Windows

Contrary to what most people think, deletion of file on windows does not mean permanent loss of the data.

When the file is deleted, its not "shredded" Instead, the table of contents that points out the location of the file is erased. To put in more simpler words, the attribute of the space used by the deleted file is changed from "occupied" to "available".

Eventually, the hard drive will write new data over the area where the old file is located.

File Recovery utilities take advantage of the fact that the deletion of file in windows is reversible.

ZAR (Zero Assumption Recovery) is a Windows software to recover data from FAT and NTFS volumes after accidental format

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Along with Windows Live Writer Beta 3 there were a bunch of other tools released as part of the Windows Live Suite. It included

Windows Messenger Mail Photo Gallery Toolbar OneCare

I have been using the Photo Gallery application from the past one week and looks like I have fallen for one more product from Microsoft.

Windows Live Photo Gallery Beta is a photo organizer that you can use to view, manage, and edit digital photos and videos. By default, all the photos in the Pictures folder on your hard disk appear in Photo Gallery. Additionally you can also add other folders on your hard disk to Photo

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Windows Live Writer Beta 3 was released a few days back and this is one tool from Microsoft that deserves a lot of praise. It definitely simplifies the task of writing posts for your blog.

Beta 3 has the following new features:

 

 

Insert videos using new 'Insert Video' dialog

Upload images to Picasaweb when publishing to your Blogger blog

Publish XHTML-style markup

Use Writer in 28 additional languages

Print your posts

Justify-align post text

Better image handling (fewer blurry images)

Resolved installation issues from last release

Many other bug fixes and enhancements

More on

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The other day one of the application server wouldn't start up because of a required port being used by another application. This, I am sure is of the common problem faced by many developers :)

The task manager in Windows shows only the active processes and gives no detail on the ports opened by these processes. One of the ways to find the process using a port of your interest is to use the netstat command.

The netstat command on windows can be used to list the TCP connections, ports on which the computer is listening, Ethernet statistics, the IP routing table etc.

The netsat -b option can be used to list the process name that is using a

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ActiveSync, a synchronization program developed by Microsoft allows a mobile device to be synchronized with a Desktop PC. Other than syncing your contacts, calendar, tasks and notes you can also sync the Emails on the Exchange server.

ActiveSync also allows you to

Copy files between PC and the Mobile Device Install/Uninstall Mobile Applications

ActiveSync can also be used to connect to a network or Internet. The connected device can use the computer's network connection as if it were its own. You can use this feature to perform tasks such as downloading non-Outlook e-mail messages or to browse the Internet.

The above feature was the primary reason I

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If you are used to a tabbed browser or a tabbed text editor you would also love a tabbed Windows console. As we all know the windows console isn't the prettiest of the applications nor its usable when it comes to selecting text or pasting text. (I am not sure if the console application has been improved on Windows Vista) The Console project on SourceForge.net is one handy application if you use the windows console a lot. Features include Multiple Tabs Text Editor like Text Selection Customizable console - You can configure the background color, image and transparency levels Keyboard shortcuts - If you are keyboard junkie, you would appreciate this feature too :) One of ...

In yesterdays post on Sandisk Cruzer Micro, I was mentioning how U3 Smart technology allows you to carry your favorite PC programs on the flash drive.

Turns out that U3 is not the only technology available to accomplish this task. There is an open source project called PortableApps using which you could turn any flash drive/iPod into a "U3 smart" device.

A portable app is a computer program that you can carry around with you on a portable device and use on any Windows computer. When your USB flash drive, portable hard drive, iPod or other portable device is plugged in, you have access to your software

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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 :D ) After going over the entire product portfolio, I finally settled on a 4GB Sandisk Cruzer Micro. Let's go over the specification first :)

Plaxo is an online address book service founded by Napster co-founder Sean Parker, Minh Nguyen, and two Stanford engineering students, Todd Masonis and Cameron Ringand. I have been a loyal user of this service from some time now.

I happened to meet a person named Ghanshyam Dass in Shanghai airport (during transit), who later turned out to be the Nasdaq Director for Asia Pacific !! We exchanged cards and the next day I received a Address Update request from him.

This was when I was introduced to Plaxo (By the way this was way back in 2004) !! I immediately signed up for the service and even downloaded the Plaxo toolbar for Outlook (which was the E-Mail client used

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Source Control also known as Revision control or source code management (SCM) is the management of multiple revisions of the same unit of information. Source Control is most commonly used in software development to manage ongoing development of documents like application source code or design documents or any electronic information which is worked on by a team of people. There are a lot of revision control software out there, the notable ones being CVS, ClearCase and Subversion. The following wikipedia page gives a complete list of the revision control software including detailed information on each of them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_revision_control_software Eclipse is fast becoming the default IDE among developers (Thanks to the extensible ...