kaputnik

HiI've been looking out for a piece of desktop software (preferably open-source - windows based) that will allow me to send out a customized (mail merge function) HTML newsletter to a group list of about 4000 subscribers. The thing is that this is not revenue based and I'm not willing to spend any money on a high end software. Problem with this approach is that most bulk email software have a whole lot of restrictions. Since I've spent a good 4 days looking and trying out at least 20 odd programs - I'd be grateful if anyone will be able to point me to software that will sort me out.Thanks

Well, some workplaces (and I may be understating this) have a considerable degree of language as described. Fortunately, I've come across some Greek guys who's completely revamped my language and now, when in India, i use Greek to swear and when outside - it's a combination of a whole bunch of languages (never sure who knows what right..!!)

This is the first I've ever heard of any government using pirated software within it's system. Infact, wth my dealings with the government in India, selling software, these guys are a headache when it comes to keeping to the dotted line. Every software around would highly likely be liscensed and on the right side of the law. In fact with the amount of software the government has actually invested in developing, there's little doubt about the dependance on very large corporations for software (although a very high amount of computing is done on MS platforms).

To be quite honest, when I first downloaded a template, I was shocked with the number of folders that a template contains, each with a massive amount of material. With careful study, I figured out that most of the stuff is really easy to understand. Now, quite a few bought templates will actually give you ooptions which will allow you to go about customizing to a very high degree. The free ones, you just have to replace the images, work a bit on the CSS and pat - you're ready to go. The first step before you buy a template is to go ahead and experiment with fome free templates so that you get the hang of customizing and you're not to sorry if things don't go your way for a while. From experience, I can tell you that even a novice will easily manage to get everything right by the second try. Personally I started off with PHP-Nuke - which was a fantastic experience and I just loved going about modifying my site and working on the look and feel. I have since moved to Dragonfly CMS which I'm finding a lot easier to handle - with out any bugs thus far. All the best

Wow, now that's something I really have to try out in my free time someday. What really bugs me is my Math skills - and being in client servicing, I'm having to grapple with cost sheets on a daily basis and it really takes a toll. This looks like interesting stuff. I also once read a book called "Surely you're joking Mr. Fynman" in which Richard Fynman actually writes about how he goes about getting the better of a guy who was a whiz at the abacus - while doing math in his head alone. Now that really would be something. For now, I'll just try to remember my tables and prowl the internet for more fascinating methods to do math.

What I normally do, and something that really puts in a whole lot of structure into all my web pages is to use tables. Simple HTML will sort this out. To Create a box, all you need is a table with 1 row and 1 column. To keep this in the center, you just need to set the alignment attribute to "center". In fact you can have tables within tables to keep your layout exactly as you want it. What's more - you can specify width and height and - like you['re looking out to doing, set the borders with light and dark colours so that it gives a great 3D effect. From what you've written, Table in the center of the page, with a colour, 3D borders - can be sorted out with something like this: <TABLE WIDTH = "200" HEIGHT = "100" ALIGN = "center" BGCOLOR = "blue" CELLPADDING = "2" BORDER= "3" BORDER-STYLE = "ridge"> <TBODY> <TR> <TD> <CENTER> <Font Color = "White" SIZE = "5">Hope this works out for you..!!</FONT> </CENTER> </TD> </TR> </TBODY></TABLE> Placed in a web page, what this will instantly do is give you a box in the middle of the page with a width of 200 px a height of 100 px; gives you a 3D border (you can get into more detailing with the border properties).. You've got a blue background with the writing int he center and sized to 5. When you make a table - you need to keep in mind that you need to use the TBODY (shows the start of the body of the table, the TR (to designate the start of a row) and the TD attribute which will tell the system that there is a bit of data (like maybe some text or an image). Of course, if you get into detailing some more there are a huge many possibilities to getting your tables just as you want them.

This is with reference to an article here (http://pesn.com/2006/08/25/9500299_Steorn_jury_application_deadline/) and there's some here (http://www.realgeeks.com/); that I turned my attention towards - the possibility of having free energy. We all know that energy conversion from one form to another - like burning wood to create fire and therefore warmth/ source of heat to cook food over - involves some sort of chemical/ mechanical reaction where the energy stored in one medium(wood, gas, oil) is converted to another (heat, electricity etc...); involves a great deal of loss in energy during the process. (Information on energy conversion is available her). Now however there's this company called Steorn which claims that it's created an electro-megnetic-mechanical gadget/ machine that is actually giving an output of greater than 100% - which essentially means that the technological component of the machine - actually draws lesser energy than it outputs. Now, to the common sence, this comes out as absolute hogwash. Physics as we know it to be tells us that something like this is just not possible, since there is loss in any conversion of energy (assuming that the energy is being converted). The big question here thoug seems to be that there is little or no conversion of energy in the electro-megnetic process being used by this company - instead, it seems like they are drawing energy from some "unlimited" source (which is where quantum mechanics comes in. According the technology page on the company's website (which by itself is rather vague and doesn't actually give very many details); the system is actually functional and is producing results in test conditions. Which is why it seems that they actually published press ads challenging the world's physicists to form a 12 member evaluation team and judge their invention/ process. Really exciting stuff and I've signed up to receive more information on the results of the experimentation - once it's completed. Should this technology actually be proven to work - it would mean the immediate (somewhat worrysome question of - exactly where does the "extra" energy actually come from. When we look at stuff like quantum physics/ the multi-verse etc - it could be that the energy being drawn is somehow disrupting our world/ paralel universe/ space-time etc - some source which is not even known of as yet - to exploit this energy. Once though this question of where the extra energy is coming from is answered (even to a reasonable extent), then the world as we know it would undergo a massive change. The most threatened would be the oil and gas industry, who must be looking at these developments with a keen eye. Non renuable fuels would hit a wall as soon as unlimited sources of energy (as long as it is reasonably cheap) becomes available. As per the projections envisaged by the firm/ other journalistic sources - the fructification of this technology could result in stuff like an unlimited powersource for your cellphone (as small as that) your laptop (wow) and consider this - if somehow the technology even operates outside of the earth's influence - interstellar space travel - holy wow. Right - so what do you guys think about this. I have this gut feeling that it's on the even and that we may be looking at a whole new world really soon. And no smoke/ smog and carbon caused global warming.

Yes, like a lot of the guys here have already pointed out; the dating website thing has been done to bits.. there is though another method that'll really help you kick off. The idea also has been done a few times but is not immediately in the spotlight. What I'm talking about is; since you're already making the effort of building a website, why not take this a step ahead in the following manner:Register an offline firm with all the necessary paperwork.Reorganize your dating matching system so that instead of the system automatically sending out e-mails to matches - the system sends you the information - upon which you take action by actually calling up the match pairs and arrange for a meeting by them at a common acceptable venue (along with the introduction made by yourselves - like as if you're the pcommon acquaintance/ friend). This is where you can actually make your financial gain. Your billing would be solely based on this. Since most persons actually shy away from the online billed version of match making (and this is only from asking friends), this would actually work out much better.All the best

Hey - that's really great. I've a personal domain with limited e-mail. My folks have asked me if its possible to sort them out with a web-based e-mail the likes of Gmail and here we are - it's actually possible. I'm thrilled with this discovery. This is why I like Xisto so much - learn something everyday. Will just have to give this a shot right away. What I do notice though is that the feature currently is in Beta. that although not very disturbing is a bit of a worry since I'd indirectly be responsible for other people's e-mail; should this feature suddenly become unavailable or disabled.Right - so I just registered for the service and the response is that they will get back to me if they find my profile suitable for utilization in their test. Keeping my fingers crossed

This is quite increadable - I can just imagine the look on people's faces if I walk into a meeting boot up my laptop and it says "Windows Pirated Edition". I'd probably get myself arrested too. This though seems to be alike a pretty good tool to play around with the OS. Most of my customization as of present is done through the regular desktop properties route. Right click on desktop> Properties> Appearance tab Throught this I have currently managed to alter my desktop windows settings in the following ways: Active Window - Lialac; Inactive Window - Shades of Grey; Tool tips - yellow; This method of changing the regular window's look and feel does not use up any extra memory - I'll have to use the various applications and figure out if they're utilizing any memory after they've made changes to the OS. Good stuff though

Most interesting.. frankly, it seems dangerous for systems to be accessable so easily. What is very likely though is that such an access method is meant to be solely for the more technically capable and must have been instituted so that specialists etc can retrieve information from systems that have locked out their owners - wo may have forgotten their passwords. All in all, general knowledge of this method (and it has not been tried by myself as yet so I really can't verify it's mechanism), is a dangerous thing since everyone in corporate environments may go about entering other people's systems without authorization. Must give this a shot to veify. Then I guess I'll have to figure out how to circumvent this method.

Google's recent forays on multiple fronts into areas that the company can bring onto the database based search platform is really amazing in terms of speed and spread. Considering the fact that the Google database is very effecient - utilizing the technology in a heavy database workload environment will really put Google through the paces. This is also immediate pointer to the fact that Google is actually coming of age and is prepared to explore areas that are related to it's core field - also shows that (and this is only a possibility) in it's present form, it's unlikely that further upgradations to the search technoloy will actually make immediate improvements to search efficiency. The natural move is to use the efforts invested in creating the technology in widening the base of application. (Example is something like a spoon - the creator makes the spoon, everyone uses it; there's little improvement to the spoon over time - the widening in usage happens only through expanding the base of application - like using it as a spatula, a liquid measure... etc..). In all truth, I really do think it is the right direction. What I'm not really impressed about is that Google's looking at a limited dive into the opensource arena. Perhaps this is a move solely aimed as a test before wholeheartedly plunging in. All in all, I do believe that the more the large players in the field, the better the outcome where development is concerned.

Pretty neat. Related technology is already in malls and other high traffic areas. The last I saw was of a fish tank projected onto the floor in a children's area, As soon as a foot is placed into the projected area, the water ripples and any fish in the area immediately swim away. There's instantly a pop-up of a small ad beside the foot at this point in time. Another I came across another one in a book store where there was an entire book projected onto a wall, and you could manually turn the pages (of course you'd only be touching thin air), but the pages would turn and you could read ahead and backward. Again with associated advertising. Looked into the company that does this and came up with this link. Couldn't find any others. This kind of stuff is really going to transform interactivity whereever we go in the very near future. Will continue some more research into this and look into this more.

I have an external IMB drive that I've had for a while - it's a bit old, and I'd suffered a power outage once while I was de-fragmenting the drive. when I turned it back on, my laptop refused to recognize the drive (although it was coming on just fine and I could hear it whirring along in it's case). Tried it out on other friends' comuters too but with the same result - even tried it on a Linux system - disk mounts but nothing from there on). I've been looking at trying and sorting this problem out for a while now (since the drive contains about 8 GB of some of my most favourite music - the CDs of which were damaged a while back by a kid cousin). If anyne knows a way around this/ some way to access a drive through some way or the other/ I'd be really grateful. I went down to a hardware guy's place, but the rates he quoted me boggles the mind so much that I may as well buy a new External and start collecting my musc from scratch.

Dusting out the fan vent always helps a whole bunch. In fact, I actually carry out this operation once a month, but with a vaccum cleaner, since sourcing air cans are a bit of an up-hill task. since I'm in a dusty area, there's a considerable amount of dust that piles up in the vent. attaching the nozzle head meant for cornors is just right for creating enough of vaccum pressure within a focussed area, so that the vent is covered from one side and draws on the fan unit. Do remember to keep the computer switched off when doing something like this (if you try it) because it may just damage the fan if the vaccum is drawing in the opposite direction to the Laptop vent fan.