sparx

I'll also recommend that you try to recover your data by running some recovery software off another HDD is you can manage to get your hands on one. Another option would be to run the software off a USB memory stick or some other allied flash media. I recommend you first try the freeware before sending the HDD to recovery experts. First try PC Inspector File Recovery before trying to recover data using any other recovery software like EasyRecover etc. Also, do NOT install any other software to that partition or the hard disk on which it is located and try your best to keep the machine running without any re-boots to prevent new data from overwriting your existing data. Be advised that recovery of data is an extremely hit-and-miss process and the result scan never be guaranteed, so be mindful of vendors who promise that you'll get your data back as it was. Finally, Good Luck... Have a Happy New Year and I do hope that you had backed up your critical data to another location.

Also try http://www.idealab.com/?utm_source=domain&utm_medium=fwd&utm_campaign=imgpal.com. A new service, they seem to be quite good.

Although more feature packed, one could always make use of the blogger extension to blog content visible on certain pages. I for one used the BlogThis! button on the Google toolbar quite extensively. The geekier among us who have now turned to MovableType and WordPress will undoubtedly find this a good tool. IIRC, there was also an extension which turned any text input box into an HTML or Rich Text editor so's one could put some formatting into what they're typing. Haven't used it yet but I'll try and post back once I do.

Perhaps. But if you just want to quickly upload using a no-frills interface, then imageshack is the site to go to. DeviantArt is more of a showcase of artists' skills. It gives skinners (is that a word??) a chance to display their creative side and gies them a virtual gallery of sorts to show their stuff to the world.

Actually, imageshack.us also allows you to save photos if you've registered. The major downside to this is the login procedure. To login and view the images you've uploaded previously, you need to click the registration link that came in the email they sent you when you first registered. No username. No password. Which means you need access to the URL or your mailbox in order to login. A little annoying, but if like me you use it mostly to post funny images or screenshots, you can use a URL redirection service like tinyurl.com or snurl.com to point to the registration URL. I caution you that is an insecure way, beause all a person needs to do is to enter the corret URL (which can be guessed or come across accidentally) and he can access your account.

The IE 7 development team has announced that the RSS icon in IE 7 will be the same as that currently being used in Firefox: This is agood move and wil be welcomed by one and all. It shows that MS and the newer devs there are at least thinking about collaboration when it comes to establishing world-wide standards. This isn't the first time too,according to the post and the result will only be better for end-users.

UPDATE:I just re-read the support article. Apparently, Norton GB 4.1 *does* support dual boot OS, but it should be installed separately on both Win OS.

As things stand Norton GoBack does not support dual booting even windows partitions. The earlier version 3 when it was still Roxio GoBack did. Never has GoBack been able to support Linux partitions and linux boot loader like LILO or GRUB. Link here

Yahoo recently acquired and has developed the code behind Konfabulator. The new system is called Yahoo! Widgets and is essentially a javasript engine that allows the user to run small apps. What's different and cool about this is the sheer number of widgets (small applications which do a wide range of things). Widgets are more usually placed on a user's desktop so they're constantly in view. Some of the more popular widgets include jazzy looking clocks and calendars, news and stock tickers, panels that show system resources and much much more. There are also RSS feed readers that hover, weather displays that update at a set frequency, email checkers, panels that display your contacts or your Outlook front page, panels to show the Wi-FI strength, currency converters etc. Thousands of widgets created by users are available for free. It's entirely up to you - the end user to customize the desktop that you always wanted. The Yahoo! Widgets system is supposedly better than the other systems like ObjectDock because they interface with the graphics sub-system in a much better way leading to better looking eye-candy. The system is available for both Windows and Macintosh systems. Be warned though, that jazzing up one's desktop with Yahoo!Widgets will lead to a hit in your overall computing performance because each widget is run like an application. The more widgets you have, the more system resources are used. Best to find the correct balance between the eye-candy and the system resources at your disposal. Yahoo specified system requirements: * Windows XP with Service Pack 1 installed or Windows 2000 with Service Pack 3 installed, or newer, or Mac OS X 10.3 or newer. * A connection to the Internet. * 512 megabytes of RAM is recommended. * Lots of spare time.

I think you'd best install Windows first, then Linux so GRUB becomes the boot manager by default. Finally, install GoBack, so that the GB bootup manager is the very first thing on your MBR.I'm just surmising all of this. But I'd love to hear the results as and when you decide to try it jguy!

Have a look at the disussion here - maybe it can shed some light on your problem. Although, by the looks of things, you must already have started afresh: Link

Yahoo has recently launched a BETA version of its Yahoo Answers service. It's designed as a community forum where people are encouraged to ask and answer questions on a wide rangin variety of topics. To encourage greater use of this community, a points system has been put in place. Garnering points leads to increased status within the community and also allows you to ask, answer and rate more questions than the daily limit. Unlike Google Answers, this service is free (for now). And anyone can answer questions whereas only experts employed and paid by Google can do the same. Both Google and Yahoo allow any registered user to post comments. I have noticed that quite a few questions are put up for which extremely easy solutions and answers are present. One need merely look it up in Google or in some online encyclopaedia like Wikipedia.org. That obviously is done by people who are trying to bolster their ratings. In the future, Yahoo are also planning on paying registered users of its Yahoo Publishers Network. I'll post more details on that later.

If it's public servers you're looking for, I'd suggest you look at this page on the official Jabber project site - http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ '> http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/

What is it that you intend to acomplish with this? Do you want to set up Jabber for a personal intranet or will prospective users be connected thru the Internet?

MSN has now released information regarding two bots that ought to help users of MSN Messenger. A bot is nothing more than a programmed response to certain queries. A large variety of bots abound on the Internet -- most are chat bots where a rudimentary AI (artificial intelligence) program attempts to chat with you. The two bots offered by MSN are Encarta and BBC TV Listings. To get info from them, add these email addresses to your MSN Messenger Contacts List * encarta@conversagent.com * bbcbackstage@hotmail.com They'll appear like regular contacts online. Just start a conversation with the Encarta one and it'll guide you on how best to proceed. Initial tests indicate that it's not working to its full potential and things work best only if you have a copy of Encarta already installed. Still, I'm hopeful that in the future more bots and useful stuff will be added. Even better would be the ability to contact these bots without having to leave the current conversation window.

Now that all the hub bub seems to have died down, I'd like to make one small point - No one yet knows what sort of antivirus solution GMail is supposedly using. Certainly not one of the more commercial ones or else they'd more likely have advertised it as a USP. Knowing Google and its strong support for FOSS (Free and Open Source Software), I wouldn't be in the least surprised if they employed ClamWin or some other similar solution.If anyone comes across any article or info on GMail's antivirus provider please post it here. Quite eager to know who's cleaning up GMail.

The official GoogleTalk blog has been started http://googletalk.blogspot.de/ I don't know how well it'll work, but users at least have a way of communicating with the development team. Personally, I don't use the client for vox chats, but since a few of my contacts have signed on to the service, I decided to add it as a plugin protocol to Miranda IM ( the instant messenger program that I use ). On a side note, check out the site featured in the very first post - http://www.customizetalk.com/ The tips and tricks page lists a decent list of shortcuts and info that makes using GoogleTalk more productive.

I prefer to use X-teq X-Setup. Although a paid version called X-Setup Pro v7 is available by default, the prior version v6.3 Freeware is magnificent in the ways in which so many applications and Windows can be tweaked. I especially liked its "Record Mode" where it allows you create a snapshot of changes made to the registry and allows the user to roll back the tweak if so required. With so many tweaks available, the integrated search function helps to narrow down the plugin that will make the change you desire. All in all, very good software.

TipMonkies has a very informative and up-to-date guide to various services offered by Google. Link here I was quite surprised to see a couple of them and visited their site to check them out. I was especially happy when I came across Google Compute as being part of the Google toolbar. Also had a look @ Google Code and the always cutting-edge Google Labs ( No, it's not about loyal dogs )

Ha ! I remember the one about Win 95: Windows 95 n. (Win-doze): A 32 bit extension to a 16 bit user interface for an 8 bit operating system based on a 4 bit architecture from a 2 bit company that can't stand 1 bit of competition. Modern day upgrade --> Windows XP Professional x64: Windows is now a 64 bit tweak of a 32 bit extension to a 16 bit user interface for an 8 bit operating system based on a 4 bit architecture from a 2 bit company that can't stand 1 bit of competition. Also from the tech support dictionary: ID10T error: /I¡D¡ten¡T er'@r/ Synonym for PEBKAC, e.g. âThe user is being an idiotâ. Tech-support people passing a problem report to someone higher up the food chain (and presumably better equipped to deal with idiots) may ask the user to convey that there seems to be an I-D-ten-T error. Users never twig.

A quick little reply from me - the original post wondered if Google had a disparate set of programs. Essentially, soccermage is talking about the services offered by Google and how they can be better integrated with each other. Somewhere down the line, we've drifted off into asking whether Google has become desperate... IMHO, none of these companies are desperate and frankly they have no cause to be. Returning on-topic -- the various services offered by Google have now begun being solemnly available to the public under ONE user-name. This is in keeping with Google's business philosophy of being a search engine first and then trying to connect the world and bring them under the collective Google umbrella of services. Why does anyone go to Google? Primarily to search for something rather than to use their services like Mail, RSS, Maps, Blogspot, AdWords etc. They are leveraging their services on what they know and do better than others - search and innovate. With almost 75 - 80% of their services still in supposed BETA mode, one will slowly but surely see greater integration in the future.

http://www.snapfiles.com/freeware/ http://www.pricelesswarehome.org/ - The site where the users and followers of alt.comp.freeware on Usenet vote for each year's best freeware. http://www.tucows.com/ used to be good but I can't really say what it's like now. http://www.nonags.com/ is also a good place to search for freeware. http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ has a new cleaner look which helps searching thru their neatly organized site. If you need to search for particular freeware, I suggest you have a look at the Freeware SearchParty

For a beta version, Microsoft's ANti-Spyware is very good. I especially like the resident blocker. Also it's abiloity to restore hijacked home pages and the default IE settings is useful at times. I remember that one of my younger brothers had accidentally and unknowingly agreed to install some software which promised him additional smileys for his MSN messenger. Of course, along with that, it also hijacked my personalised search page, start page and kept trying to contact its home server. Being a Firefox user myself, I didn't realise at the time that something wasn't right. It was only later when I had problems running the Norton Antivirus interface (it uses the Internet Explorer engine to render) that I suspected all wasn't well in the land of IE. I immediately restored the settings from within MS AntiSpyware and all was well.

Although related to stopping bad stuff from entering your machine, the following isn't an ad stopper per se. This is a black list designed solely for Intenet Explorer. It's called IESpyAD and is available from the University Of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Link here Essentially, it maintains a list of sites and domains associated with known advertisers, marketers, and crapware pushers to the Restricted sites zone of Internet Explorer. Once you merge this list of sites and domains into the Registry, the web sites for these companies will not be able to use cookies, ActiveX controls, Java applets, or scripting to compromise your privacy or your PC while you surf the Net. Nor will they be able to use your browser to push unwanted pop-ups, cookies, or auto-installing programs on your PC. This is of course a preventive measure and not intended to lean your machine if it is infected.

Seriously, for a chap like me, I'd stay as far away from it as possible. I've had many problems with IE over the years and even though Firefox starts a little more sluggishly than IE, I want it to have a non-IE look.On the other hand, this would a great way to open up Firefox to new and existing users of IE. A lot of them require hand-holding to wean them off the most used browser on the planet. Speaking of which Firefox 1.5 will be released within the next few days if no more correctable bugs are found. It now has a 10% market share although what with Opera 8.5 being released as freeware will face stiffer competition.Good Links though. John Haller is also famous for compiling "portable" versions of Firefox and Thunderbird, which allow a user to run them off a USB memory stick without any installation required.