From the category archives:

Windows

HowTo : Delete a Windows Service

by venukb on February 21, 2008

Many a times I have been in a situation where I need to delete a windows service and every time I end up "googling" to find the easiest/fastest way of doing this. Most of the posts in the search result talk about modifying the windows registry to delete the service, which isn't always foolproof.

The easisest way of deleting a service is by using the sc.exe command line tool. This tools comes bundled with Windows and is probably the easiest way of maintaining and administering Windows Services.

Lets take an example of a totally useless service on Windows: Windows Search Service.

The first thing to do is to get the name of the Windows Service; What is shown in

...

{ 3 comments }

Xobni - I have 5 Invites

by venukb on January 15, 2008

Xobni Insight is an add-on for Microsoft Outlook that offers email management and provides instant access to the most important information in your email. Xobni also supposedly exposes the hidden social network in your email.

The add-on has several features, including fast email search, email analytics, automatic phone number discovery, threaded conversations, and more. When you click on an email in Outlook, the Xobni sidebar shows the following information

Relationship Statistics - Number of emails sent and received Contact Information (Phone number is automatically extracted from the email) Related People Threaded Conversation Shared Attachments

The "Organize" Tab displays the following information

...

{ 17 comments }

Configuring Synergy

by venukb on January 12, 2008

Synergy is an open source software lets you easily share a single mouse and keyboard between multiple computers with different operating systems, each with its own display, without special hardware.

It's intended for users with multiple computers on their desk. I have a similar setup at work and till now I was struggling while switching between the desktop PC and the notebook. You could remote desktop to one of the computers, however you would loose out on using both the display units.

Workplace

The official documentation for configuring Synergy isn't that straightforward. Here is how I configured Synergy between 2 computers running Windows.

Install the software ...

{ 4 comments }

Newsgator providing its RSS reader for FREE !

by venukb on January 10, 2008

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.

newsgator

So go ahead and grab your free copy of Feeddemon !

...

{ 4 comments }

Launchy 2.0

by venukb on December 21, 2007

One of my favorite tools, Launchy just got upgraded to 2.0. As the website says, Launchy is an utility desinged to help us forget about the start menu in Windows. I have recommeneded this tool to many of my friends and  not one of them have complained about it. Its like a "must have" tool for Windows.

The new version has been completely written in QT and hence the old plug-ins and skins will no longer work. The old configuration will also be wiped with the upgrade to 2.0

launchy1

The options are now merged into a single preference dialog.

...

{ 4 comments }

PocketCM Keyboard

by venukb on November 1, 2007

In one of my earlier post, I mentioned a couple of popular keyboard applications for smartphone/pocket PC running Windows Mobile operating system. One of the reader of that post, Idan pointed me to another cool virtual keyboard application from PocketCM.

The keyboard does look a lot like the iPhone keyboard and works a lot better compared to the default keyboard application. Check the official video below to see PocketCM keyboard at work.

...

{ 0 comments }

Windows Mobile Device Center

by venukb on October 28, 2007

After upgrading to Windows Vista, setting up the communication between Vista and my HTC Touch was a PITA ! And I would like give the entire credit of this pain to Vista !

On Windows XP, Activesync did a very good job in syncing with the smartphone and I also managed to synchronize over Bluetooth. When I plugged in the handset (via USB) to the vista upgraded laptop, the windows mobile device center opened up and showed the connection status as "Connected".

The dialog box looked something like this:

Open "Windows Mobile Device Center" and you are treated with a dialog box with 2 check boxes (as

...

{ 4 comments }

Live photo Gallery can now upload to Flickr

by venukb on October 24, 2007

Live photo gallery was one of the recent applications which got added to my favorite application list. In my previous post on Live Photo Gallery I had wished that the application provided integration with Flickr.

The Photo gallery team headed by Michael Palermiti has heard to this wish and the latest update of Live photo gallery now supports a powerful Flickr Integration.

Rather than going into the details of the feature, I will just embed the video created by Michael.

...

{ 0 comments }

Upgraded to Windows Vista

by venukb on October 20, 2007

I have been tracking and trying out Vista since the Beta days and have written a lot of posts on the same.

Windows Vista Beta 2 Windows Vista logs into India Planning to upgrade to Windows Vista ? Acer - Upgrade to Vista Planning to upgrade to Vista ?

From the past few months I have also been regularly checking the price of Vista on http://microsoft.indiatimes.com. I finally choose Vista Ultimate and shelled out 9K INR for the Ultimate upgrade edition :(

...

{ 9 comments }

SPB Mobile Shell

by venukb on September 24, 2007

SPB Mobile shell is an extension for the boring default user interface of a Windows Mobile powered Pocket PC phone. Key feature include:

Phone style menu Weather forecasts  Photo speed dial World time Launcher Big dynamic tabs on Today Color based themes Smart contact search spb2

The SPM Menu based navigation loads faster and you can quickly launch application of your choice.

Even the Now Screen is pretty detailed and gives a quick overview of

Messages - Email/SMS Missed calls spb1 Volume level Weather Date and time Appointments/Meetings.

More

...

{ 3 comments }