Hello all,

I’ve often been asked which was my favourite AV player. Five years ago, I used to respond with "Winamp" or "Power DVD". But now, I should say, my opinions have changed. And thats why I laugh when people say that their favourite player is Real Player, or QuickTime. Right now, after having used most of the available audio/video playing software, I have formed a few of my favourites. And I thought that I would share them with you…

# 1 - Mplayer

Mplayer - an audio/video player for Linux, comes in as my all time favourite AV player. It can play as many video or audio clips as you want simultaneously. It has never crashed for me. It can play semi downloaded files, files with the wrong extension, and once, it has even played a zipped file! Any file with an audio or video track can be played with Mplayer. On Windows, you need to do a manual install, with a Send To shortcut to make it work. It does not have a GUI, but its amazingly powerful. Visit the Mplayer website for more information. Information on how to install and use Mplayer in your Windows system coming up in my next post.

# 2 - VLC Player

Almost as powerful as Mplayer, with a neat GUI, ladies and gentlemen, in second position comes VLC Player. Cross platform support and freeware - 2 words which make VLC magical! It can, like Mplayer, play isolated DVD files, all sorts of music and video files. But sometimes, especially in case of a defective DVD video file, your system hangs. If you like power, and no fancy stuff, but still a GUI, go in for VLC Player.

# 3 - Windows Media Player 11

Stylish and hot, WMP 11 creates a whole new AV experience for Windows users. Free to install for "genuine" Windows users, this awesome looking player is a complete package for any home user. Vista looks, audio/video tweaking, library feature, sync with music players, stable performance etc. are the main features of WMP 11. It comes in as # 3, even above iTunes, because of its fast and stable performance, cool looks, and easy to use sync feature. You can download WMP 11 from the Microsoft website.

Yes, thats my top 3. I hope that you’ve found this post useful. And no, Real Player, QuickTime etc. are not among my favourites. In fact they feature at the end of my favour list… Just below my top 3, comes DivX, iTunes, Powe DVD etc.

Technorati Tags: top 3, audio video players, audio players, video players, audio software, video software, av software, top 3 audio video players

Hello,

Many of us would have wanted to shift from Blogger to Wordpress. But you must be put off by the fact that you would have to start all over again - visitors, feeds, Google PR, advertisers and so on… I’ve seen very many posts on the technical details on how to make the shift. A week back, my friend Amit from Digital Inspiration posted a blog on how to make the shift from Blogger to Wordpress without lasting damage in terms of visitors, RSS readers, and so on.

I found it quite useful, but since I didn’t have any more Blogger blogs (atleast none with a huge visitor count and stats) I couldn’t test it… It might turn out to be very useful for you. I reccomend this article as a MUST READ for anyone planning to shift from Blogger to Wordpress.

Check out Digital Inspiration.

Cheers

Technorati Tags: blogger to wordpress, shifting, blogs

Disclaimer : I found this on Digg. Thanks to Nirmal. We envision that you use the information given below for legal(or educational) purposes only. Thank you.

Hi all,
Here’s a cool tool named Google Hack which allows to you easily search for the file of your choice - be it music, video, lyrics, hacks, caches items, fonts, proxies, torrents, applications or books.

Google has in built search queries which can be used to effectively track down these files, but these long codes need to be appended to the search term. Who will bother to do that?

So here, a few smart guys have released a cool program which will surely reduce your search time, and increase your search accuracy, when you’re searching for such, uh, ‘unconventional’ things.

Google Hacks hosted at Google CODE is a program available for Windows, Mac and Linux. Download the appropriate file, and enjoy Googling

Ladies and gentlemen,

   Today is Blog Action Day. Today, we bloggers around the world, including certain hi-fi bloggers like Lifehacker, GigaOm, Google Blog, and so on, participate to help spread the word about a cause. A cause, which needs much concern for it is necessary for sustainable development. The cause, which many of us easily ignore in our haste. Our environment.

   So I was thinking all day about what I would blog about. Finally, I decided to settle for a simple, but useful topic, and I decided to stick to the Indian context, because this blog is chiefly to serve Indian people (sorry people ).

   Here are a few things which I think could make an impact. These are the few basic things, which, though we know, we always tend to ignore.

• Please switch off all lights, fans and air conditioning when leaving a room. (Savings on your electricity bill, helps reduce global power consumption, helps reduce power crisis and blackouts, helps reduce global warming)
• Draw back the curtains, and utilize sunlight instead of the bulb in the mornings.(Savings on your electricity bill, helps reduce global power consumption, helps reduce power crisis and blackouts, helps reduce global warming)
• Use CFLs instead of incandescent bulbs.(Energy efficiency, savings on your electricity bill, helps reduce global power consumption, helps reduce power crisis and blackouts, helps reduce global warming)
• Please please please please do not waste water. Please turn off a tap while not in use. Shave using a mug of water. And turn off the tap while brushing your teeth.
• Reduce, reuse, recycle.
• Reuse paper. In small scale offices and industries, review your paper policy. (Savings on paper, help save trees)
• Put your PCs and laptops on Stand By mode when not in use. Helps save power, and extends the life of the computer.
• Ever tried purchasing wrinkle free shirts and trousers? Saves on the electricity bill BIG TIME (and helps our lazy chaps like me )
• Use plastic bags and bottles again, and again, and again, and again….
• Do you have any idea how newspapers can be reused? Of course, you can sell it to have it recycled, but you can reuse a bit of it yourself, and save a little bit of money (you can also boast to your friends). What can you make from a newspaper you ask? Temporary table covers, napkins, gift wrapping (especially the comics page), working paper, temporary wraps, file contents separater, CD cover (I’ll be posting that "How to" next time) and so on and so forth… The list is endless.
• Use public transport whenever feasible. Try to car pool / bike pool. If you’re in Bangalore, visit www.btis.in to find pooling partners. Offer lifts to those who ask for it. Try to reduce air travel. By doing these, you will be helping to reduce the energy crisis, saving a lot of money, and making a bunch of good friends . (Oops, forgot to mention, WALK wherever possible)

By doing these simple things, you can help ensure yourself, and others, a better life, and a better future environment. Something you should understand (and what my friend keeps saying every single time I mention environmental conservation) is that, you, or I, as a single person can’t do a thing. But if one Billion people of India conserve power, fuel, and water, there definitely WILL be a change. So spread the word, practice conservation methods, and encourage others to do the same.

The steps above are just my views. You’re free to form your own views, ideologies, and methods. Go ahead, spread them, maybe comment here, I’ll add them to the list. Also remember, all these steps cannot be followed in every walk of our life. We’re not fanatics! What we can do is help little by little. Practice little one day, a little more another day, and so on. And finally, we might actually end up saving our world .

And for the move active and time savvy of you, here a few more things to do -

• Publicize the cause, and the need. Many people publicize just the cause, and not the need. This leads to false beliefs, and false beliefs to unacceptancy.
• Openly support environmental causes. Use your area of expertise to do your best. Everyone could be a part of it. If you’re a journalist, write about it. If you’re a radio jockey, talk about it. If you’re a web designer, make websites about it. If you’re a software engineer, help organize it. If you’re an LIC agent, talk to your clients about it in every meeting. If you’re an service man at Cafe’ Coffee Day, talk to your customers about it, and maybe distribute extra tissue papers with the logo for the cause?!!!
• Adopt a tree. Adopting a tree isn’t as simple as what we see our politicians do. We don’t just plant a sapling, pour some water and leave it there. Adopting a tree will mean planting it, watering it daily, pruning it, helping it to grow, and protecting it.
• Launch campaigns, and conduct speeches in public areas, schools, colleges, and other educational institutions.
• Conduct such talks in otherwise neglected areas like orphanages and old age homes as well.

   I hope that I’ve made my point. I hope that someone will take off from here, and I hope that we can together, create a revolution, produce a change, and delay the inevitable. Peace!

Technorati Tags: blog action day, environment, 11 ways to go green, green India, green @ India, environmental conservation, save environment, power crisis, energy crisis, reduce, reuse, recycle

Hi all,
How would a person feel when there’s a virus on a system, when he cant access Task manager to end the virus process or access regedit to zoom it to hell? Well, thats exactly what happened to me. All my college computers were inflicted with so many viruses, that even a trio of Norton, Avast and NOD32 couldn’t come to the rescue. And Task Manager was blocked. So was regedit. Apparently, “Task Manager has been disabled by your Administrator” and “Registry editing has been blocked by your Administrator“. My first reaction was to call up the admin and use a few well chosen swear words.

But thankfully, it didn’t come to that, since Windows was Windows, and everything had a back door or two . So what do you do to re enable task manager and/or regedit when your admin has blocked them? Follow the few simple steps below -

• Hit Windows+R to bring up Run (Start>Run)
• Type in gpedit.msc and click OK
• For regedit : In the Group Policy window, browse to User Configuration>System and voila, you should have a small entry named “Prevent access to registry editing tools“. Double click that entry. Check the Disabled option, and click OK. Your regedit.exe has just been enabled .
• For Task Manager : In the Group Policy window, browse to User Configuration>System>Ctrl+Alt+Del Options and you’ll have an entry titled “Remove Task Manager“. Double click that entry. Check the Disabled option, and click OK. Your Task Manager has just been enabled . Go ahead, hit Ctrl+Alt+Del and rejoice .

Thats it guys, I hope this has been useful. Oh by the way, this post was intended for purely educational uses. Any damage you create by fiddling with these options are your own fault! Toodles!

UPDATE
gpedit.msc (Group Policy Editor) is not available on Windows XP Home. But it can be installed, by copying the files from a Windows XP Professional system. I’ve included a file which contains the 2 files required to install gpedit.msc on a Windows XP Home PC. Download the file, unzip it, and read the howto.txt file, which contains the instructions. Click here to download the file. Big thanks to Atar for this!

Technorati Tags: gpedit, taskmanager, windows task manager, enable taskmanager, gpedit for home