somesh's blog

Afghanistan, January 2011

2011-02-05T10:15:00.001-08:00

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Afghanistan, January 2011

President Obama recently spoke about the War in Afghanistan in his State of the Union address: "Thanks to our heroic troops and civilians, fewer Afghans are under the control of the insurgency. There will be tough fighting ahead, and the Afghan government will need to deliver better governance. But we are strengthening the capacity of the Afghan people and building an enduring partnership with them. This year, we will work with nearly 50 countries to begin a transition to an Afghan lead. And this July, we will begin to bring our troops home." With this post, we continue the monthly look at the men and women who live and fight in the country and at the Afghan people themselves as they struggle for peace in their land. At the end of the regular post I've included 14 additional images by Associated Press photographer Kevin Frayer. The images are black and white aerials - a unique view - of Helmand Province, southern Afghanistan. -- Paula Nelson (48 photos total)

Sergeant Quincey Northern, a medic with the US Army's Task Force Shadow "Dust Off,'' Charlie Company 1-214 Aviation Regiment, gathers his equipment after finishing a medevac mission and arriving back at Camp Dwyer, in southern Helmand Province, Afghanistan, on Thursday, Jan. 27. Medevac units may make several runs a day - at times under fire - to evacuate both injured troops and Afghan civilians. (Kevin Frayer/Associated Press)

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5+ Free Poster Making Tools For Windows OS

2010-04-06T11:30:00.001-07:00

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5+ Free Poster Making Tools For Windows OS

via Timeless Tales by Deepak on 3/29/10

For a newbie, making a poster isn't an easy task to accomplish. While a professional can do a whole lot of image editing with Adobe Photoshop or an alternative to make a nice flashy wallpaper or Poster and then print it to his/her desired size. A poster making requires a big size scale of about 3600x4800 cm size. By default even the most image editors doesn't come with such scalable big size. And theres no end to such long list of shareware poster making tools. While the most shareware poster making tools comes with lot of features to play with. But still, just only for making a poster you have to cough out a hefty price of $30 to $60.00 for these commercial poster making tools. I have listed 7 free Poster making tools here, which includes all the necessary applications, right from designing a poster to printing it. These pack includes free poster making tools, poster printing tools and a poster trimmer or razor to scale the poster to a small size for printing which can be later put together to make mega poster size like that of movies. With such freebies in hand, making a motivational posters, wallpapers, collage photo albums at home, office and work place has become so easy. The best thing about these pack is that they come with simple straight forward interface and very easy to do approach. If I were you, last thing I'll do is put together all those money you were thinking of spending on those costly softwares to upgrade my computer hardwares like a laser printer and scanner combo. Look at the list.

Poster Forge Standard

Poster Forge is a software program for quick making of professional looking posters practically without any efforts and totally for free! It contains predesigned templates for creation of inspirational, motivational, movie or old west "Wanted" posters. Special built-in free version of poster printing utility ProPoster - allows you to print your own huge size posters and hang them on the wall. Why not to put your creative ideas in your posters and amaze your friends and colleagues? Or why not to use your new posters in the internet profiles or in the blogs?

Picture Collage Maker Free

Picture Collage Maker Free is a simple-to-use Windows freeware that turns ordinary photos and pictures into stunning keepsakes to share with family and friends. With just a few clicks, you can create digital collages, scrapbooks, posters, invitations, calendars, and greeting cards.

Posteriza

Posteriza is a software application for designing all kind of posters, banners and murals. It's very easy to use, it have been designed with inexperience users in mind, so everyone can create a customized poster in seconds. It allows printing posters of any size, as big as you want (imagine your favorite photo resize to 10m2, covering all the wall) even you could add text to make it more spectacular. Don't need to install, just download

Easy Poster Printer

Easy Poster Printer enables you to print posters of any size (max 20x20 meters) with a regular printer. Just drag n drop your picture into the application and click print. Easy Poster Printer comes with a Windows Shell Extension that allows you to see thumbnails of your posters in Windows. This ensures that it is very easy to locate your posters in Windows for later use or sharing. Easy Poster Printer uses the latest technologies from Microsoft .NET, which ensures you a wide compatibility.

The Rasterbator

The Rasterbator is an application which creates rasterized versions of images. The rasterized images can be printed and assembled into enormous (or smaller, if you prefer) posters. Enter the online Rasterbation Gallery to see what the images look like. The Rasterbator originated as a web application at homokaasu.org, but it has gained so much popularity that the web server occassionally cannot handle the load and a standalone version was in place. The standalone version is the same as the web version, except that downloading images from the web and image cropping are not supported, and you have to set the output size numerically (number of pages wide/high) rather than using a fancy drag handle. The results are exactly the same.

PosteRazor

The PosteRazor will cut a raster image into pieces which afterwards can be printed out and assembled to a poster. As input, the PosteRazor takes a raster image. The resulting poster is saved as a multipage PDF document. An easy to use, wizard like user interface guides through 5 steps.

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10+ Best Firefox Security and Privacy Addons

2010-04-06T11:29:00.001-07:00

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10+ Best Firefox Security and Privacy Addons

via Timeless Tales by Deepak on 4/5/10

Security and privacy are some of the major concerns these days while choosing a web browser to use. So much so that all the major players in the "browser wars" are providing or developing a private browsing mode.

Firefox with the myraid of addons that it has to offer is never far from action. Here are some of the top Firefox security and privacy addons that you should install for safer browsing.

Stealther

Stealther – Stealther provides you with what can be called a private browsing mode. It allows you to browse the web without leaving any trace. The addon disables browsing history, cookies, cache, recent tabs and sending of referrer header for as long as you want. It's lot like the incognito mode in Google chrome. Distrust is another similar addon that allows you to acheive the similar results.

Close 'n' Forget

Close 'n' Forget – While Stealther and Distrust require you to turn on private browsing explicitly, what if you happen to stumble upon a site that you wished you would have known to turn on the private browsing mode for? Close 'n' Forget comes to your rescue. Just hit the special close button once you are finished and that site will be deleted from history and cookies cleared as if you had never visited the site.

WOT

WOT – We all know about the threats which surfers suffer like viruses, spywares, adware, malicious spam, phishing etc., but here Web of Trust comes to rescue. WOT warns you about risky websites that try to scam surfers before they enter in them using a safety rating of 21 million websites, WOT combines evidence collected from multiple sources. Not only does it help surfers but also sets a protection level for children by blocking inappropriate content.

NoScript

NoScript – An absolute must have security addon for your browser. NoScript gives you the power to specify the sites you trust and only those sites will be allowed to run active content like Javascript, Java code and other executable code. The addon thus protects you from cross-site scripting attacks and clickjacking attacks.

Panic

Panic – Panic allows you to instantly close all the open tabs and replace it with another tab of your choice. So next time while you are on facebook and your boss drops to check in just hit Alt + ` and you would be taken to predefined page in no time.

hideBad

hideBad – Hides bad things! Saves all the tabs, closes them and opens your home page. Allows you to clear history, cookies, cache and passwords at your will and then restore them later.

TabRenamizer / Page Title Eraser

TabRenamizer and Page Title Eraser – Do your tabs give you away? Why not change their names with TabRenamizer or remove the names all together with Page Title Eraser? Both these addons let you play with the tab titles so that you can change them according to your will.

Gish It / tEMPORARYiNBOX / spamavert

Gish It!, TemporaryInbox, spamavert – These addons allow you to protect your inboxes from Spam by getting throwaway email addresses to be used with web forms while registering for sites you are not sure about.

BetterPrivacy

BetterPrivacy – Now you don't need to worry from anything like 'you are being tracked..!!' BetterPrivacy is a Super-Cookie Safeguard which protects from usually undeletable Flash-Cookies. It blocks long term tracking on Google, YouTube, Ebay to name a few.

Ghostery

Ghostery – It keeps an eye on the websites that are keeping an eye on you i.e. it finds out that which web sites which are tracking you and would alert you about the same.

Torbutton

Torbutton – It provides a button to securely and easily enable or disable the browser's use of Tor. Tor can be used for anonymous browsing and has been covered on makeuseof in detail.

FoxyProx

FoxyProxy – FoxyProxy automatically switches an internet connection across one or more proxy servers based on URL patterns and switching rules defined by you.

JSview

JSview – Allows you to view the source code of external files like javascript and CSS files. Although it would require a bit of knowledge and looking through the code to determine if it really is harmful, it can be quite useful to see if there is some malicious code sending off your passwords to somewhere else.

You have more such addons .. please share in comments.

Source : MakeUseOf

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List of Top 50 free applications for Windows

2009-12-20T22:37:00.001-08:00

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List of Top 50 free applications for Windows

via The Best Article Every day by bspcn on 12/15/09

Written by Nidhi

Are you tired of buying utilities or renewing license to your utilities on your already expensive Windows system? Here is a list of 50 such applications that are free to use. Furthermore, these applications do not require any fees and are available absolutely free.

1 Advanced SystemCare Free

Helps to protect, repair, clean and optimize your PC.

Owner : IObit

2 Wise Registry Cleaner Free

Helps you speeds up your PC by cleaning up your registry. Basically it provides windows registry clean up features with pretty easy to use interface.

Owner: WiseCleaner

3 Ccleaner

Helps you optimize your system by cleaning up the system. Cleanup includes Browser history, Trash Files, Temporary files and Log files. Further, it features un-installation of unused application and the registry cleanup.

Owner : Piriform Ltd.

4 Adobe Reader 9.1

Adobe Reader lets you

• Open up and interact with all PDF documents.

• View, search, digitally sign, verify, print and collaborate on Adobe PDF files.

Owner : Adobe Systems Incorporated

5 PDF-XChange

PDF – Xchange standard features includes

• Add Comments and Annotations

• Add & apply Custom Stamps

• Mark-up pages with text and objects

• Type directly on any PDF page

• Extract text from a PDF page and few more.

Owner : Tracker Software Products (Canada) Ltd

6 AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition

Protection against viruses and spyware

• Compatible with Windows Xp or higher

• Light weight and less overhead on OS.

Owner : AVG Technologies

7 avast! Home Edition

Simplest of application in terms of usability.

• Daily automatic updates

• Continuous data protection against all types of malware and spyware

• Available in 30 different languages.

Owner : ALWIL Software

8 Avira AntiVir Personal – FREE Antivirus

Provides Basic protection

for your computer against dangerous viruses, worms, Trojans.

• Available in 5 different languages

Owner : Avira.com

9 Avant Browser

Its salient feature include online profile storage to let user save users' bookmarks, RSS Feeds, configurations or web passwords etc, in Avant Online Storage.

Owner : Avant Force

10 Open Office 3.0

Open office is an open source office suite for Windows. This is available for free download and serves as good alternative to well know Microsoft's Word & Excel. It has full-featured set of office applications for word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation programs.

Owner : CollabNet, Inc., Sun, Sun Microsystems

11 DropBox

This application lets your share files with an account and you could use up to 2 GB (greater space requires paid accounts). This is quite handy tool for sharing your file over internet.

Owner : DropBOX.com

12 SKYPE

This popular freeware is VOIP based application which helps you voice call and is available for free download. You may make computer to computer calls for free. Moreover, Skype is one of the cheap VOIP service available to make computer to Phone calls.

Owner : Skype Limited

13 Smart Defrag

Smart Defrag helps defragment your hard drives more efficiently.

• Ease of use along with Data Safety and Reliability Guaranteed

Owner : IObit.com

14 Download Accelerator Plus

Provides Mirroring Speed Boost to download from the fastest sources.
Available in 38 languages
Built-in Twitter integration to Tweet directly from DAP

Owner : SpeedBit Ltd

15 Flash Player

Plays multimedia design made with Flash.

Owner : Adobe Systems Incorporated

16 VLC Media Player

• It supports various audio and video formats which include MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, etc.

• Further, it is handy for use with DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols.

Owner : Videolan.org

17 YouTube Downloader

• YouTube Downloader is software that allows you to download videos from YouTube, Google Video, Yahoo Video, and many others

• This lets you convert them to other video formats for Ipod, Iphone, PSP, Cell Phone, Windows Media, XVid and MP3.

Owner : Biennesoft

18 Irfan View

• Fast directory view (moving through directory)

• Batch conversion (with image processing)

• Multipage TIF editing

• File search

• Email option

• Multimedia player

• Print option and many more.

Owner : Irfan skiljan

19 Notepad++

• It is a very good source code editor with support for several programming languages.

• Very good search and replace option.

• It has good Bookmarking and Multi-document support feature.

Owner : sourceforge.net

20 Textpad

• Huge files can be edited, up to the limits of 32-bit virtual memory.

• Good search and replace files in huge files.

• Warm Start feature lets you restart exactly where you left off.

• And many more.

Owner : Helios Software Solutions

21 Word Web

• Provides Definitions, Synonyms and Usage for 150000 root words.

• Includes audio pronunciations

• Light-weight to the system

Owner : WordWeb Software

22 Applian FLV Player 2.0

• Play FLV Files on any PC

• Zoom to 2x or full screen.

• Includes free audio/video recorder & converter option.

Owner : Applian Technologies Inc.

23 Easeus Partition Manager 3.5

• Resize/Move partitions without data loss

• Extend system partition easily and safely

• Create, Merge, Split, Delete and Format partitions

• Support up to 2TB partition or hard drive

Owner : CHENGDU YIWO Tech Development Co., Ltd.

24 Free YouTube to MP3 Converter

• Lets you convert the YouTube video and download it as MP3 or Wav format.

• Automatically fills the title tag and the artwork in the downloaded mp3 files.

Owner : DVDVideoSoft Limited

25 Undelete Plus

• Restore accidentally deleted files

• Image recovery from Compact Flash, SmartMedia, MultiMedia and Secure Digital cards.

Owner : Phoenix Technologies Ltd

26 Video mp3 Extractor 1.8

• Convert Video Files (AVI, ASF, WMV files) to mp3

• Fast audio extraction algorithm

• Easy to use interface.

Owner : GeoVid.

27 Diagram Designer 1.22

• Creating flowcharts, UML class diagrams, illustrations and slide shows.

• Import/export WMF, EMF, BMP, JPEG, PNG, MNG, ICO, GIF and PCX images.

• Consists of slide show viewer and Simple graph plotter to plot mathematical expressions.

Owner : meesoft.logicnet.dk

28 Real Temp

• Reads temperature information for all inter Core processors.

• Keep track of the minimum and the maximum temperature of the processor.

• Provides calibration features for each core of your processor.

Owner : www.techPowerUp.com

29 Pidgin

• Free chat client with support for Msn, Yahoo, AIM Google Talk and other chat networks all at once.

• Supports more than 60 different languages.

Owner : pidgin.im

30 VNC Viewer Free Edition 4.1

• Easy connect and use remote computer screen.

• Easy to install and use.

• Supports loading and saving of .vnc a file which contains a set of connection options.

Owner : RealVNC Limited

31 Free Video to iPod and PSP Converter

• Helps convert full video or the part of video to Apple iPod, Sony PSP, BlackBerry and mobile phones MP4 video format

Owner : DVDVideoSoft Limited

32 LimeWire

• Helps user connect to P2P network and share the file they want to share.

• Faster starup and less waiting time.

• Better memory usage

• Free download and usage for basic usage.

Owner : Lime Wire LLC

33 FrostWire

• Completely free and open source.

• Provides Faster Torrent Speeds, I-Tunes compatibility, Friendly online chat rooms, easy navigation and many more.

Owner : frostwire.com

34 JetAudio

Even though plus Vx cost but basic version is absolutely free. Features it consists are as

• Audio CD ripping

• Voice recording

• File conversion between various formats and

• Audio CD buring.

Owner : JetAudio Inc.

35 Sql Tools

• This tool is for Oracle 8/9i/10g PL/SQL development.

• Provides good basic editor services

• Easy to install and connect to ORACLE server

Owner : Aleksey Kochetov

36 Tortoise SVN

Tortoise SVN is Subversion client having features such as

• Atomic Commits

• Directory and File versioning,

• Versioned Metadata

• Consistent Data Handling

• Reliable and quick tagging and branching and many more.

Owner : subversion.tigris.org

37 7 Zip

• High Compression ratio

• Compression ratio in the new 7z format is 30-50% better than ratio in ZIP format

• Supports multiple formats such as 7z, ZIP, CAB, RAR, ARJ, LZH, CHM, GZIP, BZIP2, Z, TAR, CPIO, RPM and DEB formats

Owner : Igor Pavlov

38 The Gimp

The GIMP is a more of the complex image editor like Photoshop available for windows platform. This application is free for download. It is quite good alternative Adobe's Photoshop with similar features available for use.

Owner : The GIMP Team

39 iTunes

ITunes is a freeware that helps you play your digital music and video. It helps you synchronize your iPod, iPhone, and Apple TV.

Owner : Apple Inc.

40 JCreator

Jcreator is a light weight IDE for Java Programmers. Project management, project templates, code-completion, debugger interface, editor with syntax highlighting, wizards and a fully customizable user interface are some of the functionality that it provides.

Owner : Xinox Software

41 Eclipse

Eclipse is Software Development environment with support for multiple programming languages such as Java, C++, perl, PHP and others.

Owner : The Eclipse Foundation

42 MySql

MySql is a free open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). This is the most popular open source RDBMS and offers free download and usage. Further this has adequate features needed by small to medium scale database.

Owner : Sun Microsystems, Inc

43 Cygwin

Cygwin is a Linux-like environment for Windows.

This provides a DLL which acts as a Linux API emulation layer providing substantial Linux API functionality.

Owner : Cygwin

44 Apache

• This is free/open source http web server.

• This provided Server-side programming language support to authentication schemes.

Owner : Apache Software Foundation

45 Xampp

• Xampp is a comprehensive set of web development resources under a bundle.

• This is integrated package that consist PHP, PHP myAdmin, Mysql RDBMS, Apache Web server, Filezilla Ftp Client and few more.

Owner : Apache Friends

46 HTTrack

• This is freeware that you download the full website into your local folder.

• Arranges the file in the same directory structure.

• Further, lets you browse the pages with offline browser utility.

Owner : Xavier Roche & other contributors

47 AVS TV Box Free

• AVS TV Box Beta is a FREE universal software TV viewer and comes along with Personal Video Recorder functionality (PVR) .

• PVR allows you to schedule TV recordings.

• It works with any windows video capture device like satellite, TV and DVB cards, miniDV cameras, video capture cards and others.

Owner : Online Media Technologies Ltd., UK

48 Mozilla ThunderBird

• This is good alternative to Microsoft's Outlook. This is an email client email and Usenet client.

• Provides features such as easy mail setup, attachment re-minder, One click Address Book and many more.

Owner : Mozilla

49 Free Guitar Tuner

Free guitar tuner provides features for tuning acoustic and electric guitars. It provides few set of tones to tune it.

Owner : GCH Guitar Academy

50 mTorrent

mTorrent is free to download and use torrent client. This is one of the finest, speedy, efficient, and free torrent clients. Ease of installation and use along with user friendly GUI makes it quite popular.

Owner : BitTorrent, Inc.

Image Credit : Tech2.in.com, yesnet.yk.ca, lifeizpoetry.com, redcetus.com, stgeorgecollege.co.uk, funbigtime.com, sprucesoft.com, powerbasic.com, thewaytobuildhealth,i25.tinypic.com, milkyourmoney.com

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JD Salinger’s Uncollected Stories

2009-12-04T07:36:00.001-08:00

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JD Salinger’s Uncollected Stories

via Open Culture by Dan Colman on 11/22/09

JD Salinger captured the public imagination with The Catcher in the Rye in 1951. Later, he published Nine Stories in 1953, Franny and Zooey in 1961, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour in 1963, and a short story for the New Yorker in 1965, among other things. And then nothing. He stopped publishing and went off the grid. For those who always craved a little more Salinger, this site is a worth a look. It pulls together 22 Salinger stories that appeared in various magazines during his career, but were never published in book format. This collection includes The Young Folks, Salinger's very first published story; Hapworth, his very last piece; and Slight Rebellion Off Madison, an early version of a scene that later appeared in The Catcher in the Rye. You can peruse the full collection of stories here.

via @BrainPicker

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Top 10 Cross-Platform Apps that Run on Windows, OS X, Linux

2009-12-03T12:18:00.001-08:00

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Top 10 Cross-Platform Apps that Run on Windows, OS X, Linux

via The Best Article Every day by bspcn on 11/28/09

Written by Kevin Purdy

Whether your important data lives in the cloud, on your laptop, or on a different operating system, you shouldn't have to use sub-par tools to get at it. These downloads work with every major operating system, along with some not-so-major (mobile) ones.

Photo by Mykl Roventine.

All of these applications run on all three major operating systems—Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux—and most can be loaded onto a thumb drive and run as a portable app on any Windows system. Some can also be accessed from the web, and a few have dedicated mobile apps for most phone platforms. We've distinguished which apps work where at the front of each item. If we've missed any platforms, please tell us so (politely!) in the comments.

10. Buddi

Computers: Buddi is a financial management application developed with financial non-experts in mind. Sure, it can import your CSV file from a bank or financial firm, and it does all the standard financial calculations and projections. But the way it switches between money figures, and walks you through the importing and setting up of your accounts, makes it a real open-source find, and you can easily swap profiles between your laptop and desktop systems, if needed. Looking for something with a bit more mathematical oomph? Money management alternative GnuCash has you covered.

9. KeePass

Computers, portable, cellphones: You use a multitude of applications and web sites that require passwords, license keys, and administrator codes. On one computer alone, that makes it worth having a central vault for all that stuff. If you use more than one computer, having a consistent KeePass database is really, really helpful. Encrypt your master password database with a file only you have access to, and/or a truly secure single password, and you can take that list just about anywhere—on Windows, Mac, Linux, iPhones, Android, BlackBerry, Palms, on a USB drive, or pretty much anywhere. Open-source coders love to write KeePass apps, so there's a very good chance you'll always have this clever password management system at your side. For help getting started with KeePass, check out Gina's guide to securely tracking passwords. (It also works great in conjunction with Dropbox.

8. TrueCrypt

Computers: TrueCrypt is a multi-platform security tool for encrypting and protecting files, folders, or entire drives. The software behind it is open source, and so likely to be supported and developed beyond its current version and platforms. It's only on Windows, Mac, and Linux at the moment (though that's no small feat), but it can be made to run as a portable app, and its encryption standards—AES, Serpent, and Twofish—are supported by many other encryption apps that can work with it. In other words, TrueCrypt makes you feel better about taking all the revealing information about yourself or your work on the road. Check our guide to encrypting your data for more.

7. Thunderbird

Computers, portable: Mozilla's desktop email client is an excellent tool for reading, sending, and archiving email, even if it doesn't get a ton of love these days—seeing as how seemingly everyone's doing their email thing on the web. But even if you don't use it as your main email client, Thunderbird remains the most reliable way to back up your email from any service and, in most cases, still access it when the web interface goes down. With the imminent release of Thunderbird 3, and the portable version to follow right after, Thunderbird might just turn a few more folks back to the idea of desktop email.

6. Pidgin and Adium

Computers, portable: They're not the same program, but they come from the same open-source roots. These instant messaging clients do the yeoman's work of connecting to all the major chat protocols and helping you maintain a universal buddy list. Pidgin does the job adequately, if without a ton of pizazz, on Windows and Linux clients (you can spice it up a bit with these snazzy plug-ins), while Adium, compiled from the same libpurple code library, is written with OS X's glassy looks in mind. Both are crucial if you don't want to run multiple memory-sucking IM clients on all your machines.

5. Miro

Computers, portable: Miro doesn't get enough love (here or elsewhere) for being a pretty great all-in-one aggregator for all the video on the web. The open-source video player handles video podcast feeds, Hulu streams (which you can subscribe to, show-by-show, TiVo-style), live streams, local files, and anything else with moving pictures with ease and grace, and you can take it wherever you go to ensure you can watch your favorite web-accessible or desktop videos.

4. 7-Zip

Computers, portable: 7-Zip doesn't have the sexiest job on a computer, but since no two operating systems accept all the same compressed file formats, it's an essential download. It tackles the RAR files that file sharers are so fond of, makes sense of .tar and .gz files on Windows systems, and has its own compression format (.7z) that's space-saving and quick.

3. Firefox

Computer, portable, and (coming soon on non-Maemo devices) mobile: Even if you don't think it's the absolute fastest or most cutting-edge browser, Firefox is safer than the well-known standard on most Windows systems, and it's customizable in every last detail. That makes it worth keeping on your USB drive as a go-to option for browsing at the in-laws or at home. With add-ons like Xmarks or Weave, it's also easy to keep your bookmarks—and keyword bookmark searches—within reach on any system. And when Firefox Mobile, a.k.a. Fennec, makes its debut on mobile phones, we might see some rather awesome synchronization of everything, right down to the last tab you had open at home.

2. Dropbox

Computers, web, mobile: Dropbox creates a single folder that you'll always be able to access, no matter where you are. That folder can actually sync files and folders from anywhere on your system, but the concept remains the same—instant backup for anything you drop in one location, across multiple computers, through Dropbox's web site, on the iPhone, and on mobile browsers. That makes it perfect for music you love to listen to, documents you need to work on, and photos you pick up at a relative's house. In other words, feel free to stop emailing yourself.

1. VLC Media Player

Computer, portable: Managing the multitude of codecs, formats, and restrictions on media files, from one system to another, is a pain you don't need. VLC Media player, installed on any system, just works. It's built with the goods to process, convert, resize, and stream just about any file you can find with audio or video, and its presence on a USB drive ensures nobody ever comes up embarrassed when their nephew's soccer video just won't play, even though, they swear, it worked just yesterday. For a guide on making the most of VLC's cross-codec powers, read Adam's tips on mastering your digital media with VLC.

What apps are always with you, or always downloaded, when you're switching between systems, traveling, or otherwise away from your preferred setup? Do tell us in the comments.

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25+ Awesome Websites to Make Funny Pictures Online

2009-12-03T12:14:00.001-08:00

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25+ Awesome Websites to Make Funny Pictures Online

via Timeless Tales by Deepak on 11/29/09

The presence of many online tools and applications makes it very easy and also fun to play with your images(not necessarily) or with your friends. The best part of these websites is that most of them are free to access, and you do not even need any technical knowledge to operate.

Below are few websites with which you can change backgrounds from dull to exotic ones, create a collage in different colors, morph your friend's face with one of your dearest creature and many other things.

1- PhotoFunia

Most of you must be aware with the real tricks that Funia can create. But those who have not experienced the magic of Photofunia this is the time to check it out.

2- BigHugeLabs

Create calendars, posters, covers, mosaic, collages and what not! Include the pictures of yours and your loved ones in your daily routine with BigHugeLabs.

3- FunPhotoBox

Select your photo, add different effects on your pictures, and start fun.

4- ImageChef

Slide your photograph into 40 fun filled photoframes and share it on popular site like Facebook.

5- InStyle.com

Try the hairstyle and beauty style of celebrities before your friends do.

6- BeFunky

Try Charcola, Inkify, Black & White and many other effects with high resolution and better clarity.

7- Front Page You

Create a fantabulous magazine cover in just 3 second for yourself and shock your friends.

8- Yearbook Yourself

Upload your photos and get yourself listed in black and white decade.

9- MagMyPic

Fake magazine covers and add comic to your pictures.

10- Letter James

Personalize your all photos, photo-calendars and send them to your friends and beloved ones.

More Websites to Have Fun With

11- Photo505

12- Xerox

13- PicArtia

14- WriteOnIt

15- Dumpr

16- Fakemagazines.com

17- Montagraph

18- piZap

19- AnyMaking

20- LoonaPix

21- myHeritage

22- OnCoverPage

23- Funny.Pho.to

24- Festisite

25- FACEinHOLE

26- Create HDR

27- Blingee

28- MoronFace

Surely, you might have used quite a few, but not all, so try your hand in other remaining cool sites and let us know your experience in form of a comment.

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10 Amazing Tools for Sharing Visual Inspiration through Screenshots

2009-10-22T23:11:00.001-07:00

Sent to you by Somy via Google Reader:

10 Amazing Tools for Sharing Visual Inspiration through Screenshots

via Timeless Tales by Deepak on 9/14/09

Did you find an inspirational piece of webdesign, a cool illustration, or a neat webapp? Don't keep it for yourself, share it with your friends! Luckily, we have the coolest tools for doing it.

Ember

Ember is the best way to share your design inspiration with the world – from webpages to screenshots, design to illustration, Ember is built for creatives looking to build an online design scrapbook

Image Spark

Image Spark lets you upload and create a library of images that inspire you in whatever it is you do. Whether you're a fashion designer, web designer, or just redesigning your bathroom, Image Spark can help harness the visual direction of your projects

Shrink the Web

Join thousands of other webmasters, bloggers, ad agencies, developers, and directory owners who enhance their sites & applications with fully automated website thumbnails

Toobla

Everyone loves finding great content on the web—music videos, hilarious photos, Flash games—and we love to share it with our friends, family, coworkers. Toobla provides a way to hold onto the web content you want to keep in a useful visual library

ScrnShots

ScrnShots is the best way to take, find, and share screenshots of web and screen based design

LittleSnapper

Built for people who love to capture webpages or their desktop, LittleSnapper is full of great snapping tools

vi.sualize.us

Bookmark the pictures you like around the web. Enjoy people's favorite images

Skitch

Skitch.com is a webservice that works hand in hand with our application Skitch to give you 1-click uploading of images for fast and fun image sharing

yay! everyday

We're not an image bookmarking site. We don't selfishly hoard images for ourselves. We're more interested in sharing the inspiration, website and artist behind the work

Tiny Grab

TinyGrab is a simple yet extremely powerful utility for Mac OS X. Harnessing the power of Mac OS X's built in screenshot capabilites, TinyGrab instantly uploads and allows you to share with a small URL

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Play Games in Google Talk

2009-06-07T05:05:00.001-07:00

Sent to you by Somy via Google Reader:

Play Games in Google Talk

via Google Operating System by Alex Chitu on 5/28/09

Google released a realtime gadgets API for Google Talk that's especially useful if you want to play games with your friends.

"gadgets.realtime and the APIs built on top of it allow gadget developers to write applications that communicate asynchronously with another endpoint, whether that endpoint is another instance of the application (on another machine, or in another browser, for example), the container hosting the gadget, or an application hosted in the cloud. The obvious application of these APIs is 1:1 gaming -- at its most basic a Tic-Tac-Toe game between two users. However there are many other more complex (and arguably -- depending on your thoughts about games -- more interesting) scenarios that these APIs enable; for instance, a chat application that translates text as participants type it, or a shared whiteboard, or an application that lets a couple choose the best flight for their upcoming vacation."

For now, the APIs are only available in a developer sandbox, which includes a special interface of Gmail Chat. Here's how you can play chess with one of your friends:

* Go to the sandbox and send this link to your friend: http://talkgadget.google.com/talkgadget/sandbox .

* When your friend started to use Gmail Chat's sandbox, click on "Options", select "Start application", paste the following address:
http://code.google.com/apis/talk/examples/chess.xml
and press Enter.

If you don't know how to play chess, try two other applications:

* a very simple rock-paper-scissors game:
http://code.google.com/apis/talk/examples/rps.xml

* an automatic translation application:
http://code.google.com/apis/talk/examples/interpreter.xml

{ via Google Talk Blog. Thanks, Niranjan. }

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install Linux on already installed windows

2008-11-01T18:22:00.000-07:00

It use to take me almost a day for me to install linux on my already installed vista, Until i found this amazing software that needs a "click" to install linux.This is specially made for installing linux on windows.But only thing that you need is an internet because the installer would download all the installing files from the web.Dowlnload this Wubi ,just run the installer, enter a password for the new account, and click "Install" and enjoy the free linux.

KallOut, Powerful Contextual Search

2008-10-23T04:12:00.001-07:00

killer application

Sent to you by Somy via Google Reader:

KallOut, Powerful Contextual Search

via Google Operating System by Alex Chitu on 15/10/08

When you read an article, you often find concepts or names that aren't properly explained, but it's inconvenient to interrupt your reading and use a search engine to find more information. KallOut is a Windows application that addresses this problem: whether you read the document in a browser, a word processor or in a PDF reader, you can select some text and obtain some useful information in a mini-browser.

KallOut lists many search engines and reference sites from which you can choose, but it also suggests good options. For example, if you select "DMCA takedown", KallOut suggests an article from Wikipedia, for "Flickr" KallOut points to Flickr's homepage, while "NY" is linked to Google Maps and geotagged photos from Flickr.

The software displays search results, maps, videos, Wikipedia articles, definitions, translations - all without opening a new page. For now, KallOut supports Internet Explorer, Firefox, Microsoft Office 2003/2007, Adobe Reader, WordPad and Notepad.

Internet Explorer 8 introduced accelerators, a similar feature that already has a public API and an impressive gallery, but KallOut is not limited to Internet Explorer, it's easier to use and it requires less clicks.

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Lessons in Building Scalable Systems

2008-10-17T01:45:00.001-07:00

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Lessons in Building Scalable Systems

via Google Talkabout by Bill Kee on 19/09/07

I gave a presentation about the Google Talk Service a while ago at the Google Scalability Conference hosted by Googlers in Seattle. You can watch the video below.

Here is the abstract:
Since launching Google Talk in the summer of 2005, we have integrated the service with two large existing products: Gmail and orkut. Each of these integrations provided unique scalability challenges as we had to handle a sudden large increase in the number of users. Today, Google Talk supports millions of users and handles billions of packets per day. In the presentation, I discuss several practical lessons and key insights from our experience that can be used for any project. These lessons cover both engineering and operational areas.

Posted by Reza Behforooz, Software Engineer

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New transliteration bots make it easy to chat in Indian languages

2008-10-17T00:41:00.001-07:00

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New transliteration bots make it easy to chat in Indian languages

via Google Talkabout by Brian Hutchins on 12/08/08

Have you ever wished that you could chat with your family and friends in your native language? Sometimes there's just no substitute for expressing a thought in your own language. Google Talk now has transliteration bots that will convert text from English to Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil or Telugu. Think of a bot as an invited guest to your chat session that will transliterate what you type in English to the right local script. For those who are not familiar with transliteration, it is a service provided by Google India that allows you to type in Indian languages using phonetically equivalent English script (it is also available on our labs page, orkut scraps and blogger). If you're chatting in Hindi, when you type 'haal kaisa hai janab ka?' the en2hi.translit@bot.talk.google.com bot will reply in Hindi as 'हाल कैसा है जनाब का?'

There are currently 5 transliteration bots - Hindi (en2hi.translit), Kannada (en2kn.translit), Malayalam (en2ml.translit), Tamil (en2ta.translit) and Telugu (en2te.translit), and remember that their names end with "@bot.talk.google.com". To use one of these bots follow these three steps:

1) First add the bot that you want to your friend's list. (For example, add en2hi.translit@bot.talk.google.com for Hindi). You just need to do this once.
2) Start a chat session with your friend
3) Convert the chat session to a group chat and invite the bot to it.

Read this to know more about the bots, and let us know what you think.

तो शुरू हो जाइए...

Kuntal Loya
Software Engineer

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5000+ Resources to Do Just About Anything Online

2008-10-17T00:10:00.001-07:00

Sent to you by Somy via Google Reader:

5000+ Resources to Do Just About Anything Online

via Timeless Tales by Deepak on 13/10/08

6 Key Ways to Measure Your Blog's Success - Six essential tools for measuring how your blog is performing.

30+ AJAX-Powered WordPress Plugins - AJAX provides a way to have pages auto-update to reflect new data without page reloads. These are 30+ tools written for your WordPress blog with this in mind.

50+ Ways to Track Website Traffic - It's difficult to grow your blog or website without having some data on how people are finding you and using your site.

120+ Resources for Bloggers - From design to hosting, there's something here for every level of blogging experience.

40+ Firefox Add-ons for High Speed Blogging - Let your browser help you speed up your time working on your blog.

40+ Free Blog Hosts - Sometimes you want a blog, but not the hassle of maintenance; these pre-built, free blog hosts are the answer for you.

8 Pownce Rivals Compared - We don't all have time to run a full-featured blog, so why not use a mini-blog to still get your voice heard or keep friends up-to-date?

70+ Podcasting Tools and Resources - Pretty much everyone has heard of podcasting, but it's hard to learn where to start. This list includes tools for both the beginner and the seasoned veteran.

12 Twitter Apps for Your Phone - Do your mini-blogging while on the go.

50 Great Widgets For Your Blog - All sorts of services offered by third-party websites for you to add new features and functionality to your blog.

120+ RSS Resources - It's amazing how many people still haven't adopted RSS, (Really Simple Syndication, a way to publish and subscribe to frequently updated content like blog entries and news items), and this toolbox aims to educate to the new way of keeping up with all your favorite blogs.

30+ Tools For Working With Wordpress Posts - Tools for tweaking and customizing the your WordPress posts.

30+ 1-Column WordPress Themes - A group of WordPress themes for those who want nothing but the easiest look they can go for.

30+ WordPress 2-Column Themes - Apply some 2-column design ideas to your site.

30+ WordPress 3-Column Themes - For those folks who want their WordPress blog to show a little bit more information and organization.

50+ Tools For The WordPress Admin - Tons of tools for helping you manage the backend of your blog; these tools help you out with the administration side of things.

50+ WordPress Plugins for Multimedia - The Internet is becoming more and more of a multimedia experience and there's no reason why your blog shouldn't provide some too.

30+ WordPress Plugins To Get More Blog Readers - As the name implies, it's made up of tools to help you find more readers, the lifeblood of any blog.

30+ Tools to Turn WordPress into a Personal Hub - Tools for making WordPress do more than just run your blog.

17 WordPress Plugins For AdSense - Everyone would like to make a little money from their blog and these plugins will help you do just that.

30+ WordPress Plugins for Statistics - For those who want quick, built-in to the site statistics for a WordPress blog.

20+ Firefox Plugins For Managing Email - Use Firefox to help you manage and control your email.

90+ IM Tools - Instant messenger clients and buddy aggregators abound!

75+ iPhone Resources - Apps, bogs, podcasts and more about the iPhone.

75+ Email Services That Aren't Gmail - More choices for online email services than you can shake a stick at.

60+ Tools For Gmail - A lengthy list of tools for managing and manipulating your Gmail.

50+ Enhancements for Skype - Love it or hate it, there is a loyal following for Skype and a busy developer base.

30+ VoIP Services - It's hard to resist the allure of VoIP, and with this list you should find the service that best suits your needs.

110+ Thunderbird Themes and Extensions - Thunderbird is a highly customizable open source email client - try these themes and extensions to make it even better.

100+ Tools For Flickr Addicts - The possibilities with Flickr seem endless, and this toolbox shows you just some of what is out there for you Flickr addicts.

90+ Online Photography Tools and Resources - Tools for editing, finding, and storing photos.

80+ Photoshop Tools and Resources - Adobe's online version is coming very soon, but this toolbox shows there's still lots of life left in the desktop version.

150+ Online Video Tools and Resources - Tools for just about every aspect of getting your video online including editing, converting, hosting and more.

6 Online Photo Editors Compared - There are tools out there to let you edit photos without having to strain your desktop. This list compares six of them.

30+ Mobile Photo Sharing Tools - How to share your photos on the fly as you go through your day.

50+ Websites For the Kickass Control Freak - More tools to get your life organized and get more done online and out in real life.

40+ Ways To Access Your Computer Remotely - Don't you hate it when you have multiple computers and you realize, after it's too late, you forgot something? With remote access, you just login and grab it on the go.

70+ Tools For Job Hunting 2.0 - Sometimes we all need a new job, and more and more folks are turning to the web as a means of finding their new vocation.

30+ Leading E-Commerce Sites - Sites to help you shop or set up your own e-commerce presence.

40+ Tools For Google Calendar - Clients, notifications, interface changes and more can be found here.

30+ Mailing List Services - Keeping your customers or associates up-to-date is essential to business, and newsletters are one of the easiest ways to do it.

100+ Tools and Resources To Make Money Online - Over 100 legitimate ways you can make money online.

30+ Online Freelance Resources - Sites to help freelancers find projects that require their skills.

45+ Mobile Productivity Resources - Mobile phones are a part of everyday life now, so you might as well put them to more uses than just making phone calls.

230+ Tools for Running a Business Online - Learn how to run and manage your business without ever logging off.

30+ Presentation & Slideshow Services - Sites that help you make presentations or just make slideshows of images to share with colleagues or friends.

30+ Resources to Get Things Done - It's easy to get distracted on the web; this list will hopefully keep you a bit more organized and focused.

60+ Collaborative Tools for Groups - Tools for teams or businesses to work together from remote locations.

40+ PDF Tools to Rip, Mix and Burn - PDFs are a useful tool for transferring all sorts of documents in their original form; these tools will help you with all aspects of dealing with them.

60+ Tools For Back To School - Tools for college students.

20+ Dating Sites For Geeks and Freaks - We're living the rest of our lives online, so we might as well look for love there too.

50+ Sites to Learn About Food - From ordering groceries to looking up menus and sharing tips, new websites are making the Internet a food lover's paradise.

80+ Green Sites - A list of sites to help you live a more Earth-friendly life.

40+ Resources for Managing Your Money Online - Managing your money can be a nightmare, but these 40+ tools aim to help ease some of the pain.

90+ Social Games, AJAX Games and Mashups - We all need to to chill sometimes and these sites will provide well earned distractions.

50+ Online Map Tools and Resources - Tools for looking up maps and generating customized ones for all types of purposes.

30+ Tools For Questions and Advice - Sites to help you get advice, knowledge in specific fields and more.

30+ Ways to Find Wi-Fi Hotspots - Who doesn't want to find Wi-Fi on the go sometimes? These tools will help you find all the hotspots you can handle.

40+ Amazon Tools - New ways to search Amazon, compare prices and make sure that if the price drops, you get a refund.

30+ iTunes Tools - The media player can do lots more than just sync your iPod and iPhone.

90+ Essential Music and Audio Websites - Listen to music, discover new bands, make your own remixes, and much more in this comprehensive music toolbox.

50+ Tools For Torrenting - There is a lot more to torrenting than just downloading pirated music; this list helps you find legal torrents and pick the right downloading program for you.

50+ Tools for eBay Buyers and Sellers - There's a lot more to eBay than meets the eye, and these tools will help you manage both your buying and selling.

230+ Keyboard Shortcuts for Top Web Services - All those little secrets to save you time on various websites.

15 Ways To Create Website Screenshots - Tools to help you preserve the image on your screen.

30+ Web Browsers - There are a lot more choices out there than Internet Explorer and Firefox: here are several handpicked for you.

30+ Firefox Add-ons For Downloading Images, Videos & Files - You're browsing your little heart out, you see something you want to keep, you need just the right tool to do it with.

50+ Firefox Add-ons For Security and Privacy - Ways to protect your identity online and cover your footsteps as you move around.

7 Ways to Enjoy Music in Firefox - Enjoy music as you browse the web.

60+ Download Managers - Programs that use little tweaks to get every ounce of speed possible out of your download bandwidth.

30+ Firefox Themes - Change the look of your browser from the plain old, default selection.

50+ Google Reader Extensions and Scripts For Firefox - Use Firefox to help manage your Google Reader subscriptions.

30+ Language Tools For Firefox - Tools for Firefox to allow you to translate, write, and learn other languages.

19 Alternative Ways to Use Firefox - Why not make your browser do more than just surf the web?

40+ Online Polling Sites - Take polls, create polls, and gauge public opinion.

7 RSS Tools For Firefox - Tools to help you turn Firefox into your RSS reader.

30+ Skins For Opera - Spice up the look of this sleek web browser.

30+ Peer to Peer Services - All sorts of services that utilize peer-to-peer technology to deliver information to you.

14 Personalized Homepages Compared, Feature by Feature - We all have to see something as the first page when we start up our web browser, so you might as well make it something that is useful to you.

30+ Tagging Tools - We all like quick, easy access to things, and tagging helps you do just that.

45+ Web Operating Systems - It's not hard to imagine someday that your computer will not store anything, but only connect you to your programs online; these OS sites represent one of those steps forward.

120+ Web Development Resources - A huge list of tools to assist you with developing your website.

16 Sites and Resources For Amazon S3 - See how others are leveraging the power of Amazon's Simple Storage Service.

80+ Open Source Content Management Systems - a Content Management System (CMS) is an easy and quick way to get a website built and organized.

30+ Firefox Add-ons for Web Developers & Designers - Use Firefox to help you develop & design your site with an assortment of tools.

70+ Resources for Creating a Forum - Add an interactive aspect to your personal or company presence on the web by creating a forum.

80+ File Hosting and Sharing Sites - Every file on the web needs to be stored somewhere, and this list will help you find a solution that best suits your needs.

50+ Tools for Web Design - With these tools, just about anyone can try their hand at web design.

30+ Wiki Tools and Resources - Various tools for building a wiki.

30+ Firefox Tools for Bookmarking & Search - A list of useful tools to help you bookmark and search more efficiently using the Firefox browser.

180+ Del.icio.us Tools and Resources - After reading this list, you will wonder what you CAN'T do with del.icio.us.

50+ Digg Tools and Resources - Firefox extensions, WordPress Plugins, RSS feeds and much more for your social news site.

29 Coolest Custom Search Apps Built on Google - Unique ways to drill down your Google search results to more specific ideas.

50+ Social Bookmarking Sites - A list of tools to work with all the social bookmarking sites out there.

40+ Social Search Engines - Everything on the web seems to be being shared and voted on nowadays, including search results.

18 Sites for Social Shopping & Deals - Go shopping with your friends…even in your pajamas at 2am!

6 Alternatives To Digg - Digg isn't the only site out there to allow you to vote on stories.

10 Most Beautiful Social Networks - Some social networks are just plain old ugly; these 10 definitely aren't.

150+ Facebook Apps, Scripts and Add-ons - From desktop apps to Firefox plugins, this list is a nearly endless resource of ways to manipulate Facebook.

13 Google Maps Mashups - There are tons of Google Maps mashups out there, and some are better than others. Here are 13 good ones.

11 Things You Can Bet On (Legally) - All for fun, but you can try "betting" on everything from stocks to video performances.

10 Richest People in Tech - Who are the 10 people in the world that have gotten crazy rich off society's addiction to technology?

Well, thats the list .. if you got more, please do share them.

Source : mashable.com

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30+ Solutions to Start Your Own Wiki

2008-10-16T23:13:00.001-07:00

Sent to you by Somy via Google Reader:

30+ Solutions to Start Your Own Wiki

via Timeless Tales by Deepak on 13/10/08

Whether you're setting up an Intranet for your company or a collaborative website for your family, there are a variety of wiki solutions to choose from. We've gathered a list of more than 30 of them for those that wish to try their hand at running one themselves or are looking for a fully hosted solution.

Do you have a wiki? If so, what solution do you use?

Stand Alone Wikis

Corendal Wiki - A free and open source wiki package directed at corporate users. It's been a while since it has had any updates.

DokuWiki - Aimed at small companies' documentation needs. Offers templating and plugin support.

FlexWiki - A free and open source wiki built on the .NET framework.

GetWiki - A modified version of MediaWiki that provides new features including XML importing.

IpbWiki - A system that integrates MediaWiki with Invision Power Boards to make for a whole new wiki experience.

JAMWiki - A Java based clone of MediaWiki that uses the same syntax for things such as footnotes, templates and more.

MediaWiki - The same software that powered the omnipresent Wikipedia, MediaWiki is a PHP based, customizable system that is one of the most popular solutions due to its familiarity.

Mindtouch - Free and open source wiki if you choose to run it on your own host, but if you prefer a managed solution for an enterprise install, they offer various managed solutions.

MoinMoin - Has different built-in templates and allows for the support of documents. Popular framework being used by the likes of the GNOME and Ubuntu sites.

Ogham - A wiki-like CMS system that runs in JavaScript and is aimed at people who feel standard wikis are too technically challenging.

PHPWiki - One of the oldest wiki solutions, first appearing in December 1999.

PikiePikie - Files are stored in such a way that they are easily manipulated with a text editor on the server, and has safeguards against spammer attacks that make it easy to roll back edits.

PmWiki - Built more for non-IT people and those that have no wiki background. Easy to change skins and appearance.

QwikiWiki - Built for speed and minimal features, QwikiWiki is built for ease and a quicker learning curve.

TikiWiki - A content management system capable of handling many different jobs, but as the name implies, it favors wikis.

Wikka Wiki - Forked from Wakka Wiki, Wikka has some new features such as support for mindmapping.

Wiki Farms

@wiki - A completely free wiki service that offers WYSIWIG editing and password protected posts.

ClearWiki.com - Gives you your own subdomain, up to 10 users, 256 MB of storage for the free accounts, does have paid solutions with more of everything. Directed towards businesses.

EditThis.info - Allows you a free 25 MB MediaWiki install with unlimited users and pages.

eTouch SamePage - Allows teams to work in a collaborative environment on projects, free version allows for up to 5 users, 3 projects and 15 pages.

LittleWiki - Create a public or private free wiki with WYSIWIG or plain text editors.

Netcipia - Free wikis with no limits on what you can do and even allows you to monetize your site to sell your expertize on a subject.

On-Wiki - Somewhat directed towards academics and business in that it allows media, graphs, plotting and more for free.

PBWiki - Offers free wikis, but they only have 10 MB of space. Paid solutions start at $99.50 a year. The service offers password protected wikis for private or corporate situations.

ScribbleWiki - A MediaWiki hosting service that has free accounts for personal use and paid solutions for companies that need their pages ad-free. Site has tech support and a few other premium features.

ViaWiki - Offers free 25 MB sites and paid solutions for multiple users up to an unlimited number.

Wetpaint - A free wiki farm that focuses on bringing together the wiki format with blogs and forums. Very much directed towards fan-style sites.

Wiki-Site - Free MediaWiki accounts for individuals and groups, paid accounts get unique domains, access to stats and no advertisements, amongst other perks.

Wikia - Co-founded by Jimmy Wales of Wikipedia fame, Wikia has to approve each wiki that is started, and they have to be believed to draw a large amount of traffic and editors.

Wikidot - 300 MB free Wiki for whatever you want, Google AdSense can be placed in your wiki with you keeping 80% of the revenue.

Wikispaces - Starts at free 2 GB site for friends and families up to paid white label solutions.

XWiki -Offers free solutions as well as paid options for enterprise users. Allows for application development and embedding in pages, along with RSS feeds to keep teams up on changes.

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mysore dasara 2008

2008-10-12T00:50:00.000-07:00

This was my first time to mysore dasara. Thought would go alone but some how sharavn gave me company to mysore and also bought his santro. We really had lovely ride...stopping along the journey to sugar cranes fields, The old retro kannada music was all soothing..... Thanks to Chandra who made all the arrangements to stay in mysore......