Start ++ .. Enhanced Start Menu for Windows Vista
This is a cool extension for the famous Windows Vista start menu. Windows Vista has got an improved start menu in contrast with the classic start menu in Windows XP. It has got search in-built and user doesn’t have to go places to search for any thing.
Start++ is an enhancement over the enhanced Start menu in Windows Vista, which is bringing the power of macros and interactivity in to that tiny Start menu.
Start++ is trying to make your nearest search box, much more powerful and useful. You can customize Start++ for any kind of macro you want.
Download Start++ (for Vista)
Technorati tags: start++, start menu, windows vista
WTH you did on the so called "Shutdown Day" ?
So, what the hell you did on the world’s shutdown day (sounds funny…). Hmm.yes it’s the shutdown day for computers as the website shutdownday.org says.
Well, On 24th March, 2007 (IST), I DID NOT SHUT DOWN MY COMPUTER. Because I did not see any reason to do so. I do balance my life and computer better way, hence I don’t have to kick the a** of my computer.
The ShutdownDay.org web site has setup a post-event board where you can post your experience on WSD Day. Let’s see the world did on that day…
Most of the people who visited this site after March 24th, expressed that they are working on that very day 
The second ranked is “interesting thing” as you see in the above table.
But overall, I feel this experiment has done nothing but a big failure. I am not sure if they shutdown the web site’s server on that very day also.
Final Verdict is…You don’t have to shutdown your computer to do something else. You just shutdown your brain and sleep to relax.
Technorati tags: shutdownday, shutdown
Get a 3D Desktop Manager for Windows XP
How many times we might wonder, why we have just one desktop to keep all those pesky icons and temporary files? Can’t we have many more desktops in Windows XP, so that we can manage things much better way?
Well, there is a well know solution…A Desktop Manager. Microsoft provides a small desktop manager program as part of Windows XP power toys called “Virtual Desktop Manager (exe file)”. But this is a very simplified desktop manager with very few features. How about having a 3D cube styled Desktop Manager?
A cube, which you can rotate through and see all the four desktops on the sides on cube? Coool..Isn’t it ?
Something like this (as shown below)
All you need to do is to install this cool and nifty desktop manager called “Yod’m 3D Desktop Manager”.
This Desktop manager uses DirectX 9.0 and renders 3D spaces with out any effort and with very very less memory foot print on your machine.
Once you install this tool, all you need to do is..to press CTRL + SHIFT and press up-arrow or down-arrow to zoom in or zoom out.
To Rotate the cube and see other Desktops, just press left-arrow, right-arrow accordingly.
Technorati tags: desktop, desktop managers
Microsoft’s Atlas and Google joins Open Ajax Alliance…So?
Microsoft and Google formally joined the Open Ajax Alliance, which consists a group of vendors, OS projects and companies (around 75) using Ajax as standard application interface. This list also includes the pioneers like google, Dojo, Sun and Oracle along with Microsoft.
Read more about the formal announcement here…and here
So, the question is, how does it can help the developer community ?, which stands out the core & heart for Ajax adoption worldwide.
According to Open Ajax forum’s statement, the future looks awesome for Ajax developers…I have highlighted some of the notable things down here…
– Seamless integration of multiple Ajax products and technologies within the same Web application, particularly with applications that use mashup techniques
– Greater certainty about product choices and reliability
– Lower training costs, lower development costs, and faster delivery of Web 2.0 innovations due to industry adoption of common approaches that build from OpenAjax standards
– Interchangeability of Open Ajax Conformant products, such that customers can choose among multiple vendors (and change vendors in the future)
That means, now the developers will be able to use a standard set of declarative and protocol based language to talk to any web server technology. This also makes the web services interoperability much more robust and meaningful.
Orkut (Google) to Co-Operate with Indian Police
Google is going to help Indian Police with a reporting tool built on Orkut.com’s database to make the investigation process much faster as per the officials of google. Orkut is facing lot of criticism recently for being a host of lot of illegal communities, fan sites of gangsters and depiction of Indian and Indian historic figures.
Read more @ Source
What are International Domain Names (IDN) ?
Most of us know that a domain name is nothing but the web site name part in any URL. Till now we are using the standard ASCII based domain naming architecture across world. This can only allow us to use English characters to express any web address. But web is highly globalized place where English is just one of the many languages. How can we use any language to express URLs around world ? How does the internet can understand these languages?
International Domain Naming (IDN) brings up the solution for this. This standard was originally proposed in 1996, but implemented in 1998. A system called Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA) was evolved in this process. This process uses an algorithm called ToASCII and ToUnicode to resolve unicode in to ASCII across world. Read more at ICANN
The current generation browsers such as IE 7, Mozilla FireFox, Opera supports these algorithms natively. Windows Vista URL system also supports IDN natively. IE 6 users will have to download an activex control to use this feature on web.
Let’s see how an IDN web site URL looks like…
You can observe that IE 7 is showing a small info icon next to the URL bar. If you click on that, it will show you the IDN information for that web site as shown below…
Currently few domain registrars are supporting this IDN standards. “*.in” (India) domain extension is currently supporting Hindi IDN’s and will be supporting Tamil and Malayalam very soon.
Some of the IDN Registrars…
Capture your screen for free !
No, I am not recommending the Print Screen key to capture your screen . Though that is the best possible free tool available to capture the screen shots, it lacks the power and flexibility of controlling the capture and doing the task in a disciplined way.
Tip : Use ALT + Print Screen to capture the Active Windows exclusively. This avoids the problems in tweaking the additional desktop area that’s got captured instead of a single window.
Now lets see how we can capture the screen more effectively.
01. Download MWSnap, a free screen capture tool (the best as far as I know..) from here and install.
02. Select the profile you want to capture. e.g Window, Fixed Rectangle, Menu etc…on the left side navigational menu. As shown below…There is a cool ruler also available to measure the size of the screen or your capture.
03. You are done with your screen capture. When you try to save this capture, MWSnap provides you a good number of standard formats you can choose.
04. Additional Features to decorate your capture.: MWSnap provides some cool effects to decorate your screen captures. You can apply a shaded frame, simple frame or a button look for your screen capture.
As per my experience with many free and commercial screen capturing tools, I feel that MWSnap provides a rich set of features, all for free (Donate Mirek, the developer if you really like to appreciate him).
Tracking multiple Time Zones from System Tray
Many times we struggle to track multiple timezones across globe, especially when there are lot of other side effects attached to that tracking such as Day Light Savings adjustments etc. But tracking multiple time zones has become an important part in almost all the people who work with business across globe.
First thing you need to learn is the jargon of time zones…
| EST, EDT | US Eastern Time | New York |
| CST, CDT | US Central Time | Chicago |
| MST, MDT | US Mountain Time | Denver |
| PST, PDT | US Pacific Time | Los Angeles |
| BST | British Summer Time | London |
| CET, CEST | Central Europe Time | Paris |
| EET, EEST | Eastern Europe Time | Athens |
| IST | Indian Standard Time | Hyderabad |
Now….There are multiple ways you can track time across globe…
01. The Web Way..
There are many cool web sites, where you can choose and track your time effectively. These web sites will take care of syncing with world time accurately for you including day light savings.
can show you a list of all important cities and time at that particular instance of your visit. Alternatively you can a cool meeting planner too.
World Time Zone Map shows you a map of important places around globe along with current time.
GChart (what a weird name…) provides you a fantastic way to check the time of any location on earth using a mash-up built on google maps.
02. The Desktop Way..
If you are traveling with out Internet facility, you would want a cool, nifty desktop utility to track the time across globe..Isn’t it?
Microsoft Time Zone utility provides you a way to track 5 time zones at a time right from your desktop’s system tray as shown below. This download is only available for Genuine Windows Owners. The size of the download is below 800 kb and installs smoothly. It allows you to track up to 5 cities at any time. I will update this post if I find a better tool to track time zones.
Note : Windows Vista comes with a gadget which you can use to track multiple time zones. You don’t have to install any additional software.
ICC Cricket World Cup…All Set to Rock !
The next 20 days will be treated as the most exciting & entertaining days for India & other cricket playing countries as ICC Cricket World Cup 2007 is all set to rock the world of its own. West Indies (Caribbean Islands) are hosting 2007’s world cup.
Most of the matches will be played in St Lucia, Trinidad & Tobago, St Kits & Jamaica. The live telecast of these matches will be done in India by Sony Max TV channel. All these matches will start at 7pm IST (Indian Standard Time) and All matches those are being played in Jamica will start at 8pm IST.
You can subscribe to the ICC WorldCup 2007 Google Calendar with IST timings.
The chat can now make a difference
Today Windows Live Messenger has launched a new way to help charity through IM Chats. Every time you start an IM chat with anyone, Microsoft will shares a portion of revenue from advertisements to a selected charity organization pre-selected by you. Read more
So now the time for You & Me to make difference using Our chat
Hiring India, it’s IBM turn now !
According to the recent IBM’s annual report, their workforce was increased by 8%. Most of this is coming from their recruitment in India center. IBM has stated that at the end of year 2006, they have employed over 350k, up from 320k last year (2005).
IBM’s India center has the current staff of 52,000 people, which was 36,000 in the previous year. This makes India as the largest hub for IBM next to their USA center.
Read more @ Physorg
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