, from CNet’s blog page – http://news.cnet.com/8301-13845_3-20087492-58/name-your-favorite-freeware/?tag=mncol
- Glary Utilities – This powerful application offers extensive utilities to improve your system’s performance and protect your privacy
- The Belarc Advisor builds a detailed profile of your installed software and hardware, missing Microsoft hotfixes, anti-virus status etc.
- HTTrack – allows you to download a World Wide Web site from the Internet to a local directory
- Macrium Reflect – The only free XP, Vista and Windows 7 compatible disk imaging software with BartPE and Linux based recovery options
- Puran Defrag Free- professional defragmenter for your computer
- ThreatFire™ AntiVirus protects when others can’t
- Recuva recovers files deleted from your Windows computer, Recycle Bin, digital camera card, or MP3 player
- Microsoft Security Essentials
- Xplorer2 – Free efficient and portable windows explorer alternative
- PicPick – is an all-in-one program that provides full-featured screen capture tool, intuitive image editor, color picker, color palette, pixel ruler, protractor, crosshair and even whiteboard
- ProduKey is a small utility that displays the ProductID and the CD-key of MS-Office, Windows, Exchange Server, and SQL Server installed
- PowerPro lets you take control of how you use Windows 95/98/NT/2000/XP
- StartupMonitor is a small utility that runs transparently and notifies you when any program registers itself to run at system startup
- Everything search engine – Locate files and folders by name instantly
- http://portableapps.com
- Komposer – A most excellent Gui Website Editor / Dreamweaver alternative
- CCCP is a simple playback pack for Windows supporting the majority of video formats in use today
- WinSplit Revolution is a small utility which allows you to easily organize your open windows by tiling, resizing and positioning them to make the best use of your desktop real estate
- Speccy is an advanced System Information tool for your PC.
- Rainmeter is a desktop customization platform
- Zamzom wireless network tool – who is using my wireless
- Audiogalaxy’s new cloud music player puts all your music and playlists at your fingertips from any computer, iOS or Android device
- Paragon Backup & Recovery 2011 (Advanced) Free
- Weird Metronome – The smallest, most versatile metronome software available, and it’s free
- Code::Blocks is a free C++ IDE built to meet the most demanding needs of its users. It is designed to be very extensible and fully configurable
- TeamViewer6 for remote access to Grandma’s computer for support
- RIOT – Radical Image Optimization Tool – A free program designed to efficiently optimize images for the Web
- MultiCommander to replace Windows Explorer
- Input Director is a Windows application that lets you control multiple Windows systems using the keyboard/mouse attached to one computer
- Advance System Care 4 – Free Windows 7 registry cleaner, Windows 7 and Vista registry repair
- MWSnap is a small yet powerful Windows program for snapping (capturing) images from selected parts of the screen
- Wireshark – network packet sniffer
- inSSIDer is FREE, open-source Wi-Fi scanning software
- Evernote is a suite of software and services designed for notetaking and archiving. A “note” can be a piece of formatted text, a full webpage or webpage
- TeraCopy from Code Sector is a free file-copying utility that offers more speed and security than Windows
/*
** filename: hextobin.c
**/
Click for entire code snippet Integer to Binary Representation (C/C++) …
Browsing through the web, I came upon this article (Worst Congress Ever – http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2011/07/19/worst_congress_ever ) which lays down what I, and many of my friends, currently believe.
I consider myself an independent. I have voted Republican AND Democrat, for the best person for the job in my opinion. Reading this article further affirms my belief that the current lot of politicians in Congress are an absolute sham. They have absolutely no regard for the job they were VOTED TO DO. They have not been sent to ‘My GOAL is that the current president be a one-term president’, nor were they sent to ignore absolute facts about the debt problems and let things slide. They were sent to figure out solutions to problems which are, no doubt, complex. But, instead they behave like two opposing gangs looking out for just their turf without any regards to the mayhem they are causing to the general public … and the mayhem these gangs in Congress can cause, can unfortunately take the country down a spiral from where it may be too late to bring it back.
So, here is my proposal.
1. Get the list of every politician up for election in the upcoming election.
2. If a politician has ALWAYS voted along party lines, he needs to GO.
3. If a politician has ALWAYS voted NO, he needs to GO.
4. If a politician has ever uttered the words “MY GOAL IS TO MAKE SURE so-and-so WILL NOT GET RE-ELECTED”, he needs to GO. That cannot be his or her GOAL…
I don’t care if the politician is a Republican or Democrat. We need people who recognize their responsibilities and will do their job, not a bunch a dogs wagging their tail behind their master for some crumbs.
I know it is not an easy task to find out the answers to the questions above. I am going to work to create some database and make it available (or share if there is already one out there). If you need an answer, let me know and I will research the answer to the best of my ability. I believe if we start an effort like this ALL AROUND the country, we – the people – may truly have the power as it was meant to be.
NY Times has an interactive online tool that allows to try your hand at managing the huge US deficit. It is interesting, even if the only options provided are those hand picked by NY Times. If you are able to select enough options to eliminate (or significantly reduce) the deficit, it would be interesting to email the results to your local spoilitician … I mean politician.
Here is the link to the tool on NY Times
And – here is the link to the result of my attempt
A friend approached me with an ACER Aspire One netbook with the problem that suddenly its screen went blank. It would power on – but nothing else seemed to work. Screen was blank, hard disk did not seem like it was spinning ….
After some research, I found a potential solution … and it worked. Here are the steps in the hope it helps somebody else too.
- Get a USB flash drive (any size – we need about 3MB). Remember all data from this drive will be deleted. So backup the contents of the USB drive. It is preferable to use a USB drive with an inbuilt light that flickers when the USB drive is being accessed. This is will be useful in a later step.
- Insert the flash drive in another computer (my instructions are for a computer running Windows XP. If your have a computer running a different OS – adapt steps 2, 3, 4 accordingly)
- First close any windows (if they are open) and open My Computer. Locate your Flash Drive, and right click on the drive and select the option “Format…”
- Select the options as ‘File System -> FAT32′, ‘Allocation unit size -> Default allocation size’ and click on the “Start” button
- Download the zip file which contains a Flash File Update. The current latest BIOS version (v.3309) can be found on my site here . However, if you wish, you can check for a later version on the ACER website.
- Extract the two files from the downloaded zip file, and copy them to the flash drive. The two file names HAVE TO BE ZG5IA32.FD (the bios update file) and FLASHIT.EXE (the utility which will flash load the new BIOS onto the netbook).
- Make sure your ACER netbook power is turned off, but the power cable is connected. Remove the USB flash drive from the other computer and insert it in the netbook.
- These next three steps are somewhat tricky. Follow very closely.
- Press the “Fn” AND “Esc” keys and then press the Power button for about 2 seconds.
- Wait for 2 seconds and notice that the green Power LED should be flashing. If it is not – keep the power button pressed till it turns off and redo from step 8.
- Press the Power button again – once only (and do not keep it pressed) . If you have the USB drive with in built activity light, you should notice it flicker for about 1-2 seconds almost immediately after you pressed the Power button. If this does not happen – keep the power button pressed till it turns off and redo from step 8.
- Now – hands off the netbook. Wait for anywhere between 2-6 minutes. The BIOS should get updated and once done – the netbook should start automagically (not a typo
).
Posted in Repairs, Tech
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Click here for my first set of recipes collected from around the web. Read more …
I use a web service (DropBox – http://www.dropbox.com) to keep data shared across the multiple computers I have. While I have been extremely happy with this service so far, I am still somewhat paranoid about security of the data in my folders. See my upcoming post about PogoPlug for another (not apples-to-apples though) solution.
First, a dropbox-for-dummies intro. You setup an account on DropBox.com and install a small application on all your computers where the data is desired to be shared. You login (only once) to your dropbox account in this application. This creates a DropBox folder on the computer. Now any file/folder you copy into DropBox will be downloaded automatically on all the other computers which have the dropbox app signed up to the same dropbox account.
So, what are the pros. You end up with the files locally residing on every computer of yours that has the dropbox client installed. This means you are not accessing files over the internet or the browser, which as we all know can never be as fast as accessing them locally from your disk. The dropbox sync algorithm is pretty quick and smart; and works silently in the background. Once installed, you almost forget about it; only to be reminded of its power when you are able to access the data on another computer. Finally, a pro which I do not really find much use of (as I do not have a web enabled phone or tablet), the ability to access your files using just a browser.
Cons: Well, while the power to delete file on one computer and have it deleted everywhere is very powerful; as with any power comes responsibility. If you have a dropbox enabled computer and you delete data in a dropbox folder, they will be gone from all the dropbox computers on the next sync. No – not moved to “Trash”; but gone. I have one computer connected to an external hard drive, and I periodically backup my dropbox folder to this external drive. Another con is that the entire dropbox folder resides on the servers at dropbox.com. While I have gone through their security policies and browsed through the forums to see if the data is secure; and it seems like they are taking all the right measures to ensure this; I am still paranoid on saving my very important files on Dropbox. For the ones I have in there, I zip+password protect them.
Given these pros and cons, I have searched for an alternatives for dropbox and I have implemented some; like using my own server and syncback (see one of my earlier blogs listing the applications I use); but at the end of the day, I find DropBox to the most ideal solution and I would recommend it to anybody looking for an ideal way to share documents across their multiple computers – seamlessly.
A friend of mine needs to buy a new desktop, so instead of sending my feedback over email, I decided to put it down in this post. Maybe it helps somebody else. Read More …
Posted in SaveMoney, Tech
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I did some research to find a checklist of items for the college dorm for a freshman. Read More …