Know your process

You may have hit Ctrl-Alt-Del, took a peek at the Task Manager and noticed a Process List and wondered what the hell is all that. Simply this is a list of processes (tasks) that the system is currently running and knowing what they are used for can be very helpful in cleaning up your system. If there was only a place to get information on each one of the processes - Oh wait there is: Process Library

This is such a cool site and really lets you know what is running on your computer and whether its safe, can be stopped, and a whole bunch of other information.

(Check out the DLL search located on the same site)

Give this a try too:
Usage Monitor - This tool will let you monitor your processes beyond what is available in Windows Task Manager.

See Area 51 on Google Earth

Do a search for:
115 48'45"W 37 14'3"N

in Google Earth.


If you start to look more north at the cords:
115 49'03.88" W 37 38'28.50" N

You will see and area that is blacked out. Is this the actual Area 51 and not the one I have listed which is splattered around the net?

Microsoft confirms next XP service pack

There will be a Service Pack 3 for Windows XP operating systems.

Service Pack 2 introduced alot of new security features in Windows XP that was in serious need. What will SP3 bring?

Anti-spyware or a wolf in sheeps clothing

You just never know if the spyware application you are using is actually a front for some very questionable software. The 'Rogue/Suspect Anti-Spyware Products & Web Sites' list contains a very comprehensive listing of anti-spyware and websites that could be doing more harm than good.

I stick with the big 3:

1. SpyBot Search and Destroy
2. Adaware
3. Microsoft Antispyware (beta)

Another Google post

Yes, another Google post. Interesting to see some of the domains registered by Google.

GooglePorn.com - What is Google venturing into next?

Google Suggest for Firefox

It has been brought to my attention that there is an extension for Firefox for Google Suggest. I should have known there would be one - is one for everything else.

(just curious if Google is logging your search phrases since information is being sent back to them)

Gotta love Firefox...

Show us what you got IE7!

The future of search engines is in beta now

Just stumbled across Google Suggest and its much, much better than the Instant Search feature from Yahoo.

Check it out and let me know what you think...

Billions and Billions Indexed

Google has dropped the pages index count that it used to maintain on its homepage. Did the count actually mean something to somebody or was it just used to flex the index muscle?

Download DivX now for Free!

Offer ends soon:
http://www.divx.com/anniversaryoffer/

A different type of keyboard

FrogPad is a one-handed keyboard solution for your mobile device. Probably could hook up to your PC if you really wanted to...

New natural keyboard from Microsoft

Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000:
http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/discover/nek4000.htm

Contains a Zoom Slider to zoom in and out with the movement of a slider control.

Know thy rivals - 6 web browsers compared

Read about the comparisons of six major web browsers.

I'll stick with Firefox.

Office 2003 SP2 contains anti-phishing protection

According to the Microsoft Office Download of SP2 the new service pack contains a new Phishing Protection feature.

Strange, to use this new phishing protection you need SP2 and the new Junk Mail update. Not sure why the required junk mail update wasn't included in the service pack.

Not too much information on how this new phishing protection works - will look into it more once I install the updates.

Selecting colors from the screen couldn't be easier

Pixeur makes identifying colors from anywhere on the screen as easy as it could get. While you get the currently selected color you also get a history of all previous colors you selected.

This makes my life so easy when trying to get color ideas to use in various design.

Enjoy!

Office 2003 SP2 is upon us

Microsoft Office Downloads:
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/officeupdate/default.aspx

I'll be waiting a few weeks to make sure no bugs are introduced as a result of this service pack. Been burned too many times in the past from updating software too quickly.

Keep in mind if you are going to install this Service Pack that Sp's for Office 2003 can not be removed

Google Video

There has been an update to the Google Video Player - not like I have seen this before so this is new to me. Not sure how much use this will have yet but still kinda nice to be able to search archives from the various news stations - will get better with time.

Seems hard to keep up with all the things that Google is doing and what they are coming out with. A site that helped me is the Unoffical Google Blog.

A whole lot you can do with photos

Photo Story 3:
http://www.microsoft.com/.../photostory/default.mspx

Yes, its does require WinXP (any flavor) but at least it doesn't require SP2 like most of the new, free applications being released from Microsoft.

MyComputer - Part II: What's Running

Part II in the MyComputer series of posts.

refer to Part I: The audit

In Part I talked quickly about auditing your system to know what you have. This time I wanted to mention some tools that I use to identify what is running on my system.

Tool List:

• Usage Monitor: This tool not only will get you a list of running processes but also let you monitor and set alarms on any process
• Services.vbs: Quick little Visual Basic Script (VBS) that will get you a report of all running process and the executable that started it.
• Startup List: A list of what starts when you system starts - everyone should now this.
• Process Explorer: Tells you just about everything you need to know about processes, handles, and threads.

Stay on the look out for Part III - While its running

Thinnnerrr

I want one:
http://beta.news.com.com/2300-1041_3-5875559-2.html

The future is coming

GoogleNet Is Coming…

Free Wi–Fi with citywide coverage sounds like an element from a futuristic Sly Stallone movie. But, according to an article in the August 2005 issue of Business 2.0, it may be closer than we think. The word is Google’s already buying defunct telecoms in an effort to build its very own nationwide ISP network, which it will use to offer free Wi–Fi in major U.S. cities. The reason? By cutting out the middlemen ISP providers, Google will save millions in data transit fees. Plus, in a move that would have made Orwell proud, Google will be able to pinpoint users’ exact locations to serve geo–targeted advertising. Only time will tell if users will forgive Big Brother if he lets us surf free wirelessly.

Follow up: Search two at once

This is a follow up to my Search two at once post. I found, thanx to Rich Levin's blog, a much better search tool that searches all the main search engines at once called Myriad Search.

The UI is much cleaner and it has a very convienent export to CSV option. All in all much better than Twingine.

CNET News gets a face lift

Check out the Beta version of CNET News and the new interface.

No longer designed for 800 x 600 displays.

Google goes secure

Google Secure Access:
http://wifi.google.com/faq.html

Get through a Windows admin password

How can I gain access to a Windows NT/2000/XP/2003 computer if I forgot the administrator's password? How can I reset the administrator's password if I forgot it?

Search two at once

Twingine allows you to search Google and Yahoo at the same time.

The way results are displayed needs some work but it has possibilites.

What would be cool is to mix the two results into a single resultant set that identifies if it is a Google or Yahoo result. You would have to come up with a way to give more weight to one result over another to know how to re-order the results...

New patch for FireFox

Read on:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1861783,00.asp

Firefox 1.07 Patch:
http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/

WinXP SP2 or bust

Wanted to try out some of the new tools that Microsoft is offering but seems like everything is now being geared towards WinXP with Service Pack 2 (SP2).

Wonder if this is some sort of way to influence more users to install the service pack or move to WinXP all together.

Even IE 7 is for WinXP or greater...

IE Developer toolbar

The newly released Internet Explorer Toolbar just seems to be chasing the Web Developer extension (must have for any web developer using Firefox) available for Firefox.

IE7

Whats coming:
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/09/13/465338.aspx

Coding makes my life easier

I have a small collection of MP3s at around 2500 and growing as I convert my CD's to MP3. All of these MP3s are stored on an external 250Gig drive and are located in a single folder.

My girlfriend had requested a CD of about 130 songs to burn to CD so it can be played in our home stereo. Started to think that looking through the 2500 songs for the songs she had requested was going to be time consuming.

Fire up my 'View Directory' registry hack to create a printout of all the songs.

Quickly through together a CopyFromText script to take that list and copy the songs to a temp folder for burning.

5Min to create the script and about 1min running time made my life easier.

Free spam!....I mean spam free..

Gotta love a bayesian based spam filter that plugs right into Outlook and is free.

SpamBayes:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/spambayes/index.html

Been using this tool for a couple of years and works great....

Microsoft not above Open-Source

Open Source Code Finds Way into Microsoft Product:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1859439,00.asp

Opera free for all

Opera Software today permanently removed the ad banner and licensing fee.

Link:
http://www.opera.com/pressreleases/en/2005/09/20/

Play?

Received a DVD today and went to play in Windows Media Player and got the common 'can't locate decoder to play movie' error. So, off to Microsoft's download section for decoders to see what they have to offer. Looked around a but and noticed that all link.

Fired up Google and located a great codec pack - for free. Installed and fired up the movie - sweet!

Download the Codec Pack All in 1

Conquistador

The 86,800 most popular words in the english language. Oh ya, and its in order of popularity - cool!

Link:
http://www.wordcount.org/main.php#shwah

Sharing is caring

"Introducing powerful new software tools for shared computers in schools, libraries, Internet cafes, and other public places. The Shared Computer Toolkit helps make it easy to set up, safeguard, and manage reliable shared computers running Windows XP."

Link:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/sharedaccess/default.mspx

Get out

Microsoft's snapshot eraser:
http://news.com.com/2300-1016_3-5869333-1.html

Nice results.

Good for me, better for them

This is more of a continuation of a post I made about Seeker making it into Tucows. I guess I still had more on my mind and want to get it out.

Most of the software I create ends upbeing submited to numerous shareware websites. Whats funny is when you submit the software and they immediatly give you a 5 star rating. Does anyone actually think this award means something? The only reason for the award is to get you to place a link to their website on your website. The purpose of most shareware websites is to generate revenue through advertisement or increase the visibility of a few applications (sometimes the owner of the website is a developer looking to put his application out there).

Even though the awards are meaningless (like most that are given out by Shareware sites) the increased visibility of your application is invaluable.

There are a couple of exceptions. These are the two websites where it actually means something to get listed.

• The Great Software List - To get onto this list is no easy task. Zaine Ridling, the website owner / developer / reviewer really puts alot of work into his evaluations of each piece of software. Making it on this list means that you have impressed someone that truly believes in well-developed software.
• Tucows - Probably the most well know software review website around. Tucows will grade and rate each piece of software on many aspects (from usability to support to interface design) - make they grade and get listed.

I should also mention Softpedia and Snapfiles as they do review a little but know where near the amount as the above.

An award just for being me

Seeker, has been approved and will now be available through Tucows. This only took about 3 months to go through their approval process but it feels good to actually get approved.

Tucows is still one of the only download sites that actually reviews your application prioir to listing. Another great site that actually reviews your software first is The Great Software List - this is another site where it actaully means something to get your software listed on.

This is the problem I have with these shareware sites that give awards. If don't already know they are only giving you an award in an attempt to get you to place the award, and a link, to their website on your website. This helps them gain a better ranking with Google. So, when it comes down to it only a handlfull of sites provide an award or review that carries any weight...

Is Adobe worried?

Microsoft Unveils Expression Family of Designer Tools.

Probably not...

2,621,440 Bytes

I recently released a new version of Note-It. This version contains some additional editing tools like; bullets, indents, and text alignment options and few minor bug fixes.

Now I'm starting to run out of ideas on what new features to add. I had originally built the application out of need and started adding new features as users had requests or I came up with additional things I would like to see. I also started to add new features to Note-It to run some test that would help me with other projects.

Note-It helps me run tests on new coding techniques, getting familiar with some libraries (like the Microsoft XML library) and things that I wanted a real-world test but didn't really feel like creating a new application for it (like the Stock Quote special note which help me develop classes for scraping data from web pages).

Users need not worry as I only test coding techniques and writing code around different things, never test things that would in any way affect the end user.

So, when you download Note-It and you wonder why a simple note application has a 2.5 Meg installer, this is one reason why (plus Note-It is full of features).

Nows the time to contact me and let me know what you want out of Note-It.

Bill Gates/Napoleon Dynamite Video

Not sure how long this will be up but here it is..

Instant search from Yahoo!

Instant search from Yahoo

This has the potential to be extremely useful. Curious to see how this develops over time, especially when the search has more in the database.

To get a better feel for its power try searching for "microsoft office templates" and see how its jumps from each main result to drill down to the one you want..

I like this line on the instant search beta site " Why feel lucky when you can be right?" - little jab at Google?

Google blog search - cool

Google's beta blog search open for business.

Sometimes you just need a boot

Well, boot disk thats it. This site has helped me in the past when dealing with older systems and didn't have a boot disk handy.

As time goes on seems like you need these less and less but still good to know where to get one in a pinch...

PHP + LAMPPIX = Bootable Webserver project

LAMPPIX makes this very possible and easy.

"LAMPPIX allows you to burn your web projects (i.e. PHP presentations or Perl scripts) onto a CD-ROM and give them away to others. They will only have to insert the CD and reboot"

Very much like Knoppix

Firefox and Mozilla users get patched

Make sure all you users of FireFox or Mozilla install this patch.

Link:
https://addons.mozilla.org/messages/307259.html