Windows Media Player 11 for Windows XP is officially released

Microsoft recently released it’s flagship media player, Windows Media Player 11, for Windows XP. I’ve been using the beta version of Window Media Player 11 for a while now and it seems to be pretty well built. I particularly like the new user interface that it comes with. It’s kind of Vista’ish but that looks something different than the blue Windows XP world.

I like the concept that there is no Stop button rather it just has the Pause and Play buttons, which is one less confusion to the user. Also, it has support for URGE, the Microsoft version of iTunes Store and it seems like they both (Windows Media Player 11 and URGE) play well together.

The drawback that I could see is that there is no support for podcasters and that’s a pretty big miss. But if you don’t really care about podcasting then you wouldn’t be disappointed with this new Windows Media Player 11 for Windows XP.

Download the Windows Media Player 11 for Windows XP from here.

PS: As a Microsoft standard these days for downloading any softwares this download also requires a “Windows Genuine Advantage” check.

Technorati tags: Microsoft, MSFT, Windows, Windows Media, Windows Media Player, Windows Media Player 11, URGE, Windows Media Player 11 for Windows XP

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Announcing ASKARS.NET

I had this domain parked somewhere else all these days. And I just moved this to point to this blog to make it easy for my visitors to remember. So from now on, you can reach this blog thru http://askars.net or http://www.askars.net as well. I thought it would be a lot easier for you to remember the short URL rather than the other lengthy one. So, here it is.

I really wanted to take this moment to say “thank you” to those of you who visited the blog quite frequently that in-turn made me to contribute more to the blog. I hope the posts were helpful to you and I hope to contribute with more posts that are even more helpful. Thanks again friends. Keep visiting.

Issue with uploading an avatar to WordPress

This morning I was just trying to upload an avatar for my profile at WordPress. Okay, so it asked me for a picture and when I uploaded an image of mine it gave me this “Crop Image” page where it asks me to crop the portion of the image.

But, weirdly, there wasn’t a way to crop it. There are no controls available for me to crop the image. And so when I hit the “Crop Image” button it just uploads an empty image, a black empty image. Matt, or someone out there whom have done this before, can you guys let me know how to get over this issue?

Thanks in advance.

Technorati tags: WordPress, Avatar

Microsoft is offering Office Accounting 2007 for free

Before they change their mind go grab a copy of Microsoft^® Office Accounting 2007 Express, if it matters to you. Its available as a free download from Microsoft. On a cautious note, it is a 338MB file and so if you are not on a high speed connection you might want to do it at an off-peak time. With my high speed FiOS connection it took a good 20 minutes to download.

This is what Microsoft has to say on this new software,

Microsoft^® Office Accounting Express 2007 is everything you need to make your small business idea flourish. Whatever your idea, take it further with these great features:

Save time on everyday tasks

• Create quotes and invoices; track expenses and employee time
• Enter data once and share it seamlessly with other Microsoft Office system programs
• Manage payroll and taxes with ADP’s integrated payroll service

Get a complete view of your business

• Store and organize all your customer, vendor, employee, and financial information in one place
• Get business insights with over 20 customizable reports
• Easily share your books with your accountant through Office Live

Grow your business online

• List items on eBay, track sales activity, and download and process orders
• Email invoices and get paid faster with PayPal
• Monitor your customers’ business credit in real-time through Equifax

If the “Download Office Accounting Express” image doesn’t show-up above, please use this link to download the software. I apologize for this inconvenience.

Technorati tags: Microsoft, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Office Accounting 2007, Free, Free Software, Free Download

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ASP.NET AJAX v1.0 (formerly ATLAS) is now available for you to experience

(If you don’t see any of the images below please refresh the page a few times until you see the images. WordPress for some reason randomly cuts off some of the images at times. My apologies for the inconvenience.)

I know I’m blogging this a bit late but I just wanted to get this info out to my readers anyway. Microsoft ASP.NET Atlas team has released the renamed framework, which competes with AJAX, with the name “ASP.NET AJAX“. They call the initial release as “ASP.NET AJAX v1.0“.

AJAX is a great infrastructure and a great experience for the web based users without having to mess with page refreshes for small little things. It gives the user an enhanced and rich user experience allowing things to be done in the background without stealing the control of the page from the user. It provides the framework and controls to support/enable this great user experience.

At a glimpse, here is what the ASP.NET team says about AJAX,

Cross browser compatibility…that’s a great news from Microsoft. I love it when things work across the browsers without having to tweak things to make it work across. That’s a great news. I’ve tried this a bit and it looks very promising and cool to me. We even have thought about using this on one of our product functionalities. There are pretty lengthy keyword/attribute names to deal with but hey, as long as it works who cares.

For those of us to get started on this new framework, Scott Guthrie, the General Manager at the .NET Development Platform team, has put forward a videocast that explains pretty much of the basics for anyone to get started. (You might want to watch the video very closely as Scott is fluent enough to do things pretty fast).

There are a bunch of other ASP.NET AJAX resource videos at this location. It’s pretty cool to see Nikhil Kothari, the guy who is the cause of this whole thing from the beginning, has some videos for us to view. Great job Nikhil.

Okay…enough said. Go ahead and get the new framework, read some of the documents, watch few videos and get started.

(Alternate link if you don’t see the “Download Now” image above.)

You might want to download this as well as this toolkit has pretty rich and ready-to-run sample controls and a powerful SDK to simplify creating custom ASP.NET AJAX controllers and extenders.

(Alternate link if you don’t see the “ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit” image above.)

Of course, you should visit the official ASP.NET AJAX site to understand this whole thing. This site is the home site for ASP.NET AJAX and it has pretty extensive help/documents/videos to get started on this new framework.

Technorati tags: .NET, ASP.NET, AJAX, ASP.NET AJAX, Atlas

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Fix for: "Unable to get the project file from the Web server" error

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For those of us who deals with the reality of ASP.NET/Visual Studio.NET IDE day-in and day-out, here is a trick which I hope would be handy for you if not today, well at some point of time.

So, lets say you had a perfectly working ASP.NET Site/Web Service and that goes nicely with the Visual Studio.NET IDE. As in any normal development lifecycle we might wanted to tinger with the service/site by moving it to a different machine or location and things like that without forgetting the fact that at times we might even wanted to change some settings with IIS. Fine. So what?

Well, when you mess up with any settings or your site/service your VS.NET IDE doesn’t go nice with IIS anymore. Yes, it complains with the above dialog, with the message "Unable to get the project file from Web server. Unable to open Web project <projectname>. The file path <path> does not correspond to the URL <URL>. The two need to map to the save server location. HTTP Error 403: Access Forbidden." And most of the time it just suck up your development time to fix this issue and think about this happening at a crucial time. Well, it did happen to me last time when I badly wanted my IDE to work.

You and I know from the above message that it has something to do with the .webinfo file having a wrong mapping. Well, in both the instances when I faced this that wasn’t been the case. Then I made sure the IIS Virtual Directory points to the correct local path, recreated IIS application etc. and nothing seems to resolve. Then this simple fix made it to work and that is going to be my fix for this issue.

So, what I really did? Pretty simple. I just deleted my virtual directory in IIS and then recreated it again. Restarted IIS and bingo. My IDE was able to play nice with IIS again.

Hope it helps.

PS: If the above solution doesn’t work or is not a choice for you then try this one. Find the "VSWebCache\<ProjectName>" folder under your Documents and Settings folder and delete it and try it again.

Visit DemoGeek.com for amazingly detailed quality articles on Computer, Internet, Browsers, Software, Programming and much more.

Technorati tags: .NET, ASP.NET, IIS, Visual Studio.NET IDE, Visual Studio.NET IIS error

Bold-Italic-Underline moves to the "Cutline" theme

As you may have noticed by now, I’ve just pimped my blog to the “Cutline” theme. Why? Because the theme that I was using, “Almost Green” lost the sidebar widgets and for some reason WordPress seem to not provide sidebar widgets for that theme. So, I’d to move on and here it is.

Don’t you like it? Please let me know your comments.

PS: That’s a picture that was taken by me on my trip to India. Can you believe that is a pond of water that’s got this much green on top of it? Yes, the water that you see in the distance is a proof that this is a pond of water. Pretty amazing!!!

TinyMenu – A space saving Firefox add-on

Try this add-on to eliminate the precious space the menu takes up on the Firefox toolbar. If you notice that it takes the whole line for the menu bar but half of the space is just wasted as the menu really fills only half of the line.

Get TinyMenu from here.

Here is what you should do once you install and restart your Firebox browser,

• Right-click on a toolbar and click “Customize”.
• Drag all the items from the navigation bar up to the menu bar. You’ll have to do them one at a time, so it takes a little while.
• Click “Done” to get out of customize mode.
• Right-click on a toolbar and un-select the navigation toolbar.
• Right-click on a toolbar again and click “Customize”.
• This time, drag the items from the Customize window to the menu bar (arranging it as you’d prefer). Again, you’d have to do this one at at time and so it takes a while.
• Click “Done” to get out of the customize mode.

And that’s it. You’ve just saved a line of real estate on your browser.

Technorati tags: Spacesaver, TinyMenu, Firefox add-on

Sidebar Widgets – Where are they?

Hello WordPress, where are my sidebar widgets? It used to be under the Presentation menu. I don’t see it anymore. What happened to that?

Pimp your résumé

Here is a step-by-step tutorial on pimping your résumé to stand out of the crowd. This comes with picture samples that makes it easy to understand. Here are the steps involved,

• Pick a better typeface
• Remove extra indentations
• Make it easy to skim
• Apply typographic detailing
• Use smart quotes
• Space out text set in ALL CAPS
• Separate durations of time with en dashes
• Adjust spacing in phone numbers

Read the full tutorial here.

Technorati tags: Resume Makeover, Win with your resume, Resume Tips, Revamp your resume

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Dell.com offers free upgrade to Windows Vista on your new PC/Laptop purchase

On one of my previous posts I’ve talked about postponing your PC/Laptop purchase until Oct 28, 2006 if you want to experience a free upgrade to Windows Vista.

It looks like Dell.com has started offering this a bit early. Today when I was customizing a laptop that I wanted to purchase for a while (and have postponed since that post), I noticed that there is a new category that they’ve added during the customization process which allows you to do an upgrade for $10.

There are 2 ways you can upgrade your Windows XP based system to Windows Vista for almost free.

• Express Upgrade to Windows Vista Home Premium from XP Media Center Edition
• Express Upgrade to Windows Vista Business from XP Professional

 

I’m not sure about the other retailers whether they would do it from Oct 26 onwards or they would do it only after Oct 28. I couldn’t find anything on their web sites that says that. You might wanted to check that out at your local stores.

But on Dell.com, when you custom build a PC/Laptop they’ve included an option for you to pick and choose the upgrade kit. They, of course, charge you $10 to cover the cost of shipping the upgrade kit. But, hey, $10 to experience Vista than $$$? I’m up for this deal.

Dell.com says it clear that even though you can enroll for the upgrade kit now it will only be available on February 2007 when Vista will be (hopefully) available for the public.

Visit Dell.com to start customizing your Home/Home Office PC/Laptop.

Technorati tags: Windows Vista, Free Upgrade to Windows Vista, Dell.com free upgrade to Windows Vista, PC purchase

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How to post a YouTube video on to your WordPress.com Blog?

I was struggling a bit in the morning today to post a YouTube video onto this blog. For security reasons WordPress.com doesn’t let you <embed> objects within your post. That’s understandable and makes sense. So, what would be the workaround to post a video on to your WordPress.com blog? There should be a work around…right?

Sure, there is. Thanks to Matt at WordPress, here is how you could get the video to your WordPress.com blog.

• Locate the URL for your YouTube video (it should be next (on the right side) to the video on the YouTube site itself).
• In your blog post type-in this in the space where you want the video to appear, ““ (without the quotes) 
• Replace the URL above with the URL that you’ve just grabbed from the YouTube site.
• Publish your post.

Simple, that’s all you have to do to get the video to your WordPress.com blog. Now, in case if just pasting the thing didn’t work then,

• Change to the HTML mode so that you’ll have access to the post’s HTML.
• In the space where you want the video to appear, type in this, “<code></code>” (again, without the quotes) 
• Replace the URL above with the URL that you’ve just grabbed from the YouTube site.
• Publish your post again.

That’s it. You should be able to see the embedded video player on your WordPress.com blog.

Please see my comment on the updated steps for this to work as WordPress seems to eat up a bit of my post. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Technorati tags: WordPress, WordPress.com, YouTube, YouTube Video, Embed YouTube Video On WordPress.com Blog

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Scrybe – "It will blow you up" kind of an Online/Offline Organizer

Warning: You will be amazed or stunned by looking at this stuff. Please use caution.

My search for an online organizer/companion ends right here. Yes. Scrybe, an incredibly “out of the world” online organizer with offline support as well is about to launch this month and I have no words to explain how this has been thought thru and done with perfection that I would rather let you watch this video and blow your mind up.

Recommended: Grab a chair that’s sturdy enough.

If the embedded player doesn’t work, here is the outgoing link for you to experience.

Where in this world these folks have arrived from?

Scrybe, you’ve just completely taken off of me if this holds true on the real release. I can’t wait when you folks raise the curtain up at iScrybe.com.

And, these are just simple words to say, thank you for a job well done.

Way to go Scrybe!!!

Technorati tags: Online Organizer, Scrybe, Online/Offline Organizer, Online Companion

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Internet Explorer 7 Is Available For Public Download – A Hack To Avoiding The Automatic Upgrade

Microsoft just managed to release the full version of Internet Explorer 7 just on time and is ready for public download. You can get the latest Internet Explorer bits in 2 ways.

• One is to go download and install it by yourself.
• And the other is to do a Windows Update.

If you don’t install it by yourself then by the time the next Windows Update happens (if you have it configured to update automatically) you’ll get the new Internet Explorer.

I agree that it looks like its been forced upon you. I can see that. But, don’t worry, there is a hack available to stop the automatic Windows Update from upgrading your Internet Explorer.

Here is how,

• Copy this command (except the quotes) to a .BAT or .CMD file “REG ADD “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Setup\7.0″ /v DoNotAllowIE70 /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f“
• Run the file, by calling it in the command prompt or by double-clicking it.

Note: When you are ready to allow Windows Update to upgrade your browser then change the above switch from 1 to 0 for the REG_DWORD. Here is the script for allowing automatic update to do its job. “REG ADD “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Setup\7.0″ /v DoNotAllowIE70 /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f“

Okay, so by now you must have gotten the latest Internet Explorer 7 bits and must have (mostly) installed it already. Then, what’s next? Wait there is more on the line. You can extend your Internet Explorer experience by installing some of these add-ons (that’s a new thing to IE of what Extensions are for Firefox).

There are a bunch of add-ons available, like for example,

• Pop-Up Blockers
• Parental Controls
• Download Managers
• Developer Tools
• Offline Browsers
• Music and Audio Players
• Video Players etc.

Keep in mind that there are a whole bunch of add-ons available under each category and so please pay attention before choosing one. But some of the add-ons are really useful and I hope that the add-on community will unleash more as now IE7 is available for the mainstream public.

Hope there won’t be an SP1 right away!!!

Until then, enjoy your new Internet Explorer 7.

Technorati tags: Internet Explorer 7, IE7, Browser, Windows Auotmatic Update, Stop Upgrading To IE7 Automatically, IE7 Add-Ons

Searching Within Google Search Results – Are We Missing A "Locate This" Kind Of Thing?

I may be missing something here or may be Google (and may be other leading search providers for that matter) is/are missing this feature. And I’m sure if Google is missing this then you might also be feeling the same as me if you are an active Google searcho’holic.

I rely heavily on Google search for even small little things like, lets say, checking a syntax when I code and things like that. It does a decent job of giving me what I want. Note the word “decent job” and I mean it. At times MSN Live Search has gotten me the correct result set than Google.

So, I search for something and it gives me that gazillion number of links and pages and then its my headache to go thru it to reach my result set. I’ve noticed that I always end up with paging thru the search results to arrive at what I was looking for. You might get an impression that rather I should use specific keywords to arrive at the desired result set. To a certain level I agree. But not in all the cases.

For example, a while back I’ve posted about a transformation pack that transforms your Windows XP into Windows Vistas’ look and feel. A while back I was looking for to see where I am on the search results on Google when I use the search term “Windows Vista Transformation Pack”. For the first few weeks I was on the first page of the search results, at times as the very first entry, but then over time I’ve got dropped to the second page. Now when I searched for that term it came up with a bunch of pages and I had to browse thru it to find out where I am. I know what I was exactly looking for but I felt I was forced to browse thru the result sets. It would be a lucky day if you could locate the entry on one of those first few pages. Since I was on the second page it wasn’t been a big hassle. Now think about an entry getting pushed down to the 10th of greater pages and you know the pain if you are to locate that.

It would have been a simple thing for Google (or any other search providers for that matter) to implement a feature that would help us locate an entry within the search result. I don’t mean to say that to bring up the entry to the first page. That I know I should have used a different search term like for example “Windows Vista Transformation Pack + askar” to arrive at the correct entry. But what I’m talking about here is a way to locate an entry within the gazillion number of pages that comes out of a search result so that we can jump down to the entry of interest. Do you see what I mean?

I’ve looked into Google, Yahoo Search, Windows Live Search and some other leading search providers and to my irony no one seems to provide that functionality.  Did they take it all for granted on us to go thru the gazillion number of result pages so that they can advertise on each of the page? Do you think that way?

Technorati tags: Google, Google Search, Windows Live Search

Benefits Of Eating Seafood

CBS News’ HealthWatch section has a nice article on the benefits of seafood versus the risk of mercury exposure. I’m a big fan of seafood and I don’t mind eating seafood 5 days a week at least. I really love it. After reading this article and given the added benefits that it brings in may be I should do it 7 days a week.

Here is an excerpt from the article,

• Fatty fish like salmon have the highest omega-3 levels but also have more saturated fat and cholesterol and can have higher levels of dioxin and PCBs. They tend to have less mercury.
• Shellfish and crustaceans are low in saturated fat but can have moderate amounts of cholesterol and present the greatest risk of microbial infection if eaten raw.
• In all seafood, levels of dioxin, PCBs and other contaminants do not pose health risks when eaten in government-recommended amounts.

Read the full article here.

Technorati tags: Seafood, Health, Benefits of eating seafood

Apple Donates $10 On Every iPod Nano (Red) Purchase

This makes a big time in those under-developed countries/region. Apple just announced that it will donate $10 to the cause of fighting AIDS in Africa when you buy this Red iPod Nano Special Edition directly from Apple.

This is what Apple says about this,

This is one little thing that can mean a lot. As a (PRODUCT) RED partner, Apple will give $10 from the purchase of your iPod nano (PRODUCT) RED to the Global Fund to fight AIDS in Africa.

Yes, it surely means a lot especially given the sale numbers of iPod’s. That would make a lot of difference. So, if you are planning to buy an iPod lately please buy it directly from Apple Store to contribute to this cause.

Let’s be nice to help the people in need.

Technorati tags: Apple, iPod, Fight Against AIDS, Donation

Windows Live Mail Desktop (Beta) – A Refresh Available For Download

Windows Live Mail team has recently released a beta refresh (Build 1083) and have made it available for public download. I’ve been using Windows Live Mail Desktop and I feel it’s one of a slick and “not-so-messy-configuration-settings-to-figure-out” kind of a thing. These days I check my Gmail and MSN accounts both on the Windows Live Mail Desktop. Even though at times the Gmail server fails to respond (or something happens that sort of) the application stayed pretty stable.

With the latest refresh Windows Live Mail team claims these as some of the enhancements,

• More bug fixes
  • Over 150 of them since the last refresh build – including lots of accessibility and stability updates
• Current View settings are now sticky
  • We admit it, we made a mistake.  In the last refresh build, every time WLMd was launched, the Current View settings were lost and needed to be reset.  What a pain – especially when reading newsgroups!  I’m happy to announce that this has now been fixed.
• Update Feeds Button
  • In the RSS tab, we have added a new button for you to be able to automatically sync all your RSS feeds.
• Easier Help Options
  • Now under Help you’ll see the option for getting Technical Support.  This will take you right to our Support site so you can fill out a ticket and get assistance from our support team!
• Minimizing to System Tray
  • I think I may have just heard a small roar of excitement from our Beta testers. J  You all have been asking for this one for a while, so here you go!
• Support for Windows Live ID sign in (for non-MSN Mail, Hotmail, and Windows Live Mail account holders)
  • Adding the ability to use non-Windows Live ID accounts in WLMd was a popular customer request – and I am super-psyched that we are able to provide it for you!  You can now sign in to WLMd using any Windows Live ID account, not just one that has an email account associated with it (such as @messengeruser.com).  And for those who don’t yet have a Windows Live ID, WLMd allows you to create one as a part of sign-in! Remember that this is a very new feature for us – so please spend some time playing with it and let us know what you think!

Looks promising to me. You can download the latest refresh from here.

Technorati tags: Windows Live Mail Desktop Beta, Windows Live Mail Desktop Beta Refresh, Free Desktop Email Client

Best Practices On Google’s Software Development Methodology Revealed

Here are some of the best practices that Google follows with its development effort. It seems like the environment is pretty open, reaching out and motivating.

Take a glimpse at the Google culture below.

• There are managers, sort of, but most of them code at least half-time, making them more like tech leads.
• Developers can switch teams and/or projects any time they want, no questions asked; just say the word and the movers will show up the next day to put you in your new office with your new team.
• Google has a philosophy of not ever telling developers what to work on, and they take it pretty seriously.
• Developers are strongly encouraged to spend 20% of their time (and I mean their M-F, 8-5 time, not weekends or personal time) working on whatever they want, as long as it’s not their main project.
• There aren’t very many meetings. I’d say an average developer attends perhaps 3 meetings a week, including their 1:1 with their lead.
• It’s quiet. Engineers are quietly focused on their work, as individuals or sometimes in little groups or 2 to 5.
• There aren’t Gantt charts or date-task-owner spreadsheets or any other visible project-management artifacts in evidence, not that I’ve ever seen.
• Even during the relatively rare crunch periods, people still go get lunch and dinner, which are (famously) always free and tasty, and they don’t work insane hours unless they want to.
• Google drives behavior through incentives. Engineers working on important projects are, on average, rewarded more than those on less-important projects. The rewards and incentives are too numerous to talk about here, but the financial incentives range from gift certificates and massage coupons up through giant bonuses and stock grants.
• Google is a peer-review oriented culture, and earning the respect of your peers means a lot there. More than it does at other places, I think. [..] your actual performance review is almost entirely based on your peer reviews, so it has an indirect financial impact on you.
• Google has a long all-hands in which they show every single project that launched to everyone, and put up the names and faces of the teams (always small) who launched each one, and everyone applauds.

Developers can switch team anytime and no questions asked? I still wonder how do they manage that resource gap? If a developer is in the middle of an effort and if he wanted to move out of the team then who is going to fill that gap? How soon? From where? Do they maintain a pool of resources that showed interest to join the team? Or is it like the dev has to wait till he comes to a point where they can replace one person with another? How does that happen real time? I’m just curious.

But overall its pretty neat and simple (as their products) that keeps things moving forward. I wish I could work there sometimes.

Technorati tags: Google, Google’s Software Development Process, Development Culture

Socialize:

Messenger Plus! Live – An Awesome Windows Live Messenger Extension

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I’ve been using the beta version of Windows Live Messenger for a while now and it looks to me pretty slick. When I was looking for extensions I just came across this extension pack for Windows Live Messenger and this seems to extend the experience further.

Here are some features of Messenger Plus! Live that you might want to take a look at if you are to consider this extension,

Tabbed chats

Use a tabbed web browser? Even if you don’t, you might find tabbed conversations useful for organizing your chats by converting a myriad of windows into a simple single one. Vertical tabs on the left, normal tabs on the top. You name it. You can also use tabs to group just some special chats and keep all the rest in normal windows if you want.

Quick Texts

Tired of always typing the same? Meet quick texts and text replacements: automatic and customizable messages that can be sent with a simple shortcut or typed command, or automatic text replacing to use written shortcuts or using it as a word filter.

Custom Sounds

The Custom Emotion Sound feature brings sound integration in Messenger to the next level by allowing users to send their own sounds during a conversation. Sounds are played instantly on both ends and are transferred automatically and transparently when needed.

New emotion sounds can be easily created from existing sound files (such as MP3s) or can be recorded live from a microphone or other audio source but, if sound authoring isn’t your thing, thousands of sounds can be found in the public database or imported from sound packs.

Colors, formatting and commands

Messenger Plus! gives you the possibility to choose any color you want for front and background, and add formatting, such as bold, italic, underlined and stoke-out. It also lets you control almost every aspect of Messenger via text shortcuts called commands, much like the ones in traditional IRC chat rooms.

Personalized Status

Create custom away or busy statuses with a special name tag, personal message or even an auto-responder. Set a timer to reset your status in a certain time and organize presets to reuse common statuses.

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Messenger Lock

Be it for security in shared computer environments or for avoiding your boss (which would be wrong wrong wrong!), this feature lets you lock Messenger with a simple shortcut (or Plus! menu command) and hide it in the system tray with an inconspicuous icon, the ability to password protect it and to automatically send a message to your contacts to inform them when you have locked and unlocked your Messenger.

Contacts Desktop

Similar to what ICQ used to offer, you can show the status of any desired contact on your desktop in the form of small floating windows. You can drag and drop messages or links into these to send a message to the contact, or drop a file to start a transfer.

HTML Chat Logging

Messenger Plus! Live lets you keep logs of all your conversations in a much more flexible way than the original Messenger ones. Heck, Plus! let you do that for years before MSN Messenger added it as a standard, though not perfect, feature. But what does Plus! Live improve over it?

• HTML Logs: beautiful styling and the flexibility of files you can take anywhere
• Emoticons and Winks: Everything is logged, even custom emoticons are kept and winks shown as thumbnails
• Log viewer: Shows you all your logs sorted by contact and date within Messenger Plus!
• Skinnable logs: if you get tired of the default style of logs and know CSS or get a custom.css file, just drop it in your logs folder and change their look!

Event Viewer and Event Logging

Contact sign ins and sign outs, status changes, display name and personal messages changes. Everything can be logged and archived in XML-based files which you can view from your browser.

You can also use the Event Viewer in the Plus! menu to view this info in real time, to find if a certain contact signed in earlier or analyze their status changing behavior, or even their musical tastes!

Contact List Clean-Up

Easily view stats about all your contacts (last sign in, when you had the last conversation, etc.) and clean your contact list deleting old and repeated contacts.

Run Multiple Messenger Sessions

Just check a box in the Messenger Plus! Live Preferences and you’ll be up and running for logging into more than one Messenger session at the same time, all integrating with Plus! correctly and without patching any files.

Tabbed Chats and running multiple messenger sessions were a sell for me and I liked it after I installed this extension. Above all its free.

Here is the link to the site where you can download the Messenger Plus! Live Extension.

Happy Chatting!!!

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Technorati tags: Windows Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Messegner Extension, Free Extension For Windows Live Messenger

Windows XP Service Pack 1 Is Officially Dead

Microsoft has published details related to the end of support for Windows 98, Me and XP Service Pack 1 since January 6, 2006. Consequently, on October 10, 2006, the operating system has officially been pronounced dead. As of today “Microsoft will end all public assisted support for Windows XP Service Pack1 (SP1). After this date, Microsoft will no longer provide any incident support options or security updates for this retired service pack under the policies defined by the Microsoft Support Lifecycle policy.”

The solution? Upgrade to Windows XP Service Pack 2. For systems that pack a powerful software configuration even Windows Vista is an option as it is close to ship to RTM. With this move, Microsoft disallows support for XP SP1 after a total of four years since the product was released in September 2002. The Redmond Company has even kept the support alive for over two years although it should have ended it 12 month after the release of Service Pack 2 on August 2004.

As of yet, Microsoft has failed to announce an official date for support termination for Windows XP Service Pack 2. It is expected that this will be in close relation with the adoption level of Windows Vista.

Technorati tags: Microsoft, Windows XP, SP1, Windows XP Service Pack

Hold on to your next PC purchase until Oct 28, 2006 for a free Windows Vista experience

The title says it all. Microsoft is set to offer either free or discounted Vista upgrades to those who purchase new computers during the holiday season, press reports indicate. To qualify for the coupons, a PC would need to be purchased after October 28 of this year (2006), and the upgrade would be good through March 15, 2007.

Microsoft would not confirm the program publicly, other than saying “we’re working with partners on this”. Reports indicate that the free or discounted upgrade would be based on the version of operating system installed.

For example, those who have Widows XP Professional, XP Tablet PC Edition, and XP x64 Edition would be entitled to the free upgrade. Those using Windows XP Home would be permitted to upgrade to Vista Basic for $49 and Premium for $79. No upgrade price was specified for Media Center Edition.

I was about to buy a new high-end laptop to replace my aging Compaq laptop. Glad that I didn’t commit to it so far. I would rather wait till the end of October to have a chance to experience the real Windows Vista.

Technorati tags: Windows Vista, Buying New PC, Free upgrade to Windows Vista

Google To Acquire YouTube For $1.65 Billion

Google just announced today that it has agreed to acquire YouTube for $1.65 billion in a stock-for-stock transaction. To clarify the confusion that since Google is already having its own video site so what will happen to YouTube, they were quick enough to make it clear that YouTube will operate as an independent unit of Google once the deal closes and will retain the YouTube brand name. They added that no YouTube workers will lose their jobs as a result of the acquisition and that Google will maintain its own online video business. Rumor says that Yahoo, Microsoft and News Corp. (now the parent company of MySpace) also had probably expressed interest in buying YouTube. But at the end its Google that’ve won the competition.

Technorati tags: Google, YouTube, Acquisition

Windows Vista RC2 is available for public download (Download link provided)

Microsoft has just released the Windows Vista Release Candidate 2 (RC2) version for public download. Initially it was suspected that Microsoft will release this only to their beta testers, MSDN and Technet subscribers and to the Customer Preview Program (CPP) members. But then, things must have changed that made them to make this version available to the public, but only for a limited time.

Anyways, as always, go grab ‘em before its gone. Microsoft has explicitly said this time that it will be available only “for a limited time” and “may not have the same level of support” as RC1 (whatever that means). So you you should go grab ‘em as soon as you can if you wanted to get the feel the new Vista version and to realize the 1400+ bugs it still has.

Here is what you should have to do to get RC2.

• Navigate to this link.
• Select the version of Vista you want to run, either 32-bit or 64 bit, your choice.
• This will launch a new window where it tries to use the Akamai Download Manager (which comes in handy) to download this massive 2.49 GB file.
• Accept the security dialog boxes so that the system can allow the Akamai Download Manager ActiveX control to work.  

Now, you might need tons of patience for this monster to get downloaded. Once downloaded you have to burn the ISO image to a DVD before installing it on to your (test/spare) machine.

There is no explicit product key provided for this RC2 as the expectation was to use the product key from RC1. I haven’t tried this though but it looks like that’s what the plan is. 

How do you get the product key for RC1? Read my previous post on how to get the product key for Windows Vista RC1.

Enjoy Windows Vista (without any cost).

Latest Update: It seems like the build 5744 (which was later renamed as RC2) had some issues that Microsoft pulled it off from the public download space and have said that it will be made available for public download again once they fix the issue. So hang-in there. It will be back with may be fewer than 1400+ bugs. Keep watching this blog and I’ll update it as soon as RC2 is made available again.

Technorati tags: Microsoft, Windows Vista, Windows Vista Release Candidate 2, Windows Vista RC2, Windows Vista Release Candidate 1, Windows Vista RC1, Windows Vista For Free, Windows Vista Download Link

Transform your Windows XP to Windows Vista Look

The above are some screenshots of my desktop and my Windows Explorer. Do you think I’m running Windows Vista Beta or RC1? Guess what? You were wrong.

I run Windows XP Media Center Edition on my home desktop and the new look and feel of Windows Vista was the wonder works of this “Windows Vista Transformation Pack“. It’s a comprehensive transformation package that even transforms the startup screen and all the icons and sounds and almost everything that was Windows XP’ish. I’ve been running this for a while now and it seems to be perform pretty decent.

If you get the paid WindowBlinds program then you can even get the Vista glass effect. But without that it even looks good and very much functional. Awesome work by WindowsX.

Get the latest Vista Transformation Pack from here.

Download takes a while as the file is bigger in size. But once downloaded the installer guides you thru the process pretty much and the one thing you should be careful about is to cancel out the Windows warning dialog for some system files replacement. Don’t worry it won’t sabotage your system. I’ve done that thrice and it’s okay to do it.

May be setting a restore point before you do this might not be a bad idea. So, how do you set the manual system restore point? Simple. Just navigate thru Start >> Programs >> Accessories >> System Tools and launch ”System Restore” tool. Click “Create a restore point” option and hit the “Next” button and on the second page just give it a name (like for example, “Prior to Vista Transformation Pack”) and hit the “Create” button. That’s it. Now you are pretty much worry free to try this out. On my experience the whole process was pretty smooth.

PS: The Yahoo Widget that you see on the top right corner of the screen doesn’t come with the pack. That’s something I run separate on my machine.

Technorati tags: Windows XP To Windows Vista Transformation Pack, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Transform XP to Vista look

Food Expiration Dates – Explained

BusinessWeek takes a shot at the confusions/misconceptions people have on the food expiration dates. For example,

Milk, for instance, starts deteriorating in quality quite quickly. Pasteurized milk usually remains fresh for five days after its sell-by date. However, if milk isn’t refrigerated promptly, it will develop a sour taste and spoil, even though it might not necessarily be dangerous. Interestingly, milk can lose vitamins when exposed to light, which is why it usually comes in opaque plastic or paperboard.

Read the full article here.

They even have a very nice slide show that details the topic in a much better way. You can view the slide show here.

Technorati tags: Food Expiration Dates, Health, Eat Healthy

Microsoft Is About To Release Vista RC2

Paul Thurrott at WindowsITPro says that Microsoft is going to release the final prerelease version of Windows Vista by Friday (10/06/2006). And they’ve named the release as “Release Candidate 2″ (RC2).

This build (in Microsoft terms, build# 5743) is not open for public and is only available for the beta testers, MSDN and TechNet subscribers, and some Customer Preview Program members. Also, this is the final release before Microsoft releases Vista for manufacturing (RTM). And so its expected that this release would be more stable.

Read the full article here.

Technorati tags: Microsoft, Windows Vista, Windows Vista RC2

Windows Live Writer Now Supports Blogger Beta

For those of you who use Blogger platform, you are now blessed with the Windows Live Writer team for providing support for the Blogger platform. They say that immediately after they released the new feature Blogger did an update and that caused some issues with the new functionality. But then they’ve corrected that and the latest bits out there are stable.

You can get the latest bits from this location (its a download location).

Technorati tags: Windows Live Writer, Windows Live Writer Beta 1, Blogger

A Comprehensive List of Passwords For Your Routers

Often I find myself in a situation where I set quite crappy/complex/idiotic/once-in-a-lifetime-I-got-that-word kind of passwords for my router assuming that will be the safe bet. But after a while once (obviously) I forget those passwords I keep resetting my router to its factory default mode.

Fine, now it asks for the router’s default login credentials. Who knows? I don’t have the time to look for the manuals (out of the many different manuals I’ve got) and so I end up calling the customer service to figure out the password.

Now there is an easy solution to that problem. Someone at phenoelit.de had composed a comprehensive list of default passwords for the various routers. Of course, it comes with the “terms of usage” policy that for this to work you shouldn’t have reset your router’s password. If you have then follow my way of life of resetting the router and then use the password from the list.

Isn’t that handy? To me…sure it is.

Here is the link.

Technorati tags: Router, Password List, Default Password List