Online Diary » My Favourites

Newsgator providing its RSS reader for FREE !

venukb — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 11:08:53 +0000

I have been a great fan of Newsgator products, particularly the desktop based feed reader FeedDemon ! I have been recommending the same to many of my friends.

After trying out lot of RSS readers including RSS Bandit and Google Reader, I finally found that none of them could match FeedDemon’s simple yet powerful user interface and I totally loved the synchronization feature built into the application.

Along with Flickr, FeedDemon became one of the apps that I paid for !

Now Newsgator has turned most of its RSS products including FeedDemon into FREE applications.

So go ahead and grab your free copy of Feeddemon ! There are host of other products including Newsgator Mobile being offered for free. Nick Bradbury, the creator of FeedDemon and many other products has more details on this free offering.

Do read my earlier post on FeedDemon and if I am not able to convince you to use FeedDemon, probably Amit would !

Thanks Nick

Employee of the Month !

venukb — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 16:18:45 +0000

I’m sure Vasu would have something to say on this

What other punch line can you think of for the above photo ?

Sandisk Cruzer Micro

venukb — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 18:24:55 +0000

I have been planning to buy a USB flash drive from quite some time now. My current 256MB flash drive is of no use in the sense that it runs out of space too quickly.

My 30GB iPod could have served as an alternative; however its little bulky to carry around and the “proprietary” cable that has to be tagged along with the device makes it much more difficult.

Transcend and Sandisk are the 2 major vendors of USB Flash drives. I had a look at the products offered by both vendors and was more impressed with the Sandisk range.

Sandisk flash drives looked much better; cute and compact. However compared to Transcend they are priced on the higher side.

The other reason for choosing Sandisk was because of the 2 Year International warranty. Transcend provides lifetime warranty only at the place/country where it is bought (The one I got was bought in Taiwan )

After going over the entire product portfolio, I finally settled on a 4GB Sandisk Cruzer Micro.

Let’s go over the specification first

Retractable USB connector – No need for additional cap

Brilliant amber LED – Lights on when its connected and blinks when data transfer is in progress.

U3 smart enabled – More on this below.

Dimensions: 7.94mm x 20.6mm x 57.15mm (D x W x L) (Please note that my photography skills are limited)

Hi-Speed USB 2.0 certified (backwards compatible with all USB 1.1 ports)

Compatible with Windows 2000, SP4 and XP*

Certified Windows 2000 and XP*

Enhanced for WindowsÂ® ReadyBoostâ„¢ U3 Smart Enabled
Sandisk Cruzer Micro is U3 Smart Enabled. Devices powered by U3 are touted as the next generation USB flash drives. Other than allowing you to store/secure your data, U3 enabled drives come with a host of pre-loaded software ! And additionally you can install hundreds of other U3 compliant software’s.

U3 addresses one of the basic problem that probably everybody using a flash drive would have faced.

To give an example, if I had a 3gp file on the flash drive and if I had to play it in one of my friends PC, I would have to rely on his PC having the software capable of playing the 3gp file. However with a U3 Zoom Player installed on the flash drive, I would never have to worry about the software being installed on a host PC.

U3 Applications are allowed to write registry information to the host computer and this information is removed when the flash drive is ejected.

On inserting a U3 Smart drive, the U3 Launchpad is invoked.

The Launchpad interface is used to launch/manage the U3 Smart programs.Sandisk Cruzer came pre-loaded with the following software

Skype – Make VoIP Calls.
Hp PhotoSmart – Picture viewing software
Avast Antivirus
Sudoku and Mahjong games.
CruzerSync U3 Edition – Allows you to synchronize Browser Bookmarks, profile data (Outlook mails/Documents) etc.

You can also install additional programs from U3 Download Central or Sandisk U3 Download site. I quickly installed the following useful applications

Mozilla Firefox for U3
Foxit Reader for U3
Putty for U3
WinSCP for U3
FileZilla for U3

You can also use U3 Launchpad to configure the installed applications as well as setting the Launchpad preferences. If U3 Launchpad is too annoying for you, there is an option even to uninstall it. (You could re-install the program back as well)

If you want to know more about U3, here are some useful links:

If you are feeling sleepy after reading this lengthy review you should probably check some of the “Amazing Photos” of Cruzer Micro taken in my camera

The 4GB Cruzer cost is around 1450 INR (35 USD). Ebay India seems to be selling the same for around 1900 INR.

Would you go for a U3 Smart Drive ?

Windows Live Writer Reloaded

venukb — Thu, 31 May 2007 18:50:25 +0000

Microsoft‘s Windows Live Writer is a powerful desktop based weblog client and is currently the only product I like from Microsoft’s stable. The initial beta had lot of interesting features which made it a must have for any blogger.

Review of Windows Live Writer Beta 1

There are lot of free and licensed desktop weblog clients including Qumana but not a single client is as powerful and feature rich as Live writer. Beta 2 version of Live writer is now available and there are lots of new features added into the new version.

Feature Highlights:

Inline Spell Checking – From now on you no longer need to manually run the spell checker.
Inserting/Editing Tables – You can insert and edit tables. Nice add-on
Support for excerpts – “Split Post” option now allows you to insert the “more” tag in the posts. Previously this could be done only via the HTML Code view
Better integration of local and online edited posts.
New look and feel

Checkout the official post for more interesting features added in Beta2

Screenshots

Download Windows Live Writer Beta 2

Amazon – DRM Free MP3

venukb — Mon, 28 May 2007 16:32:42 +0000

More on bLaugh

Doodles of a Crazy Man

venukb — Tue, 08 May 2007 14:16:17 +0000

“Doodles of a Crazy Man” is the title of the blog maintained by my highly talented friend Vasuki.

Wondering why I am writing about this blog? Not because he is my friend or that his link is on my Blogroll; its out of total appreciation to the blog’s content and his writing talent.

Of all the different blogs/RSS feeds that I read daily, this blog stands out primarily because of quality content.

Vasu has a unique style of story telling/putting his view and if you read a couple of posts in his blog you will definitely be tempted to dig through the blogs archives.

Most of the posts are guaranteed to bring a smile on your face. Irrespective of whether it makes you smile or not, each and every post in his blog is an interesting read unlike my blog. (Yes I am envious )

Checkout Doodles of the Crazy Man - You’ll love it

Subscribe to his RSS feed as well; Its one of those feeds where you wait for a new post to arrive.

P.S. I sometimes wonder why Desipundit doesn’t link to some of his amazing posts.