Setup and forget automated backup with Cobian + Your favorite cloud hosting app!

There are numerous file cloud syncing/backup tools available such Sugar Sync, Dropbox, SkyDrive, Box.net and Google Drive to name a few.

These tools helps you keep your files safe in the event of a disk failure, virus attack or any other destructive situation, automatically.

You add a file/folder to the "special" sync folder and all is backed up and synced or use "selective sync", a highly sought after feature implemented in most applications, to select which folder to be synced to the cloud.

Now this is all good. But there are times when you really don't want some files to be synced always, all the time. The perfect example is the Outlook PST file which stores all your emails. You want it to be backed up, but it's going to be a waste of bandwidth if each time an email arrives and your file starts syncing to the cloud. There maybe many other such files that need not be synced ASAP.

What you need is some way to specify WHEN exactly do you want the sync to happen. How awesome would it be if you can tell "Hey, backup this file/folder every hour, every 135 minutes, every week or every first Monday and Thursday" ?

Cobian Backup to the rescue! I was looking for a flexible backup solution and found a gem. Luis Cobian has created a wonderful piece of software. Kudos!

Download Cobian Backup version 11 (Code named Gravity) , the latest as of writing and install it. I am assuming you have your sync tool installed as well.

Once Cobian Backup is installed, in the "Task" menu, click "New Task" or alternatively press Ctrl + A to add a task.

Note the setting "Use Volume Shadow Copy". Using that option, you can be sure that your file can be backed even while it's locked by an application.

After that add a source which could be any file or folder that you want to backup. The destination should be your magic folder (Dropbox/SugarSync Magic Briefcase") or any folder setup to be selectively synced. You can have multiple sources and multiple destinations.

As you can scheduling is very advanced and will cater to almost any need.

There's compression + industry standard encryption too!

with filters!

 I unfortunately cannot go through all the features in Cobian backup due to the sheer size!

So the idea is to use Cobian Backup to backup your files to the synced folder and you have a bullet proof, automated backup!

Download Cobian Backup

My Best Productivity Tools (One Note)

There are quite a few software that I use daily or once in a while to get things done in a more productive way or be productive. So I thought of listing down a few of my most used and trusted software. This is in no way a Top N Productivity Tools post or neither is a complete one. I’ll try to be concise and precise. Oh and by the way, I use an Android powered smart phone, so don’t be surprised to a see a few Android apps on the list. I’ll cover an app each in a post! Here goes the first!

  Microsoft OneNote
 

One Note is first, because it IS my number one productivity tool. I don’t know where I’d be without it. The companion Android application that was released recently is pure bliss.

Need something organized ? OneNote to the rescue! My office life would be a giant mess if it wasn’t for OneNote. I have everything from meeting notes, documents, task updates from team members to research documents, personal notes, brainstorming sessions and to do lists organized all thanks to the wonderful piece software from Redmond.

I tried Evernote and loved it because it could sync with my Android device but I didn’t fall in love with the tags concept or the number of hierarchical layers that it could divide my work in to.

In contrast, in OneNote, I have a notebook for each of my projects and I have a number of sub layers all neatly organized. I just love all those hierarchical organization capabilities! And automatic text recognition in the images is neat! It would suck to add all my office to-do lists in to my phone but One Note handles it like a boss! Adding a task is one click and automatically adds that task to Outlook too. It’s easier than having another to do list app.

Seriously, if you need everything organized in your life; office or home, OneNote is a gem! Now that OneNote syncs with my Android and integrates nicely with SkyDrive (you can edit OneNote documents in the browser!), my notes can be accessed where ever I have a browser and an Internet connection. 

Try OneNote!

P.S : NO, I am not a MS fan boy!

Await more productivity tools!

Commit using shortcut key in TortoiseSVN (Windows)

I always needed to automate committing in TortoiseSVN. Sure, it was not a very big deal to right click a folder/file and click commit but still how awesome would it be if I just use a shortcut key?

This led me to to this stackoverflow question which basically leads to this article. Cool! Just what I wanted!
Well, not quite. It does show that we should call TortoiseProc.exe with the required parameters, but acquiring the parameters (selected folder/file) in Windows Explorer is the tricky part. Not to mention, that it should happen when a shortcut key is pressed.

Well the whole process was surprisingly easy, thanks to QTTabBar. QTTabBar is one awesome piece of software which enables, tabbed browsing for Windows Explorer which is its major feature. Plus, it has a plethora of other goodies which makes Explorer down right lame.

Take a look at those lovely Tabs!



So the feature that we are going to use is "Applications".

Once QTTabBar is installed, right click on the bar, and select Options.

From Options, go to the Applications tab.

Then from there, select the + button to your top right (the one without the folder icon). Type a name "Commit"

From there, set the options as follows.

1. The path should be of course where you installed TortoiseSVN.
2. Leave the arguments as it is, unless you know what other arguments you need to pass in.
3. Assign a shortcut key and presto!

C:\Program Files\TortoiseSVN\bin\TortoiseProc.exe
/command:commit /path:%s%

Here is another shortcut I created for Update.

/command:update /path:%s%

This is just the beginning, you can do MUCH more than this using the article I specified earlier.

And the fun doesn't stop there... You can automate just about ANYTHING that accepts parameters, using shortcut keys now!

Happy Committing!

Best Spell Checker for Skype (or any windows application)–Tiny Spell

 

If you are that person who wants pristine clean spellings all over what you type and might jump off a river and go crazy if you make the slightest spelling mistake, you are more or less like me. I use Skype at work and the lack of a built-in spell checker  is a real draw back for me. But look no more. I have found the perfect solution. Tiny Spell.

Stays out of your way until you commit the crime and beeps (optional, but default) to let you know that you did something wrong. It will show in a tiny tooltip, the incorrect word and all you have to do is press the down key to bring a list of possible corrections. (Down key is not enabled by default)

With a plethora of features, TinySpell really does save the day. Did I mention it is free? Well there is a Pro version but seriously it wouldn’t annoy you in anyway to buy the pro version (At least not yet) and the features in the non-pro version is more than enough!

These are the settings that I have set up. I was heartbroken that I cannot get the replacement list hot key to set up to Ctrl+Space. But it is a minor flaw given that at least I can turn a blind eye to.

 

 

Well the features of Tiny Spell at a glance (I have included the ones that I like)

• Show spellings error on-the fly!
• Show the possible corrections with a press of a key.
• Beep on spelling error (Could be annoying sometimes)
• Ignore password fields
• Use either a whitelist or a blacklist for defining applications to which spell checker should be enabled/disabled.
• Custom Dictionaries (Default is American English)

• Insert the replacement word or copy it to the clipboard.
• Add your custom words to a dictionary!!! (Brilliant!)
• Low on resources ( It was taking about 4MB )

TinySpell+ (Pro version) includes much much more.

• Remembers the last error.
• Instantly displays the best spelling suggestion (No need to press down) for quick replacement
• Add auto-replacements to the dictionary
• Import/Export your private dictionary
• and a bit more enhanced checking for spelling errors such as ignore ALL CAPS and words with numb3rs.

 

So if you are interested in it, go for it!

TinySpell

 

Technorati Tags: skype,best,spell,check,checker,auto,automatic,checking,incorrect,words,windows,application,program,free,freeware,app,software

Zotero Word Plugin giving trouble?

Well I had my Zotero Word Plugin installed and working fine and one day suddenly it disappeared in to thin air :(

All my project work got stuck because i couldn’t cite or put a reference list and i was so worried.

1. I reinstalled Office 2007
2. Upgraded Zotero to 2.0
3. Tried to reinstall the word plugin using Firefox

Nothing worked :(

Well if that is the case for you too, maybe this little trick might get you up and running again. Notice this will only work if you have INSTALLED Zotero + Zotero Word Plugin (Which is a Firefox Addon in 2.0).

Well finally the problem was that Word itself has disabled the Zotero AddIn.

So just head to Word Options (From the Office Globe) –> Addins –>

Check to see if by any chance Zotero is in the “Disabled Application Addins”.

If it is, you are in luck. Simply select “Disabled Items” from Manage drop down box and click Go..

Select Zotero and Click Enable. Restart Office and Presto :D

Hope this helps anyone out there…

Don’t forget to thank you if this helped you! :)

Technorati Tags:
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end,note,endnote,papers,mendeley,mendely,bibtex,citation,cite,reference
,list,bibliography,manage,automatically

Search for ANYTHING using EVERYTHING

• Ever wanted to quickly find all the doc files in your PC?
• Or all jpg files where the name starts with D and ends with an A + contains a 1 in the middle?
• Love wildcards for searching??
• Even better, wish you can use regular expressions for searching?
• Wish that everything was indexed and it was a matter of typing to search for something?
• Want your files to be indexed REAL TIME but without hogging up your RAM?
• Love Google’s simple search box?

You need EVERYTHING! :D
EVERYTHING will search for ANYTHING and EVERYTHING the WAY you WANT it :D








Just give it a few minutes to index all your files and you are good to go! Just simply enter a query with/without wildcards and the results are immediately shown! Everything registers it self for file changes and automatically updates the index.
Everything is very low on resource consumption. I have made everything index all my files and that is exactly 301,695 files and it takes less than 20MB.




One of the most coolest features of Everything is that it can start an HTTP/ETP/FTP server on any port and (with username/password authentication) you can connect to your computer from anywhere and browse all the indexed files + download them :D




Other features include

• Context Menu Integration
• Export Search Results (txt format)
• Exclude items from your search (File/Folder/Pattern)
• Hot Key support
• Match cAsE/Whole Word/Path/Regex
• Use Boolean operators! (w00t!)
• Automatic Update
• Runs on Windows 7 (64-bit too)!
• Its FREE!

Bad Side

• No network location indexing (You need to run Everything on both computers and start an ETP server)
• No file content indexing (only file names)
• Only NTFS partitions supported!
• Windows Only!

Check Everything FAQ for more details



DOWNLOAD EVERYTHING

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find,look,auto,regex,regular,expression,boolean,windows,7,xp,2000,NTFS,
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easily,network,browse,computer,computers,everything,anything,export,hot,key,
match,case,path,whole,word,operators,context,menu,integration

Google Chrome Extensions

I've being a hard-core Firefox fan but now Google Chrome is tempting me very much!!! First it was the Grease Monkey scripts that Chrome supported and now there are about 100 useful (almost similar to Firefox) extensions in the Google Chrome Extension website!! Installing an extension does not need a restart (well, uninstalling doesn't need either!)

Well Stumble Upon and some neat extensions are rocking Google Chrome!!! True that Chrome does not have a huge addon repository like Firefox but I'm betting on it!

Install the latest Developer Preview of Chrome and try out all those neat extensions!

Google Chrome Extensions

Get to know your laptop battery and give it a treat!

How much do you know about laptop battery? Bet you don’t know a lot apart from the manufacturer! Want to know the design capacity? Total capacity?? How about wear level? Interested? Keep reading…

Battery Care is one good piece of software that will let analyze your laptop battery’s birth certificate!

 

This is the main screen where you get to see all the basic information

 

This is the Detailed Information screen where you get to know everything about the battery! As you can see there is a comprehensive list of details about your battery

 

The most awesome feature of Battery Care is the automatic selection of power plan depending on the power source. This helps a lot when you keep your laptop unattended for a long period of time.

 

 

BatteryCare has a handy system tray icon which will display the current status of your battery

 

BatteryCare has options to temporarily disable battery-hungry Vista Aero and SuperFetch, ReadyBoost and SearchIndexer services in battery mode making you squeeze out that extra juice out of your battery!

BatteryCare website contains a comprehensive guide to laptop batteries and debunks a lot of battery myths too!

http://batterycare.bkspot.com/en/guide.html

 

Another great feature of Battery Care is to change the power plan with just 2 clicks! Right click on the system tray icon and you can easily switch between ALL the power plans and not just 2! (I can seriously kill whoever changed Windows 7’s power plan switch option!)

Battery Care is really a one man show by Filipe Lourenço! Kudos!

Download Battery Care and give it a try! It is totally worth it!

Technorati Tags: battery,software,freeware,care,laptop,wear,manufacturer,find,analyze,analyse,how,to,capacity,remaining,time,status,detailed,current,power,source,designed,discharge,cycle,calibration,tension,voltage,automatically,plan,saver,balanced,plugged,high,performance,update,cpu,temperature,monitor,disable,pause,windows,7,vista,aero,service,select,selection

Your one stop solution to be online in all your IM Messengers + Email Accounts + Social Networking Sites

Seriously, how many instant messengers and web browsers windows you have to have opened to chat, view email and connect with your social networking buddies?

For me, just one simple application! Digbsy!

First of all Digsby is a MULTI-PROTOCOL Instant Messenger! It can support AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk, Jabber, and Facebook Chat!! Yes people, FACEBOOK chat too :D :D

 

Apart from these you can have fully customizable messaging windows!

OK… no more multiple windows!!! Do it the TAB style :D

Merge all Roberts Yahoo, MSN and Facebook chat in to one! :)

Find all your conversation, quickly! Really really quickly!

One of my favourite feature is the Digsby Widget :D This allows you to embed a widget in your blog or favourite which the visitors can chat with you live while you are using your desktop Digsby application

Another very cool feature is the ability to carry on conversation without the window taking up half of your screen and blocking your precious screen space. This also allows to quickly respond to messages without stopping what you are really doing.

 

OK… that’s all about instant messaging but that doesn’t stop there! The email functionality of Digsby is very extensive!

Digsby supports Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL/AIM Mail, IMAP, and POP accounts

The another very awesome feature is to the ability to keep up with all the social networking sites. Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and LinkedIn accounts are supported. You can even update your status using Digsby :)

Well i have only covered a few of the main features of Digsby! There are 100’s of more features and customizations for Digsby!

 

Download Digsby

 

Technorati Tags: software,freeware,instant,messenger,yahoo,hotmail,digsby,multi,protocol,facebook,chat,aim,google,gmail,windows,live,msn,icq,jabber,mail,email,desktop,application,programme,program,tab,tabbed,widget,aol,imap,pop,pop3,twitter,myspace,linkedin,update,status

Ever wanted an uncluttered desktop?

I know everybody loves their desktop! Their treasure chest. That is where all your documents, songs, downloaded items, pr0n and all your 245 shortcuts are stored. You want it neat but you need all the items too??? Have your ever seen your beautiful wallpaper that took 5 hours to search for??? No! Not in all that clutter… Do you want a simple solution for all your clutter problems?? Like ‘em organized? Fences is your solution all your cluttered nightmares :D

 

Like this desktop better than yours???

Want to hide all the icons and fences see that beautiful desktop wallpaper? No problem! A simple double click will do the trick. Want them back? Another double click and presto, everything is back.

And as their websites says

Fences is an add-on to your desktop, not a replacement.

Fences™ is a software by StarDock

 

Download Fences

Technorati Tags: freeware,software,desktop,enhancement,cluttered,clutter,unclutterred,neat,perfect,clean,organize,manage,neatly,cool,effects,managing,stardock,fences

Connectify! Share your Internet Connection, Wirelessly!

Ever wanted to share your Internet connection wirelessly?? You have 165 different WiFi activated devices and you wanted them all to have the same 100Mbps connection you get to your PC? Easy! Install Connectify! Connectify lets you virtually create/emulate a Wireless Access Point. No, it will not be an Ad-hoc network. You turn your laptop/desktop in to a REAL Wireless Access Point. No fancy configurations, no special hardware required! You only need a WiFi card (which almost all the laptops and new motherboards have built in).

Security? Will all my neighbors get free internet? Not a problem! Your WiFi hotspot will have WPA2-Personal (AES) encryption!

So what’s the catch? You know there is one, huh? Well Connectify runs only on Windows 7… All prior Windows versions are not supported. There FAQ tells you why…

Does it run on Windows Vista or Windows XP?

Sorry, not at this time. Connectify depends on improvements made in Windows 7 to operate. Frankly, Windows 7 is such a big improvement, that we suggest you're better off upgrading than waiting for us to get all this working on an older version of Windows. For more information on upgrading to Windows 7, see the upgrade guide on our web site.

Read their FAQ for more information.

 

Download Connectify from the official website

Technorati Tags: freeware,software,connectify,connnect,cool,share,internet,connection,wireless,access,point,WPA,WPA-2,encryption,mobile,devices,WiFi,fidelity,windows,7,hotspot,start,initiate,build,laptop,virtual,desktop,sharing

Aw snap! My files are corrupted/missing! :(

Ever wake up in the morning only to find your nights of work is corrupted/missing or cant boot up your PC? Ever want to get back to an earlier revision of a file you were working yesterday? Two days back or one month back? :) There are two options! Keep track of several folders with the date, zip it and email it your self. There should be easier way, isn’t it? Yep! There is! Dropbox, your ultimate solution to backing up and automatic synchronization.

Setting up Dropbox is so easy and once installed it is setup once and forget type software. Dropbox, simply put, is a folder which everything you put in to is automatically synchronized with the Dropbox server + all computers you have linked up with your account. That means, if you have Dropbox installed both at home and office, both the folders will contain the same exact content as one will immediately reflect changes made in another and vice versa. How cool is that? :) This does not stop there, well sure you can link up more than 2 computers… so all the 65365 computers that you work on will contain exactly the same folder…

Now, lets say half way through your document you suddenly realize that you have done some changes to your document that you want back badly??? Normally, this is impossible! Because the content of the file is over written… only exception being you can keep on undoing… but what if those changes were done 7 days back? No worries! Dropbox to the rescue! Dropbox not only does automatic synchronization but also keeps track of all the changes made to your files… up to 30 days!! (Yeah you get unlimited undo history for the paid version!)

Yeah now you know why you need Dropbox! It will automatically detect changes in a file and synchronize it with the server and other linked computers! But wait! What about my 65 MB file??? Every time i make a minor change to it the whole file is getting uploaded again!!!? The answer is NO WAY! This is why Dropbox is the next big thing and this is why Dropbox is so HOT! Dropbox uses a technology called Delta Synchronization (lBock-level or delta sync) where only the part of the file which has being changed is only synchronized! Easy on the bandwidth and time saving! Plus, upload resuming is supported too! It certainly is smoking HOT!

Here is a complete list of Dropbox’s features

So what are you waiting for! Get Drop Box!

P.S : The above link is actually a referral link…No it doesn’t give me $0.25 for everyone who clicks it but i get 250MB of additional space (up to 3GB) for everyone who gets registered!

Technorati Tags: files,cant,boot,revision,Keep,self,Dropbox,solution,synchronization,setup,folder,server,account,office,exception,worries,Yeah,history,version,technology,Delta,Easy,Plus,Here,features,Drop,referral,options,computers,folders
recover
files
corrupted
restore

What happened to that 10GB i had free yesterday? :(

Common question? Yes! One morning, fresh, you check how much space is left in your C: drive and that 10GB is smiling at you making your whole day happy! You do your work, you play some games and you do all the www stuff you do everyday and everything is normal. Until, you see that weird message haunting you..

Where did all my space go??? Where is that 10GB i had in the morning?

Prime Suspects

• Wife (Nah! She never touches the PC)
• Dog (Hates anything except fresh meat)
• Children (Was at school)

Now which one took away my free space?? Lets hand over the case to Mr.CCleaner first! (There’s another Mister waiting to take over the case too)

 

CCleaner (Formerly Crap Cleaner),boasting powerful and expandable set of features will go deep down of your hard drive and search for all those unwanted junk files you never knew that was there in your hard drive.

It will first search in well known places for junk, useless and unwanted files reside ( Which is shown on the left side.. then it will search on places that most applications leave unwanted junk files… (Shown below)

 

 

The analyze button will start searching for the junk files and will display what was found… You will be amazed the first time you run it, if you have  never run this before…

The other amazing feature that CCleaner offers is cleaning your registry! It will clean all those pesky little entries that take up the space in your registry and slow it down!

CCleaner is also built in with an Uninstall utility that can replace the Windows Uninstallation Utitlity…. + a startup manager and system restore point manager…. too much to ask in a freeware!

Download Now

Technorati Tags: Common,message,Where,Prime,Wife,meat,Children,CCleaner,Mister,Crap,Cleaner,features,files,places,Shown,Uninstall,Uninstallation,manager,system,Download,registry

Let me concentrate please!!!

Do you constantly get distracted by your instant messenger notifications or all those zillion email notifications that constantly keeps popping up on your screen when you have to submit that project due tomorrow? Or you cant resist opening your browser to check what your friends are doing now?? All those are done BECAUSE you see those icons that makes you want to click them! Well what if you don't see them? What if you see only see what you type? Only text! Nothing else? Well, ladies and gentlemen, say hi to Dark Room.

 

(Full screen)

Well this is how it looks! Just like a Dark Room.

(Fullscreen)

The text is Green and the background is Black! Gives you the original Matrix feeling. This is a simple text editor where there is only you and your text. You get all the simple features of a notepad like text editor. You can specify your own Font and Background colors, Font and the page settings. You can even make the app transparent to your liking.

Simple other features like Auto Save and context menu integration makes it simple yet effective notepad alternative.

You know what’s the best feature? You will never get distracted again and you will finish the project due tomorrow, today and go out with your girl and save the world too :)

Technorati Tags: messenger,cant,friends,text,Dark,Room,Full,Just,background,Black,Matrix,features,notepad,Font,Simple,Auto,Save,context,menu,integration,girl,world,notifications,icons,editor

OMG! Duplicate Files!! Not a problem anymore!

There was a time where it took me zillion hours to go through my playlist, my software folders and all my other load of images and videos….only to find they contain duplicates! Well though it took me zillion hours, i doubt whether i have done the job correctly!

But now it takes me only 10 seconds to scan my music folder, 15 seconds or less to scan my software list and less than 5 seconds to scan my list of images and get my hands on a neatly arranged, flexible and comprehensive list of duplicate files…all ready to be displayed in any customized way i want…

Ladies and Gentlemen, introducing Duplicate Cleaner by Digital Volcano. This too good to be free utility makes searching across directories and finding duplicates as easy as 1,2,3!

Digital Volcano, Duplicate Cleaner 1.3 (The latest version at the time of writing) starts with a very easy to understand interface!

First you need to decide where am i going to search for duplicates! You can choose any directory or a drive! Simply select it and click Add Path.

Now choose what you want to search :)

There are 2 handy sections, File Search and Music  Search…

The File search includes the basic search options. You can specify a File Filter (Wildcards) to limit which files to search for. The other amazing feature is check for the Same Content(CRC) which guarantees you almost 100% accurate search results :) Apart from that, you can search for same File Name, Size or Date.

The second option (Music Search, which saved me gigs out of my huge music collection) is the option to search for music files. It searches for songs with the same Artist, Title or Album.

Example result from my music folder may show that a particular song is there in 2 folders. Once i get the results, i can just check whatever file i need and press “Remove Selected”

Removing, does not necessarily mean getting rid of the file, that is why you can either delete to recycle bin, permanently delete or move all checked files to another folder.

 

Now lets say, your search returned 1000 duplicate entries, are you going to go through everything and check all by your self? Nope! That is when the handy Selection Assistant comes in to play!

It can make your life easier by specifying which files you want to delete, whether the file with the lowest bit rate, lowest sample rate or shortest length. (The option is to actually keep the opposite )

Or keep the newest/oldest or smallest/largest or by search pattern. When you click close after selecting the options to your heart’s content, just click remove selected files to get rid of them!

I anyway like the CRC option in the file search and it is the most used search method for me.

Duplicate Cleaner is a truly amazing piece of freeware, which perfectly does the job and saves your hard disk space and the money in your wallet!

Brilliant job, Digital Volcano

Technorati Tags: Duplicate,Files,images,music,folder,Ladies,Gentlemen,Cleaner,Digital,Volcano,version,interface,directory,Path,File,Search,Filter,Wildcards,Same,Content,results,Apart,Name,Size,Date,option,collection,Artist,Title,Album,Example,result,song,Once,Remove,self,Nope,Selection,Assistant,life,length,heart,method,piece,disk,money,wallet,Brilliant,directories,options,zillion,hours,software,folders,whether