Techglimp: October 2009

Cool Websites and Tools [October 30]

(1) PingTest – At first glance, this site might look like any other broadband speed test service out there. However, it isn’t one of those. It doesn’t check the speed of your connection. Instead it checks the overall quality of the connection that determines how well it can stream videos, play music and online games.

(2) RRRipple – Flash-based and sleek group file sharing app that allows you to share media with different groups – be it sharing photos with your friends, reunion videos with your relatives, work documents with your boss, links, and messages with everyone else.

(3) SeeNow – Fun website that lets you have fun with your photos by morphing them into a series of popular image templates from movies, shows, magazines, music albums, sports, etc. The site currently has around 350 different templates, nicely sorted in various categories.

(4) Offers – Leading coupon and special offers directory on the internet – having staked out its place in the market over the last six years. They have thousands of offers (around 8,000 at any time) with hundreds of new offers updated daily. They carry coupons from some of the most well-known online and high street retailers such as Amazon.com and Sears.

(5) Sayabit – Nice file sharing service which lets you upload files and share them on sites like Twitter and Facebook. It can host images, documents, PDFs, Excel files & PowerPoint presentations in unlimited capacity. For each file it creates a short URL which redirects to a landing page if its an image and downloads directly for other kinds of files.

Posted by Navin Saturday, October 31, 2009 0 comments

Cool Websites and Tools [October 27]

(1) SafeMess – New browser based text encryption tool that lets you quickly encrypt your text. It uses secure XXTEA 128-bit block cipher algorithm and the encryption is done with JavaScript locally inside your browser, no text or password is stored online.

(2) BedPost – Quirky web app that allows you to track your sexual activity online. It acts like an online calendar which you mark on whenever you have sex. The idea behind this is after a few months you can look back at your history and reflect.

(3) Sawlogs – Online dream network with a dedicated community where you can share and discuss your dreams with others. There are also some additional features which can help you find out what dreams mean.

(4) SpeakingFaces – If you believe in the saying, “first impression is the last impression” then it is important for you to make a solid first impression. SpeakingFaces is a fun site which helps you in making a perfect first impression. The concept is simple – pose in front of camera, take a picture and upload it to the site. And then get rated by the community of users.

(5) GoAnimate – Online cartoon animator that allows you to create cartoons featuring some of your favorite toon characters and stars from TV. You can also create you own characters to insert yourself and your family and friends into your clip. This online cartoon animator is really easy to use with everything displayed neatly on a fully clickable window.

Posted by Navin Wednesday, October 28, 2009 0 comments

Cool Websites and Tools [October 26]

(1) ChromeExtensions – Web repository of Google Chrome extensions/add-ons which can be installed in the developer version of Google Chrome. You can search for extensions, add the ones you like directly to Chrome, and rate & review add-ons after you use them.

(2) CheckMyTorrentIP – Free online application for torrent users. It allows you to quickly check if your torrent line is anonymous and no personal IP data is exposed publicly. This comes in handy if you are using online anonymity service like VPN or some proxy servers and want to verify whether it’s actually protecting you.

(3) AcceptEdge – Online tool that helps high school students get through their college applications. It works like a college matchmaker where you can browse different colleges and find a school that fits you best. The site predicts a list of colleges based on your academic and social profile.

(4) Xm.my – Simple web tool that lets you create short map links for any location on Google Maps and easily share them online (Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, etc.)

(5) MySkyStatus – This online application is for the social network buffs who religiously update their status on Facebook and Twitter, they can now continue doing it even when they are at an altitude of 20,000 feet sitting in an airplane without internet access. MySkyStatus, a service by Lufthansa airlines does that for you.

(4) Xm.my – Simple web tool that lets you create short map links for any location on Google Maps and easily share them online (Twitter, Facebook, Delicious, etc.)

Posted by Navin Tuesday, October 27, 2009 0 comments

Cool Websites and Tools [October 25]

(1) TraceBullet – A must bookmark website for webmasters. It combines 6 different net testing tools (IP check, ping request, WHOIS check, etc) and provides quick access to all on one page. This is much better then having a bunch of bookmarks with sites scattered around the web.

(2) BookofOdds – If you have ever wondered what are your chances of having a heart attack, or what’s the probability of a black horse winning a race, then Book of Odds is the site you need to check out. It is an interesting site which talks about the real life probabilities presents you with some nice data.

(3) Yubby – New service that makes it easy to organize, combine and share your favorites online videos. It lets you search over 30 video sharing sites (YouTube, MetaCafe, Vimeo, Yahoo video, etc) at once. The videos you like can be quickly organized into channels, and the best thing of all you can share and publish your channel as a single embeddable video player.

(4) JacksonPollock.org – Webby Awards winner website (also an iphone app) that lets you create Jackson Pollock style paintings online. To create your own masterpiece, just visit the website and move your mouse around the screen. Click on the mouse to change its colors and press any key to sign your painting.

(5) WorldSings – Place for new artists to promote their music and build a fan base. Call it an American Idol on the Internet. Anyone can register as an artist and post their song videos. Top 20 voted songs enter the The World’s Best Song Competition, which will be held in Las Vegas on March 19, 2010. The winning song gets a $1 million prize.

Posted by Navin Monday, October 26, 2009 0 comments

Cool Websites and Tools [October 24]

(1) Linkli.st – New web tool that makes it easy to create lists of links and share them with others. It provides a browser bookmarklet for quickly adding links to your list. You can create as many lists as you like and keep them organized in one place online.

(2) ASCII-O-Matic – If you are an ASCII art fun check out this simple online utility called ASCII-O-Matic. It lets you upload an image and generate ASCII art picture from it. The application supports only JPEG format and has strict image dimension requirements.

(3) TheNameEngine – Online recource where you can find and hear proper name pronunciations of famous athletes, politicians, actors, newsmakers, brands and more. The site was created as a tool to help radio and tv channel professionals when preparing for their segment or an interview. That being said, anyone can freely use and benefit from it.

(4) Quotegasm – Website that aggregates quotations by famous people. The quotes are submitted by users and nicely organized into categories (Wisdom, Love, Politics etc). In addition to categories, users can browse quotes by author or search quotes using the search engine.

(5) TweetAlert -This tool lets you can easily track subject of your interest on Twitter. When one of the subjects appears on Twitter, it will be automatically re-tweeted by TweetAlerts and you will see it in your actual Twitter feed.

Posted by Navin Sunday, October 25, 2009 0 comments

Cool Websites and Tools [October 23]

(1) Personalized Money Generator – Ever wondered how would you look like on a US dollar bill? Or how about putting yourself on a UK pound instead of Queen? Check out Personalized Money Generator, this simple online tool lets you quickly create custom money bills with your own photos on them.

(2) Google Flu Trends – This tool uses “aggregated Google search data to estimate flu activity” in a certain country. Basically, this app consists of an interactive map that responds to your cursor as shown in the screenshot. When you place your cursor over some country you’ll get an indication of the flu intensity in that country from ‘Low’ to ‘High’.

(3) Buildy – New web based service which lets you easily create floor plans of your house or apartment and then share it with others. It comes in handy especially for those who are looking to rent out their premises. They could include their created floor plan in the adverts so that prospective tenants could have a better idea about the rooms.

(4) LocaFollow – Website that helps you find twitter users by searching only their Bio and Location fields. Since these are the fields that users fill in their Twitter profile, Locafollow is your best shot in finding friends that share your interest or are in the same zip code as you.

(5) CrimeReports – Online service which lets you view crime reports by zip code, city or a particular neighborhood. Currently limited to North America, this tool gets its data from various law enforcement agencies. It shows crimes like robbery, theft, homicide, assault etc by default through symbols/flags of various colors on the map.

Posted by Navin 0 comments

Vista Switcher – Replace Windows’ Alt-Tab With Something Cooler

Are you looking to spice up your system a little? Maybe you want a little something that your friends do not have? Maybe you want to impress that special someone (if they are as geeky as you are!)

Do you want to add a window switcher that will knock your socks off? Well despite it’s name, Vista Switcher makes your Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7 machine switch screens, real slick-like.

The 270KB 32 bit download page is located here and wow, there is also a 64 bit download for you serious 64 bitters out there.

After downloading and running Vista Switcher, you will have a new icon in your system tray. It resembles an X in a box. The icon looks like the image to the left:

If you either hit that icon or you just push the control and tab keys together, it will launch its interface that allows you to not only select the screen you want to go to but it shows you an awesome preview of that screen. There are hot keys that we will get to a little further in if you want to leave your default alt tab functionality.

Check out the program’s interface below:

You can still see your desktop through the transparent window and it does not go away if you release the keys. You can mouse over each item and it will show you a preview. Click on it to switch to that active window.

The application smoothly switches between screens and has a bunch of options which we explore below.

On the general tab you can first off switch your default program language. If your language is not available you can click the Find more translations to do just that. You have the check boxes for Auto starting Vista Switcher, to show or not to show the icon in the system tray, do you want to replace the alt tab action with Vista Switcher and (or) replace the right mouse button plus the wheel to Vista Switcher, and you can set hot keys if you do not want to use the combinations they provide.

This screen above is all about looks, you can change themes, fade out animations, task numbers, items allowed to be shown and preview style.

Next up we have the behavior window that allows you to modify the position of the window if you hate for it to be shown dead center. You can have Vista Switcher disable when you release the mouse and you can also have it show only tasks that are active or not with the last check box.

The exclusion list allows you to exclude specific windows from the switcher. You will see what is actually running on your machine from here.

I love this application and I have installed it on my Windows XP desktop as well as my Vista laptop. Are you using an alt tab replacement? If so we would love to hear about it in the comments!

Are you looking to spice up your system a little? Maybe you want a little something that your friends do not have? Maybe you want to impress that special someone (if they are as geeky as you are!)

Do you want to add a window switcher that will knock your socks off? Well despite it’s name, Vista Switcher makes your Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7 machine switch screens, real slick-like.

The 270KB 32 bit download page is located here and wow, there is also a 64 bit download for you serious 64 bitters out there.

After downloading and running Vista Switcher, you will have a new icon in your system tray. It resembles an X in a box. The icon looks like the image to the left:

Check out the program’s interface below:

The application smoothly switches between screens and has a bunch of options which we explore below.

This screen above is all about looks, you can change themes, fade out animations, task numbers, items allowed to be shown and preview style.

The exclusion list allows you to exclude specific windows from the switcher. You will see what is actually running on your machine from here.

I love this application and I have installed it on my Windows XP desktop as well as my Vista laptop. Are you using an alt tab replacement? If so we would love to hear about it in the comments!

Posted by Navin Friday, October 23, 2009 0 comments

How To Upgrade From XP To Windows 7 In 4 Easy Steps

Windows 7 will be released today. We have already given plenty of love to Windows 7. If you are still using Windows XP and want to switch directly to Windows 7, you might get disheartened knowing that there is no direct path to upgrade Windows XP to Windows 7. However, with a bit of planning and with appropriate tools, you can move from XP to Windows 7 with minimal of fuss. If that is what you are looking for, this is the guide for you. Let’s set the ball rolling straight away.

Step 1: The checks

First off, you would want to make sure your existing hardware can support Windows 7. Windows XP has been out for a long time and your hardware might not support the newer and comparatively more demanding versions of Windows like Windows 7. These are the official system requirements:

1 GHz processor (32- or 64-bit)
1 GB of RAM (32-bit); 2 GB of RAM (64-bit)
16 GB of available disk space (32-bit); 20 GB of available disk space (64-bit)
DirectX 9 graphics device with WDDM 1.0 or higher driver

If you would rather not install any new software, a simple copy and paste would suffice for the time being. Just make sure to include everything you might need. While you might have set up your folders differently according to your taste, here are some key locations that you should check out and decide if you would like to back them up:

My Documents
My Music
My Pictures
(If you have more than one user account on your computer, make sure to back up their files as well)
Your projects folders and files, if it is your work computer
Browser bookmarks, saved passwords, etc.
Other program data under %AppData% (This doesn’t always work. It is better if you use respective applications to export settings)

Another option you can use to quickly backup and transfer your settings is the Windows Easy Transfer tool that you can find on the Windows 7 DVD. Browse to the folder named supportand then to migwiz on your Windows 7 DVD and launch migsetup.exe. This will launch the Windows Easy Transfer tool.

Choose how you would like to transfer the settings:

and then select what to transfer:

Step 3: Drivers

Next up are the drivers. It is always a good idea to search your computer manufacturer’s website to see if they have newer drivers for Windows 7. Older drivers may not always work, or may not work as intended. This is especially true for drivers made for Windows XP. I was able to use an XP display driver with Windows 7 beta but it didn’t work when Windows 7 RC came out. You might have more luck with Vista drivers on Windows 7, but nothing is guaranteed. So if you are trying to get older drivers to work, you better be prepared to play around after installation.

Step 4: Install

Finally, you are ready to install Windows 7. Pop in the DVD and restart your computer. Boot from the DVD and follow the prompts to install Windows 7.

Choose Custom (Advanced install) when given the choice:

Then choose the system drive (which was your C: on Windows XP) as the partition you would like to set up Windows 7.

Wait for the installation to complete, and boot into Windows 7 once you are done.

Installed, now what?

Already here? Way to go. Now that you have Windows installed there are few additional steps you should take before you are ready to go. First off, make sure you install an antivirus before you start browsing the web or transferring files using USB drives. MS Security Essentials, AVG,Avast and Antivir are good free choices. You might want to look into commercial ones if you want something better. ESET and Kaspersky are good choices over there (Oops! Did I start a flame war?).

Install your favorite applications now. This would be a good time to get the latest versions if you have been postponing pending software updates.

Oh and don’t forget to restore the settings you backed up earlier. If you went the copy-paste route, its time to do some more copy-paste. If you used Windows Easy Transfer instead, click on Start button and type Windows Easy transfer, launch the application and let it know that this is your new computer, then browse to the location you stored those settings to and let it do the rest.

Hope this helps you plan your upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7. Once you are done, use the comments area and tell us know how it went and if Windows 7 is worth the price tag!