Windows Registry

Now that i hav given an introduction lets just get in straight away to our workspace: windows registry is like the brain of windows operating system. it grows with windows, installation, registration, settings everythin resides in basically in a few sentences this is wat seperates ur operating system to others a general belief which is true is if u install to many programs ur system will slowdown reason too many keys for ur windows to process and so will ur registry files sizes wud grow too. so where does these files reside in ur windows ? although u can veiw all modules of registry as a set wen u use regedit or regedt32 in ur run command registry resides as various files in ur windows directory under this path: common path: c:\windows\system32\config i.e: drive:\windows installation folder\system32\config this config folder files combined is the registry that u knw and work on. different files store different configurations of ur operating system eg: SYSTEM : this files has mainly hardware settings SOFTWARE : this file has all ur software installation and configurations SECURITY : ur local windows security policy etc.. Now since we are here i strongly advice everyone to boot in dos and make a copy of all files present in this folder this is ur first line of defence against any attacks, crashes and chaos! this action is going to be ur windows life saver. Now, we all defrag our systems to speed up their perfomance but wat abt the files that are in use ? wat abt the fragmented virtual memory pagefile ? thats where page defrag comes into play a very small (35kb) tool from sysinternals, that defrags pagefiles and registry files upon boot so as to give a stable and high perfomance from your system.

Everybody loves Windows

Windows came into the world of computing with a bang and each next os release was a bang too. Series of sucessions showin the amount of work microsoft has put into it and unlike many linux fans who argue with me that windows is rigid and linux is flexable. here’s news: windows is as rigid and flexable as we want to be. imagine this is the only product that has so many tweak sites to tools that are by far countless, but not all these software’s and tools claim to do wat they are supposed to.. an experienced user wud rather keep his system away from these tools nvrtheless wud tweak his os for his maximum perfomance. as thru constant work he knws which are the essential services one can safely disable as well as tools one can safely use! now in the following posts i wud take from the start from setup to complete Windows eXPerience. Now here’s the deal forget shareware’s forget cracks forget keygen’s and welcome to clean green windows nvrtheless ur operating system’s perfomance and better to its full capacity.

Meet Umesh Thota

Meet the new blogger on Software And Tools. His name is Umesh Thota and has been following the blogging world for quite some time. His main blogs are posted in his intro post at http://www.softwareandtools.com/index.php/Tweaks/2006/01/27/not_just_another_.... Now let me introduce you to Umesh. Umesh is from souther part of India from a city called Hyderabad. I think I know Umesh for more then a year now. He spins my head when we have a online chat :(. On another note, he is a nerd. He is up at night when the rest of the world is sleeping! As I understand he is doing a lot of work for Microsoft Hyderabad User Group http://www.mugh.net/ (Sorry Umesh, I won't visit this site too many times, as it just does not work with Firefox, when will you guys learn something!!). He likes to tweak software that he is using to get the most out of it. I remember few days back when he invited me to Windows Messenger Live and I complained about too many unwanted things in Messenger, he promply gave me a link to a site which had some tweaks in it and he always wants to beat you on the technology that you are using. But the point here is he is one big nerd I have seen during last few years. He is always trying to give me tips on how to do things better and what software to use. So I proposed Umesh to come and share his tricks and tweaks onto the readers of Software And Tools so the readers can benefit as well. And Umesh agreed and here he is. He will be writing about software tweaks and tricks which can potentially improve your productivity and efficiency of the system. So good luck Umesh, you are in charge now :). He will be writing on Software And Tools - Tricks & Tweaks Blogs. You can subsribe to that or you will be able to find his posting on this main blog as well.

Meet Umesh Thota

Meet the new blogger on Software And Tools. His name is Umesh Thota and has been following the blogging world for quite some time. His main blogs are posted in his intro post at http://www.softwareandtools.com/index.php/Tweaks/2006/01/27/not_just_another_.... Now let me introduce you to Umesh. Umesh is from souther part of India from a city called Hyderabad. I think I know Umesh for more then a year now. He spins my head when we have a online chat :(. On another note, he is a nerd. He is up at night when the rest of the world is sleeping! As I understand he is doing a lot of work for Microsoft Hyderabad User Group http://www.mugh.net/ (Sorry Umesh, I won't visit this site too many times, as it just does not work with Firefox, when will you guys learn something!!). He likes to tweak software that he is using to get the most out of it. I remember few days back when he invited me to Windows Messenger Live and I complained about too many unwanted things in Messenger, he promply gave me a link to a site which had some tweaks in it and he always wants to beat you on the technology that you are using. But the point here is he is one big nerd I have seen during last few years. He is always trying to give me tips on how to do things better and what software to use. So I proposed Umesh to come and share his tricks and tweaks onto the readers of Software And Tools so the readers can benefit as well. And Umesh agreed and here he is. He will be writing about software tweaks and tricks which can potentially improve your productivity and efficiency of the system. So good luck Umesh, you are in charge now :). He will be writing on Software And Tools - Tricks & Tweaks Blogs. You can subsribe to that or you will be able to find his posting on this main blog as well.

FeedLounge- What's the big deal

I got an email today about Feedlounge and that it's now open to public. I went to Feedlounge to check it out. First thing I found was it is a paid service- No good I said. Still I continued with the demo of FeedLounge (they have 3 hour demo service- This is a good thing). So checking out their demo, I cannot still figure out why I should be paying for this service. Here is what I found :- 1) A clean UI (can be still improved) 2) Outlook like interface 3) Faster loading time (compared to Bloglines, yes) 4) Support for tags 5) It has keyboard shortcuts (haven't learned them all yet) 6) :) I haven't mentioned that it is all web based ( it is good) 7) It does not have auto feed discovery feature ( I am looking for it but cannot find it) 8) Does not have any mention of podcast supports. I cannot play the podcasts in the browser itself as I can do it with Google Newsreader. 9) I cannot find a way to export my feeds (where is it? ) OK, so what's the big deal about Feedlounge? What is new that other free and good aggregators are not offering if not more? What is the value in it for me? Why should I pay US$5/month when I could use good aggregators like Newsgators, Blogines, Google Reader for free?

Mystickies, don't forget to see that site later!

Yesterday, I discovered Mystickies on the Internet. First observation, ‘wow cool’, second observation, ‘why should I use this instead of del.icio.us’ and third thought, ‘OK OK, let me give it a try for few days’.

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Mystickies lets you bookmark pages, let you add notes and tags to them and then you can go through them later directly while you are browsing those websites or through Mystickies website.

Mystickies is for those who browser Internet a lot, they see something interesting, bookmark it and think that they will check it out later. Now sometimes when we bookmark things, we might also want to add notes of what we want to do with that website at a later stage along with any other idea that might have struck our brain at that moment. Mystickies lets you do that. Above all, when trying Mystickies, remember that it’s still in Beta ( what isn’t these days). Mystickies will even let you add tags to your bookmarks.

To get started with Mystickies, go to their homepage at www.mystickies.com and create a login ID or Login if you already have a ID created. When you login the website will detect if you have the Browser Extension already installed on your browser, be it IE or Firefox. Although the extension is only available for Firefox for now. :)Firefox gets more support these days compared to IE. Once Firefox extension is installed, it will appear in the Toolbar (although I don't like this option, again this takes the space on my desktop) and it can be accessed by right clicking your and checking it on the menu (preferred method). Mystickies website said that they have a bookmarklet, but does not seem to be working on my system.

Once things are installed, you can start making bookmarks. When you are on a page and want to bookmark, you can either click on “New Sticky” option on the toolbar, right click it and select that option or best, click on ALT on your keyboard and drag it on your screen and then left click it and a new sticky is created (preferred and productive method). Start writing notes in the sticky along with tags as needed (mutilple tags can be added).

 

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It also supports the feature of adding multiple accounts to the tool bar in the extension, so we can enable an account, and then bookmark sites to that account. Personally, I don’t see much use of it and if there was a good use, then ofcourse there could have been better way.

OK, now here are some questions that one can ask before deciding if he/she really needs to sue Mystickies?

Question:– Why can not I just use Del.icio.us or similar services and bookmark the pages that I want to approach at a later stage and tag them with something like “to_do” or “later” ?

Answer:– Personally I think that can be done and that should be easy to manage as well. The problem with tagging services like Del.icio.us is it does not allow anybody to hide the bookmarks. So whatever I bookmark is publicly viewable and so are my notes. So from that point of vew I will still prefer using Mystickies as I would want to hide some notes (some of them have my ideas) and websites from public.

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Question:– Isn’t bookmarking locally an easy option as well?

Answer:– It is but I cannot add many notes and organise them and ofcourse cannot add tags to them (not that I know if this can be done). Also, I might add things at my one computer and the boomarks won’t be available on my second computer. Yes, I know we can sync. the bookmarks but it is just not a productive way to do things. I hardly use bookmarks these days.

Question:– Everytime I open a browser or go to a website, it makes a connection to Mystickies.com website. Why?

Answer:– Ya, that is what I have found as well. I think it check Mystickes.com website if we already have any stickies on the page we are trying to open and bring it on the screen for us. This can be handy, but everytime making connections for hundred of webpages I open on a daily basis is not a good idea. I hope somebody from Mystickies can shed some light on this one.

Question:– I am worried about the privacy and that Mystickies.com will track all the websites that I visit?

Answer:– So am I. I read their very small privacy note and they said that they don’t keep records of our site usage. But I would still see a detailed write up about this. Hey guys at Mystickies.com, can you do this for us?

Question:– I cannot add a sticky without installing Extension? This is no good!!

Answer:– I don’t like this as well. They for now dont’ even have an option to create a sticky from their sticky browser page. What if I am on a computer where I cannot install any extensions but still want to create stickies for later.

Question:– I want stickies to have different colors, but what I can have is just single colored stickies?

Answer:– That is what I think as well. We should have the ability to have different colors on the stickies. I don’t think it will be really difficult to implement this feature in the extension.

Question:– It would be a great feature if we can share stickies with other members ?

Answer:– This is one feature that I will like to see as well. It can be a great tool for sharing stickies with other members. There are so many times, where we find something interesting and share the link with a friend, but if they have a Mystickies account and if we are able to share it with them, then it can really become very easy.

Some of the other features that I will like to see from what is mentioned above is, the feature of minimising the sticky on a page an then restoring them. I will like a feature of exporting the sticky (mainly description) and tags along with URL into a webpage or somewhat similar format.

Overall, it can be a lot better tool with some extra features. I will use it for now and see how I go and if I keep using it after a month or so. I am still worried about privacy policy and data that is collected about my usage.

 

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Get tagged at 1000tags.com

OK, we have seen it all, people advertising on blogs, people doing Google text based ads, buying pixels on the website to advertise ourselves and the whole lot. But now there is another player in the market where you can get your site advertised when you buy a tag ( I am not sure if you would still call this a tag). One can either buy exclusive tag or shared tags. Alright, I don't know if I will visit this site again and this site does not have the "wow" effect for me. But I praise the owner of the site thinking to come with this mega million idea and slap myself for not thinking of this before. A brilliant idea inded and good luck to the owner for making million dollar from this site.
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