Thursday, November 19, 2009

Microsoft Office 2010 Public Beta Live

Microsoft announced the public beta release of Office 2010, Visio 2010, Project 2010 and Office Mobile 2010 today. The Beta release of Office 2010 marks the closing of the Technical Preview program.

The beta site can be accessed at http://office.com/beta and the Professional plus 2010 beta can be downloaded from here.

We had covered on the benefits and new features of 2010 in our earlier post. Now you can go ahead and download and try out all the features yourself.

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Saturday, October 24, 2009

Microsoft Office 2010 technical preview

Have been using the latest version of Microsoft Office 2010 (Technical Preview) since August of this year. Since this is a technical preview, it’s a far cry from a stable version. But for me, except for Excel 2010, which had co-exists with 2007 due to some compatibility issues, all other Office 2010 products have been working without any issues.

For MS, this is the second winner on hand after Windows 7. Have posted below screenshots of new features in Office. For more details, log on to http://www.microsoft.com/office/2010/. As per the latest news, the public beta for Office 2010 is going to be released in November 2009.

Outlook 2010:

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Startup screen: Funky!

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Messages grouped into conversation: The feature which has been popularised since Gmail is now available in Outlook. Though it’s not perfect at this stage, it’s a welcome move forward. Compress your long e-mail threads into a few conversations that can be categorized, filed, ignored or cleaned up with a few clicks. Don’t know whether it’s intentional or not but when it creates conversation by subject all mails with blank subject are grouped together which are not really linked with each other.

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Forgot to add subject? No to write custom macros to enable this small but important functionality.

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Attaching file more than limit? The validation is there on the client side itself, which is a saver for the admins who risk their server going down if some guy attaches a 1gb file by mistake.

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Quicksteps: A one click action. It’s like shortcuts to regular tasks that you perform in Outlook.

Excel 2010:

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Sparklines: The coolest new addition to Excel. In a single cell, it’s able to give trends graphically. It’s a quick and easy way to monitor your KPI’s.

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Search in Filter: Adds the much needed search box in the filter drop down which is a boon where the there is a high list of values in the filter.

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Pivot table & Pivot chart: The new Slicer feature provides you with a rich visualization of your PivotTable view so you can dynamically segment and filter the data to display just what you need.

Project Gemini: “Project Gemini” add-in for Excel 2010 provides groundbreaking technology such as streamlined integration of data from multiple sources and lightning-fast manipulation of large data sets with up to millions of rows. Have not been able to try this out but this is a feature much touted in Excel 2010.

excel_2010_filetypes

(Edit) Above are the list of supported file types in Excel 2010. The file compression which was inbuilt in default xlsx format introduced in 2007, is now available in 2010 default xls format itself.

Powerpoint 2010

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Video: Create visually impacting presentations by embed and edit video files directly in PowerPoint 2010. Easily bookmark and trim your video to show only relevant sections. Video triggers let you insert text and captions to call attention to scenes. Style effects such as fades, reflection, soft bevels and 3-D rotation are also available to help you quickly capture your audience’s attention.

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Pictures: Transform your images into compelling, vibrant visuals by using new and improved image effects and artistic filters such as color saturation and temperature, brightness and contrast, blur, paintbrush, and watercolor

Co-authoring presentations: You can co-author the same presentation with multiple individuals simultaneously from different locations. When you access the file, you can see who’s authoring the presentation with you and their changes when you save the presentation.

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Effects: New transitions and animations will enable you to make your presentations more captivating for the audience.

MS Office 2010 has risen to the expectations. With the beta releasing next month, we will get an exact idea of what can be expected out of the suite.

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Thursday, October 15, 2009

How much is your website worth?

Have you ever fancied finding out how much is your blog valued? You might not want to sell, but it could give an indication of the popularity of your blog / website.

Jump to http://bizinformation.org and simply enter the domain name and you will get an approximate value within seconds. The valuation is based on various statistics such as visitor count, popularity in social bookmarking sites, referrals etc. There’s also a badge feature available which will display the value directly on your site.

Just trying out with this blog and according to this site, it’s valued at $5976!

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Friday, August 28, 2009

Life in Whitehouse

Some interesting insights in the life @ Whitehouse with President Barack Obama.

 

Disclaimer: These photos were emailed to me. If these are copyrighted or violating any rights, please let me know.

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Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Office Tab

Tabs are synonymous to multi tasking. As more and more applications are adapting to the tabbed interface, addons are available to add tabs in the existing applications.

Office Tabs

Office tabs makes it possible to add tabs to Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Powerpoint individually.

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The tabs can be configured for each product individually.

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Tested it on Windows 7, Office 2007. Working fine. But if you have Office 2010 Technical preview edition running alongside, be ready for crashes.

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Saturday, August 01, 2009

Softwares I cannot live without

Below is my list of “Top 21 freewares”. While compiling the list have thought of categories and softwares that are essential in order for me to survive in front of a computer for a long time.

Blogging tool: Windows Live Writer

There are very few softwares from MS which have found a fan following from both pro & anti MS enthusiasts and this is one of them. Makes blogging very very easy.

Internet Browsing: Google Chrome

Redefined the meaning of “Fast Browsing”.

PDF Reader: Foxit Reader

Adobe Acrobat Reader is not the only software that can open PDF files. Foxit is a lightning fast pdf file reader.

PDF Writer: PDF Creator

Create quality PDF files from any windows application with advanced features such as copy protection, password control and others.

Text File Reader: Notepad ++

Tab windows is the life line for any multi tasking person. With syntax highlighting, auto completion, ability to add plugins, this makes text editing and programming much much easier.

Compressing software: 7-zip

Fast, light weight, and enhanced compression make it a better choice than any other software available.

File Search: Windows Search 4.0

Inbuilt in Vista & 7, and available as an addon for XP, another product from MS which does exactly what it is supposed to do. Search -> Results –> Open. Quickly. Natural search is also supported.

System Housekeeping: CCleaner

It optimizes system, removes unwanted logs, internet history, temp files and is a must for keeping any system spic and span. It saves on hard disk space and also had a registry cleaner helps in keeping the registry in top shape.

Anti spyware: Spybot Search & Destroy

An anti spyware which is still the best amongst the host of new anti spywares that crop up every single day.

File copier: Fast copy

Fastest copy / delete software on windows. Period.

Codec: K-lite

A necessity because it makes viewing of any types of media files so much easier. know know VLC player is there, but guess habits are hard to die.

File Renamer:

Lupas Rename 2000 – Has been previously reviewed over here.

FTP Client: FileZilla

Forget the command line / explorer to do file transfer.  Filezilla supports FTP, FTPS and SFTP with an intuitive graphical user interface.

Download manager: Free Download Manager

With integration support for Chrome, IE, Firefox, Opera, Safari, there’s no reason why one should choose ANY other download manager. I Keep trying other managers and then keep coming back to using this. Supports video downloads and increases download speed manifold.

Web content filtering: Privoxy

It’s a Web proxy based on Internet Junkbuster with advanced filtering capabilities for protecting privacy, filtering Web page content and removing ads, banners, pop-ups, and other obnoxious Internet junk.

Password Bank: Keepass

The only software that I entrust with all my passwords, except the banking ones, which continue to remain in my head ;), though there is no reason why I should not transfer it on this.

Image editor & viewer: Irfanview

The Best image viewer. Simple yet powerful. You can use this for viewing to converting to creating images. Don’t forget to download the plugins available which enhances the experience of using this masterpiece.

Music Player: Foobar 2000

An amazingly light piece of software that does best what it has to do. Play music.

Audio & Video Converter: Super

Have had a high success rate for converting multimedia files with this software. It might take some time to get used to the interface. But once you are aware of the features, it is a very powerful application. It can convert audio and video files to virtually any format. Their website has the comprehensive list of possible conversions.

Torrent: uTorrent

The homepage of this software says everything, “A Powerhouse With a Tiny Appetite”. Look forward to a future post explaining the whole torrent business, if you are not aware of what exactly is a torrent.

CD/DVD Burner: CD Burner XP

Have tried lots of softwares for burning CD / DVD. The simplicity and reliability of this one makes it a must for everybody.

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Sunday, July 05, 2009

Runpee.com suggests best time to pee during a movie

Jumbo cola and a thriller / horror movie is a deadly combo. You need to control your bladder and heart from explosion.

RunPee.com comes to your assistance by letting you know the best time to break out for a pee whilst watching a movie. It also tells you what is going to happen during that 3 minute break.

They have also added an iPhone app which can be downloaded from iTunes so that you can check the break time right from the theater.

It has been developed on a very practical idea. Do you find it useful? You decide!

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Saturday, June 13, 2009

Outlook tweaks for the basic user

Have you missed the IBM Lotus Notes functionality of “Prompt to save mail” for each mail in MS Outlook? Or have you cursed yourself for forgetting to add the attachment before sending that all important mail?

MS Outlook might not have all the functionalities of it’s counterparts but it’s powerful VBA macro engine leaves us to do what we want.

1. Attachment Reminder reminds you when you forget to attach a file to an email—preventing a possibly embarrassing situation with a client or boss.

Once installed, the code scans your new email message for words indicating that you've attached a file—you can change the words in the code . The detection only happens for the latest message in a conversation, skipping the replies and forward portions.

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2. Outlook offers only two options while sending mail as seen from the screenshot below, image

save all mail to sent items or do not save any mail. We cannot selectively save an selectively save a copy of message to sent items as was possible in Lotus Notes

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Prompt to save does exactly what it means. Before sending the email, it will prompt whether to save to sent items or not.

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Below is the code that does these two jobs. There are lots of versions floating around so not sure whom the credit should go to for the original code. Have modified it to suit my requirements.

Follow the below steps to install the code

1.) Ensure that Macros are enabled for your Microsoft Office Outlook. Macros don’t work with Microsoft Outlook Express, therefore this setup cannot be achieved with Microsoft Outlook Express.

2.) Ensure that your security level is set to Medium. You can set the security level by clicking on Tools –> Macro –> Security. Set the desired level to Medium.

3.) Traverse through Tools –> Macro –> Visual Basic Editor ( Or press ALT + F11)

4.) Expand Project 1 by clicking on the + sign.

Project Edition in Outlook

5.) Expand Microsoft Office Outlook Objects.

6.) Double click ThisOutlookSession.

Paste the below code, save and exit.

' this sub needs to be installed in the ThisOutlookSession module
Dim vCancel As Boolean
Dim Msg, Style, Title, Response As String

Private Sub Application_ItemSend(ByVal Item As Object, _
                                 Cancel As Boolean)
    vCancel = False
    Item.Categories = ""
    If Item.Class = olMail Then
        Call CheckAttachments(Item)
        If vCancel = True Then
            Cancel = True
            Exit Sub
        End If
        Call CheckToSave(Item)
        If vCancel = True Then
            Cancel = True
        End If
    End If
End Sub

' this sub can be installed anywhere
Sub CheckToSave(objMail As MailItem)

    Msg = "Do you want to save a copy of this email?"    ' Define message.
    Style = vbYesNoCancel + vbQuestion + vbDefaultButton1    ' Define buttons.
    Title = "Mailbox Control"    ' Define title.
    ' Display message.
    Response = MsgBox(Msg, Style, Title)

    If Response = vbYes Then    ' User chose Yes.
        objMail.DeleteAfterSubmit = False
    ElseIf Response = vbNo Then  ' User chose No.
        objMail.DeleteAfterSubmit = True
    ElseIf Response = vbCancel Then
        vCancel = True
    End If
End Sub

Sub CheckAttachments(objMail As MailItem)

    Dim InCount, MailBody, MailLength, AttachCount, SignAttachCount
    'If you have a picture or vCard in your signature then make SignAttachCount equal to the
    'number of files attached in your signature.
    SignAttachCount = 0
    InCount = 0
    MailBody = LCase(objMail.Subject) & LCase(objMail.Body)
    'If the message is a reply or forward, then the macro will not search for the strings in the original message.
    MailLength = InStr(1, MailBody, "from:")
    If MailLength = 0 Then MailLength = Len(MailBody)
    'Add lines for every string you want to check.
    'Parts of a string can be added as in "attach" will match "attached", "enclose" will match "enclosed"
    If InCount = 0 Then InCount = InStr(1, Left(MailBody, MailLength), "attach")
    If InCount = 0 Then InCount = InStr(1, Left(MailBody, MailLength), "file")
    If InCount = 0 Then InCount = InStr(1, Left(MailBody, MailLength), "enclose")
    AttachCount = objMail.Attachments.Count

    If InCount > 0 And AttachCount <= SignAttachCount Then
        Msg = "Did you intend to attach any file in this mail?"    ' Define message.
        Style = vbYesNo + vbQuestion + vbDefaultButton1    ' Define buttons.
        Title = "Missing Attachment"    ' Define title.

        ' Display message.
        Response = MsgBox(Msg, Style, Title)
        If Response = vbYes Then ' User chose Yes.
            vCancel = True
        End If
    End If

End Sub

 

On startup, click enable macros, if prompted. You should be all ready to go. Send out a test mail and check. If you have any problems in installing leave a comment.

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Monday, June 08, 2009

Bing

Year 2009 is proving to be a good year for Microsoft. First was the awesome Windows 7 (which is there on my to-blog list) followed by it’s latest search engine Bing http://www.bing.com. With Bing, MS is seriously looking to eat into rival Google’s marketshare.  Within 10 days of it’s launch, Bing has already crossed Yahoo to  the 2nd rank in search engine marketspace.  I have already replaced Bing as my default search provider in Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer.

To get straight to the facts. Why should you switch over to Bing?

  1. Bing has come on par, if not better, with Google in terms of the interface, search results & the speed
  2. Bing will display the categories, related searches and the search history on the left.

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  1. Bing Video search makes it possible to play videos directly on the results page and also offers a plethora of options on the target video’s duration, screensize, resolution and the source.

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  1. Bing’s image search displays image results on an infinite scrolling page with options to filter images by size, layout, color, style or people

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  1. Bing’s image search has the ability to display only wallpaper images in the image search results. This is done by searching for a term in Bing image search and clicking on the Size category in the left sidebar. It will automatically display various size filters including one called wallpaper. This will display only images that have the exact size of the computer screen resolution.
  2. The parameter contains will tell the search engine to only look for websites that contain that search term

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  1. Bing’s Best Match & Deep Links feature is designed to make finding relevant information easier by cutting down the number of clicks and getting you to your final destination faster. Results include customer service numbers for retail sites, the ability to track a package right from the search page, deep links to common pages within the site and much more.

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  1. Quick Preview is an additional window that expands over a search caption to give more information about the site's relevancy

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  1. Instant Answers is a feature designed to provide information within the body of the search-results page.

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So, are you ready to go and bing? If you want to make it the default search provider for your browser, click here.

Read more...

Saturday, June 06, 2009

Dreams

All of us have dreams.

All of us do not dream.

Can you make out the difference between both the statements? Whilst the former is a dream which most of us have while sleeping and forget on waking, the latter is the vision we set for ourselves for the future.

There are various reasons why many of us do not dream

  • prefer to take life as it comes or
  • are comfortable with the existing situation or
  • are bogged down by family pressure and responsibilities or
  • complacent or
  • under-confidence of one’s abilities or
  • scared, lest the dream fail or
  • scared, because people might laugh at or make fun of the dream or
  • ignorance of the power to dream

Am a true believer that each one of us has loads of talent to make it BIG in the world. It’s just that the task of identifying the talent is not straight forward. It requires lots of contemplation, self appraisal, analysis of our passions & desires. Lot of us think that the people who make it big are born with the silver spoon in their mouth. While luck does have it’s own role in each of our lives, fortune favors the brave. If we look at history, the biggest names (right from Bill Gates to Warren Buffet to Dirubhai Ambani) started from scratch and carved out their empires. Agreed that few people have “it” in them, but a majority of them grow big because they never stop learning. They learn from the people around them (small or big does not matter), reading about the stories of successful people,  fictional books which inspire. The process of learning never really stops. Each of us as an individual can do anything we want. We just have to set our heart and mind towards it.

Human brain is a person’s biggest asset. It can give answers, solve equations, create visions and do just about everything as long as we do not limit ourselves. We do not even harness a fraction of it’s original power to think and do. In our normal day to day scenarios, we tend to think only in the direction which is set. If there were a business problem with some department in our company, we do not think a solution for that if we are not responsible.  This is how we limit ourselves. If one needs to understand the power of our brain, try to wake up in the morning remembering your dreams (the former kind mentioned above). When we are in deep sleep, our brain is free of any limitations. It does many things which we would not have thought capable of. For eg, I try do the above exercise very often and have been very surprised, i’ve woken up in the morning realizing having sung a song with lyrics never heard before, having choreographed steps which have never seen before (though I am born of two left feet), solving a technical problem which has been bothering me in real life for many days. When we have this realization of the power within us, we can do anything. There are no limitations, no precedents. Ask an average adult to give a speech in front of 100 people, he will shiver, he will blunder. Put a 2 year old kid in front of 100 people and ask him to speak about his toys, he will blabber non-stop with high excitement. What’s the difference between both, the adult has heard of something called “stage-fear” whereas the child has not yet come across that concept. Our limitations are what we impose upon ourselves. Free ourselves and we live a free life. This is very very easy to say and equally tough to enact, but having the realization is the first step forward.

Three books have changed my life forever: The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged, Godfather. I learnt how to dream, why to dream. I found my passion, found out where I want to be. Though I have not yet figured our how to reach there, I know I will. Knowing where to go is the most important step. We get a direction, a mission for our life, getting there is something which will eventually happen once we are convinced of where we want to go.

“The first ingredient of success is desire.
Do you know what you want?
Your desire is the planting of your seed.
Your desire for success must be so strong within you
that it's the very breath of your life.
It must be your first thought when you wake in the morning,
and your last thought when you go to bed at night.”

So, if you like writing, dream that you would write a best seller one day selling over a million copies, if you adore cars, dream that you will bring a revolution to the way cars run, if you like playing guitar, dream that you will perform solo to a live audience in a packed stadium, if you think your world is made of 0 & 1’s, dream that you will build a computer which will replace books in each and every school in the world.

Dare to DREAM and dream BIG.

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Friday, June 05, 2009

Sharks In Your Life

Came across this very interesting story on the net. Not sure of the exact source as there are lots of websites with this article. Thought of sharing it with all of you.

The Japanese have always loved fresh fish. But the waters close to Japan have not held many fish for decades.

So to feed the Japanese population, fishing boats got bigger and went farther than ever. The farther the fishermen went, the longer it took to bring in the fish. If the return trip took more than a few days, the fish were not fresh. The Japanese did not like the taste.
To solve this problem, fishing companies installed freezers on their boats. They would catch the fish and freeze them at sea. Freezers allowed the boats to go farther and stay longer. However, the Japanese could taste the difference between fresh and frozen and they did not like frozen fish.

The frozen fish brought a lower price. So fishing companies installed fish tanks. They would catch the fish and stuff them in the tanks. After a little thrashing around, the fish stopped moving. They were tired and dull, but alive. Unfortunately, the Japanese could still taste the difference. Because the fish did not move for days, they lost their fresh-fish taste.

The Japanese preferred the lively taste of fresh fish, not sluggish fish. So how did Japanese fishing companies solve this problem? How do they get fresh-tasting fish to Japan? If you were consulting the fish industry, what would you recommend?

How Japanese Fish Stay Fresh:
To keep the fish tasting fresh, the Japanese fishing companies still put the fish in the tanks. But now they add a small shark to each tank. The shark eats a few fish, but most of the fish arrive in a very lively state. The fish are challenged.

Have you realized that some of us are also living in a pond but most of the time tired & dull, so we need a Shark in our life to keep us awake and moving?

Basically in our lives Sharks are new challenges to keep us active and taste better..... The more intelligent, persistent and competent you are, the more you enjoy a challenge.

If your challenges are the correct size, and if you are steadily conquering those challenges, you are Conqueror.. You think of your challenges and get energized. You are excited to try new solutions. You have fun. You are alive!

So have you found the Shark in your life?

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Friday, May 29, 2009

ZooZoo

If you are from India and you watch even a wee bit TV, you wouldn’t have missed the Vodafone’s ZooZoos. Vodafone with the help of O&M has created a masterpiece with the ZooZoo Ad Campaign. It showcases viral marketing at it’s best. Contrary to the popular perception, ZooZoo’s are not animated characters, they are human beings in costumes in a greyish set. If you want to watch the TV Commercials, click here. To get the full story behind the creation of these masterpieces, click here.

Below are some of the behind the scenes shots of the ZooZoo in action.

 

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Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Wolfram|Alpha

Most of us have got accustomed to the google search engine for our daily requirements. What if there was a search engine which went a step ahead and gives you a handful of computational answers depending on your search query?

Enter Wolfram|Alpha (http://www94.wolframalpha.com). The next generation search engine which might not kill google but it is definitely an alternative to many of the questions that google does not answer at one shot.

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It's a computational knowledge engine: it generates output by doing computations from its own internal knowledge base, instead of searching the web and returning links. Eventually you should be able to ask it about essentially any kind of systematic factual knowledge. You can get an idea of what it covers today by looking at the examples. It gives you real time answers on weather, stock quotes, time zones, all of mathematical computations, chemistry, physics, socio economic, people, culture etc..

You will get hooked onto it once you have started using it. Spent about 10 minutes on the site and found out some interesting details

  • My surname is ranked 831st in the world and one in every 7133 people have this surname. So guess it’s not very uncommon.
  • I’m 10,377 days old and there was only 11 hours of daylight on the day I was born.
  • 1 million rupees is currently valued at $20,980.
  • My country is ranked 7, 2 and 12 among the biggest countries in terms of area, population and GDP respectively.
  • I’ve learnt the full native name for my country just now. Shame on me!

Stephen Wolfram and his team certainly weren’t short of humor when they built this search engine. People have been finding some interesting easter eggs within Wolfram Alpha, triggered by specific questions or events. Ben Parr has posted a collection of these which at

http://mashable.com/2009/05/17/wolfram-easter-eggs/

http://mashable.com/2009/05/17/better-wolfram-easter-eggs/

wolfram-theanswer[1]

wolfram-chicken[1]

Would definitely recommend everybody to spend some time time on Wolfram|Alpha, go through the examples, screencast, community forum.. You will certainly learn something new every time you pay a visit.

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Saturday, May 09, 2009

Vintage Bombay

Recently one of my friends had sent a photo collage of Bombay, India as it was in the yester years. Was personally fascinated by the pictures and thought of sharing it with all of you.

 

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Saturday, May 02, 2009

Change is constant

What happens if suddenly you are asked to or forced to change what you have been doing or how you are doing ? What happens if you are told that you cannot continue what you used to do the way you used to do? Change happens in all our lives at some point of time or the other. It could be related to anything like

  • your work area within your existing job like change in workplace or manager
  • change in job
  • your lifestyle like not being able to sleep after having a newborn in the house :)
  • marriage, this change does not need any corroboration :)

A change is a "shift from comfort zone". By working in a particular manner we get so accustomed to it that any deviation from it will drastically disturb the mindset. We do not know whether the new thing will be good or bad but generally we take it as bad if the current way is going good. We might not realize or willing to realize that this change might open up new opportunities. In the recent past there have been several instances when I have been asked the question of "why the change?". Change should be looked upon as a part of life. As the saying goes, the only thing that is constant is change. So do we cope up to this? Whenever there's a change, we have two options

1. We see this as a positive thing, embrace it and look forward to it
2. We resist the change and stick to the existing method and then sooner or later adopt the change with rancor.

What is going to happen is going to happen. That's destiny. That is not in our control, but what is in our control is how do we take it.

If we take it as in the first option, the doors are open for us. There is a whole new world out there waiting to be explored and there are so many things to be learnt. There's a feeling of vibrancy, of excitement, of positive energy around us. But this does not come that easy. It takes a lot of conviction, self-belief and positive outlook and then the fruits of this are much sweeter.

But it's the second option that most of us opt for as it is the most easiest to adopt to. It's also the most difficult to get out of and causes a lot of stress and anxiety within us.  The immediate reaction of the change is to dwell on how good the existing things are and why was the change required. After receiving the shock of the change, we try to resist the change for some time. Realizing that resisting is not helping, we try some work-arounds, some experiments to circumvent the change. When we realize that it’s not working, we grudgingly decide to integrate with the change and make it as an integral part of out life.

What we also constantly do post the change, is to make the “before & after” comparisons. While accepting the change we also need to firmly accept the fact that things will not be the same as before, otherwise why would the change dawn? Same is with comparisons between people. No two persons are same, neither the fingerprints, nor their skills and talents, not the way they speak, nor the way they work, nor the way they manage people, nor the way they get around with people. So expecting the same thing from two different persons is impractical.

Changes are either self triggered, as in the 1st two examples above or it can be something which is “shoved” onto us, as in the last two examples. Either ways, unless we are ready and we maintain an open mindset, change can be very unsettling initially.

Whichever option that we opt for, change will still happen but it is in OUR control to CHOOSE which option. We can make a choice to be happy with the change or make a choice to get get stressed out with the change. It is our choice and we have to REALIZE that we have the POWER TO CHOOSE and be happy!

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Saturday, April 18, 2009

MS Outlook Autocomplete

Each time that you send a new message in Outlook, the emails that you type in To/Cc fields, are automatically inserted into the AutoComplete list, so in the next time that you type an email address, Outlook automatically completes the right email address for you. This autocomplete list grows over time and will contain not only valid email addresses but also those that are no longer working and those with typos.

The AutoComplete file of Outlook is stored under [Your Profile]\Application Data\Microsoft\Outlook , and it always saved as the profile name of Outlook with .NK2 extension. The Microsoft Outlook mail autocomplete manager NK2View by Nirsoft is a portable software for the Windows operating system that provides the means to view, delete and edit all email addresses that are stored in Outlook’s autocomplete database. The software program can be used to load a valid Microsoft Outlook n2k file after startup.

It displays the information in the usual table layout that is known from many other Nirsoft applications like the one that can be used to display and save email attachments in Outlook. Columns that are displayed are the display name of the user, the email, the autocomplete value, the protocol, the recipients field and the cryptic entry id and index parameters. They can be sorted for easier access to the information.

microsoft outlook mail autocomplete

The Outlook tool provides the means to backup and restore n2k files. Creating a backup before processing the file is recommended as it is the only way of ensuring that the file can be restored if something goes wrong during the editing process.

The usual options to export information into various formats such as xml, txt, html or csv are provided in the interface. Another interesting option is the ability to add entries from an Outlook address book into the autocomplete file.

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Thread Compressor for MS Outlook

In the usual course of communication via e-mail, there’s a conversation chain. Conversations do usually follow a simple principle. User A writes an email to User B. User B receives the email, reads it and replies to User B. The reply includes all of the content that was send to User B plus the reply. User A receives the email and then replies back, again with all the contents included that he initially send to User A, plus the reply of User A plus his own answer. And so forth.. The amount of data in mail keeps on increasing as we just hit either to reply which by default carries the previous mail data.

Thread Compressor (http://threadcompressor.co.uk/) is an add-in to Microsoft Outlook, which removed unnecessary emails from a "thread" - reducing the amount of storage required (maybe keeping your mailbox within its size quota) and reducing the number of emails you need to read.

TC4[1]

Once this is installed as an addin, it automatically compresses all the mails by default which the author also warns on his site “Let me say that again: Thread Compressor, as it is configured by default, WILL DELETE DATA FROM YOUR INBOX.

With TC, you may choose to have it actively delete content. Otherwise, you could have it move "compressed" items to your Deleted Items folder or some other folder you may create (in a PST file, for example). There's also an option on the Advanced tab to have it not remove mail, but just mark it as read. Or to keep various flavours of mail (like high priority ones).

Installation & Instructions to use can be found from the author’s site. Play around, you’ll end up saving a good quantity of mailbox space.

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Friday, March 27, 2009

Free Temporary Email Address

Have you ever come across a website that required you to fillup a registration form with valid email id to give download link or software key or just to validate email before getting registered on their site?

Did any website reject your gmail, hotmail, yahoo & other free webmail id?

Do you have the necessity of creating an email id for temporary use only (say minutes or hours)?

If you have answered yes to any of the above questions, then the below websites will be very useful (in order of my personal preference). All of them provide free temporary email address.

10MinuteMail (http://www.10minutemail.com)

  • Any e-mails sent to that address will show up automatically on the web page.
  • You can read them, click on links, and even reply to them.
  • The e-mail address will expire after 10 minutes.
  • You can also extend the expiration for another 10 minutes.
  • The domain names are not fixed and keep changing.

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YopMail (http://www.yopmail.com)

  • Lets you choose your own username @yopmail.com
  • Is feature rich and has an interface similar to any other realistic webmail provider.
  • Provides RSS Feeds, ability to delete mails, forward to other mail id.
  • Messages are kept for 5 days.

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Mailinator (http://www.mailinator.com)

  • Alternate domains
  • Provides RSS, widgets for checking mails
  • Messages are kept for a few hours image

Do not provide your personal email id for temporary or common registrations. Use a disposable email id instead.

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Friday, March 20, 2009

Outlook Attach View

To those for whom Microsoft Outlook is second life and their administrator has set limits on the mailbox size, Outlook Attach View is a tiny(78k) portable life saver.

outlookattachview[1]

The software program scans the emails of the Microsoft Outlook version that is installed on the computer system for email attachments. These Outlook email attachments are then displayed in a table format which gives the user options to sort the data in all possible ways. The information that are extracted from the Outlook emails are the filename of the email attachment, the recipient, file size and data of creation among other values.

Email attachments can be selected by the user to retrieve additional information about them. It is possible to save email attachments by selecting them and clicking on the Save selected items button in the software program. It is furthermore possible to delete selected email attachments directly in the software as well. This could be a handy way of copying email attachments from Outlook to another hard drive to free up some disk space.

The list of email attachments that has been found can be exported into various formats including text, html and xml.

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Saturday, February 21, 2009

ManicTime

Ever wondered how much productive have you been each day? How many hours have you spent in front of computer each day?How much time you spent on each application? And the trend of usage?

Previously reviewed Rescue Time did a similar thing but then all the data was uploaded on their servers which was a concern.

Enter ManicTime. Collected data is not transmitted anywhere or shared with anyone. Only you have access to it, which means no privacy concerns. Having a local database also enables you to use ManicTime offline, without an Internet connection. The reporting features are also pretty good.

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On my Windows 7 laptop, it takes about 290 MB of memory.

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You can download this utility from here.

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