Technology. Without Error

Launchy

I have used a lot of desktop enhancements, program launchers, docks and I can tell you that Launchy is one of the least intrusive and one of the most useful application launcher. Launchy is a keyboard friendly program(or whatever’s on your PC) launcher. Type in the first few letters of whatever you want to start and Launchy would provide you with a list of matches for those keys. The best thing is, you’ve got an integrated calculator (type and you get the result) as well as integrated search. Plus you can type in all those URLs directly to load them on your default browser (It would’ve been better if Launchy allowed you to set your browser preferences, but then that’s not too much of a problem) If you’ve got Chrome as your default browser then it works super fast. But if you’re like me and prefer to use Firefox, look for the solution below.

Firefox

Firefox. Now I guess I don’t need to even explain this. Most of my stuff is online, just like everyone’s and my browser is my window to the internet. Now if I don’t have the best browser around, then I’m probably missing something. Add extensions and you’ve got one customized superpowered supercharged superbrowser!

Chrome

Now that doesn’t mean I don’t like Chrome. I find Chrome to be perfect in many aspects, especially when it comes to loading time, minimalist interface and the way in which it really merges into the internet. It makes you feel as if there is no browser, its just the internet. Plus, the background updates (I’m going to update to the latest version anyway, so its better if the application does that for me) Chrome is also an awesome companion to Launchy especially when you create applications for web services. You can use launcy to load your Chrome gmail app by just typing in “gm”

Update: I’ve recently shifted to Chrome and I find that it’s more suited to my web browsing tasks than firefox.

Destroy twitter

I’m on twitter and you can follow me here. Everyone has their own favorite when it comes to twitter client and it just happens that I take a fancy to using Destroy twitter. I tend to use the twitterfox extension for Firefox as well, but then DT has to be my favourite AIR app.

Tray it

Tray it is a tiny piece of software which lets you minimize applications to the tray. They run in the background, as simple as that. I like doing that with many of my applications and you can find Firefox, DT and my mail client on my system tray. Having firefox on my tray lets me set up Firefox as my default browser and use Launchy to run searches/URLs real quick (since Firefox is always running in the background). Plus, if you’re a Firefox fan, there’s no way you would want to close the application anyway. Just minimize and send it to the tray.

Rocketdock

A dock is something which I have installed just because it looks good. The best part about a Mac is now available for a windows PC as well. Of the many dock applications, my favourite has been the Rocket dock suite. Easy to use and as light as it comes.

Even though face recognition is not as popular as other biometric means of security such as fingerprint recognition, it still is a powerful and easy to use way to increase your security. Banana screen lets you harness the facial recognition to login to your PC without typing in your password.

Being used to a biometric fingerprint scanner on both my work and home laptops, I was disappointed when I started using my ASUS netbook. I had to think of an alternate way to login without typing in passwords. Searching online gave me results on only one application, Banana screen from Banana Security. But even lifehacker’s links weren’t alive since Banana security’s website had nothing on it, let alone a download link. After a bit more googling, I found a link to a Banana screen download at Softpedia.

Banana screen requires that you enter the windows password before the first time you use it. After installation, you create a profile of yourself called a model. The Model is a webcam capture of your face which allows you to login. I would have liked BS to completely replace the windows login screen, but BS only creates an alternate windows lock screen (Alt + L). Every time it fails to recognize (the first few times, since it needs to adapt the model to different lighting environments) you’d have to enter your password to login. And it updates the model. It learns!!

One tip would be to set the camera timeout to a low value on the settings. That way the camera doesn’t stay on for long. To login, press shift to activate the camera, and lo, access granted!! If you enjoyed the application, leave a comment..

What’s SDK?

A software development kit (SDK) is typically a set of development tools that allows a software engineer to create applications for a certain software package, software framework, hardware platform, computer system, video game console, operating system, or similar platform. And in many cases includes the IDE for the development

What’s an IDE?

An integrated development environment (IDE) also known as integrated design environment or integrated debugging environment is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development. An IDE normally consists of a:
1. Source code editor
2. Compiler and/or interpreter
3. Build automation tools
4. Debugger

An IDE is actually used to write and test programs.
Eg.: Microsoft Visual Studio, Turbo C++ professional

An SDK adds functionality, lets you include the sample code, documentation.
Eg.: Eclipse SDK(it comes with the IDE)

Therefore, SDK > IDE! Hmmm…whatever…

Google themes now..before that we had google labs which brought into gmail a plethora of features mostly useless..first it was gmail, then it became gmail with chat, then support for new smileys..now it chat with video support..

All because Gmail became too fat!

Isn’t gmail becoming too bloated with features, though definitely most of them useful nevertheless..

Even worse is all those new smileys and video chat doesn’t even find support on the gtalk application..I wish they would have focused on the gtalk application when trying to improve the chat experience..Now what do we have? support for these smileys over mail…yeah! great…and of course I really need voicemail when I am dealing with a mail application…honestly…This is not just with the Gmail but also the same with all their other applications….Take a look at google chrome, I already have firefox (thank you!).. But first it was orkut and now even youtube asks you whether you would like to try google chrome…maybe just so that you could feed it doughnuts! Maybe I am indulging in too much of google bashing, but then I prefer the good old days of gmail when mail was good…and it was just mail with no webclips (don’t I already use your google reader?)…And I almost forgot AIM integration for chat,  which brought in my feeds, no math to work out when you send out mails at night and lots of other silly lab features…

I wouldn’t say that there hasn’t been features on the useful side, IMAP is a great feature to add on to any mail service. I love the space in my box definitely, after all “Who needs to delete when you have over 2000 MB of storage” , the awesome feature of labelling mails, starring important ones, the ability to create instant filters and 100s of other small bits which make my mailing experience pleasurable everyday….

True, gmail has been changed email as we know it..and I have forgotten what mail was, before gmail..but I wish gmail would focus on gmail…the gmail app on my mobile and lots of other things which I haven’t even thought about..but then, that’s what the google team’s job is..I guess, I haven’t even sent a mail from my gmail account in the past few months…so to tell you the truth, I use the chat more than the mail

Firefox and Google talk are two apps which I cannot really manage without…but then what do you do if you share your PC with someone else? Maybe someone else at home. Each of us have our own collection of bookmarks, addons and of course logins.

So you would need to get Firefox and Gtalk to run multiple instances. The secret to running them is to use Firefox’s in built profile manager. We need to invoke the profile manager by changing the shortcut path on your desktop. Ideally, the target looks like this “C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe”

Change it to

“C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe” -profilemanager.

Run the shortcut and you will come across the profile manager.

Firefox profile manager

Click on create new to start the new profile wizard.

add new profile firefox wizard

But, even now, there firefox would not let you run two profiles at the same time. Which means if you open another firefox instance when one is running, it will still belong to the same profile. Now to work around that, we need to change the path to

“C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe”  -no-remote -profilemanager

Run the shortcut and you will come across the profile manager even if you have one firefox instance running already. Great now you can login two people can login to two gmail accounts at the same time…

Now, Gtalk is not as customizable as Firefox is, but still they manage to give us two workarounds to run multiple instances.

1. Download Google talk. Run it as instance no.1. Download Gtalk labs edition, run it as instance no. 2

2. I do not recommend gtalk labs edition as it is still in limited beta and has quite a few shortcomings compared to the regular gtalk app. So we lets get to playing around with the shortcut target for google talk as well, considering you had a default install of gtalk, the shortcut target should be “C:\Program Files\Google\Google Talk\googletalk.exe”. And yes, its a bit different if you run Vista.  Lets change the shortcut to

“C:\Program Files\Google\Google Talk\googletalk.exe” /nomutex

Gtalks! galore, run as many as you want….

Multiple Google talk instances