Cpx24.com CPM Program

Gets Lots Of Copies Of Windows XP SP2

How to cost Microsoft Money



Microsoft has a form on their website that you can fill out to get a copy of Windows XP SP2 on CD at no charge (with free shipping by Purolator).



I ordered one.



Then, at the Order Confirmation screen, I clicked Back, then Refresh, then Retry (since the form had to be posted again). I did this 149 times. I got 150 order-confirmation emails.



He also got 150 CDs in the mail.

Clusty - new way to find Web sites

Online search engine upstart Vivisimo is trying to persuade the masses that Google's vaunted technology isn't the most efficient way to find things on the Internet.



The little-known Pittsburgh company is taking aim at Google and other industry leaders like Yahoo with a new search engine called Clusty.com, scheduled to debut today after four years of fine-tuning.



The search engine's name refers to the clustering technology that Vivisimo has refined to sort search results into different categories related to the initial search request.



http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/printstory.mpl/tech/news/2822260

blinkx - Change the way you search

Blinkx is not yet another keyword search engine, it is much more than that. It uses special patented technology to link concepts, rather than simple keywords. As you view web pages or documents it uses intelligent algorithms to find related articles to the contents of you active window. This list is continually updated as you scroll through documents. Instead of entering keywords into a flat database of keywords, you are presented with a dynamic and relevant set of links. It’s easier, more logical and faster than traditional methods. Blinkx is self-learning too, analysing what you’re interested in and intelligently linking through to related articles.

Blinkx is available as a free download and can be used in two ways. Blinkx can sit quietly in the background while you work or browse, placing a toolbar at the top of open windows where it links to related concepts on the internet, in the news, in blogs and on your hard drive. Or, you can call up a search box that you can type words or sentences into to generate links. It’s that simple.

The blinkx windows client automatically finds web pages, news articles and documents on your machine that are related to the content of your active window. You can also use it to actively search web pages, news articles and documents on your machine that are related to a query you enter.



If you want to search, blinkx understands your question and presents you with links as you search. In every case, blinkx provides an answer that is appropriate, faster than using a search engine and personalized just for you.

Desktop Linux a vehicle for pirating Windows

PCs running Linux are growing in popularity in part because they can be loaded with a pirated copy of Windows, according to a study from analyst Gartner.



The consulting firm issued a report on Wednesday stating that about 40 percent of Linux PCs will be modified to run an illegal copy of Windows, a bait-and-switch maneuver that lowers the cost of obtaining a Windows PC.

PHP/SWF Charts

 
PHP/SWF Charts is a powerful PHP tool to create attractive Flash charts from dynamic data.

Microsoft Unveils Windows XP for India

Microsoft Corp. announced Wednesday that it would offer a low-cost, localized version of its Windows XP OS in India to tap the large market potential in this country of 1 billion people, most of whom do not speak English.

DoT asks BSNL, MTNL to offer broadband at Rs 500 per month

The telecom incumbents Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited (BSNL) and Mahanagar Telephone Nigam Limited (MTNL) are likely to be among the first ones to offer broadband services at 'consumer friendly' rates. The two public sector undertakings (PSUs) have been asked by the department of telecommunications (DoT) to offer broadband services at around Rs 500 per month for a minimum speed of 256 Kbps.

Sybase Offers Free Linux Database

Sybase is offering a free version of its leading enterprise database management system for Linux.



MySQL and PostGreSQL definitely face competition from this Wall Street Database Leader.

Assemble your Ideal PC

If you'd like to assemble your own, our step-by-step guide shows you how to put everything together.



Building your own PC can save money, but you're unlikely to save a huge amount in these days of stiff competition between PC vendors. Still, by building your own you'll get exactly the system you want, and gain insight into how PCs are put together.

Record and Promote Your Own Music

Want to be a rock star? It's never been more affordable to pursue the only valid excuse to trash a hotel room. Cheap software makes it easy to record CD-quality audio to the PC in your bedroom--or to a notebook in the back seat of a taxi, for that matter. And the Web offers instant access to millions of music fans.



Skip those large music companies that don't care about your music. Doing it yourself is easier and more affordable than ever.

Microsoft Knowledge Base And Firefox

From Ed Foster's Gripelog

Firefox users who want to search the Microsoft Knowledge Base are out of luck. Clicking the search link has no effect.

What other non-IE browsers are not allowed?

Why you should switch to Firefox now

Can you imagine the Internet without pictures? A new flaw in the way Windows, and therefore Internet Explorer, renders JPEG images--one of the most common image formats on the Web--should make you think twice about whether you should display them. At the very least, it should nudge you into considering an alternative Internet browser, such as Firefox.



The code to exploit this flaw is now public. Usually, exploit code release is the first step toward a new virus or worm, and as we have seen before, the time from exploit to virus is generally about two to three weeks. In other words, the clock is ticking.

Google News Kills The Exclusive

http://techdirt.com/articles/20040927/1040224.shtml

Google News seems to be getting hammered lately. Last month, we wrote how they seemed to be favoring just a few small sites. Last week, there were a bunch of stories about how Google News' political coverage might be unintentionally biased. Then, over the weekend, there was plenty of news coverage over Google's admission that they were blocking certain Chinese news links on purpose, as the Chinese government didn't like those sites. The latest, however, is an accusation that, thanks to Google News, there are no more exclusive stories any more. People don't remember who broke a story (unless, of course, they get it really, really wrong). The idea is that since Google groups together all of the coverage, plenty of "me toos" get credit for breaking the story. In fact, the article claims, since the latest version often gets top billing at Google News, editors have the incentive to make minor modifications on stories, so they're always appearing "updated" -- and always at the top of the Google News list. Google, of course, responds by pointing out that they don't just rank on date, and even claims that the system does take into account who broke the story. It's not clear if this is really a Google News issue so much as an internet issue. With the speed that news travels these days, almost any hot story seems to be followed quickly by others with nearly identical reports. Of course, there's also the ongoing debate about how much credit sources deserve for "breaking" certain news, and whether or not tools should be developed (sort of in reverse of what Google News is accused of doing) that would specifically show who really "broke" some news. At some point, of course, you have to wonder how much it really matters. Clearly, on some stories that involve in-depth investigative reporting, some amount of credit makes sense, but is there a point at which it gets silly? Do people care more about who broke a story than the news itself?

Old Computers - rare, vintage and obsolete computers

Early personal computers were nothing like present day computers, they had personality!



Each was different and more exciting than the previous, with new features and capabilities.



Sure, they have limited power, were possibly very expensive, and can't run any software written for a different system, but that's what makes them unique and interesting!



This website is dedicated to the preservation and display of these vintage computer systems.

You Might Be An IE User...

From Dvorak Uncensored: Who uses IE?? He's compiling a list of "You may be an IE user if..." jokes. Examples:

  • If someone tells you to go to "www.whatever.com" so you go to Google and search for it, you are probably an IE user.
  • If someone tells you you need a firewall and so you go to the store and buy Norton firewall in a box for $70, you might just possibly be an IE user.
  • When you get a popup ad showing a Windows-like warning and you think it is a Windows warning box, you might be an IE user.
  • If you web browser has 8 search bars and you don't even know how they got there, you might be an IE user.
  • If you get pop-up ads and you aren't even using the Internet, you just might possibly be an IE user.

Apologies in advance to the 83% of my readers who are using Internet Explorer.

The Obsolete Technology Web Site

If you have worked around computers for more than then or fifteen years, I am sure you will enjoy this site as much as I did.

The site is called The Obsolete Technology Web Site, and as its name implies, it is about old things. It serves as a history of the personal computer, or the home computer, or whatever it was called years ago. Early personal computers were nothing like present-day computers, they had personality! Each was different and more exciting than the previous, with new features and capabilities. Sure, they had limited power, were very expensive, and couldn't run any software written for a different system, but that's what made them unique and interesting!

 

My Yahoo! - What's New

My Yahoo! now supports the various flavors of RSS and Atom, allowing you to add virtually anything to your page. Choose from thousands of sites that syndicate content.



More Content - You still get all your favorite Yahoo! services like Mail, Movies, Maps, Photos, Stocks and Sports. Now you can mix in cool stuff from around the Web - Craigslist, BBC, CNet, plus blogs like Boing Boing, Defamer, Instapundit and thousands more.



Find Things Fast - Whatever your interests, it's easy to track down what you want and feed it into your page. Look for specific sites or type in a topic. Global news. Gadget reviews. Travel logs. Baby blogs. It's all out there. We've made it easy to find and pull on in.



Add What You Like -- Instantly Add Content - Found something you like? Great. Preview it, and if you like it, just click "Add." Presto! It's yours! Refreshed and updated whenever you look.

Picasa offers Hello - web photo sharing application

Following their recent purchase by Google, Picasa has introduced Hello, a web-based photo hosting and sharing application. Like Picasa, Hello is free, and provides the ability for Blogger.com (also owned by Google) authors to post thumbnail images int heir blog posts that, when clicked, show a full size image.



Hello works like an Instant Messaging application that allows users to view images together, comment on them, and share them. High resolution images can be downloaded and printed once they’ve been shared. Hello uses AES encryption to keep these exchanges private.



The integration with the Picasa image manager and Blogger.com blogging engine reveals a bit more of Google’s integration strategy. In fact, Hello may be the first thrust by Google into the IM space that many have been predicting.

System Rebuild Utilities - Clipmate, Knockout, ActiveWords

ClipMate - this utility captures everything I copy and allows me to perform sophisticated editing, pasting, and searching capabilities on my collection. ClipMate turns the standard Windows Clipboard into a power user’s dream - an archive that is always ready and available with the click of the mouse or tap of the pen. I stor all of my passwords in an encrypted ClipMate collection and can, with a couple of keystrokes, authenticate myself to any web page or account I need to access.

Knockout - This free utility addresses the number one complaint I hear about Outlook - it’s tendency to leave “orphan” processes running in the background. When this happens, Outlook behaves badly. Add-ins refuse to load properly, your system slows down, and some pretty bizarre things can start happening. Lookout puts an icon int he system tray that monitors whether Outlook (as well as Word which apparently has similar tendencies although I rarely experience them) is running and provides the ability to force Outllok processes to terminate. From the context menu of this tray icon, you can also create new e-mail messages, contacts, appointments, tasks, and notes.

ActiveWords - ActiveWords allows you to associate a key word with an action on your computer. Use ActiveWords to launch an application, open a web page or document, or perform other tasks by entering a key word. If I want to launch Outlook, for example, I press Control+Space (the ActiveWords trigger) and type “ol”. Presto! Outlook is running. I have an ActiveWord for every application on my system. I also have ActiveWords for my most frequently visited web pages and documents that I open all the time (like a project tracking spreadsheet and my ResultManager dashboard maps). But ActiveWords also allows me to generate ready-to-send e-mail messages to common queries I receive (or send), initiate the creation of Outlook tasks associated with a particular contact, perform system changes that would normally require a lot of mousing and clicking, and more.

Anagram - If you use Outlook or the Palm Desktop, you need Anagram. This gem intelligently parses what ever text you have selected and determines with uncanny accuracy whether your selection should be used to generate a new contact, appointment, or task in your information manager. It enters the appropriate information into each field in the destination application and, on the rare occasion when it “guesses” incorrectly, provides a one-click mechanism for redirecting the data to the appropriate new object. The lates version extends this capability to the Salesforce.com CRM system. It has saved me thousands of keystrokes.

Windows XP Command Prompt CMD Documentation

Well every now and again - actually more often than I prefer - I need to open a Windows command prompt to do some work. So I hammer out some DOS commands, make some mistakes, curse, then success! The Command-line reference from Microsoft have some really great tips like copying and pasting and a complete command reference.

In addition to the tools installed with Windows XP, there are over 40 support tools included on the Windows XP CD. You can use these tools to diagnose and resolve computer problems. For more information about these support tools, see Windows Support Tools For information about installing support tools, see Install Windows Support Tools

For more information about changes to the functionality of MS-DOS commands, new command-line tools, command shell functionality, configuring the command prompt, and automating commmand-line tasks, see Command-line reference.

Some command-line tools require the user to have administrator-level privileges on source and/or target computers.

Command-line tools must be run at the prompt of the Cmd.exe command interpreter. To open Command Prompt, click Start, click Run, type cmd, and then click OK. To view help at the command-line, at the command prompt, type the following:

Why Google Will Defeat Yahoo! in the Web Hosting War [Hosting]

The mighty (and now public) juggernaut that is Google is emerging as the most formidable potential competitor in the Web hosting space. Who will suffer the most when Google enters Website hosting? Yahoo!



"No way!" you say. "Google doesn't even offer Web hosting." You mean Google doesn't even offer Web hosting yet. Let's look at the facts and see exactly why Google will defeat Yahoo! in the Web hosting war.

Hotmail to wean users from free export tool

Starting Monday, MSN will cut back on the use of exporting e-mail to another client, part of its new spam-fighting plan.

Read More...

Google indexes pictures all wrong

Here at ongoing, I used to store all my own pictures with nice names I invented on the spur of the moment. Sometime last year, I realized my cameras were thoughtfully giving each shot a nice guaranteed-unique name, so I just started using that; for example, that slug is in a file named IMG_2663.jpg. But, I’m careful to always supply an appropriate alt text, like so: Vancouver slug. It turns out that Google pretty ignores the alt text, which is irritating, so you’ll find my roses and prairiescapes and Foo Campers in Google only with a lot of effort.



http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2004/09/24/GooglePix

Applications that make GMail easier to use

Google GMail Loader (GML)

All users of GMail must visit this site. It contains links to many applications that make using GMail much simple from the destop.

The writer carries a nice blog http://www.marklyon.org/

Why are the keys arranged the way they are on a QWERTY keyboard?

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/question458.htm

In 1874 Remington and Sons manufactured the first commercial typewriter, called the Remington Number 1. This typewriter was designed by Christopher Sholes and used the "QWERTY" keyboard we are all familiar with...

Firefox as MyIE2

Tariq writes ..

Recently I was writing a mail to a friend of mine, who wanted to know how I customized Firefox to give me the same features as MYIE2 (which I used to love). So I thougth I'd share the content with you as well.

Actually there is nothing much to it, all you got to know is the proper extension to install.

My current list to duplicate most of MYIE2 (now known as Maxthon) functionality is

Other configurations that were needed

· to load images like in IE set browser.display.show_image_placeholders to false in about:config

The other big thing for me was to be able to do searches from the address bar. In MyIE2 (Maxthon) this was extremely customizable. You could setup wild cards to submit search strings typed in an address bar to a search engine. In FireFox the means of achieve this is through bookmarks. Each search engine you require to submit a string typed in the address bar needs to be saved as a bookmark with a keyword defined like so - http://devedge.netscape.com/viewsource/2002/bookmarks/

In addition to this, to send every other string to the google search page and not the ‘I am feeling lucky’ page the following change is needed

in about:config change browser.search.defaulturl to http://www.google.com/search?q=

What is still missing for me is

  1. An extension that would give you a button to close all tabs
  2. Have Blank Last Tab work in 1.0
  3. An Extension or hack that will let me do google search for strings with colons and dots in them. For instance at the moment I cant say google vs.net or google xsl:copy it gives me an error
  4. Have a better popup blocker. The FireFox popup blocker is good, but not as good as the one in MyIE2 (Maxthon)
  5. Have adblock preloaded with all the ads to block
  6. Have an extension that would provide translation services like WordLingo, BabelFish, and configurable options
  7. Still looking for an extension that will let me save open windows as a group and load/manage these groups

Well that does look like quite a few gaps that need filling. If any of you can provide insights post feedback on this blog.

Other than that the fact is you can achieve most of the MYIE2 functionality from Firefox and its extensions. So if you ask me what the chaps at Mysoft should do, right now I’d say pre-packaging and extension building. Why I say this is, because It took me quite some time and quite a bit of hunting around to setup all these extensions. The chaps at Mysoft could release pre-loaded versions of FireFox (call it MyFox or Foxthon or whaterver), with a few additional extensions to fill the gaps, and from what I've seen Maxthon is loosing ground to FireFox anyways.

HowStuffWorks

Every day all of us encounter complicated things that we take for granted. For example, if you own a car with an automatic transmission, do you regularly think about how it works? Are you currently thinking about the microprocessor that is allowing this content to be delivered to you? These things are probably erased from our brain. We just use what’s around us and keep going on with our lives. This is fine, but sometimes it’s fun to really dig deep into how certain things work. HowStuffWorks is the standard online destination for this type of information.

CDCheck - Free Utility

This utility detects and recovers damaged files on CD-ROMs. You can discover which files on your CD are corrupted. You can also use the program proactively, to insure that your data on CD-ROMs are safe. In addition to CD-ROMs, the program can be used with other local or removable media, such as disk drives, floppy disks, and Zip drives.

 

My Favourite FireFox Keystrokes

I was observing my own habits the other day and noticed that there are certain things I do without even thinking. I am definitely a keyboard user. I can’t remember the last time I used a “mouse” – my laptop has a built in touchpad, and I’ve used an external touchpad for my desktop system for close to 6 years.



First, I noticed a pattern; I operate in two different modes - active working mode and casual reading/browsing mode. When I’m in casual reading/browsing mode, I noticed that instinctively my hands rest in two positions: with my left hand thumb on the Alt key, and my left hand index finger on the tab key poised to cycle through my open applications with Alt + Tab; and with my right hand index finger on the right side of the touchpad for scrolling up and down or moving back and forward in my browser.



Continue reading ..

Isolating Google's Printed Material

Isolating Google's Printed Material in a Google Search Form



Google has digitized a certain amount of printed material and made it available via regular Web search. Magazine articles have articleid in the URL. Book excerpts have ISBN in the URL. This quick search makes it possible to narrow your search to exclusively book excerpts, magazine articles, or both in the Google search engine. Give it a whirl.

ASCII Art Made Easy!

If you don't want to save the image as an HTML file, you can use a program like Paint Shop Pro (free evaluation available) to take a screenshot of your browser showing the text-image, and save it as a normal image. Don't forget to use the tools to cut the text-image out of the rest of the screenshot.

Magic ASCII Picture has a lot of output modes for you to create your own ASCII Art Photo, such as Custom Text, Random Letters, Binary Numbers, Hex Numbers, MAP Gray Chars and so on. So you can make some web photos with this application. The image that you choose to have converted, along with your own personal message, can be exported into three major formats, HTML, Rich Text Format (for emailing and word) and BMP. The software is backwards compatible with all major web authoring software and graphics programs.

Now it is so easy to convert your pictures to text - Just point your GIF image and this amazing script (http://www.degraeve.com/gif2txt.php) converts the GIF file into ASCII text or colored HTML. You will be surprised to see the conversion. It is so accurate and looks beautiful.

If your image is in other format like jpg or bmp, try a free converter likr Irfanview.

Toogle is a Text version of Googles Image Search. Currently it creates images out of the very term that was used to fetch those images, later we will endeavour to create images out of the search terms entered by users past and present.

Why A9.com want you to use A9.com

Why use A9.com?



A9.com remembers your information. You can keep your own notes about any web page and search them; it is a new way to store and organize your bookmarks; it even recommends new sites and favorite old sites specifically for you to visit. With the A9 Toolbar all your web browsing history will be stored, allowing you (and only you!) to retrieve it at any time and even search it; it will tell you if you have any new search results, or the last time you visited a page.

Google Guide

Google Guide



Google is so easy to use but most people use only a small number of Google's services and features. The more you know about how Google works, its features and capabilities, the better it can serve your needs.



Just as the best way to learn how to sail is to sail, the best way to learn how to search with Google is to search with Google. Consequently this GoogleGuide contains many examples and exercises designed to give you practice with the material presented and to inspire you to find amusing or useful information.

Convert Hi8, 8mm,VHS Tapes to DVD

Convert your VHS videotapes to DVD. Transfer Video Tapes to DVD before they deteriorate. Send 8mm videos from VCR to DVD.

Fortunately, if you still have a device that can play your tapes, like VCR and a DVD recorder in your PC, you can convert these analog videos in Hi8, 8mm or VHS Tapes to DVD.

To copy VHS tapes to DVD, you'll want an analog deck, like your VHS player or camcorder (Hi8), to send the analog video to a capture device, which you can control with a consumer DVD-authoring program such as Sonic Solutions' popular MyDVD, used for this article. In the authoring program, you can set capture and encoding parameters, choose and customize your menu, capture the video, and record the DVD on a standard DVD recorder.

Get a DVD recordable drive that supports dual-format (+R/RW and –R/RW) single and dual-layer recording. They provide a better one-disc solution for converting 2-hour VHS tapes. The VHS To DVD trasfer is 16x speed.

Ulead MovieFactory and Pinnacle Instant DVD Recorder can copy tapes to DVD in a single step, so you can set a few parameters, roll the tape, walk away, and return to a finished DVD.

The least expensive way to convert Hi8 to DVD or to convert VHS tapes to DVD is to use your computer and a separate capture device, either capturing directly to MPEG-2 and converting to DVD in a single step, or capturing to DV format, editing your video, and then producing your DVD. Or you can buy a standalone device that can convert analog video directly to DVD in mpeg2 without a computer.

Both computer-related options require an analog deck to play the original tape. Your old camcorder or VHS player will do, but if you're buying new, look for a deck that's compatible with your tapes and that offers S-Video output (rather than composite only). If you'll be working with older tapes, consider a deck with an internal time base corrector (TBC), which removes jitter from the video and produces a cleaner signal. Also, consider a deck that can record in Super VHS mode, which produces higher-quality VHS tapes than plain VHS decks.

JVC's SR-MV40U contains an internal DVD recorder, and can copy VHS tapes to DVD without a computer. If you plan to convert directly from video tape to DVD, get a device that uses internal chips to convert your video into MPEG-2, the format used by DVDs. JVC SR-MV40U and ADS DVD-Xpress are external analog capture devices that connect to computer via USB.

The VHS to DVD recorder, Canopus Corporation's ADVC300, also an analog-to-digital capture device, converted the analog signal into DV format, which it transferred to the computer via a FireWire connector. Then, during capture, MyDVD converted the incoming DV video into MPEG-2 on the computer, but the quality was inferior to that produced by the DVDXpress and the SR-MV40U.

Since we converted from tape to DVD without editing, we captured with the ADS Tech DVDXpress, which attaches to the computer via a USB 2.0 port. We then connected S-Video and stereo audio output cables from the JVC SR-MV40U deck to the DVD Xpress. We also connected the JVC unit to a TV so we could watch our progress, primarily to help debug potential problems with the capture device and to use when cuing the tapes.

Have you tried Picasa yet?

The Tablet PCs Weblog writes ...



Google recently purchased Picasa, a picture organizingation tool, and has made it available for free. It’s a very nice application that will scan and watch any folders you designate (or your entire drive) as picture folders. You can perform a number of useful operation on these pictures including:



* Watching a slide show

* Creating a web album

* Printing images

* E-mailing images

* Ordering prints

* Minor image corrections (red eye removal, auto enhace)

* Crop and rotate images



An interesting feature is the Timeline, which organizes and displays images based on their creation date. You can also associate keywords (metadata) with each image to aid in searching for just the image you need.



The UI is very clean and intuitive and most users should be able to get up and running in a matter of minutes. If you have a large collection of images and are looking for a lightweight tool to keep them organized and viewable, Picasa may be just the tool you need.

Are you technophobic?

Are you technophobic?



I am a computer geek. I am a coveted person, for I offer mostly free labour to family, colleagues and friends who aren't so good with computers.



For anyone out there with an advanced knowledge of computers, this is your Golden Age.

Google's History

The Economist has a nice backgrounder on Google, with a look ahead:

Google now faces a three-way fight with Yahoo! and Microsoft, which have both vowed to dethrone it as the dominant internet search engine. Yahoo!'s strategy is to interconnect its various online services, from search to dating to maps, in increasingly clever ways, while Microsoft's plan is to integrate desktop and internet searching in a seamless manner, so that search facilities will be embedded in all its software, thus doing away (the company hopes) with the need to use Google. Both firms are also working to improve their basic search technology in order to compete with Google.

In response, Google has gradually diversified itself, adding specialist discussion groups, news and shopping-related search services, and a free e-mail service, Gmail, which is currently being tested by thousands of volunteers. It has also developed “toolbar” software that can be permanently installed on a PC, allowing web searches to be performed without having to visit the Google website, and establishing a toe-hold on its users'PCs.

Google's technical credentials are not in doubt. The question is whether it can maintain its position, as search, the activity where it is strongest, moves from centre stage to being just part of a bundle of services. Yet the example of Gmail shows how search can form the foundation of other services: rather than sorting mail into separate folders, Gmail users can simply use Google's lightning-fast search facility to find a specific message. So the technology that made Google great could yet prove to be its greatest asset in the fight ahead. Let battle commence.

How your blog will get discovered

http://radio.weblogs.com/0001011/2004/09/19.html#a8241 

Mikal makes a very common mistake about weblogs: "if no one has linked to [my blog], then it might take Google forever to find it."

This is absolutely not true, but it prompted me to write a blog on all the ways your blog can be discovered.

First, why isn't it true? Well, if you're using a modern weblog tool your tool will ping a weblog ping server. There are at least two that I know about:

1) Weblogs.com.
2) Technorati.com.

Update: Karsten Schneider says that Pingomatic is even better cause it'll automatically ping 14 different places.

Your weblog is really not a weblog unless you ping one of these two sites. Make sure your blog tool pings at least one of these two sites (and I'd recommend pinging both). This is one of five things that make weblogs different from standard old Web pages. (I've written about the five rules of conversational software before, but they are 1) Easy to publish. 2) Discoverable. 3) Social (track linking between sites). 4) Viral (permalinks are built for each content component so that content can be IM'd or emailed around). 5) Consumable (blogs should publish RSS feeds so that readers can easily subscribe to your content).)

How does a ping server make your blog discoverable? Easy. If you've published in the past few minutes you'll be listed at weblogs.com.

Very few people understand this site's role in the bootstrapping of the weblog world. Let's go back to 2000 when I first started blogging. There were only a small number of weblogs back then. Dave Winer showed me how he built his weblog. He'd visit this page every day and visit every link on that page. That's how he got cool stuff on his blog before almost anyone else did.

By doing that he built a resource that brought more and more people into the blogging world. I remember distinctly that his first link to me brought about 3,000 visitors.

How did that bootstrap the weblog movement? Well, other bloggers who started up figured out the same thing. So we soon started visiting links on weblogs.com to try to find the cool new site or blog before anyone else.

By the end of 2001, though, that approach was quickly becoming too hard. Why? There were too many weblogs!

About that time is when sites like Technorati and Feedster and Daypop and Blogdex (and later Pubsub) started to appear.

All of these sites, along with the major search engines, now visited weblogs.com regularly to "spider" these sites.

Today a new blog only takes a few minutes to get into Technorati. Don't believe me? This was tested at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology conference earlier this year. Dave Sifry, founder of Technorati, asked the audience to blog his talk. It took three minutes for the first post about the talk to appear in Technorati's engine.

Google and MSN, while glacially slow in comparison, have sped up quite a bit. It used to take a month or maybe even longer for a blog to appear in Google's main index. Now it takes only a day or two. Same for MSN search. I haven't been using Yahoo search lately, but I'd expect they work just as fast. Maybe someone should do a test to see how speedy all the search engines are with new blogs.

But, that's the "automatic" way that blogs can be discovered. What are some other approaches for a new blogger to get discovered?

1) Link to other people. Lots of them. And then click each link on your own blog. Why does that work? Well, because good bloggers watch their referer logs. That shows bloggers who has linked to the blog, and how much traffic they've sent to it. Believe it or not, but I read my own referer page from the bottom up. Why? Because I want to find the blogger that doesn't have much traffic yet. Everyone knows about Dave Winer. But how many people know Alex Mallet (the guy who currently was at the bottom of my referer page)? Where am I most likely to find a news scoop? On Dave's site? Or on Alex's?

2) Email a blogger you like. Note that I didn't say "an A-list blogger." Don't just go for the traffic. Go for the quality. If you like Alex's writing and/or content but don't like Dave's, isn't a link from Alex better for you? Plus, if you think the content you have on your blog is better for Alex then for Dave, aren't you more efficiently using everyone's time? That said, if you think you got something that Dave would be interested in, feel free to email him. One rule: don't beg for a link. Just say "here's something that I think you might be interested in." Let Dave or Alex decide whether or not it's good enough for their readership.

3) Put your blog in your email signature. I've visited many blogs after someone wrote me a real interesting email, even on a totally non-blog-related topic.

4) Put your blog in your forum profile. For instance, if you post something over on Channel 9, make sure your blog is in your bio and listed under your name. I find a lot of cool blogs that way. Same thing on newsgroups. Just don't spam the group and say "visit me." Instead, post something that'll be interesting to the group. Copy and paste it into the newsgroup so people don't need to leave the newsgroup, but feel free to put your blog URL at the top of the message.

5) If you're IM'ing, feel free to tell your partner you have a blog. I get a lot of IM's and I like to read the blogs of the people I'm IM'ing with.

6) Hang out with smart (or at least interesting) people. For instance, Alex Mallet is working in Drew Endy's lab at MIT. Now, Drew is the guy who blew us all away at FooCamp last weekend. Just the fact that Alex can hang out with Drew and understand what Drew is asking for makes him far more interesting. Subscribed without even reading another post. Figure out who the "connectors" in your community are and find out how to hang out with them. If they get to know you, chances are they are looking for new people to link to. For instance, if you're a political blogger I'd be trying to figure out how to meet Glenn Reynolds or Andrew Sullivan. These two guys alone have hundreds of thousands of readers per day.

6B) Go to a user group and get known to people. Many people meet at my geek dinners who I hadn't been reading before. After getting to know them over beers I found them to be doing interesting things and I wanted to read their blog. "Do you have a blog?" That's your in. Do you have business cards with your blog address on them to hand out at parties or dinners or other social events? Why not? Do you attend user groups? Why not? Meetups? Why not? Have you spoken at a user group? Why not? Get up on stage. It'll change your life. Volunteer to help run a meeting. Bring donuts or pizza for everyone. Make an impression. Get people to figure out who you are and why they should talk to you. Remember eBay's Jeffrey McManus? At FooCamp he served everyone martinis. Total investment? Maybe $200. But everyone will forever remember who he is and what company he represents. And he's already gotten two links on my blog.

7) Write comments in other people's blogs. But make the comments smart and interesting. How did I find Mikal? In my comments. Yeah, eventually he would have shown up in my referer log, or on Feedster or Pubsub or Technorati sooner or later, but every comment that gets left on my blog is emailed to me so I read them all. Don't forget to use your real name and leave your blog's URL there too.

8) Appeal to your favorite blogger's Feedster and Pubsub searches. Good bloggers are building lots of Feedster and Pubsub searches (the searches build RSS feeds that you can track over time). Learn how these work.

There are probably a few other ways that you can get your blog discovered too. Anyone have any other good ones?

Update: Biz Stone says he just wrote a blog entry on promoting your blog.

Note how Biz and Karsten just turned comments in my comment area into links on my blog. Yes, Dennis Pallett, one of my Pubsub and Feedster searches is for my last name.

TargetAlert for Firefox

TargetAlert: "TargetAlert for Firefox"





TargetAlert is an extension for the Firefox web browser that provides visual cues for the destinations of hyperlinks.



If a hyperlink points to a something that is not a web page, then TargetAlert will try to append an icon to the hyperlink that represents its destination. For example, a hyperlink that points to a PDF document would look like this when using TargetAlert:

Byepass compulsory registration in news sites

http://simon.incutio.com/archive/2004/07/16/registration

The single hottest topic in the online news industry at the moment is that of required registration. A number of large news sites (the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune) have moved to this model, and many local newspapers are following suit.

If you haven't seen BugMeNot, go and check it out now. It's a simple service for sharing free news site accounts, and it's started to upset some people in the news industry. A post to the online-news mailing list inquiring about possible legal action against the site prompted me to reply with the following:

The flaw here is not with BugMeNot - it's with the entire concept of user registration in its present form. The reason BugMeNot works is that there is absolutely no value to an end user in keeping their account to themselves. If you want to stop people from sharing their accounts, give them an incentive not to. This is not a difficult thing to do - I have a large number of accounts on different community sites which are used to contribute to discussions and manage my personal information. I would never dream of sharing those accounts with others - it would allow other people to impersonate me and damage my reputation. An account that only allows me to read content (a one-way interaction) is of no value to me, so why not share the account with others?

BugMeNot is not a new idea by any stretch of the imagination: shared accounts have existed for as long as sites have required registration for spurious reasons. For as long as I can remember, members of the MetaFilter community have worked together to set up username/password combinations of metafilter/metafilter on sites that require registration to bypass the irritation of setting up yet another account.

If you want to fight BugMeNot, the solution is to monitor the site and ban any accounts for your own site that appear there - but that's just fighting the symptoms. The core problem is the whole idea of registration itself: it's anti-web, anti-user, it doesn't scale and it's a sign of extreme short term thinking. Imagine if every site on the web required registration - no one would use it!

As a web user, I see registration as nothing more than an unnecessary irritation. Before BugMeNot I would simply hit "Back" whenever I saw a registration screen; now I use it to carry on through to the articles and accompanying ads. As a heavy web user who buys online almost as frequently as offline I'm exactly the kind of demographic sites should be trying to attract.

Reading the above a few days later, I think it still accurately represents my thoughts on the free registration model.

Adrian has also posted his thoughts on registration, which run along very similar lines to mine.

For a great example of the mentality behind registration, check out this spiel from the Toronto Star (via Craig Saila):

Our main goal of asking you to become a registered member of thestar.com is to improve and enhance your online experience with us. Registration is an important piece of our long-term strategy in building a valuable audience for our advertisers and helping us in setting the priorities for future site development and enhancements.

[...]

By asking you to share some information with us we are able to increase the value of our site to advertisers, who help support the cost of producing one of Canada's top news sites, by offering them the ability to target their advertising messages based on the information you provide.

And that's the problem right there: as a user, the value proposition of having more targetted ads thrown at me just isn't a good enough incentive for me to jump through their hoops.

David vs. Goliath... vs. Goliath: Blinkx and the Future of Search

http://www.mediapost.com/dtls_dsp_searchinsider.cfm?artid=268768

WHILE THE ELEPHANTS DANCE, THERE'S sometimes an opportunity for a mouse to change the world. And that may be just what's happening in the world of search. In the aftermath of Google's IPO and the continuous stream of search speculation from Microsoft, a small technology start up named Blinkx may have just changed the way we search.

With over a million downloads in under two months, Blinkx has been a hot topic on the download forums and blogs. Ironically, the big draw for Blinkx has more to do with finding the right piece of information on your desktop than with making the Web easier to search. No matter, the same technology powers both types of searches and introduces a paradigm shift for the entire industry. Almost all of Blinkx's functionality sounds very similar to projects currently underway in Microsoft's research labs. The difference is, Blinkx is out there and working right now, not two years from now.

I had a chance to chat with Suranga Chandratillake, one of the co founders of Blinkx and the CTO. It was fascinating.

Concepts rather than Words Blinkx takes the idea of search a step farther than the keyword bound interface used by Google and every other engine. Rather than asking the user to interpret what they're looking for into a string of keywords and then launch a query, Blinkx examines the context of their current activity and tries to distill the desired concept from it.

For example, if you're on a Web site about collecting 1970 Volkswagen Beetles, Blinkx will use all the relevant content on that page to create the key concept of what you might be looking for. It will then suggest matching sites based on the entire concept, rather than just two or three words. Chandratillake points out that this gives a much more accurate match, because you're using the entire text of a page. If you want to restrict the text used to provide the match, just highlight the desired content and Blinkx will refine the query.

Search Suggestions in any Application The content used to create the concept doesn't have to be a webpage. It could be an e-mail, a text document or even a spreadsheet. Once Blinkx is installed, it will take a screen shot of whatever you're working on and quietly suggest both local files and web sites that seem to match the key concept of your file. The Blinkx tool bar loads icons on the top right of the toolbar and when it finds a match, the appropriate tab changes color. Blinkx has tabs for 7 different channels, including News, Products (shopping), Web, E-mails, Video Clips, Blogs and Local Files. The suggested links appear in a window when you roll over the tab.

Now Serving Suggestions Daily One of the interesting results that Blinkx found with the original users is a dramatic increase in the number of links chosen in a day. Traditionally, most users may turn to a search engine 5 to 10 times a day. This means most users might see 50 to 100 links. But when Blinkx is always there, suggesting relevant links, the number of links seen by the user rises dramatically. The average Blinkx user generally sees 200 to 250 links a day. As Chandratillake is quick to point out, this opens up some real potential in the area of search marketing. "When search is ubiquitous, users will look at it more. They don't have to stop what they're doing, go to the Web and search. We're always there, making suggestions."

Do the Elephants Care? Chandratillake is the first to admit Blinkx isn't perfect. "There are still a lot of bits to figure out. The biggest hurdle for us right now is the size of our index, but that's improving every day." Small interface and usability issues aside, the question is how will Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft respond? This is potentially the biggest innovation in search in the past eight years. And the fact that it came from a small start-up rather than a major player indicates that the frontier of search is still alive and well. Copernic reportedly has a similar search appliance coming out soon.

Blinkx will have to find its place, and search users will have to understand this paradigm shift. But I'm betting those two things are inevitable. As Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft continue their dance, they'll have to pay attention to this mouse, because it's changing the tune of the entire search industry

2% of Office

2% of Office




Why should I upgrade to Office 2003 when I only use 2% of Office’s capabilities as it is? Does that question sound familiar to you?
This topic came up recently in a conversation I had with a lady by the name of Donna Poskey, a marvelously talented Microsoft Account Executive. She hears this occasionally from clients who are using much earlier versions of Office. And I hear it as well, from individuals and companies alike. If you teach, develop with, or write about Office, or are known as the power user in your circle – you probably hear it, too.

100 Photographs that Changed the World by LIFE - The Digital Journalist

100 Photographs that Changed the World by LIFE - The Digital Journalist

Google like it's 1999

http://www.engadget.com/entry/1645422542142743/

google 1999

The picture above is of all the hardware it took to run Google (Lego bricks and all) back in 1999. Kinda freaks us out, though we’re not really sure why.

Microsoft cracking down on pirates?

http://www.neowin.net/comments.php?id=24260&category=main

Today is talk like a pirate day and the crazy folks at Microsoft UK have issued a light-hearted press release having a jab at those who use pirated Microsoft products. Although the press release is a joke, Microsoft recently started an optional Windows Validation process on their download servers. At recent conferences before the release of XPSP2 several Microsoft representatives have hinted at possible PID blocking on other Microsoft applications. In simple terms if you have a pirated version of Windows XP and you install an updated application like Windows Media Player, that application will detect your pirated install and will not install. There are also rumours that Microsoft are cracking down on the pirates themselves. Earlier this week the largest seizure of counterfeit Microsoft software and components took place, worth $80 million. For now the pirates are laughing but it looks like Microsoft are beginning to laugh and I'm sure they'll have the last laugh.

MS Press Release:

"Here be monsters

Avast ye, scurvy knaves, beware of piracy!

September 19th in the year of our lord 2004: Ahoy there! Avast ye on Talk Like A Pirate Day!1 Those who sail aboard the good ship Microsoft have a warning for those bilge rats who make choppy the calm seas with their knavish software tricks.

Because those who try to take the piracy off the high seas and onto their PCs face a fate worse than walking the plank. For they risk cursin' their businesses and being left up a creek without a paddle. They be sinkin' too with no patches to shore up systems, and could catch something far worse than scurvy.

Captain Alex Hilton, of the good ship Microsoft, says: "A lack of swordsmanship and sailing skills will leave the landlubbers high and dry."

So, on Talk Like A Pirate Day heed this tale of woe and do not bring the pirates tricks to your PC, for here be monsters. Yaaargh!"

A Visual History of Spam

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/18/1642214

Cristiano writes "Microsoft employee Raymond Chen has saved every spam message and virus-laden e-mail he's received at work since 1997 and graphed the spams and viruses to create a cool visual representation of one man's malicious traffic."

Sleeping at Airports ? Guide to Airport Lounges

How to Sleep at an AirportIf you are a frequent traveller, you may have found yourself stuck in an airport overnight. Experienced business travelers will usually find their way to the nearest hotel, but when bad weather or strike action conspire to ground flights en masse, these fill up swiftly, leaving passengers without a bed for the night.

While spending the night in an airport lounge is not the most attractive prospect, there are ways to make the most of a bad situation.

Sleeping In Airports is a light-hearted site full of great travellers tales and titbits of advice for those that find themselves stuck overnight at an airport, whether you are catching an early flight, or become horribly delayed.

Everything is clearly laid out on the opening page.

Click through to a region to select a particular airport, or you can just browse the stories and funnies using the links in the main section.

The entries have been added by people from all over the world, and include advice like the most comfortable or peaceful spot to lay down your head.

The best and worst list is a great place to go to get a feel for what you might read. And after reading about the crowned champion, Singapore's Changi Airport, I think I actually want to fly there just to spend some time in the airport.

Sleepinginairports.com's top five

1. Changi, Singapore: Free Internet access, reclining chairs in designated snooze spots, a luxury spa and lounge so quiet that students visit just to study for exams.

2. Amsterdam Shiphol, The Netherlands: Comfortable chairs and a casino to while away the hours.

3. Auckland International, New Zealand: Few announcements, couches and a mini-theatre.

4. Helsinki-Vantaa. Finland: Showers, couches and Internet.

5. Chek Lap Kok, Hong Kong: Overstuffed chairs, children's play area , courteous staff.

Seating Arrangement in Airplanes

Airplane Seating Guide ArrangementAnyone who has flown with a commercial airline will probably have experienced the downside of flight accommodation. Cramped seats, zero legroom, if only you had known when you checked in that the seat three rows in front offered so much more comfort. Well, now you can.

Seat Guru is the home of this brilliant resource, where you can check out the seat plan for many of the main airlines' fleets.

You will need to know the type of plane you are flying in, which you can find out by calling the airline or your travel agent. You then select the airline from the panel on the left, and select the plane from the pop-up menu.

Here you will see the full layout of the plane, with the pros and cons of each seat clearly stated.

Hover your mouse over the plan to read the pop-up info. This guide notes everything from extra legroom, to proximity to noisy areas, such as the toilets.

You can even find out what entertainment is going to be available on your flight by clicking the links in the boxes that appear when you hover your mouse over Video or Audio.

Armed with this knowledge you can now ask the check-in staff to place you in a seat you know is going to be comfortable, but make sure you get to the airport nice and early to avoid disappointment.

SeatGuru has information about American Airlines, Delta Airlines, United Airlines, Continental Airlines, US Airways, Northwest, British Airways, Alaska Airlines and JetBlue airplanes.

Searching for new ways to search

Searching for new ways to search

FileHand Search 2.0 - better than ever and now it’s free!

FileHand Search, winner of a 2004 Shareware Industry Association award for best utility using .Net, has just been upgraded to version 2.0 and offers a number of enhancements including the ability to index and search Outlook data.

The interface has been redesigned but still offers the same fast and clean look of the previous version which displays extracts from found files ranked by relevance to your search terms. It’s a unique display and one that eliminates any question as to whether you’ve found just the file you’re looking for.

Free Search Tools

From the UnofficialMicrosoft Blog







I’m amazed at the number of people who continue to discover Lookout - I figured at this point, everyone who uses Outlook would have found it in a blog or website they regularly read. It’s pretty common that new reviews or posts about Lookout end up comparing it to x1, FILEHand Search, or another tool. I’m not going to get into that again - I wrote a lengthy comparative review some time ago (do a search at Marc’s Outlook on Productivity if you want to read my reviews).



No, the reason I bring this up again is that I encountered a really interesting thought in a post about Lookout that showed up in RSS this morning from the Early Adopter blog:



It’s kind of funny that the top feature of many products (Lookout, Newsgator, etc.) is that they integrate into Outlook. This makes me wonder if Microsoft made a mistake when they went out of their way to make Internet Explorer the OS shell. I wonder, would the world have been better served if Outlook was the OS shell?



Hmmm… now that’s an alternate reality I hadn’t thought of before. How different would things be if Microsoft had gone this route?

A9 vs Google

http://www.onclipevent.com/archives/enterframe/000574.html

Amazon is taking on Google with a new search site called A9. While Google concentrates on simplicity and delivering the most relevant search results in the shortest possible time, A9 is adding the experience face to the process of conducting a web search by providing various facets like related movies and books. While A9 still relies on the Google to provide its basic search results, integrating it with Amazon's 'Search inside Book' feature, has made this into a really powerful...

Filehand vs Copernic Desktop Search

www.filehand.com

www.copernic.com

I tried both these great programs on my desktop and here is some of my analysis

Both program are equally effective in indexing and can index all types of microsoft office files, pdf, text, mp3 and pictures.

Personally, I found the interface of Copernic better and easy to navigate.

Filehand give you results in google type format and you get lot of options per document while in the result window itself

The Preview pane of Copernic wins by a great margin and the way it groups the results is quite intelligent.

There are rumours that even Google is coming up with such a desktop search application. So we can expect some great wars for this market in the near future.

 

Windows security checklist

Windows security checklist (kottke.org): "Windows security checklist"



8 steps to better Windows security



1. Run Windows Update regularly.



2. Install ZoneAlarm (Firewall)



3. Buy and install NOD32 (Anti-Virus)



4. Install WinPatrol (Anti-Hijack)



5. Buy and install AdMuncher (Ad and Popup Blocker)



6. Install and run AdAware (Anti-Spyware)



7. Replace Internet Explorer and Outlook Express with Firefox & Thunderbird



8. Disable Autorun.

Export Captivate Movie to Macromedia Flash 8

To export a Captivate movie to Flash, you should have Macromedia Flash MX 2004 installed.

Since Macromedia Captivate 1.0 is designed to export to Flash MX 2004, when exporting to Flash 8 in Macromedia Captivate, you can receive an error message like the one above. Macromedia Captivate 2.0 may solve this issue but till then, follow this:

Although Captivate is designed to export only to Flash MX 2004, you can import your Captivate project into Flash 8 by following the directions below:

1. Close Flash 8 if it is open.
2. Open Windows Explorer.
3. Navigate to:
C:\Program Files\Macromedia\Captivate
4. Copy the RDMFISTUB.dll file.
5. Navigate to:
C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash 8\en\Configuration
Note: The 'Local Settings' folder by default is hidden. If you are unable to locate the 'Local Settings' folder you can unhide it by opening Windows Explorer, select Tools > Folder Options > View, and select the option to 'Show hidden files and folders'.

6. Create a new folder called Importers. Your final path should look like this:
C:\Documents and Settings\username\Local Settings\Application Data\Macromedia\Flash 8\en\Configuration\Importers

7. Paste the RDMFISTUB.dll into the Importers folder.
8. Open Flash 8.
9. Create a New Flash Document.
10. Select File > Import > Import to Stage.
11. Browse to and select the CP file.
12. Click OK.

Note: Mouse movements will not be preserved when importing to Flash 8. The beginning and ending mouse placements will be imported, but the motion tweens for the movements will need to be recreated.

Get A Gmail Account

Do you want a free Gmail inviation code ? ISNoop can help you.

The isnoop.net's gmail invite spooler offers a place for people with Gmail invites and those who want them to come together with minimal effort and fuss.

Firefox: Mulitple startup pages

AndyJarrett.co.uk








If you, like me, initially go to a couple of addresses when you first start a browser session then you'll be glad to know that FF can open these up for you.

Microsoft Calculator Plus

Microsoft Calculator PlusThis application includes mathematical and conversion functions.

Microsoft Calculator Plus is an updated calculator application for Windows XP that you can download at Microsoft Web site. Microsoft Calculator Plus has an improved interface over the standard Calculator that comes with Windows XP. The new calculator also boasts some neat features, including the ability to perform exchange-rate calculations and various types of conversions, such as currency and weight.

The download process checks the version of Windows on your system and doesn't download the program until it has verified that the software is a "genuine" Windows version.



Calculator Plus also includes currency conversion, with a live link to the European Central Bank to ensure that the currency exchange rates used by Calculator Plus are as up to date as possible.

Download Microsoft Calculator Plus

Autodesk Revit 9, Revit Building 8.1, Autocad 2006, Autocad 2007

Autodesk Revit Building 8.1Autodesk will release Autodesk Revit Building 9 and Revit Structure in early 2006. Autodesk Revit Building 8, incorporating state-of-the-art building information modeling (BIM) capabilities that let architects and designers work together on a single holistic representation of a building project, to save time and money in the design process. Autodesk Revit Building 8.1 is a fully integrated geometrical, material, and analytical mod�eling application for structural engineering, analysis, design, and documentation. It is building information modeling (BIM) for structural engineers.

The Autodesk Revit platform (Autodesk Revit Building 8.1 and Autocad Revit 9.0) is beginning to show some connection with Autodesk Architectural Desktop through the ability of Revit Structure to export and read Architectural Desktop structural objects. Revit Building 8.0 success the highly successful Autodesk Revit 7. The AutoCAD Revit Series 8 includes AutoCAD 2006 and Autodesk Revit Building 8. Autodesk Revit Building supports complete round-tripping of markups with Autodesk® DWF Composer. You can also publish Revit Building models to 3D Autodesk DWF (Design Web Format) file format for high-impact communication of 3D design information.

Autodesk Revit Building provides features that help integrate your work with consultants. The Autodesk VIZ 2005 Interoperability Plug-in for Revit Building lets you import DWG files produced in Autodesk Revit Building and use them to create stunning, photorealistic interior and exterior renderings. You can import or link DWG files directly into Autodesk Revit Building to use as reference geometry or as the starting point for a new design, such as a site plan. Any CAD system that supports the DWG, DGN, or DXF file format can work effectively with Autodesk Revit Building.

With Revit publish to Autodesk Buzzsaw, you can easily convert Autodesk Revit Building files to DWG or DWF format and upload them to Autodesk Buzzsaw project sites. Using default template assignments, you can also assign properties to a view and then set them back to their original state whenever you publish or print your project.

Revit Building Screenshot

Autodesk is trying to remove cost from the equation by bundling AutoCAD 2006 with Revit 8 for the cost of AutoCAD alone. You must install both on the same system under the joint license arrangement. In order to site license Autodesk Revit Building 8, you must install the Network License Manager onto a server on your Local Area Network. Autodesk Revit Building 8 requires Network License Manager based on FlexLM version 10.1.5 and is not compatible with previous versions of the Network License Manager.

Download Autodesk Revit 7.0 (exe - 48.8 Mb) - Autodesk Revit Building 8 and 8.1 Documentation, Autodesk Revit Building 8 Help Files

Download Autodesk Revit Building 8 (exe - 68.0 Mb (Build Number: 20051017_2000) - Also contains link to Download Autodesk Revit Building 8 Content and Libraries, Download Autodesk Revit Building 8.1 Tutorials, (Metric & Imperial Format) - RevitBuilding8.1_20051017_2000.exe

Try Revit Building Online with Autodesk Revit 7 Streaming Trial - Try Revit 7 and Revit 6 by streaming Autodesk software at no cost. The trial is a fully functional version of Autodesk Revit - including the ability to create, view, save, and plot your own files. This trial is available only in the United States and Canada.

Autodesk Revit Building Related Books

* Autodesk Revit for Building Designers & Architects Release 7.0 by Sham Tickoo
* Mastering VIZ Render: A Resource for Autodesk ADT Users by Paul F. Aubin
* Mastering Autodesk Architectural Desktop by Paul F. Aubin
* Building Construction Illustrated, 3rd Edition by Francis D. K. Ching
* Mastering Autodesk Revit Building by Paul F. Aubin

Download Free Audesk Revit Training Videos in Windows Media Player format from dgcad,com. Revit City (revitycity,com) offers links to Revit Tutorials, Revit Families and other Revit Building Resources.

Autodesk Revit Building 8.1 is available only to Subscription Customers of Revit Building 8.0. With subscription, Autodesk Revit customers receive many benefits, including new releases and technology updates, predictable budgeting, e-Learning tools, and online support. This Web Download of Revit Building 8.1 and AutoCAD Revit Series 8.1 are applicable only to licenses of the English version of Revit Building 8. The Service Pack 1 for Autodesk Revit Series 8.0 requires the original installation CD of Revit Building 8.0, original CD of Revit Building 8.1 or the network image.

With Autodesk Revit Building, you get back to what you love: designing buildings, without your software getting in the way. Work in any view that makes sense, quickly and easily making changes to major design elements. Create comprehensive design proposals in record time. See your ideas visualized on the fly with 3D views and instant shadows. You can even make late-stage changes without worrying about coordinating your plans, schedules, and construction documents. You design it; Revit Building documents it.

Everything you wanted to know about blogging but were afraid to ask

The things they don't tell you about in blogging school

50 tips on how to bog - and some interesting comments too.

1. If you want to start blogging and have huge amounts of traffic instantly I can recommend one of three things: be an established journalist/opinion maker; be Glenn Reynold's brother; or porn. Otherwise face facts: you've got an awfully big hill to climb.

2. Never get your brother to guest blog for you. Trust me.

3. Before you start, read other blogs and get a feel for what they are like. Then completely forget everything you've read and seen so you can establish a new and distinct voice that will get noticed. This also helps a common problem: a really sucky first post. Trust me.

4. Prepare for the reality that the rest of the world may not share your high opinion of yourself and your site.

5. You know that movie where the guy built a baseball field and waited for some dead folks to turn up and play ball? Blogging's like that. Prepare to slog at putting up brilliantly crafted, accurate and to-the-point insights that will proceed to make no difference to anything at all.

Full list here - http://simonworld.mu.nu/archives/037779.php

Google Groups 2

Google Groups 2 is now open for BETA users ..

http://google.blogspace.com/archives/001231

Google finally bit the bullet and added mailing list support to Google Groups: Google Groups 2 - BETA. It even lets you create your own mailing list, just like Yahoo! Groups.

Google says:

  • Group creation: Users can easily create, join, and search email-based mailing lists; administrative interface enables customized access controls to designate a group as public or restricted
  • Dynamic conversations: Postings appear within 10 seconds and are indexed within 10 minutes
  • Enhanced user interface: Users can track and mark favorite topics using the "My Groups" feature and view postings in a variety of ways including by message summary, title, or conversation view

Abbyy FineReader 8.0 Professional OCR

ABBYY FineReader OCR 8.0 delivers accurate text recognition quickly, and excels at high-end OCR automation. Abbyy FineReader 8.0 Professional Edition offers a new ability to automate common OCR tasks. It also adds a wealth of new features for making recognition work better for a wider range of originals, most notably text in books, PDF files, and digital photos.


PDF has become the lingua franca of the online document world because Adobe gives away the Reader program free. So it's a good thing that FineReader expands its Adobe Acrobat PDF file capabilities in version 7.0. FineReader not only now supports most available types of PDF, it also exports PDFs and extracts text from PDFs, a capability that turns PDF into an editable file format.

FineReader 8.0, similar in many ways to OmniPage, follows the same design as earlier versions. Its main screen shows thumbnails of pages on the left, a graphic image of the currently selected page in the middle, and an editing pane with recognized text on the right. But FineReader adds a Zoom pane across the bottom that displays a magnified version of the area in the image you're currently editing. You can also send the text to Word to edit and correct, with the Zoom pane still active.

A welcome new feature is the ability to define common OCR tasks to run with a single command. For example, one predefined procedure asks you to pick an image file, then opens the file, recognizes the text, and sends the result to Word. A wizard makes it easy to define your own procedures.

FineReader's speed and accuracy have improved, too, and the software now works hand-in-hand with Microsoft Office 2003. For example, you can scan a document directly into the middle of a Word 2003 document, then use Word's own proofing tools to correct the recognized text. You can also output scanned documents to PowerPoint 2003, making it easy to create presentations from existing documents.

FineReader provides powerful and intuitive features after you’ve become adept with the program and have taught it to work your way. That’s especially true in the Corporate Edition ($599.99 per concurrent license, reviewed here), in which you can fully automate batch scan scheduling using a Hot Folder without manually invoking FineReader. Professionals and small businesses that don’t demand networked scanning access and the more automated features will prefer the pocketbook-friendlier Professional Edition ($399.99). Either way, expect more of a learning curve than for lower-end OCR alternatives that serve move casual users.

The company also touts a number of enhancements when extracting text from PDF files, including, perhaps optimistically, a speed increase of up to 200 percent. Other new features include recognition of hyperlinks in scanned text, and defining file properties such as author and keywords when saving output to HTML, XML, PDF, .doc, and Microsoft Reader’s e-book .lit formats.

The notable installation exception is that FineReader 7.0 now requires product activation. If you're connected to the Internet, it's simple to complete this copy-protection step. If you can't connect to the Internet, however, FineReader will run--in a crippled state that won't save or print recognized text.

The FineReader interface makes basic OCR tasks as simple or as complex as you'd like. Right below the standard menu bar, you'll find a toolbar with five large icons. One launches several one-step scan and read operations, ideal for beginners who need help wading through many OCR options. The other four buttons control individual steps, letting you scan, read, proofread, and save the recognized pages as a document. More-experienced OCR users will find that additional toolbars provide quick access to advanced functions such as recognition zone adjustments, image editing, and rotation.

Technical support for Abbyy FineReader is very good; Abbyy offers free support for registered users for the life of the product. The company's online technical support site offers a wealth of useful information, including a list of tested and supported scanners. You can also contact the company for technical support by e-mail or by phone. Phone support is available via a toll call Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. PT.

If you do a lot of optical character recognition and require a high-end solution, the latest ABBYY FineReader OCR is tough to beat. A side-by-side display of the original image and FineReader's text capture makes it easy to proofread the program's output.

Google Adsense Website Error Page

The Google AdSense website is temporarily unavailable. Please try back later.
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お手数をおかけいたしますことをお詫びいたします。

Die Google AdSense-Website ist vorübergehend nicht verfügbar. Bitte versuchen Sie es später noch einmal.
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A cute little girl - Tanvi




Check pictures of Amit Agarwal

Windows Media Player 10

http://thomashawk.com/2004/09/windows-media-player-10-good-bad-and.html

Thomas Hawk's review: WMP 10 - The Good, The Bad and the Ugly.

Folder Redirection

Meryl Evans writes about this great utility called TweakUI (freeware)

I never use Microsoft Window’s default settings of My Documents, My Pictures, or My Music. I change it up on my own or use TweakUI, a Windows PowerToy. For home users, there is no compelling reason to change the defaults. I do it because I have my way of doing things and organizing. For business users or networked environments, it’s a good idea to redirect folders because of the backup system and use of network…

http://channels.lockergnome.com/windows/archives/20040906_folder_redirection.phtml

Microsoft Streets And Trips 2006 with GPS Locator

Microsoft Corp. today announced the availability of Microsoft Streets & Trips 2006 with GPS Locator, the latest version of the best-selling mapping and travel planning software for the United States and Canada. Microsoft Streets & Trips 2006 with GPS Locator introduces Voice-Prompted Directions, a hands-free option that reassures travelers with turn-by-turn directional information so everyone in the car can enjoy the ride without the stress of getting lost. For running errands around town, taking a family road trip, finding the way around a new city or planning a day of business meetings, Streets & Trips 2006 with GPS Locator offers easy-to-use tools to plan personalized trips and travel with confidence.

Microsoft Streets and Trips 2006 is a slick mapping program that's great for planning weekend getaways, cross-country treks, and other vehicular excursions. This year's version displays about 5.9 million miles of roads, plus another 1.8 million points of interest, including ATMs, museums, restaurants, and zoos. Impressive sounding, perhaps, but DeLorme Street Atlas USA 2006 shows more eateries and attractions, a fact we learned when using both programs to explore various U.S. cities.

Example: In a square block of downtown San Francisco west of Moscone Center, Streets and Trips shows only 4 points of interest, while Street Atlas USA displays 11. Free mapping services, such as Google Local, also help to make Streets and Trips a tough sell. If ease of use is critical in a software-based atlas, Microsoft Streets and Trips is your best choice. If you want a mapping program that shows the most restaurants, hotels, and other roadside attractions, DeLorme Street Atlas USA 2006 is the better pick.

Microsoft Streets and Trips 2006 offers some enticing extras like a the link to MSN Virtual Earth, Microsoft's online repository of satellite maps. Let's say you're viewing a map of San Francisco's Union Square and you want a bird's-eye view of it. Click the Virtual Earth icon at the top of the screen, and a satellite image of Union Square loads in your browser. Granted, this may be fluff, but it's fun. Far more useful are the (optional) GPS-related upgrades, particularly the new voice directions--crucial for using Streets and Trips while driving. (We'll examine the GPS features in a separate review.) If you don't have a GPS transponder but do have a Wi-Fi connection, the new Locate Me feature can utilize Wi-Fi hot spots to estimate your location. Naturally, you'll first have to be inside a Wi-Fi hot-spot range for this feature to work.



Microsoft Streets and Trips 2006 provides a better interface than DeLorme Street Atlas USA 2006. To view a city map, for instance, you simply type its name in the Find box. By comparison, Street Atlas makes you enter start and finish locations in separate windows, then it calculates the route before displaying a map--a slower approach. And it's easier in Streets and Trips to load sections of a map not on the screen--just click near the edge of the map window. The same task in Street Atlas requires an annoying click-and-drag procedure, which gets tiresome after a few tries. Not that online mapping services are any better, as is evident from a real-life comparison of online mapping capabilities.

Another new tool called Night Map Style is like wearing night-vision goggles. The map's background is pitch black, and roads and street names are shown in shades of green. It's convenient for night driving and other low-light conditions, although most of the background detail, including points of interest icons, aren't visible. We prefer the conventional map view, which is easy to read on a backlit laptop at night. Your visual preferences may vary.

Microsoft's support for Streets and Trips 2006 is very pretty generous. Streets and Trips includes one year of unlimited e-mail and toll-free telephone support--almost unheard of in software technical support. Microsoft promises e-mail responses within one business day. Microsoft also provides a searchable knowledge base dedicated to Streets and Trips 2006, as well as blogs, chats, and newsgroups, all available online.

System Requirements for Microsoft Streets & Trips 2006 with GPS Locator: Microsoft Windows Server 2003, Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition, Microsoft Windows XP Professional, Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional, Microsoft Windows 98 Second Edition, Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition

Microsoft Street & Trips with GSP is available for US, UK, Germany and Italy.