mahesh2k

As you know widnows 8 preview or should i say, developer preview is out. For those who are into development. I think they are going to like one news that .NET is here to stay. I am feeling good about this because i don't have to move my stuff to linux for that. They also added HTML, JS and stuff for the metro UI. Okay before talking about the user interface stuff let me tell you that you can download the OS from the MSDN site. You can search for that in the bing. I got the torrent link and frm there i downloaded. There is nothing different in either web download or the torrent link. Same stuff. Just seeded by some another person for those who prefer torrent. I knew it was kinda hard for me to download with current connection, so moved to office connection and then downloaded frm there. Of course it took some time as it was OS. I downloaded it and tested on vmware 8 and virtualbox. For your information, vmware 7 and earlier don't work with windows 8. They trigger some hardware warnings with vmware. I don't know waht are those warning, so upgraded to vmware 8 for the time being. Also found out that i can use the same disk under virtualbox. You can choose that image for running under virtual box if that is what you want to do. Instillation - i have 1GB of ram on my computer and allocated 746MB for the virtual machine. It took more than 30 minutes for the installation and with vmware there were many gltiches. I can tell you that if you're planning for the vmware installation, it is better to go for the virtualbox for now. It works fine under virtualbox. For vmware there are many issues which needs to be addressed. For example, vmware tools are not working under the vmwares current version. So you have to wait till they update the installation for the windows 8. Not that you are going to miss much of the vmware tools feature. But in my opinion, just forget it for now. User interface- developer preview has metro UI fixed on the front. Boot screen and the login screen requires you to have .NET id or so called their login feature. Boot screen and the initial UI looks like xbox screen. Once you get into the desktop you'll see tiles on the screen which are made for the tablets. Tablets interface is different from the desktop and as of now developer preview has no option for switching between tiles and desktop mode. I'll see if there is an option for that. Tiles interface for the normal desktop users looks pretty much childish. I do think there should be normal desktop feature for now. But in this preview there is no such thing for now. But they may do this in future updates. Also tiles are bit annoying as the start button and the tiles both are over crowded in case if you're into app jumbling and stuff. I don't know if we need virtual desktop for the same stuff. But surely it would be great to see virtual desktop for this OS. One more thing is win 7 UI is sill there and nothing is removed from the preview of the windows OS. Some of the apps tested on this installation are - opera 10 USB, firefox and winamp. Three of them are working fine as of now. Opera's USB installation is working good under windows 8 and nothing much different noticed for now. Firefox current version is also working on the win 8 and i don't think any less from mozzila because of this. They are going to be very stable in future updates. Over to you, download and let me know if you like the installation of windows 8 and other features. I don't have much to comment because i can't install visual studio here for the testing and so my usage is a bit restrictive from here.

PAN Card is similar to SSN ID or tax ID in US. Basically every paid transaction in india is supposed to have this number quoted during book keeping and invoice. Indian Government and Paypal is having some issues right now because paypal is not ready to apply for the bank status in india and they don't want to adhere to indian govt policies. Pan card requirement is there since December 2009. I don't know why it was so late warning for xisto. Anyway, the reason paypal is useless for indians is because - paypal can't be used by indians for money transfer within country. e.g. Anwii is from one city in india and i'm in another city in india, in such case payments are bounced. Only outstation payments are allowed. e.g. I'm paying from india to anwii in US. Amount per transaction is limited to 500$/ transaction. Also amount of 10$ or higher is directly withdrawn to local bank account of the paypal user, So keeping money more than 10$ in account is not possible for indian users. Indian users are only allowed to route credit card with paypal for masking. Using paypal balance is not allowed anymore. Like this there are many restrictions going on with paypal. If any indian user setup paypal cart with business or premier account then chances are there recursive payments are likely to trigger something and cause account block. Weird i know but that's what is going on with paypal. This is not only for india but also for german and some other countries where paypal is restricted by respective govt authorities.So my point is shree should get alertpay added to the system for indian users because i doubt if any indian user is going to use paypal for paying the fees for any service in xisto. Anyway, thanks for the announcement.

Considering 2GB of RAM i don't know why you have to go for X11 desktop. I mean most of the heavy desktops run fine on 1GB of RAM and linux is less resouce hungry compared to windows and apple. So even with 2GB off RAM you are way ahead in terms of speed. That is what i think for your netbook for now. But if you're into minimalistic ways of desktop and user interface then by all means go for X11 based desktop. Maybe you can even consider xubuntu on this netbook. If not there is always linux mint with x11 support right ? I mean you can install this linux mint with default desktop environment and then install the lxde or x11 on top of that using repository, adept or synaptic. That will do as well. It will install alternative desktop environment and you'll be able to use the preferred desktop window as per your choice every time you log in to the system. That is how i see things with linux for now. In your case you can do this way as i said or you can go with Lxde if you have enough experience with it. In my opinion Gnome 3 and the similar high quality desktop managers are bit too much with resource as of now. Especially that desktop effects in new kde and gnome. So X11 is good choice in my observation. I say go for it, if you can minimize the complexity on your desktop. Only install eye candy stuff if you need it else just leave it on desktop instead of installing on netbook.

I have a slow internet connection but still i spend some time downloading stuff from the internet. I download podcast every now and then. Some of them are worth listening as they're good with information. Like interviews, tips and tricks and always something new to add to your brain cells. I don';t know if you're into podcasts like me but if you're then take a look at some of these podcasts. You'll find them informative or at least entertaining to subscribe to and listen. Anyway here is the short information about each podcast and some personal opinion. Stackexchange Podcast - if you're developer and spend some time on stack overflow then you know the podcast they release every now and then. There are always something interesting stuff in this podcast. But what i find interesting is that they've some nice interviews and stuff shared on their podcast. Also they used to have transcription for the podcast earlier but they don't offer it anymore. .NET Rocks - Windows developers benefit from the .net podcasts. This podcast is packed with useful information related to .NET world and rest of the windows stuff. Considering the current growth of the .NET i can think of this podcast as much to listen. If you're into windows programming then consider signing up for this podcast. The Doc Report - This podcast is about entrepreneurs interviews, tech tips, contests and few other stuff. I have seen that it is new in the podcasting but already two episodes released with GTD - get things done stuff. You'll find that theyre interviewing some excellent developers on their shows.So my opinion is that listen to it if you like GTD and entrepreneur stuff. Java Posse - this one is for java developers and it is not much interesting to be honest. There are some good stuff in it but that aside not much interesting for me. But many non java users are also listening to it so listen once if you want to know what's in it. 37 Signals - This is also interesting podcast especially for ruby on rails developers. This podcast is from the makers of rails platform developers. They are also the owner of 37 signals and have some interesting stuff shared in their podcasts. I am not much into it but heard about this podcast just once. The Developers Life - This is generic podcasts with information helpful for the developers. I have seen that they've some good information and also some contests or offers in that podcast. But if you think they're into much fluff then maybe stackexchange is good podcast which linked earlier. Pragmatic Podcasts - Pragmatic podcast is mix of GTD and good development practices. They have some good information in their podcasts. I have seen some cool interviews and transcripts shared on this podcast. These are some of my recent podcast downloads. I have also non tech podcasts which i will review shortly. Other than that let me know if you subscribe or download to good podcasts.

Just downloaded "All my notes organized" portable edition. I found it on give away of the day site. As per my time zone it was in offer. So i just grabbed it and validated the key. Once validation is done i can move this setup anywhere legally as per their offer. So this portable installer is good for application like this. As of writing this post there are still 8 hours left for the software to be downloaded so anyone who is into giveaway of the day fan can download this software which is deluxe edition for free. Check the site here. Just to let you know, this software is 100% free on that site and once offer expires you have to pay for the deluxe edition which is again cheap. But if you get it inside this offer then chances are there that you'll find a good deal for sure. Ok let me come back to the software review. Compared to the software explained in my earlier post, this software is much easy to use and has much better learning curve. It also has better features than "my life organized" and as an deluxe edition user i can say that it beats the free edition of the software by miles. When you open this software you'll find that there is category in hierarchical order and you're supposed to add notes in node format. You can change text, skins and many other things in this note software. It also lets you minimize to system tray if you're working on some another program.It's text editor has all the rich editing features and you can also copy paste from web page and it'll preserve the HTML. You can store data of about 4GB and onwards. It works fine that way. I heard that it doesn't work with windows 7 for now. I don't know why it is not working on 64 bit edition of the OS. But if you're in that boat you can either use virtual machine or some other method to keep the software. This software has handy license and only requires one time installation and then you can move it to as many computers as you can using USB drive. That will surely work. So overall there are some handy features and it our smarts my life organized software. If you're not into "my life organized" software so far, you can choose this one as it is in offer for free.

Earlier in some of the other threads i mentioned about the to-do list and tasks management lists. I was trying to find some good task management softwares. Though there is no perfect one for my needs as of now. I'm just hopping from one task managment app to another. It really is hard to find such for your needs. You can't have all the features in one app. Atleast that is what i have noticed so far. In between i was looking for some serious apps in task management. I found "my life organized" featured in one of the software forums. I then downloaded the free edition of the program. I have no clue abour premium version, so no comments on that part. Let me just give you quickie of what this program is in short. "My life organized" is one good software that lets you add tasks and sort them out as per the place and importance. You can sort tasks based on office, school, home and other places. You can also add custom places if you want. There is also way to add flag to your tasks. This way you can remember as per their imporance. Something like notepad for the writing work etc. It has that feature included in the free version too. This will help those who want to show tasks as per the places. There are alerts and the notifications as well. This software is actually mix of typical to-do list and the other task based management software. I'm not into outlook based to-do or task management, so syncing with outlook never made any sense to me. I do think it is good for those who are using it. That aside, One good feature for this software is that you can run it from the portable drive. This is good for those who spend a lot of time using cafe computers and running the apps on someone elses computer. For such users this is really good software. They do have web based interface with iphone and blackberry apps. But not sure if there is web based app for the desktop syncing. So far i have not found the feature with this free edition of the my life organized. Anyway, just for those who are interested, here is the site - my life organized.

Developing themes for wordpress is extremely easy. You can first of all design 2 or three column HTML OR XHTML Template. once you do that just strip out the part of that file into individual php files for the theme. Then add the respective wordpress php calls to it. Once you follow this, just update the css file respectively and then you can upload the theme. It may look difficult while reading this but if you do this on your own once you'll feel like wordpress theme designer. It's so easy and exciting to build themes using wordpress that i often create random themes with design and play with it. There is one tutorial i found on the web which was written by knowledgesitra member web_designer on her blog. She wrote series of tutorials for converting HTML file into wodpress theme. I'm sure you'll find it useful. Take a look at wordpress tutorial and see if its easy or not. For me that tutorial is heavenly sent. It's so good, only thing is that you just haev to adopt some more calls that are required in new wordpress themes. That is all. Read that tutorial and then come back here to give feedback. i'm sure you'll enjoy that tutorial and will find it easy to create themes. Forget about frameworks and CSS stuff for now. Oh and to answer your question, it is possible to build such themes it just requires more manipulation of CSS.

Orkut was re-written shortly after when they acquired from the developer- orkut. It is not on old codebase anymore. Orkut's one of the team member is indian and is in bangalore. You can check his name "sandip patil"(i don't remember exactly it was sandip or something) profile for that. He'll tell you the big change they did in the entire codebase during 2007 update. They added a lot of community and other privacy features during this update and moved the orkut to asp interface way back in early 2007. I still remember that because he commented that on one of the MS programmers wall who i friended during my involvement in c++ community. If you check old images of orkut communities and profiles you'll understand the difference. Old interface was php based and new interface is ASP+Flash based. New improvements which are made that looks like facebook are more slow as it uses flash. Their mobile interface was quick as it was in ajax+asp which always works for small apps, not on desktop by the way. I agree they do create some worst products or sometimes even make good products into bad one. For example, notebook closed, wave closed and google fonts interface made horrible thinking it as user friendly. Fail one more. That's not the point though, as innovation has it's limit sometimes. My point is what's in it for us ? Think about it. You have public profile and google being search engine company will make your information public. Many females and govt. officers don't want such information out on search engine. That aside, even commercial project workers dont want open access to profiles. For that reason they're sticking with facebook. Google argues with us saying that circle is the best option for privacy and you can have privacy that way. But then again, public profile and private circle hardly makes sense. Especially for women as they expect real name and picture on g+ as account TOS. So my point is , if you as a user, find it useful over facebook or any other social network ? For what ? What feature is there that you dont find anywhere else ? For me there is no such feature. Google even tempts users to join google+ by claiming it has SEO advantage, but even that claim failed as nobody seen any difference in 3 months or so. As for hangout working for US users, i have yet to come across any fan of hangout. Most of the hangout fans are either into social media, blogging or some other public relation stuff or news site -who want more traffic for their brand and are interested in slapping their personality or brand on readers. G+ is hyped because of media and nothing else. To be honest this one sided reddit style train wreck communication turned me off with google+. I mean think like this(explaining it in my case), your friends are not on google plus as there is no privacy and everything is open and searchable. Media is tempting you with Google+ features which are no different than previous one released by others. Then some celeb or blogger or social media person likes G+ and rest of the followers follow them. I may appear less consumerist or skeptical to you, but i'm tired of information overload and Google+ has plenty of noise than signal. That is what keeps me away from it. Facebook keeps me in check with people and also stops me from boredom because i can find friends easily and control them from adding me and even showing me in list of available friends and view of search engine users. If someone comes up with more privacy than FB, i'll not hesitate to go to that route. It's all about signal vs noise. I'm not teenager to think like - 1 million folks eat at mcdonalds so it must be healthy. I'm past that age now and i can see the hype trends with popularity. Anyway, sorry for the rant.

There are many users who are on slow internet connection. That includes me. I can't afford to download 700+ MB stuff ISO and extra CDS or DVD disc. I also struggle getting applications for the linux distro due to low speed connection. So most of my use is restricted to offline usage. For linux offline use is somewhat restricted due to already less apps. If there are more apps coming in market then they do have dependency and other issues of size and download speed. These are the issues from my side. So i can't rely on big size distros. I know tehre are many others like me who want frugal install and don't want some corporations to decide the apps and the settings for me in this install. In such cases such small distros are perfect. 30mB-100MB size distros take approx 4 hours or so with my mobile connection, i know it is horribly slow. But that;s the closest cheap plan i can get here. So ubuntu and other big distros are useless for me as my use is large yet a bit frugal in terms of apps. So slitaz can save me some time with features like - back up cd, frugal install, on-demand image for linux. We can't put all people into one box and decide their operating system needs, same is for me. I prefer frugal install like this for now. Until i get better internet connection, such distros are important for me.

As an old orkut user i know how worst it is to rely on google for the social profiles. Not just orkut but blogger blogs are also not reliable. Spam trigger in your orkut community could cause losing blogger blogs and other google services. I dont know why we are comparing google plus with facebook. Both are different. Google plus is basically sheep-herd stuff and it looks more like twitter. I have given invite to my friends and all they reacted - i'm happy with facebook, this seems twitter like stuff to me and it's boring and has less privacy. Privacy as in no private profile feature and all the data being available under search engine, which is not the case with facebook and orkut. After 2-3 months of launch many people are coming back to facebook in fact, as google plus is horribly boring. It is good for marketers to slap ads and links reddit style on their readers and followers. But as user, you have not much benefit. There are no forums or groups like orkut or facebook. Oh please, don't say there are hangout. Try convincing people on mobile or USB or dialup internet about hangout and how it could work out for them. lol. it's uselss without text based communication like we do here in forum. Forum features are cool and should be there but google plus being marketing or reddit style+twitter style platform will be complicated if they add forums to it. Besides that they'll not be able to handle spam. One more important point, they want real name and public profile, which is not good for privacy. Facebook is keeping users only based on privacy and private profiles features. Start giving that to google plus users and you'll get more users. But google can't do that because they want more public data for ad manipulation. In case of privacy, You can have fake name and private profile on orkut and facebook but not on google plus. Trust factor on G is getting low these days by consumers. Google plus also lacks PM or messages feature. But considering they have message or wall feature to individual and circle method, this feature can be bypassed for PM and messages. But still it's note easy to eat stuff for users. All this fanboy stuff aside, what's in it for us (individuals). It all depends on needs. Facebook having more features covering larger userbase and as long as they're offering that service, they're in it. Just my 2 cents.

The features of linux are all there. If you're talking about window manager specific features then sure they are not going to be there. But do you need them all the time ? Especially as backup cd or for some guest OS image for vmware or virtualbox ? In my opinion i don't need it at all. Besides that there are couple of stuff is missing. For example, not many languages are supported as it is low on disk space. You will not find many packages that you're going to install on ubuntu. You have to manually find them and install on slitaz. Another thing is that they have a german developer doing all the strings work behind this project and they surely lack documentation and the native language support for other international users. As yordan suggested, there is also need for improvement on the keyboard layout. In case of frugal install it is really hard to get the packages and keep the low size. They have managed to get low size because they have done reduction of lot of files and that way they're making constant changes to have such a low footprint. You can have more packages in small linux distros like damn small linux and arilinux as well. In case of damn small linux you have footprint of about 100 MB or so and it does have more applications than the slitaz which you want to use in your regular use of the linux operating system. But make sure that in case of you needing small bootable drive, it's better to have such small distro. I also prefer such distros in vmware or virtual box imaegs. These are some handy things in linux. Anyway, coming back to slitaz. It has long way to go and improve. But i guess they did heavylifting already with such small size distro. That's what i like about the distro.

Damn small linux being popular portable distro i hardly cared about anything small or anywhere near it. But i found slitaz on monday and i must say that i'm impressed. Slitaz is so far the smallest distro for me now. It is just 30MB ISO file. You can burn it on CD or use it on vmware or the virtualbox. That way you can easily test the system. There are many good things about this distro. First thing is that it is simple and frugal install with bare minimum applications inside the distro. You will not find much unnecessary things inside the distro. It also comes up with it's own GUI. I have not yet found what it is as there seems to be its own theme and i can't figure out the way around it for now. But i am planning to add other window managers and with package manager i can found out the installed stuff. I was tiold that i should be installing cooking version of the slitaz which was 2.0. But i thought 3.0 which is stable is worth installing as it was new and stable. and it is infact stable none of the bugs or boot issues so far in virtual box. I'm also going to test it under vmware player to see if it works for me. if it is then i guess it's better for suggesting others. By the way there are some thing that i would like to add about this new small linux distro. One important thing is that it is lacking a lot in tutorial and other documentation. there is one official page for that but not much of screenshots or the information that you usually see with installation just like in ubuntu. I don't know if linux users are overly confident and hostile towards newbies and expect hash learning curve. But i hope they add documentation if possible because i was googling and bining for the stuff in case of this distro. Also there are no videos and community activity. I don't even understand my way out of their forums. I should take some time to browse the site i guess. But it was kinda confusing for me to check the site and it's section for the docs and some other stuff. Its weird design for the linux distro in my opinion. That aside, there seems to be active development from them and updates of fixes are also regular which is good thing considering this distro is likely to be more helpful for many users. But all this stuff aside. There are some positive sides to this. You have distro of about 30MB and some decent applications and excellent backup distro you can use for your work. You can download this small distro from it's official site - slitaz.

I'm sure you're aware of sites like softonic, download.com and few others. Most of the time these downloader sites rank higher than original software site and gets most of the traffic for the download keyword for that software. Take case of screenshot captor software for example. Softonic made subdomain of this software and hosted this free software on their servers. They added one good review with link to original site. But they're doing competitor analysis and dumping and trashing original authors site and software download link injustice as they show ads on their page but hesitate to accept that original authors site is good. They claim that software from softonic is better and virus free but they can't say the same for original author. My question is since when original software writers site becomes less trusted and not virus free but softonic, or cnet download.com or similar sites became better. Take a look at this page for example: So what are the bad sides or disadvantages of this download leecher sites ? 1) No credit given in most of the cases as cnet never links to original authors site for the download. They only expect users to download software from one of their mirrors. Cnet is bad with this and softonic mentions - original developers site is not trusted. funny and laughable business ethics. 2) Misguiding credits - as i said earlier, softonic says original authors download link is not reliable but their own download manager is reliable. 3) Download manager - this download manager is like spyware that shows ads and the offers during program install. it expects you to install software from their sponsors. this is similar to digsby and some other toolbars which get installed during such offers. You do get chance to opt out of it but they force it on you till the last click. 4) Traffic leak and leeching original author- if you eve create free software for the sake of donations for others to use, youll realize how bad it feels when someone says your own site is less reliable and may contain virus but those who distribute your software are reliable. shady business tactics. Do you need download manager ? hell no. why? because it is packed with ads and adware software which is forced on you during software download and installation. Virus free ? do you think google deskop is full of viruses if downloaded from official google website ? if not, then why you possibly believe softonic or any site telling you to download from them ? As a consumer who you trust, original software developer or some snakeoil leech site salespage ? if you think such download leecher sites are right to manipulate free software and authors right any way they want, then i have no argument. What do you think ? are these sites bad or we're bad for writing free softwares, themes or service ? should we let them do leeching business like this on software ?

I'm now getting obsessed with these type of tools. Not because of the web or the interface but i'm just logging my stuff on these type of softwares like crazy. I know they have some use but consistent use is what makes me crazy. I am also searching for few other applications just in case if this one drops me due to too much disk space use or for some other reason they expect me to upgrade to their plan. So i decided to look for other web based softwares that can help me with similar tasks. I found one another limited use application called" many moon". They have similar feature set and offer paid and free plans. They have no mentions of limits for the free plan but considering the use of paid plans i guess this has something to do with disk space. So not sure if i'm going to use it for long term. But surely going to test it so that i can suggest it to others if they want it for their business or some other serious use. It is free for now and have no idea about other pro version features. So it does the job as needed in my original post requirement. If your work criteria is in similar lines then manymoon will definitely help. You can check out many moon here. Hope someone will find it useful for their to-do tasking and collaboration use.

I choose offline app because i can't guarantee the connection all the time. So that is the reason i prefer offline app. Also doing things alone makes me cut off from those collaborative applications. I can see your point for the online collaborative application but not sure if they;re meant for my usage. Still i searched for some of the online collab based task editing tools. I found few and decided to use it for the serious work. First i tried sandglaz which is closer to what i wanted with collaborative task editing. First good point about the application is that it lets you type freely on the interface and from where you can set up the tasks. That is one good feature and anyone can do this without learning much about the interface. It also autosaves the tasks as you type. So once you stop for few seconds it saves the tasks. I guess that is pretty much common feature these days with most of the notepad and the task based web apps. Once created task it lets you drag and drop the tasks anywhere in order to prioritize and list them. That looks good to me and i would like to see something like that in other web apps as well. Grids are also good feature that lets you separate the tasks and view them in order they have to be. It just expects you to click on+ button and from there you just have to add the grid and filter tasks as per that. You can add due dates to the tasks and then keep them in grid. This looks good for sorting the tasks as per date. I like that feature and i think most of the offline softwares should adopt that in their interface. That aside, i have just missed group sharing and collab editing feature. This feature also exist for the web app and you can share or let them edit the tasks. Which i guess is what we looked for and this app seems to be perfect for this type of work. Sandglaz is free for now and there is nothing mention about the price and the plans. So not sure how long they're going to keep the software or web app free for the users. I think it depends on the montly access and usage and so based on that they're going to charge the users. I think freelancer group and other groups who wants to edit tasks in real time should use that web app. You can find sandglaz here.

I realized that web based solution is not worth it especially during my connection issues. I have frequent connection issues with my ISP. So it was worth looking for desktop alternative of this program. As of now there is now official desktop application for the workflowy as they're interested in more of cloud based solution instead of desktop. So i decided to find alternative and checked few freelancers blog for the similar application. I found grindstone as close application that does the same job like workflowy. You'll not get exact feature set and the user interface with grindstone but it is pretty much the same. It is also known with the name - grind stone task force. It has some additional features like timer and the task completion log. You can view log of task completion in the window. There is view for completed and the dated tasks. This helps you if you want to view the recent and the completed tasks. You can download it here. I have to play a little more with it, once i do that i can make more comments on it.

I was looking for custom to-do list application and found workflowy. It lets you use your own way of managing tasks and keeping track of them. As of now it is free of cost and there is no limit on how many tasks you can write custom way or by how many times. This app is basically a web based text interface with node based structure for managing the tasks. You'll find that workflowy is easy to use even for notepad based tasks. But it's not meant for note taking and should not be used for that. You can however use it for structured note taking. There is chance that your short notes are going to be good in that way. When you first open node it lets you name it and then you can add tasks one by one to it. You don't have to use it for to-do lists only though. You can use it for logging work done and some other ways as well. I am using it to log the work done during office hours everyday. That work is then logged into the workflowy. Not good for printing it out but it can keep pretty good log for the same reason. And it being custom app you cam name it in whatever way you want and then manage your list. Perfect for freelancers and office loggers and even students will find it easy. I think it is likely to be mentioned in future in some of the productivity based blogs and forums. I found it via one of the user of this app. First didn't like it due to it's simplicity but later realized that it could help me with some of my to-do listing stuff. It is one good web app for sure. It loads fast and can be used from tablets and mobiles as well. There is no difference of the user interface and the stuff in that case. I'm sure some of you are likely to enjoy this app due to simplicity and effectiveness. Take a look at the workflowy web app.

When it comes to gaming it's hard choice between two. Some of the good indie games are now written in java despite it's leaking issues and few other packaging issues. C# is dominant over Xbox and some other gaming boxes. I have no idea if any MMORPG is written in either java or C#/ASP, so i can't say for sure on which is the best on that part. But in case of mmorpg stuff php still dominates and should be used, just my opinion. C# - is perfect for XNA and window based development. i don't mean that it is only usable in windows but it can be run over linux and mac but the gaming development part with c# on non window based platform is very limited. So you're restricted with the development for general audience or the box audience with XNA. There are tons of frameworks and support tutorials for C# in case of game development. Memory wise it is good as well and not much of drawback other than limitation of compiling over multiple platform for same game. You can check garage games for the XNA engine and the other C# based game development scripts and softwares. There are some free editors and scripts on that site. Java - is good for mobile and desktop gaming. Plenty of packages for game development, frameworks are also available. Disadvantages- memory leaks, low performance on old hardware in case of desktop games. Not sure how many mmorpg use java for the game development so not sure about web games. JavaFX is good but not as promising like HTML5 and silverlight or flash. In case of web games, flash is much better than java in my opinion. Again not sure if you're after web based games like miniclip or MMORPG, so depending on that things will change for sure. There are some other things that goes in case of java and C#. For example, if you want online hosting then you have to ask for additional package from Xisto for java and ,net hosting. C# based project have to be moved to .net server of Xisto and java requires approval from xistohost before you deploy here. So many variables are going on with C# and Java here.

Here is the screenshot for those who are yet to decide on this software. It lists some of my processes in the process tree. You can check out there are not much in the list as of now. But when we open those web developer apps like photoshop and other stuff. List goes up and in such case process tamer is useful. I have noticed that you can give priority based on some rules. This may sound like unix style rule based killing. I don't know if it's there but i guess most of the unix terminal commands have such ways to kill process, maybe it was inspired from that. At the bottom you can see there are options to kill process based on the CPU usage. You can also wipe out old processes which are not running in the task manager. That is good feature. Take a look at some of the configurations. I have not done much with it because i have no ideas if these options are in any way useful for me. So i just skipped them. I also don't want the program to start with the windows and only want it to run when i use some heavy games or applications. There is an option for the killing balloon messages. You should use it especially if you're working or running some games. The balloon tips can be annoying as they pop up every now and then when your using some CPU sensitive apps and these apps usually take more random resources and tamer flashes the tips. SO better to turn them off. Hope other windows users find it useful for their desktop setups. :-)

Those who are using windows XP or windows vista experience the system resource issues. I don't know how much windows 7 users are facing this and what they do about it. As far as i know they're having balanced resources and i don't think it has issues like vista and windows XP. Windows XP also shows BSD less times than previous versions of windows. I don't even remember it is showing these days. But there are system resource issues with it none the less. For example, using firefox for entire day consumes a lot of RAM and page file memory this you can experience if you start any game after this. I have the same issues with the stuff and for the same reason i have decided to use a process priority application that can solve this issue. I found process tamer just to solve this problem. Before process tamer i used demo of process priority which is much bigger program that uses its own resource for running. There was also less improvement in the running resources as well. So i don't think it did job good and so not worthy of using or buying anymore. Plus anymore usage is paid by the way. It is shareware program so i was looking for free alternative for the applications. I have also tested alternative applications such as - process master. This is free program and less updated these days. You can access this program from angelfire website and you can also use it for free on win32 based setup. I don't know if it supports current win 64 installation so i have no idea about it. You should read the respective page. That aside, let me come back to process tamer. Process tamer is free application with less footprint of it's own. It has size of about 140k and runs smoothly on desktop. It also takes less RAM and lets you force specific programs over another. You can schedule priority as well with percent of resource allocation. You can set when to free up resource if it consumes less or more memory. There are some more things to configure depending on your needs. If any process goes to take too much resource, it lowers it's priority until CPU processes are taking less load, so that way you're keeping process tamed. Once started it goes in the system tray and from there you can manage the system resources and modify the configurations. You can also exclude or add high priority processes in this list. I have found that process tamer is much better way to handle resources. You can check out process tamer.

Here is the image for you to check the background colors. I have selected the corbel font for the book but it is not changing at all for any type of book.You can see this image for the font. It is fixed with "Times New Roman" font for the ebook reader. I don't know if it is "Times new roman" or the "Georgia" font. Anyway as it is fixed there is nothing much i can do for now. It's just stuck with the FBreader and nothing i can do. Maybe i'll ask for the fix on other forums and see if it gets fixed soon. I don't know how to fix myself this but for now this is enough and i guess i don't need to bother with the font till i get answers from other regarding this. If you know any good sites that guide for the readability issues. I mean which background is good for long reading and the fonts. Do let me know so that i can change the settings for now.

I can choose the font setup but sometimes i guess soem fonts are forced by the book. For those books it is really hard to choose and make the settings for the font. I have tried to change the default book font from the times new roman to corbel and it is not changing. So i guess there seems to be some sort of trouble with the fbreader settings. I did managed to change the settings from the - settings > style. I found that it is working for some books but there are some which are not changing at all. What could be in that book that causes this other than css is beyond me. I would like to figure that out or ask someone from fbreader team about this. As for background changes yes i did changed that to gray and white combination. Mind you, i have no idea about such glaring issues other than the ones mentioned by kindle and nook. So i have to check what possible settings are good on LCD screen for the PC. I found that these gray+white are the settings that makes the much difference. If you know any color combination regarding the eye strain let me know. I would like to try that out as much as i can possible while reading these books. I think i read 2-3 books a month and so that is the reason it is better to take care of these things earlier. As for pdf books, they are limited in number and many free books are released in .epub and .mobi reader. So if you want to read the multiple ebook formats for these free ebooks then it is better to choose FB reader. I know sometimes you find these books in pdf format. But in m opinion you'll find most of the .mobi and .epub in amazon and other kindle marketplace. So better to have such reader in case as we're not sure where such free books comes from these days. I'll update you later on the font issue.

If we're using linux hosting and cpanel then we get free awstats, webtemp and one more stat script installed by default on our hosting account. You can consider login into the cpanel and check it if you want. I found these scripts less informative as they have some weird UI and presentation of stats. There are some missing things as well. Like unique events and unique pages. But these type of server log scripts are much better than the web page based scripts because they can crawl certain type of bots which normally analytics and other scripts can't do. This is what i noticed personally when i found that one foriegn web crawler from china does the crawling on my server. I thought it could get registered in google analytics but it doesn't. So in case of those webalizer and awstats, these crawlers and the browsers which are not yet registered by the analytics can be easily found. Atleast in my case i found them useful and registered under these stats programs. That aside, if you can't trust the server logs for some reason. Or want someone to show your stats then consider using histats.com. Note that it is "histats and not hitstats". Both are different and have totally different way to crawl and manage stats on server. You don't have to use google analytics to know your stats. As i said earlier if you're into affiliate marketing consider using server logs like awstats or webtemp or webalizer. If not that then histats, icerocket and some other stat software which work on web are enough for you to keep track of traffic. I may review any other new analytics script in the future in this thread if i get some time. :-)

I'm sure most of you read ebooks during weekends or late at night when you get some time before going to bed. I also prefer to read the ebooks during this time. I don't prefer kindle or other special ereader devices because i carry mobile with me all the time. So i thought it was worth getting app for this ebook reading. I'm using one android phone right now and was looking for one good ebook reader that works with both windows and android phone. In case of windows it should let me use the app on desktop and normal app on mobile. I found FB reader doing the same for me. You can use this application on windows, linux and on android phone. It is small app with simple window that lets you browse the pages quickly and also lets you manage the colleciton of books. I have seen that windows based application is no different than the mobile application. The interface and the way we access the app is basically the same. You just have to see if you can access the collection a little bit differently than android phone. Your interface for the windows though similar will have some difference here. One more difference is that this app doesn't respond to the font changes in the book. I mean book may have some different font but by default this app takes same font for all the books. It could be just my installation or default feature. You just have to check this on your own. I have tried to ask others about this and waiting for their reply on this. That aside i think this app is good for viewing ebooks no matter where you want - windows or android. I know there are some eye strain issues with android phones and so for that reason i don't think you should consider watching this for long time. Instead of that you should consider reading on window based tablet if possible or some another mobile where you can adjust the LCD light. One more thing to notice here is that FBReader for windows is not available on it's download page and seperately maintained at it's own page on fbreader site. You can find that page here. So depending on where you want to read the ebooks, you can download either widnows based version or phone based version. I am using both and whenever i want to read the books. I have to find some other alternatives as well for reading multiple other file formats. So far this ebook reader can read - .mobi, .epub and some other file formats which have popular databses online for ebooks. But still i think there needs to be more file format support at per support on other epub book reader apps. I'll post about those types of reader soon. In between you can check this ebook app.

I downloaded the thunderbird from portableapps. It works just fine and you can also update it from the portable drive itself. No need for the settings etc in order to work for it. There are some plugin suggestions from other but not yet seen what and which to choose for my personal use. Till then going to avoid the plugins for thunderbird. I also found sunbird from the portableapps. That application seems to be extention of calendar and contacts. I think it is good app for anyone who wants to keep track of the day. It's free and being portable definitely helps. I don't know why the version of it was not updated lately. But i guess they're going to change the name as per mozzila's site news. It's definitely one good software to have if you're into office or some time critical projects or home work. I don't know if it separate extention of thunderbird or software. I found it useful for my birthday and work reminders as well. So going to keep it and see if it is useful for long term work on computers. You can download this mozilla software from portableapps.com if you want portable version.