A firewall is essential when it comes to preventing malicious software and hackers from gaining access to your computer. With Windows 7, you can actually fine-tune your firewall settings to match your daily usage while still keep your computer well protected. To access the advanced settings and help you get started right away, follow these next few steps.

First of all, you need to disable your Windows firewall to gain access to recommended settings. To do this, go to Control Panel> System and Security > Windows Firewall and then click on the “Change notification settings” link on the left panel. Disable both private and public network firewall and click apply to continue. At the Windows Firewall control panel page you see after clicking OK, you will notice a new button labeled “Use recommended settings” — this is what we are after — so go ahead and click the button.

A popup will ask for your confirmation, and you can safely click Yes to continue. Windows will analyze your current computer state, along with installed applications, and determine the right firewall settings for your computer. After the process is completed, you can continue with fine-tuning the firewall settings to suit your needs.

To access the advanced settings for Windows 7’s firewall, click “Advanced Settings” on the left panel of the Windows Firewall control panel page. You will see a new page with Inbound Rules, Outbound Rules, Connection Security Rules, and Monitoring links on the left panel. You can disable available rules or create new ones — for Inbound and Outbound Rules, this is essentially important and allows you to set the firewall to work according to your needs — and manage monitoring preferences from here.

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The idea of a web conference is to provide the users involved, with a seamless interactive atmosphere and share data with multiple individuals based at different geo locations. There are many online conferencing solutions in the market today, we will compare are review the three most popular ones DimDim, WebEx and GoToMeeting.

All three services provide a good interface to work on for the potential customers. They allow for an interaction between the concerned individuals by virtue of their product model which enables people to share their desktop workspace, presentations and even make changes to the presentations in full view of the people involved in the conference. They allow registered users to create and invite people to a conference by just including their email addresses. The recipients on their part have to just click on the link provided in the email they receive to join a particular conference. Once a conference is started, the organizer along with the attendees can share files, desktops and even work on a particular document dynamically. The control of the conference can be shifted to one of the attendees, such that they could continue the presentation. With just a click of a button, desktops can be shared and unshared at will.

Here is a closer look on these service providers:

Webex:

Webex is a popular tool for web conferencing which has been acquired by CISCO. It can be used for a wide range of purposes such as web meetings, conducting training sessions, for IT  support among others. It also provides various features such as recording of the conferences. Webex provides these services at a cost of $59 per month wherein the client can arrange such net meetings with up to 25 people at a time. The payment plans also involve cheaper annual plans and prepaid plans as well. They also have a “anytime commitment cancel” system which enables users to cancel the services.

GoToMeeting:

GoToMeeting is another popular web conferencing tool. It also provides a secure way to share desktops and workspaces between the organizer and the attendees. Apart from the basic  version, GoToMeeting has more advanced versions which include Webinar services which allows the organizer to conduct Webinar sessions with up to 1,000 attendees. The basic version of GoToMeeting is priced at $49 per month with options to save up to 20% on annual payment schemes.

DimDim:

DimDim is a popular, open source alternative to WebEx and GoToMeeting. Since DimDim is open source, it is free to use for up to 20 members. DimDim’s impressive list of features  includes the ability to create a whiteboard where ideas can be shared among the attendees. DimDim has an option to buy a Pro version which is priced at $19 per month which enables unlimited meetings and other pro features for up to 50 people. The pro features include Webinar widget which allows the organizer to share meetings over popular third party websites such as Facebook and Twitter.

My Favorite:

Effectively, all three service providers cater to the needs of the customers and provide similar features. Having worked on all, I would say GoToMeeting is the best of the three. The user interface is quite intuitive and there is no learning involved at all. DimDim, is cost effective as compared to the others as it is an open source initiative, you might want to go with it in case of budget constraints. Though DimDim also offers a slick UI but the constraint of putting PPT over their servers before presentation is quite restrictive. As far as WebEx goes, I didn’t really find any point why a small-medium business would go with WebEx when GoToMeeting provides all the features at a comparatively lower price.

So recently I have to change my laptop’s hard disk. It is always a big pain to move files, bookmarks and other info from one laptop to another. More so, moving means all the installed programs would need to be re-installed on the new machine. If you are a blogger like me, you will have other softwares like Windows Live Writer too.

This time when I moved, I wrote a quick check list which I ‘m sure would prove to be quite handy to all of us in future.

Take a scan of your system using Belarc advisor:

Belarc advisor creates a detailed profile of your installed software and hardware, missing Microsoft hotfixes, anti-virus status, etc and displays the results in your Web browser. It also shows the keys/licenses of installed softwares. I would recommend to take a print of this web page created by Belarc and keep it in a safe place.

Back up ALL your important files in a USB or a CD’s . I use my classic 80 GB Ipod for these purpose. Like any USB devices, it proves to be quite handy and fast.

Back Up Firefox bookmarks and related profiles:

Firefox bookmarks, cookies, Google Toolbar data for firefox all resides in a folder inside.

C:\Documents and Settings\<Your Profile Name>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles

The folder would have some name like eid50wk9.default. Take a copy of this folder.

Back Up IE favorites:

Take a copy of IE favorites that reside in

C:\Documents and Settings\<Your Profile Name>

Back Up Memento Notes:

I use Memento Notes as a Post-IT for my laptop. It’s a small, no-frills program that sits quietly in my task bar. If you are taking a back up of Memento notes, make sure to copy both memento.exe and memento.notes. Memento.notes is like a database where all your Post-ITs reside.

Back Up Windows Live Writer (WLW):

If you ‘re a blogger I ‘m sure you must be using this great application from Microsoft. WLW inherently does not provide any means to take a back up of stored drafts, settings, external plugins etc. Scott has created an excellent Windows Live Writer back up utility.  After a quick installation, it takes a single click to take ‘Backup’ and then one more click to ‘Restore’ your settings on the new computer. Note that while restoring, Windows Live Writer should be closed otherwise it may throw an error. Also if you don’t see your posts after restoring, don’t fret. Go to C:\Documents and Settings\<your profile>\My Documents\My Weblog Posts\Drafts and double click on one of the posts , you will then see all posts inside WLW right hand pane.

Back Up Email client:

It will depend on the kind of client you are using. For Mozilla Thunderbird, back up means simply copying the mail folder to the back-up location.

I trust these points would be useful for all of us. I suggest you to bookmark(Ctrl-D) this post for future use.

The best way to edit a pdf file would be to have Adobe PDF -not the Adobe reader but the Adobe pdf creator.  The only problem is that it is expensive and is not in everyone’s reach. If you are looking for a free and easy alternative solution to edit a pdf file or to remove a page from a pdf file, read-on…

The process followed would be to first convert pdf into a word document, edit (or remove the unwanted portion) and then convert it back to pdf.

How can we convert any pdf file into word document?

This may sound trivial but believe me Google search results were nothing short of cr*p. I tried several converters, some gave blank output, some asked for an email but never responded. One of them that did reply, said that my document has errored out and I need to try again! Finally I landed on Pdf2Word Converter. It converted my 0.5 MB sized pdf to word in < 1 min and didn’t ask for any email etc. Yes, it is free.

Now you can edit your word doc, remove page(s) from it, or do anything as you would normally do.

So far so good.

How can we convert word document back to pdf file?

Using the free Primo PDF. It’s a desktop based application to convert any file to pdf file.

Download the pdf creator and run the set up program to install it. There is a catch. Unlike other desktop applications Primo pdf is not accessible from the start menu but from the printer options. To convert a document to pdf, click print and select Primo PDF as your choice for name of the printer. Click Ok. On the next screen select ebook radio button under printer settings and click on ok. Your PDF file is ready! Source

To merge two pdf files into one you can use MergePDF

At times, over a phone call, it becomes frustrating when you have to pronounce a name and the person on the other side is not able to understand. This happens especially in an offshore-onshore model or a multi-cultural environment.

Keeping this in mind, I created a simple new web application this morning –Over The Phone- which you can use to pronounce your name over the phone. The application is coded in PHP and uses standard NATO phonetic alphabets.

Over The Phone.

Would appreciate your feedback.

If you are planning to conduct a free online survey or a poll, don’t look beyond Google Docs. It has all the features you want and is easy to set up. Though there are oldies in the market like PollDaddy but the free options provided by them are very much restrictive in nature. PollDaddy only allows 100 survey responses/month . The other one that came on #1 position of Google Search on the term “free online survey” provides 20 survey/month only. There seems to be no such restriction with Google Docs.

With Google docs you can get as many survey responses as you want and is not difficult to set up either. Here is a step-by-step guide to set up an online survey using Google docs-

1. Log into Google Docs using your Google Account id.
2. Choose New > Form. [To speed up, you also have the option to choose a template form. Google keeps on adding new templates to gallery.] 
3. Fill in your survey questions. Your survey questions can be in the form of text, multiple choice questions(radio buttons), drop downs, on a scale , free text(big rectangular box for detailed answers).
4. You will see a URL on the bottom, that’s the URL to your survey.
5. The answers will get collected in an spreadsheet residing in your Google Account.
6. To get notified as soon as someone submits a form click on See Responses > Spreadsheet.

   

7. Once you are on the spreadsheet go to Tools > Notifications rules.
8. Set the notification rules. If you want to receive a mail as soon as someone fills in the form check Notify Me When A user submits a form checkbox and Notify Me With Email Right Away checkbox.

You are done. Gozar!

Calling 7 zip as just an alternative to WinZip would be an insult to the software developers of 7 zip.  It’s much better than Winzip. I was surprised to see that one of the archive files that  Winzip reported as corrupt, 7zip unzipped it without any issue.

The other important point is that it supports a lot of archive formats –like ISO- that WinZip doesn’t. Here are some of the supported formats:

Probably WinZip should come out with some unique and exclusive option now, otherwise it would be just a matter of time before people would start flocking towards 7-zip.

I wanted a free software which can do screen recording, give output in youtube supported format and has record and replay functionality with minimal learning curve (I know I am asking for too much from a freebie   I tried a lot of softwares, the nearest I reached in terms of all my requirements was Avi screen capture.

Here is a quick step-by-step guide to get you started-

1. You can define your own capture screen area.  AviScreen also has a unique feature called “follow the cursor”. As the name suggests, the capture area is centered around the mouse tip. This feature allows you to produce a video of relatively small dimensions while covering all mouse activity over the whole screen area (as defined by you).
2. To record your screen, simply click on capture video button (OR Ctrl-Alt-S) given on left down side. The Aviscreen classic window will go in the background and you will see a small icon in the system tray.
3. You can stop recording by going to system tray icon > Right click > stop OR by pressing Ctrl-Alt-F . I prefer the latter.
4. By default all recorded videos get stored at C:\Program Files\bobyte\AviScreen classic\Captures\

One of the major drawback I found with this software was the huge size of videos that were produced in AVI format. A one min recording has a size of 45MB. Thankfully there is a workaround. You can use Windows movie maker to compress the videos.

I use AviScreen Classic for my screen capture purposes and I would say it does a decent job of capturing videos, given that it’s a free version. The only complaint I have with this tool is that the file size generated by it after recording is huge. A one minute recording done through this tool renders a file size of more than 50 MB!!! Uploading such 10 mins videos to youtube will take ages. So how can we utilize this freeware and upload the video after compressing their size?

Enter Windows Movie Maker. A program that resides on every windows powered desktop. A 43 MB series of videos was reduced to 1.3 MB using this tool. Here is how you can do it-

Steps below are for Windows XP, other windows OS should have more or less same navigation path.

1. Open Windows Movie Maker by going to Start > All Programs > Accessories > Windows Movie Maker.
2. Go To File > Import into collections.
3. In the next screen, you will see your movie file(s) on the top. Drag them to the storyboard on the bottom. As shown by the red arrow.
4. Now go to File > Save Movie File. Click on the next button.
5. Enter the desired file name, choose the location to store file and click on next. You will get this screen.
6. Click on Show more choices. Choose Other settings radio button and select Video for broadband (512kbps). Click on next.
7. On the next screen click on finish and check the video size now.
8. Magic

Enjoy!

Some trivia about Youtube:

• YouTube recommended video/screen size is 320*240px. Recently they have started supporting more formats like 480×360px and 1280*720px
• Videos can be up to 1GB in size and 10 minutes long.
• Accepted youtube video formats are .WMV, .AVI, .MOV, MPEG, .MP4, DivX, .FLV , 3GP
• To view a youtube video in full screen mode just format the URL. Say, the video that you want to see in full screen mode has the URL http://in.youtube.com/watch?v=32176vsadfsf. Simple remove watch? from it and replace = with / so the URL should become http://in.youtube.com/v/32176vsadfsf
• To download youtube video append kiss infront of Youtube. The above URL would become http://in.kissyoutube.com/watch?v=32176vsadfsf

You have data, you want to present it visually. What kind of chart should you go for?

The answer depends mostly on what message you want to convey, and the number of parameters/values you are dealing with. Different types of charts – bar, pie, scatter chart etc. – are relevant in different scenarios, and it can be a daunting task deciding which would work most effectively in your case.

Chart Chooser helps you make the right choice.  Tell it what you want the chart to show: comparison, distribution, trends, etc.? Based on your inputs, the tool displays the types of charts most suited to convey your message.

Chart Chooser displays a small visual sample of each chart type. You can download the templates for the charts as Excel or PowerPoint, and simply change the source data to your own data to create excellent graphs.