Tips n Tricks

A service is a long running executable which does require any user intervention and is configured to start when the operating system is booted.

On Windows, the services are managed via services.msc and you can also communicate with a NT service using the SC tool.

On Linux the services can be controlled via the chkconfig command line tool.

Usage details of chkconfig  is shown below:

chkconfig --list [name] chkconfig --add <name> chkconfig --del <name> chkconfig [--level <levels>] <name> <on|off|reset>

Add and Del options are used to create or delete services for management. A service can be activated

I have been reading in many posts which mention special tools to help in ejecting/removing a USB disk.

The Windows "Safely Remove Hardware" feature has been notorious for hiding itself after installing the new hardware.

You do have the option of Ejecting the hardware; however this becomes a pain if you are working with multiple USB devices.

Also in Windows XP, one USB device might list multiple entries in the Remove Hardware dialog. In Windows Vista there is a option to filter the device components.

Do you really need to eject the USB Hardware ?

Most of the USB Disks are optimized

Web Analytic tools are must have for anybody running a website since they give interesting insight into your site’s traffic patterns.

Woopra Web Analytics was mentioned/reviewed by so many sites that I had to give it a try.

After signing up for Woopra, I immediately proceeded towards the downloads page. I installed the Desktop Client (for which I had to upgrade the JRE on my system to 1.6) and also installed the WordPress Plug-in.

Only after installing the WP Plugin did I realize that I had to have an "Invitation Code" to use Woopra !

Without an code you need to wait till Woopra inspects and

Cell Broadcast also know as Short Message Service - Cell Broadcast (SMS-CB) is a service designed for delivery of messages to multiple users in a specified area. Unlike SMS Point to Point which is manly a one to one service Cell Broadcast is a one to many service.

Some mobile operators use Cell Broadcast for communicating the area code of the antenna cell to the mobile user (via channel 050), for nationwide or citywide alerting, weather reports, mass messaging, location based news, etc. The service might not be supported by all the operators; even some of the handsets don't have the capability to receive Cell Broadcast messages.

One of the readers on my earlier post on HTC

I happened to reinstall the OS on my system (yet again) and there is a set of software that I install after every OS re-install. In fact I have a "Must Have" directory which has all the software's that I use on a day to day basis.

Here is my list of "must have" applications for Windows. I am also mentioning it in the order of install of these applications.

Kaspersky Antivirus

The first thing to do after reinstalling an OS (or before you connect to the Internet) is to install a good Antivirus  and a AntiSpyware application. I currently have a 2 year subscription of Kaspersky and

I am sure many would be surprised with the title of this post. Gmail for one provides with almost 6.6GB of space and its keeps growing every day. It would be amazingly difficult to fill up this space.

Even on the Gmail's home page, you would see this marketing statement:

Over 6628.815124 megabytes (and counting) of free storage so you'll never need to delete another message.

So why would anyone want to clean up/delete the mails on his/her Gmail account ?

I for one find it annoying to store unwanted mails; Note that I am not talking of spam mails and referring to marketing mails etc which are genuine but unwanted !

These mails just fill up your pages and

Twitter is a web service which helps you to communicate and stay connected through quick exchange of messages. Its supposedly one of the fastest growing phenomena on the Internet.

Until few days back, accessing Twitter service from iPhone was possible only via the safari web browser. Following are the 4 web based Twitter Clients for iPhone:

Twitter Mobile

Twitter Mobile is the official version of the mobile client. The User interface is basic (hence loads faster) and it lacks a lot of features available on normal web based client.

The following snapshot shows the only 4 options available on the mobile client.

Pocket Tweets

The

Exactly an year back I wrote about moving this blog from GoDaddy to Dreamhost. The story continues and this year I have moved to Media Temple (referral link).

I had considered Media Temple last year, however the site revenues weren't enough to match the rates quoted by Media Temple. Even this time around I thought a lot before choosing  Media Temple. I did see a lot of negative reviews on Media Temple but I guess you would see that for every other hosting provider.

You need to use the service to come to a conclusion and MT does have a 30 day money back guarantee option.

Why shift from Dreamhost ?

WordPress 2.5 was released some days back and I upgraded to the same with some minor hiccups. There were high expectations from me and everybody with respect to the Admin user interface.

I for one was totally disappointed when I found out that the menu items in the interface were taking almost 50% on my 15" widescreen.

Also I found that it was not just me complaining; Many found that the new admin interface was not that user friendly including Dean Robinson who came up with Fluency Admin Theme for WordPress 2.5. The theme moves the main options to a sidebar and the sub-options to the top

A 16 GB iPhone just made its way to my home today all the way from an US store. Even though I had "experienced" iPhone by reading about it and by seeing tons of videos on YouTube, using it live was a totally different experience.

iPhone is an amazing, astounding, remarkable, wonderful, incredible, marvelous product from Apple!

The sad fact is that I can use this phone only for the next 20 days after which my brother would take ownership! (He is the actual owner of this phone)

Sadder is the fact that I have to return using my HTC Touch. Believe me,