Top 10 products of 2006

CRN published a detailed review of top 10 products of 2006 encompassing both software and hardware. Here are the links:
• Best Web Development Tool
• Best Security Software
• Best Networking Hardware
• Best Storage Product
• Best App Development Tool
• Best Printer
• Best Notebook
• Best Application Software
• Best Operating System
• Best Server

Linux equivalent of Windows Softies

If you are one of those who abandoned the plan to switch over to Linux because of sheer lack of full feature softwares, then this post could be of some help to you to overcome your fear and go opensource. LinuxEq like the name suggests maintains a good list of softwares for Linux family of OSs with its windows counterparts. The apps range from equivalent of photoshops, office, itunes, netmeeting to notepad.

Tiny apps : Free and efficient Apps

There is a good collection of apps at TinyApps which are free and run on your system without much overhead on your CPU. Almost all of the apps are freeware(?), less than 1.44MB in size, does not require VB/MFC/.NET runtimes and they claim they are not adwares(?). A good number of their apps come with source code, requires no changes in registry, 100% self contained withing their own directory, do not require installation. Free apps for Palm and OS X are also available.

Run Windows and Mac apps Side by Side

[Credit: Lifehacker]
LifeHacker published a post about running Windows apps side by side Mac apps on your Mac. This killer hack requires a virtualization product from parallels. Track the full story here.

Heres a screencast:

Online Compilers

Suddenly came to mind to look for online compilers. Though I had a somewhat greater speculation about finding Online Compilers, it failed to disappoint me as I came across a few. These compilers come handy when you do not want to go through the process of downloading or purchasing desktop compilers, or you want to compile on the fly or just to test a code snippet if it works or not. A word of caution though, these compilers do not come even near to the power of desktop compilers. In case you want a free compiler or tool here is a good collection.

Heres a little list of Online Compilers

♠ Java :Online java compiler, lets you upload a no. of files and provides download for compiled file. You can also view the compiled applets directly.

♠ DJGPP C Compiler : Online version of DJGPP compiler. Write the code and download .exe file.

♠ C/C++ Compiler : Lets you write online code and shows compiler messages upon compilation. Good to check codes.

♠ C#, C, VB.NET, FORTRAN : Compile the stated languages. (link not working at the time of writing)

Porn -- Not to survive

A latest analysis has concluded that there are now only about 1 percent of total web-pages that contain sexually explicit content. The porn industry is falling steeply downside. The porn sites use to make money just by showing sexual content (in the form of images or videos mainly) which until recently attracted a large number of audiences. Of late these audiences have come to know about the cheap tricks played on them and thus the downside of porn. Here are some of the methods to filter porn:

♠ A simple way to block sexual content is to configure Content Advisor in Internet Explorer (open Internet Options ->Content tab), Firefox can be configured to block Pop Up windows (open Options->Content tab). There is no built in content filter in Firefox, this is where extensions come handy, Firefox extension Procon serves as good filter.

♠ There are also a lots of porn blocker softwares available for download.One example is NetDog which works with both IE and Firefox.

♠ In order to avoid those annoying porns appearing in the search results we recommend using Google Safesearch. It can be configured through preferences section on the Google homepage.

♠ PicBlock blocks the images based on flesh content by blurring them out "PicBlock blocks porn images by detecting the amount of flesh tones in images. Since the software is not based on offensive keywords list or known URLs, PicBlock may not be a substitute for your content filtering software." [via Digital Inspiration]

Picture Downloader

Not less than often we spot a guy who opens each picture on the net and decides whether to download it or not. Even if he wanted to download all the pictures from the site, he has to open all the pictures individually , and the wait between the page loads cause some to think about the ways of committing suicide.

I was one of them until recently when I came across a lot of "Picture Downloaders" (see how) across the net. I picked up one called Abacre Photo Downloader from Abacre [download] , while a lot more were available here (nice collection).

These tools provide filters like what type of image to download (jpeg, gif, png etc), file size of image (in kb), size/dimension of image (in px). Download the whole album and delete the ones that doesn't suit your taste.

SpringerWidgets -- Same widget for my Web and my Desktop

SpringerWidgets is integrating the widgets what we commonly differentiated as "widget for web" and "widget for desktop". The widget will work with same look and feel whether its embedded on the web or put up on your desktop. They have developed some samples for this. One of the sample widget to read RSS feed is shown here. Remember although this widget is embedded on this blog you do not have to come to this page everytime to view it (unless you are a die hard fan of this blog :-) ), instead you can download the desktop version of the same from here.

Get this widget!

Instant Web Calculator

Welcome to hassle free calculation. InstaCalc is an online calculator which provides calculation facility in real time, that means results are displayed as you type. It claims to be faster that windows and easier than excel, which seems true looking at its speed and rich features.

The most interesting part is its graph and chart calculations, it instanly draws charts on your screen as you vary the parameters.

It does'nt take much to explore all its features. A comprehensive reference section is provided.

It also provides codes which can be embedded onto your geeky page to enable on the fly calculations.

A Three Column Sample Blogger Beta Template

Here is a sample three column template for Blogger beta. As it is very difficult to find templates for Blogger beta I have altered one of the two column Blogger templates and made it three column. Three column templates are very convenient for blogs with a large content required to be arranged in categories.

Below is the code for the type of template shown in the figure. A word of caution before you edit your template (in html mode), back up the whole template on a notepad. You can copy the code below and paste into your template editing area while working in html mode.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" ?><br /><!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"><br /><html xmlns='http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml' xmlns:b='http://www.google.com/2005/gml/b' xmlns:data='http://www.google.com/2005/gml/data' xmlns:expr='http://www.google.com/2005/gml/expr'><br /> <head><br /> <b:include data='blog' name='all-head-content'/><br /> <title><data:blog.pageTitle/></title><br /> <b:skin><![CDATA[<br /><br />/* Variable definitions<br /> ====================<br /><br /> <Variable name="textcolor" description="Text Color"<br /> type="color" default="#333" value="#333333"><br /><br /> <Variable name="pagetitlecolor" description="Page Header Color"<br /> type="color" default="#FFF" value="#FFFFFF"><br /><br /> <Variable name="datecolor" description="Date Header Color"<br /> type="color" default="#f93" value="#ff9933"><br /><br /> <Variable name="titlecolor" description="Post Title Color"<br /> type="color" default="#f63" value="#ff6633"><br /><br /> <Variable name="footercolor" description="Post Footer Color"<br /> type="color" default="#999" value="#999999"><br /><br /> <Variable name="sidebartextcolor" description="sidebar Text Color"<br /> type="color" default="#999" value="#999999"><br /><br /> <Variable name="sidebarcolor" description="Sidebar Title Color"<br /> type="color" default="#666" value="#666666"><br /><br /> <Variable name="linkcolor" description="Link Color"<br /> type="color" default="#69c" value="#6699cc"><br /><br /> <Variable name="visitedlinkcolor" description="Visited Link Color"<br /> type="color" default="#666699" value="#666699"><br /><br /> <Variable name="bodyfont" description="Text Font"<br /> type="font"<br /> default="normal normal 100% Verdana, sans-serif" value="normal normal 100% Verdana, sans-serif"><br /><br /> <Variable name="pagetitlefont" description="Page Header Font"<br /> type="font" default="normal normal 100% 'Lucida Grande','Trebuchet MS'" value="normal normal 100% 'Lucida Grande','Trebuchet MS'"><br /><br /> <Variable name="titlefont" description="Post Title Font"<br /> type="font" default="normal bold 130% 'Lucida Grande','Trebuchet MS'" value="normal bold 130% 'Lucida Grande','Trebuchet MS'"><br /><br /> <Variable name="sidebarheaderfont" description="sidebar Title Font"<br /> type="font" default="normal bold 130% 'Lucida Grande','Trebuchet MS'" value="normal bold 130% 'Lucida Grande','Trebuchet MS'"><br /><br /> <br />*/<br /><br />/* ---( page defaults )--- */<br /><br />body {<br /> margin: 0;<br /> padding: 0;<br /> font-size: small;<br /> text-align: center;<br /> color: $textcolor;<br /> background: #e0e0e0;<br /> }<br /><br />blockquote {<br /> margin: 0 0 0 30px;<br /> padding: 10px 0 0 20px;<br /> font-size: 88%;<br /> line-height: 1.5em;<br /> color: #666;<br /> background: url(http://www.blogblog.com/tictac/quotes.gif) no-repeat top left;<br /> }<br /><br />blockquote p {<br /> margin-top: 0;<br /> }<br /><br />abbr, acronym {<br /> cursor: help;<br /> font-style: normal;<br /> border-bottom: 1px dotted;<br /> }<br /><br />code {<br /> color: #f63;<br /> }<br /><br />hr {<br /> display: none;<br /> }<br /><br />img {<br /> border: none;<br /> }<br /><br />/* unordered list style */<br /><br />ul {<br /> list-style: none;<br /> margin-left: 10px;<br /> padding: 0;<br /> }<br /><br />li {<br /> list-style: none;<br /> padding-left: 14px;<br /> margin-bottom: 3px;<br /> background: url(http://www.blogblog.com/tictac/tictac_orange.gif) no-repeat 0 6px;<br /> }<br /><br />/* links */<br /><br />a:link {<br /> color: $linkcolor;<br /> }<br /><br />a:visited {<br /> color: $visitedlinkcolor;<br /> }<br /><br />a:hover {<br /> color: #693;<br /> }<br /><br />a:active {<br /> color: #cc3333;<br /> text-decoration: none;<br /> }<br /><br />/* ---( layout structure )---*/<br /><br />#outer-wrapper {<br /> width: 847px;<br /> margin: 0px auto 0;<br /> text-align: left;<br /> font: $bodyfont;<br /> background: url(http://prashant.nit.googlepages.com/tile.gif) repeat-y;<br /> }<br /><br />#content-wrapper {<br /> margin-left: 42px; /* to avoid the border image */<br /> width: 763px;<br /> }<br /><br />#main {<br /> width: 450px;<br /> float:left;<br /> padding: 20px 0 20px 1em;<br /> line-height: 1.5em;<br /> word-wrap: break-word; /* fix for long text breaking rightbar float in IE */<br /> overflow: hidden; /* fix for long non-text content breaking IE rightbar float */<br /> }<br /><br />#rightbar {<br /> float: right;<br /> width: 150px;<br /> padding: 0 0px 0 0;<br /> font-size: 85%;<br /> line-height: 1.4em;<br /> color: $sidebartextcolor;<br /> background: e0e0e0;<br /> word-wrap: break-word; /* fix for long text breaking rightbar float in IE */<br /> overflow: hidden; /* fix for long non-text content breaking IE rightbar float */<br /> }<br />#leftbar {<br /> float: left;<br /> width: 150px;<br /> padding: 0 0px 0 0;<br /> font-size: 85%;<br /> line-height: 1.4em;<br /> color: $sidebartextcolor;<br /> background: e0e0e0;<br /> word-wrap: break-word; /* fix for long text breaking rightbar float in IE */<br /> overflow: hidden; /* fix for long non-text content breaking IE rightbar float */<br /> }<br /><br /><br />/* ---( header and site name )--- */<br /><br />#header-wrapper {<br /> margin: 0;<br /> padding: 0;<br /> font: $pagetitlefont;<br /> background: #e0e0e0 url(http://www.blogblog.com/tictac/top_div.gif) no-repeat 0px 0px;<br /> }<br /><br />#header {<br /> margin: 0;<br /> padding: 25px 60px 35px 160px;<br /> color: $pagetitlecolor;<br /> background: url(http://www.blogblog.com/tictac/top_h1.gif) no-repeat bottom left;<br /> }<br /><br />#header h1 { <br /> font-size: 200%;<br /> text-shadow: #81A75B 2px 2px 2px;<br /> }<br /><br />#header h1 a {<br /> text-decoration: none;<br /> color: $pagetitlecolor;<br /> }<br /><br />#header h1 a:hover {<br /> color: #eee;<br /> }<br /><br />/* ---( main column )--- */<br /><br />h2.date-header {<br /> margin-top: 0;<br /> padding-left: 14px;<br /> font-size: 90%;<br /> color: $datecolor;<br /> background: url(http://www.blogblog.com/tictac/date_icon.gif) no-repeat 0 50%;<br /> }<br /><br />.post h3 {<br /> margin-top: 0;<br /> font: $titlefont;<br /> letter-spacing: -1px;<br /> color: $titlecolor;<br /> }<br /><br />.post {<br /> margin: 0 0 1.5em 0;<br /> padding: 0 0 1.5em 14px;<br /> border-bottom: 1px solid #ddd;<br /> }<br /><br />.post h3 a,<br />.post h3 a:visited { <br /> color: $titlecolor;<br /> text-decoration: none;<br /> }<br /><br />.post-footer {<br /> margin: 0;<br /> padding: 0 0 0 14px;<br /> font-size: 88%;<br /> color: $footercolor;<br /> background: url(http://www.blogblog.com/tictac/tictac_grey.gif) no-repeat 0 8px;<br /> }<br /><br />.post img {<br /> padding: 6px;<br /> border-top: 1px solid #ddd;<br /> border-left: 1px solid #ddd;<br /> border-bottom: 1px solid #c0c0c0;<br /> border-right: 1px solid #c0c0c0;<br /> }<br /><br />.feed-links {<br /> clear: both;<br /> line-height: 2.5em;<br />}<br /><br />#blog-pager-newer-link {<br /> float: left;<br /> }<br /><br />#blog-pager-older-link { <br /> float: right;<br /> }<br /> <br />#blog-pager { <br /> text-align: center; <br /> }<br /><br />/* comment styles */<br /><br />#comments {<br /> padding-top: 10px;<br /> font-size: 85%;<br /> line-height: 1.5em;<br /> color: #666;<br /> background: #eee url(http://www.blogblog.com/tictac/comments_curve.gif) no-repeat top left;<br /> }<br /><br />#comments h4 {<br /> margin: 20px 0 15px 0;<br /> padding: 8px 0 0 40px;<br /> font-family: "Lucida Grande", "Trebuchet MS";<br /> font-size: 130%;<br /> color: #666;<br /> background: url(http://www.blogblog.com/tictac/bubbles.gif) no-repeat 10px 0;<br /> height: 29px !important; /* for most browsers */<br /> height /**/:37px; /* for IE5/Win */<br /> }<br /> <br />#comments ul {<br /> margin-left: 0;<br /> }<br /><br />#comments li {<br /> background: none;<br /> padding-left: 0;<br /> }<br /> <br />.comment-body {<br /> padding: 0 10px 0 25px;<br /> background: url(http://www.blogblog.com/tictac/tictac_orange.gif) no-repeat 10px 5px;<br /> }<br /><br />.comment-body p {<br /> margin-bottom: 0;<br /> }<br /><br />.comment-author {<br /> margin: 4px 0 0 0;<br /> padding: 0 10px 0 60px;<br /> color: #999;<br /> background: url(http://www.blogblog.com/tictac/comment_arrow.gif) no-repeat 44px 2px;<br /> }<br /><br />.comment-footer {<br /> border-bottom: 1px solid #ddd;<br /> padding-bottom: 1em;<br />}<br /><br /><br />.deleted-comment {<br /> font-style:italic;<br /> color:gray;<br /> }<br /><br />/* ---( rightbar )--- */<br /><br />.rightbar h2 { <br /> margin: 0 0 0 0;<br /> padding: 25px 0 0 40px;<br /> font: $sidebarheaderfont;<br /> color: $sidebarcolor;<br /> height: 32px;<br /> background: url(http://www.blogblog.com/tictac/sidebar_icon.gif) no-repeat 10px 15px;<br /> height: 32px !important; 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Xcelsius - A Class product from Business Objects

In the world of Business Intelligence, reporting and interactivity of reports are crucial to a report's effectiveness and hence of business. And the need of the day is to integrate the vendor specific reports (or dashboards) to the product of users choice ( thats what I call people ready business). This is when Xcelsius comes handy.

For all those who still ponder what a Business Intelligence is, here's the shot - Business Intelligence is a marriage of Business Effectiveness to Technology. It calls for analytical processing of historical data to design strategies, making forecast and investment decisions. Business Intelligence, or simply, “BI,” is the act of capturing raw data, then transforming and combining that data into information that can be proactively used to improve business (link).

Crystal Xcelsius a product from Business Objects lets one to import data directly from Excel sheets to create reports comprising of different types of charts, dials,sliders etc. and then export it to pdf, ms word, powerpoint or web besides its very own dashboard. It provides a slider option to be embedded on the dashboard, which causes instant visual variation in the charts or dials upon sliding (i.e. changing the parameter representing the slide). What is exciting is that the reports can be exported to above mentioned formats without comprising on the level of interactivity. Watch the screencast describing these features.

Checking Emails from different accounts at One Place

EPrompter is a free software that allows you to check, reply, forward, delete and all other common email functionalities through a single interface. It also offers spam protection. Eprompter can be downloaded from here.

Audio Blogging

The popular audio blog Audioblogger which provides service for Blogger is going off the air starting november 1st. Audioblogger provided audio blogging services for Blogger by providing an US number which can be used to post directly your audio through phone.

A very good alternative is Gabcast which provides paid as well as free services. For select countries blogging numbers are provided. SipBroker provides good free voip services.In order to record from your machine as it was in my case you can download some VOIP tool. I downloaded Express Talk, a soft VoIP tool from NCH which provides machine dialling facilities. It can be downlaoded from here by providing your email address. Now in order to blog on gabcast you have to dial sip:422@sip.gabcast.com and record your sound. This sound can later be heard from gabcast or its code may be copied to your favourite blog. You can check My Voice section on the right side of this page for sample.

Google Earth Workaround

I found a lot of tiny dots on the most beloved Google Earth (download it here). There are a lot of places marked by other and I am sure you will find one which is near your place of interest. My work started by searching Google. First I searched by keywords like "Google Earth Placename", later started searching with keywords like "site: filetype:kmz" or "site: filetype:kml". But then came up this great site containing a good amount of information on geographical locations. Tageo contains a lot of information about even the smallest of towns of the world alongwith latitude and longitude information, but on top of that it provides a link to KML/KMZ (to be opened with Google Earth) file for each place.

Now that I have located my place on Google Earth, in order to share it I must upload somewhere. In order to accomplish this "this wonderful site" came handy which allows the upload of KMZ and KML files. So finally I am able to share my location with you right here.

Virtual World

The world, initially a vast stretch of never-ending terrains,seas and deserts, started evolving slowly but with a very fast pace. The whole of the world is now at your finger-tips, thanks to the virtual revolution brought by digitals. Here is a collection of virual realities which have changed our way of life in recent past.

• Maps and satellite and Ariel Imagery:
  
  While the baton is carried by Google Earth and Google Maps, Microsoft Virtual Earth(combines MapPoint and Local Live Search) and Yahoo maps are making the competition tougher.OpenLayers ( an Open Source venture) and Ask.Com are also catching the race. Most of these include local search with GPS functionality which helps giving driving directions and lots more. There are also freely availabe APIs for these maps, so that they can be embedded in your site at your disposal and convenience.
  
  
• Virtual Computers/Platforms
  
  The virtual computers or platform helps to test all varieties of application to check for compatiblity different hardwares and platforms. Gone are the days when one used to acquire a lot of hardwares to test a single software.VMWare provides players for virtualization over windows and linux systems. Microsoft's Virtual Server provides a virtualization platform that runs most major x86 operating systems in a guest environment, and is supported by Microsoft as a host for Windows Server operating systems and Windows Server System applications. Microsofts Virtual PC also provides a similar though slightly depreceted facillty.PVM (Parallel Virtual Machine) is a software package that permits a heterogeneous collection of Unix and/or Windows computers hooked together by a network to be used as a single large parallel computer. Thus large computational problems can be solved more cost effectively by using the aggregate power and memory of many computers.
  
  
• Virtual Keyboard
  
  Tired of typing SMS or emails on your Cell or Handheld? The solution is in the virtual world where you can project a virtual qwerty keyboard from your handheld onto any flat surface and could experience a real keyboard typing. Shown here is an example of I-Techs's Virtual Kbd which both infrared and laser technology to generate an invisible field and project a full-size virtual QWERTY keyboard on any surface.


• Chat Bots
  
  Chat bots are chat robots, who are such programmed through artificial intelligence that they give very human like answers in a chat session and they learn more and more as they go through the length of chat with wide variety of people. Here is a good list of these online artificial nerds.
  
  

Final release of Internet Explorer 7

Yesterday microsoft release final and stable version of IE7 which is more secure and employs many cool features (such as tabs etc) which makes ones browsing experience more pleasant.
Grab your copy now http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/downloads/default.mspx.
You can also download it from here. Remember you gotta have Windows XP with sp2 to install it.

Meanwhile its interesting to know these "20 things you don't know about death".