Automatically change your wallpaper

I am a big fan of wallpapers as I have a cool 17 inces wide screen Lenovo laptop. Whenever I want to chill out, I will start searching for cool photos, wall papers for my Windows Vista desktop. But I found it very tedious to maintain these cool collections and change wallpapers when I get some time (only). I wanted a program to change wallpapers automatically with out giving me any side effects.

I found this cool tool called Desktoptopia (beta) doing a great job on selecting a right desktop wallpaper from awesome collections. It’s tiny, nifty and cool. It can change my wallpapers at given intervals, or allows manual change as well. You can find loads of wallpaper collection which are configurable with your tiny tray utility.

 

Download Desktoptopia

Hyderabad Barcamp 5 – Live ! Part 7

12:40 PM

Session : Women in IT By Kavita Vemuri, Technical Manager, IIIT-H

Kavita Vemuri delivered a splendid Off-beat topic on Women in IT and problems and how people think different, studies and statistics. The statistics that were demoed are very compelling.

She also talked on how things are seen from Women perspective.

I think this is one of MUST NOT MISS session for most of the barcampers out there. It really helps them to mature in their views about fellow women workers in IT field. She hit the nail on the right point where the word “Diversity” is becoming a multi-definition word as per people’s comfirtness in this corporate jungle.

She has also pin pointed on the need for Gender Insensitive policies rather than Gender Sensitive policies.

I liked the quote on her last slide 🙂

“They” Say : Women are key to economic growth, but then they keep changing the lock !!

Disclaimer from Kavita : “They” –> Governments

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Hyderabad Barcamp 5 – Live ! Part 6

11:45 AM : Tea Break ! It’s suffocating due to some problem with AC system in Google !

Session : Amit Aggarwal talks about Build a Successful Blog.

Amit talks about his experiences around doing blogging for living….i.e Professionally…he is a well known tech blogger who get indexed by techmeme.com from India.

He blogs @ labnol.org.

Amit has shared his invaluable blogging experience such as keeping the visitors in touch, focusing on content, frequency of blogging, Using Google Alerts, SEO (Search Engine Optimization)  etc. Definitely a good session for young tech bloggers out there.

-more to come

Happy BarCamping !

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Hyderabad Barcamp 5 – Live ! Part 5

11:24 AM

Session : Lighting the Web, Silverlight 2 By M.S.V Janakiram, Microsoft.

I somehow feel people tend to show MS as a devil and people doesn’t like them, but the fact remains that they use MS technology in and out in thier life. This session was started with a disclaimer that Janakiram will be talking much about generic technology but not specific to Microsoft ! (In Contrast …Check the ealier session I covered in Part – 3 of this series.) Community Spirit seems to be UnCommunitized now ! 🙂

This session is focusing on Rich Internet Application platform and usage of SilverLight. Janakiram started with Quote “Media is embracing the Web” and a mind blowing movie trailer demo with high definition sound effects using Silverlight on Fox Movies website. and… there it comes 🙂 A jazzy bollywood, tollywood movie application shown with high definition video experience in Firefox.

Janakiram described how do developers and designers co-exist and work together using Rich Internet Application platforms like Silverlight and Microsoft Expression and Visual Studio .NET 2005.

Janaki has demoed an application mashup built-upon Google Maps and Silverlight which shows the movie trailers on the pin points of movie theatres across Hyderabad.

-more to come

Happy BarCamping !

 

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Hyderabad Barcamp 5 – Live ! Part 4

11:00 AM

Hysea Representatives talked on their activities and events. Boring  for developers like me 🙂 !

Session : Prasad Y, CMD of  teleonto talking about his experiences about Product development. Boring again. More like self perspective session and people seems to be taking an unofficial break in Bar Camp….:-)

I will take a break too….

-Happy BarCamping !

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Hyderabad Barcamp 5 – Live ! Part 3

10:47 AM

Session : Building Low Cost Scalable Web Apps – Ramesh Rajamani, Compassites, Bangalore.

Session seems to be focussing on High Availability, Performance and Storage solutions planning for such demanding applications. I feel, this session is more technology centric rather than practice centric (which I hate to listen in events like barcamp where people think technology is just a way to implement systems).

Most of the things sound obvious to me and few things are going above my head.

One funny thing…the speaker talks about Amazon S3 to save time on performance while S3 is sleeping in woods at the same time 🙂

more to come….signing off for now…

-Happy Blogging

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Hyderabad Barcamp 5 – Live ! Part 2

10:30 AM

The first session is kicked off post introductory welcome by Ramesh Loganathan, VP, Pramati.

Sanjeev is doing Behavioral Driven Development  (BDD) now. He is from a little startup called “Corners“

This session started with Test Driven Development introduction…

BDD focuses more on defining the behavior of the system rather than designing the code. This comes out when developer thinks about system in terms of domain specific language (DSL).

The session was planned to end with a demo with Ruby On Rails with BDD, but for some reasons the demo was not given.

I just looked back in to hall…and…..WOW ..I can see too many Students 🙂

 

– Happy BarCamping…

 

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Hyderabad Barcamp 5 – Live ! Part 1

Barcamp 5 @ Hyderabad is scheduled today and Google India is hosting the show for us. Thanks to Google 🙂

9:30 AM : I reached Google’s office at around 9:30 AM. Entry is super smooth (took just 5 mins including an official entry for my laptop) with pleasant welcome from Google’s reception.

Googlers turned their Cafe in to BarCamp conference hall to accommodate large set of audience. The first instant benefit I got from Google the moment I entered in to thier office is “GOOGLE GUEST WIFI”. No Hungama, nothing. I had to enter my email id and nothing else. I am connected to a high-speed internet pipe on the fly.  🙂

Seating seems to be not so good as it’s a canteen. I am not sure if I can sit for long in these fibre chairs. I also observed that there are no power hubs down on the floor as its a canteen in real. Google has quickly arranged few Power strips to us.

10:00 AM :  Conference agenda is being prepared. There is a big Queue out side the office and folks are checking in….

more in next part…

Happy Barcamping !

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Carry your Browsing Experience to anywhere with Google Toolbar now.

I must say “Hats Off” to Google for this. Google Toolbar 5 Beta has been released with very cool features today. One of the best features is “Sync up Toolbar” feature. I have posted recently on a Google Addin for Firefox which can sync up your favourites to any computer using Google credentials. I have search for a similar add-ons for IE but failed to find one. Now this toolbar solves my problem with IE bookmark sync 🙂

Install Google Toolbar 5 Beta

One the toolbar is installed, you will be prompted something like this. If you enable this, You are ready to carry all the stuff you do on your computer to anywhere.

With new Google Bookmarks integration, Google has almost challenged del.icio.us bookmarking system seriously. If Google could make it’s toolbar users addictive to their bookmarking system, I am sure everything else will be done automatically.

How to Quicky Crop or Resize a large image with out any Software?

This is a very frequent problem that almost every avid blogger faces in world. Many of the bloggers are not enough tech savvy to know how on image editing beyond MS Paint or Microsoft Picture manager in the world of windows. Yes…blame microsoft for that 🙂 MS Paint could have been more friendly. Isn’t it ?

Yes, We have picnik.com for us, which can do lot of cool stuff online with any software installed on your desktop. (well you need Flash to be installed in your browser). But do we have that much time with us to wait and see until picnik loads all the sunshine, blossoms and bird songs?

If you don’t want to wait for such a long time, well there is an application ready to serve you in a quicker way for FREE and completely online.

http://www.fixpicture.org/ provides you a quicker way of resizing your large images with a single click conversion wizard.

Choose any large picture (up to 3 MB in size) and select your options as shown above and click “Convert”. Your picture should be ready for download as soon as possible.

Absolutely NO desktop software is involved in this operation.

How to increase the number of downloads in Firefox

Any standard web browser supports only 2 downloads at one time per one server. Firefox also does the same. As a result, you will not be able to download more than 2 files at once in Firefox’s download manager.

A minor tweak to Firefox’s configuration allows you to configure this number as per your requirement.

Type “about:config” (with out quotes) in Firefox’s address bar.

Firefox will display a big list of configurable values in a grid. In the Filter box of this grid, type network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server.

By default this will have a value of “2”. Change this number to your custom number as shown below.

2007 Internet Quiz : What is your score?

 

I passed with a score of 97%. Well I missed 1, 2 questions 🙂

Check http://www.justsayhi.com for more quizzes like this.

Copy files faster than ever in your PC (Windows Only)

Everyone must have gone through atleast once through this pain. "Copying large volumes of files". Nothing can test our patience than doing this tedious task and waiting for long hours and late nights to do backups. The default copy program in windows is bit slower because of the buffer usage algorithm doesn’t care about the volume of the files or the size. It just copies the files in a single thread and pre-defined buffer for any scenario.

TeraCopy is a nifty small copy handler for Windows XP/Vista, which does a smart job of making the copy jobs much more faster and reliable.

A Free copy for Home users can be downloaded from HERE

Lets look at the cool features at a glance…

• It uses dynamically adjusted buffers to reduce seek times in file copy operations. It also does asynchronous copy between two different hard disks to make it more faster.
• Pause and Resume file copy process anytime
• Does not terminate the whole copy job for any error in reading files
• Tracks the failed copy transactions
• Completely integrates with Windows Shell and replaces the original boring copy dialog.

Sounds cool huh ?  🙂

Find shortcuts for any program

This is sweet for all keyboard champions and fans like me. I hate to use mouse for every action that I need to do in software. I enjoy the productivity gain that I get my keyboard. But how can I refer to all keyboard short cuts in one place for any application (popular) ?

Here it comes to save my time..

http://www.keyxl.com/

KeyXL is a search engine for Keyboard shortcuts. You can find full list of short cuts for many popular applications like Internet Explorer and Firefox.

Examples

01. Gmail : http://www.keyxl.com/aaa2334/41/Gmail-web-based-email-keyboard-shortcuts.htm

02. Microsoft Excel 2007 : http://www.keyxl.com/aaa33ef/136/Microsoft-Excel-Software-keyboard-shortcuts.htm

03. Adobe Photoshop CS3 (Mac) : http://www.keyxl.com/aaaaa5f/149/Adobe-Photoshop-CS-software-keyboard-shortcuts.htm

Create any type of chart online absolutely for FREE

I always dreamed of having Visio as a web based tool rather than a desktop tool. Now with the power that comes with Web 2.0, we have got many options to create charts, diagrams and plans completely online with no software foot print of the desktop computer. One such web software is Best4c. I agree with you that the name is weird :-), But as of now it looks like a winner application to me. Go create charts, plans, and diagrams for free @ http://www.best4c.com/

Shameless Skype Software Horror (SSSH….)

16th August : Skype is down…and everyone are panic. The world of communication is not fallen or AT & T, Virgin did not lost their satellites..but skype has got crashed data servers and the world is panic.

16th August : As a usual routine, the major OS vendor, Microsoft has issued critical security patches to their operating systems Windows XP and Windows Vista worldwide. These patches are available as part of Windows Update (which can be configured not to download updates automatically by any user) worldwide. The criticality of these patches also demands a safe restart of the operating system to make sure it is secured from any malicious attacks. Every machine in this world which has been updated using windows update was restarted….

What happend to skype?

Now the funniest thing that could ever happened to a software which was made with no idea of disaster scenarios comes in to picture. The massive restart of windows machines all over the world has apparently brought down skype servers and caused a big disaster. To my understanding , Skype does closes the connections and commits the calls in shutdown process. Massive start of windows machines (skype is not sure how many ….), it has got massive log-in  requests which are enough to give their servers a sleeping pill.

Who is the culprit ?

My vote goes to Skype. Hats-off to their product engineering which has never taken such a scenario of disaster. I am wondering what the hell their testing team doing with load testing? Do they test skype servers with a 500 simultaneous login transactions? How could anyone blame someone with so much of irresponsibility at their own house? This is funnier than fun.

Windows update restarted many machines and all the other IM networks survived including AIM, MSN, Yahoo and Google and why not skype? Does skype is going to disable the auto sign-in feature in future? 🙂 are the questions now…

Read more on this..

The best way to read Digg.com

Do you love digg.com? or Addicted? well, then you would have definitely felt tiresome of opening your browser very often to read digg.com latest stories. I used to always dream about a cute offline client which can provide digg.com experience in-built. Now I found it too.

DiggTop is a shiny little application which syncs with digg.com and gets you the latest news and videos down to your desktop. You can even set alert thresholds on digg count of any story. The following are some of the screenshots of the cool diggTop.

 You can download this application from GSkinner Website for free. This application runs on Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR). So installing AIR is mandatory.

Install AIR Here….

How to make Vista Windows more cool ?

I love Windows Vista’s windows for two things. No…not for that flip-3D animation. But for the those three re-designed form controls with glow on left-top corner and the stylish border of the window when you enable Aero effects. 

But by default you get a form border which is a bit thicker than anticipated for any cool window. It looks some what like this…

 

Don’t you think, it looks bit bold but not so soft at the edges? Well, it requires a simple plumbing to get a sleeky, thin edge shape. Let’s try to get something like this…

To get the above effect, just follow these steps…

1. Open Start Menu
2. Type “personalization” in search box
3. Open Personalization Dialog
4. Select “Window Color and Appearance”
5. In this window, you can see “Open Classic Appearance……” link. Click that.
6. In “Appearance settings” window, select “Advanced”.
7. In “Advanced Appearance” Window, select the “item” dropdown and choose “Border Padding”.
8. Make it to “2”.
9. Close all the dialogs by clicking Ok.

Windows will take 10 seconds to adjust the borders and you get nifty cool windows ready.

The 100 Best Products of 2007

PC World has published the World’s 100 best products for 2007 today. They have ranked software, hardware, web sites, media technologies and services which are rising and falling in the current timeline and in future.

The Top 10 list goes like this…(via pcworld.com)

Google Apps Premier Edition Review

Intel Core 2 Duo Review

Nintendo Wii Review

Verizon FiOS Vendor Site

RIM Blackberry 8800 Review

Parallels Desktop Review

Pioneer Elite 1080p PRO-FHD1

Infrant Technologies ReadyNAS NV

Apple Mac OS X 10.4 “Tiger” Review

Adobe Premiere Elements 3 Review

The full list is available here.

What makes Indians busy on Internet?

Guess what? No..It’s not work or bollywood :-), It’s “Scrapping”. According Alexa traffic rankings for India, Orkut.com stands the most viewed/visited website after yahoo.com. I would give Orkut.com as numero Uno, because I believe Yahoo.com gets most of the hits due to it’s messenger traffic but towards the website.

The Rankings are as follows…(top 10 rankings)

01. Yahoo!

02. Orkut.com (Where people fight on stupid topics for days and years)

03. Google India

04. Google.com

05. Rediff

06. MSN (msn.com)

07. Naukri.com (A Job’s site)

08. YouTube

09. Windows Live (live.com)

10. Blogger.com

Some more interesting facts seems weird to me. The trends clear shows that Indians are wasting lot of limited Internet connectivity that country has as of today. Let’s see some interesting rankings

• 11 : RapidShare.com – A site which is well known for sharing files on internet.
• 14: Debonairblog – A porn blog. Posts lot of MMS videos online.
• 16. MegaUpload.com – Similiar to RapidShare
• 37: MegaShare.com – Similiar to RapidShare

Top Informational, Corporate & News Sites (India only)

• 12: Wikipedia.org (Good to see Wikipedia growing in India)
• 13 : Indiatimes.com (Times Of India’s web portal)
• 15: Microsoft.com
• 17 : Raaga.com (Indian music streaming site)
• 18: Sify (Satyam Infoway web portal)
• 20: Timesjobs.com (Times of India’s Job’s portal)
• 21: Monster India (Jobs portal)
• 24: Jeevansaathi.com (Matrimonial)
• 28: ClickJobs.com (Jobs)
• 62. Eenadu.net (Telugu News Paper)

The top ranked sites (1-10) are showing a healthy traffic in netizens. “Search” is still stands as a hot trend in India. Blogger.com coming at rank 10 shows that India is stepping in to serious blogging right from masses.

At medium level ranks, pornographic and pirated software downloads have taken most of the traffic. This is clearly showing an indication of usage of pirated software. Very bad !