A little bit of digging around the settings and I’ve figured out how to hide it. Here’s how. Click Options → Preferences. Then click on Advanced. Now scroll down a bit and look for the setting offers.sponsored_torrent_offer_enabled and set it to False. BAM! I’ve also included a few screenshots to show you how to do this.

Which one to fetch from?

It really all comes down to preference. All you need to look at is the URL of the page and make sure it follows a simple convention – like a combination of artist and song title. The LyricWiki database, one of my personal favourites (one of the very few websites that have lyrics for a recent favourite of mine – Skyharbor‘s kickass album Blinding White Noise.) has a very simple URL format for a lyric page.

http://lyrics.wikia.com/Artist_Name:Song_Title

Searching for lyrics on LyricWiki

Imagine you’re designing a simple application to display lyrics — you could get the artist name and song title as inputs from the user and then build your URL in the above format (note that the URL is case sensitive – each word’s first letter has to be capitalized, and all spaces should be replaced by underscores), following which you could download the page and parse it for the lyrics. For example, if you’re searching for the lyrics of Skyharbor’s track Trayus, the URL would be -

http://lyrics.wikia.com/Skyharbor:Trayus

Click on the above link, and take a look at the page source. You’ll notice that the lyrics are HTML encoded – this would mean you’d have to decode them to obtain the lyrics. An easier way to do this would be to go the Edit page, which contains the lyrics as plain text in HTML.

http://lyrics.wikia.com/index.php?title=Skyharbor:Trayus&action=edit

Now on to getting our hands dirty with some code!

Coding the lyric parser

Without much further ado, here’s how you do it.

//Substring method, but with starting index and ending index too.
private static string slice(string source, int start, int end)
{
    if (end < 0)
    {
        end = source.Length + end;
    }
    int len = end - start;
    return source.Substring(start, len);
}

//Method replaces first letter of all words to UPPERCASE and replaces all spaces with underscores.
private static string sanitize(string s)
{
    char[] array = s.Trim().ToCharArray();
    if (array.Length >= 1)
    {
        if (char.IsLower(array[0]))
        {
            array[0] = char.ToUpper(array[0]);
        }
    }
    for (int i = 1; i < array.Length; i++)
    {
        if (array[i - 1] == ' ')
        {
            if (char.IsLower(array[i]))
            {
                array[i] = char.ToUpper(array[i]);
            }
        }
    }
    return new string(array).Trim().Replace(' ', '_');
}

private string pullLyrics(string strArtist, string strSongTitle)
{
    WebClient wc = new WebClient();
    string sLyrics = null;
    string sUrl = null;
    int iStart = 0;
    int iEnd = 0;
    sUrl = @"http://lyrics.wikia.com/index.php?title=" + sanitize(strArtist) + ":" + sanitize(strSongTitle) + "&action=edit";
    //Set encoding to UTF8 to handle accented characters.
    wc.Encoding = Encoding.UTF8;
    sLyrics = wc.DownloadString(sUrl);
    //Get surrounding tags.
    iStart = sLyrics.IndexOf("&lt;lyrics>") + 12;
    iEnd = sLyrics.IndexOf("&lt;/lyrics>") - 1;
    //Replace webpage standard newline feed with carriage return + newline feed, which is standard on Windows.
    sLyrics = slice(sLyrics, iStart, iEnd).Replace("\n", Environment.NewLine).TrimEnd();
    //If Lyrics Wikia is suggesting a redirect, pull lyrics for that.
    if (sLyrics.Contains("#REDIRECT"))
    {
        iStart = sLyrics.IndexOf("#REDIRECT [[") + 12;
        iEnd = sLyrics.IndexOf("]]",iStart);
        strArtist = slice(sLyrics, iStart, iEnd).Split(':')[0];
        strSongTitle = slice(sLyrics, iStart, iEnd).Split(':')[1];
        pullLyrics(strArtist, strSongTitle);
    }
    //If lyrics weren't found :-(
    else if (sLyrics.Contains("!-- PUT LYRICS HERE (and delete this entire line) -->"))
        sLyrics = "Lyrics not found.";

    return sLyrics;
}

Did you notice the block of code that looks for "#REDIRECT"? Yup, LyricWiki can also suggest possible artist name/song title corrections. Isn’t that neat?

How it works

The slice() and sanitize() methods are pretty self-explanatory. I’d like to touch on a few things in the pullLyrics() method.

The DownloadString() method, a part of the WebClient class, allows you to download a webpage’s HTML source as a string. I used this method to fetch the webpage and then parse the HTML source. Some of the things a developer needs to keep in mind while using this method are —

• Character encoding — I hit a snag on one of the test cases where the output had junk characters when the artist’s name or the song title had accented characters (case in point: Céline Dion). To avoid this, we need to set the Encoding property of the client to UTF8.
• Line breaks — Line breaks in webpages use only a newline feed (\n), while Windows uses carriage return + newline feed (\r\n). To avoid seeing ugly boxes joining lines of your lyrics, replace all instances of \n with \r\n.

Did this piece of code help you? Did you find other interesting uses for the WebClient class? Figured a more efficient approach? Do let me know in the comments!

In this daily marathon, that life has come to be, I believe most of us would need some entertainment by the end of the day. After an entire day of work, having heard from my manager a millionth time that I am not working to my full potential and that I need to put extra efforts, despite me clocking more than 12 hours a day, I don’t think I would opt to see weeping housewives or lame reality shows where they would shout at each other on top of their voices with no reason whatsoever. The music channels would be playing the same song that they were playing in the morning and every single day for the past one month for that matter. The news would be showing how a cow landed a man in trouble or how aliens are planning to abduct Himesh Reshammiya. The Bollywood movie channels would be airing a movie that was entertaining some 10 years ago, but looks boring today. I do not intend to disrespect the Indian media industry, but that’s the way it is. So at this point, I think that it’s quite obvious that I would rather not opt to watch all that. Other choices would be the peculiar Alan Harper of Two and A Half Men, or the portrayed ingenious of Sheldon Lee Cooper in The Big Bang Theory, or even a certain eternally confused Ted Mosby and a resourceful Barney Stinson of How I Met Your Mother. They would make us smile and even break into hysterical laughter at times. Then there would be the channels airing Hollywood flicks. Romantic comedy, Sex Comedy, intense thriller/suspense, horror – I have my options, or so I think.

A few things at times do not make any sense to me – at all. An angry girl’s argument, the Caste system, discrimination based on religion, arranged marriage, the Annual Budget. Off late, the Higgs boson as well. Oh! I almost forgot, there are two more – the Central Board of Film Certification and the Indian Broadcasting Foundation! While surfing channels, I see that HBO is airing the movie – Final Destination. Having nothing else to do, I start watching that. For those who don’t know, the movie is about some exciting scenes and people dying in very unusual ways. Now I am watching it for the scenes and just when the first accident is about to happen, I get excited and watch on. At that very moment, I exclaim, “What the Fuck!” No, it was not out of excitement for having watched the scene, but it was more out of disgust. The scenes were deleted and the movie skipped forward. At that very moment, a message flashed at the bottom of the screen indicating that IBF was monitoring the content on air and that we could complain if we’d seen something discomforting on that channel. I punched the wall beside me out of frustration. I thought to myself, I didn’t appoint you to be my nanny, what gives you the right to monitor what’s on air and what’s not? Even in the regular soaps, like Two and A Half Men and How I Met Your Mother, there would be times when the funny punches would have a word or two – like Fuck or Ass, deemed profane by IBF and they would be muted, or even scenes deleted or blurred at times. TV series like Californication or Spartacus, have a significant amount of adult content and scenes portraying violence. The quality of the content though could very well be figured out by the high ratings that these have on IMDB from global audience. But when on air in our country, thanks to the IBF, they would be stripped off a lot of content, thus totally diminishing the entertainment value. I clench my fists and swallow the bitter pill as there was nothing much I could do. Now this one time, the movie The Dark Knight was airing on TV. We all know what the reputation of the movie is. I could watch the movie a hundred times over and so, when it was airing on TV, I was watching hopelessly. There is a character in the movie, Harvey Dent – Two Face. The people behind the movie did an amazing work with the make-up/animation and his face was half-burnt exposing the skull completely. Now, just when the Joker enters a hospital to have a little chat with him, half my TV screen goes black. I get somewhat tensed thinking that there was something wrong with my TV. It takes me a while to realize that, it was in fact IBF who did not want me to see the disrupted face of Harvey Dent and hence the screen was darkened whenever he was on screen. Absolute bullshit!

The American Pie, The American Pie 2 and The American Wedding – a few very good movies. Yes, the genre would be Sex Comedy, but brilliant comedy nonetheless. When I watched it on DVD, it made me laugh so hard that my cheeks hurt. But thanks to the IBF again, you dare not watch the movie on a movie channel in India. Because the movie would be so brutally ravished after the scene deletion and the dialogue muting, that it would be pointless to watch it – Stiffler would be speaking more in beeps than words. There is more. If you have watched the movies – The Ring and The Ring 2, you would know the value that the deformed faces add to the movie. On air, those scenes were deleted. Seriously, why even air a Horror movie without the Horror scenes! Makes no sense to me. An epic saga of stupidity is on display here and we people are helpless about it. I would like to think that the IBF consists of a bunch of kids. I wonder what gives them the power or the right or even the time or money for the job they are doing. How does our Govt. even justify their existence? There was an episode in Californication, where Hank Moody gets trapped in his apartment with a stripper, and his daughter’s teachers and everybody concerned barge in all at once. That scene was absolutely hilarious, but we would not be allowed to watch that because there was a nude girl in the scene. IBF, thank you again! Alright, our Govt. feels that it has some sort of Moral responsibility towards us citizens to shield us from media content that promotes “Western Culture” as they call it. I don’t feel that there is a need for any such veil and that it is nonsense. To protect kids at home, they have their mothers. When I was a kid, thankfully I did not have to experience such nuisance. There was unrestricted airing of content on channels and my parents did a decent job on deciding what should I watch and what I should not. But at least, I could watch an entire item number kind of song on a music channel, without any scene deleted or words in the lyrics muted or beeped. As far as the youth is concerned, they would watch what they want to watch anyway.

I’d like to think that this IBF is a result of a bunch of people refusing to have a broad mind. If there is a funny scene which has a certain amount of nudity in it, I would watch that for the funny nature of it and not the nudity on display, because if I wanted to watch nudity, I’d rather watch pornography – which, thanks to the internet, is readily accessible today. If the IBF just has to exist, then it would help the nation, if they started monitoring the news section of the media and other programs on air – questioning their credibility. Because, I am okay with a music channel airing Chikni Chameli or Sheila ki Jawani and even my kid watching it, but I definitely am not okay with a NEWS channel telling me that a cat was trapped on a balcony or a cow has superpowers. No thanks!

Now a look at the CBFC. Motion pictures are considered to be a Director’s vision. The director has to put in a lot of thought into directing a movie. A good movie would touch you, make you think, make you laugh or cry. Or at times, just simply entertain you. Now at times there would be a certain degree of adult content in some movies. But that in most cases would be relevant to the plot of the movie. Let’s take a movie of recent times – The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. The character of Lisbeth Salander played by Rooney Mara in the movie had a rather strong build up. There were some adult scenes in the movie, which if you ask me were justified by the plot. Once again, if the director wanted to portray nudity itself, he’d rather go direct porn movies, isn’t it? The movie had a strong background. Based on a bestseller novel, and already turned into a Swedish Motion picture, the anticipation surrounding the movie was high. But, our Indian Censor Board was not comfortable with the content of the movie and asked the makers to remove scenes before releasing it in India. They refused, and the movie was not released in India. I had to watch it later on a DVD and I regretted having missed the chance to experience the intensity and the amazing background score on a big screen. Thank you CBFC! People are talking of India moving ahead and all that. But, looking at all this, where people are just hesitant towards having a broad mindset, I have my doubts. I think it’s about time they stopped all this drama. So is there something that could be done here? I think yes.

You categorize, we decide if we watch or not. The Motion Picture Association of America could be taken as an example. They categorize content, but they do not decide on behalf of the people without their consent about what they should watch and what they should not. Come to think of it, some movies are even released as unrated and the audience is responsible for watching such movies. Coming back to India, if the content is deemed fit for only a certain category of audience, then the movie theatres could screen the audience based on the rating the movie gets. If required, have more categories for broader classification to be more precise. Your job would be to only let the audience know what they are in for. Whether they watch it or not, leave it to them. As far as the IBF goes, well, yes there are certain scenes not fit for everybody. For example, there is a certain programme that covers happenstances like theft, rapes, burglary and deceit. The purpose of the same would be to create awareness about what’s happening in the society today. If I remember correctly, the programme had a tag line “chain se sona hai toh jaag jaiye!”. If I were a parent, I’d like my child to be educated about all that. So, why not have a rating for the content? Say whatever the channel is airing, it has some amount of nudity/violence/adult content. So, have a tag on the channel that flashes something like “Adult Content” or “Violent Content” while the show is on. If you think Horror movies are not for everyone, then the channel could have a tag flashing like, “Horror Content”. So, if I turn on the TV, and see a show which has such tags, I would switch if I wanted or needed to. That would definitely make more sense. So, IBF and CBFC, if you are reading this, please stop beeping and blurring and deleting content for the sake of sanity. It is just stupid if not anything else. If you must interfere because you feel obligated, please rate the content and let us decide. And if you must do things to feel important in this world, then please stop films like Agent Vinod and Piranhas 3DD from hitting the multiplexes. That would save us the torment.

1. The ones who have profile pictures of other famous people, kids, pets, cartoon characters.

I see people having profile pictures of other people all the time. Celebrities, sportspeople, kids, cartoon characters, animals, even random shit like a flower vase or a bed pan. I will imagine you look like a shirtless ogre with bad breath and hairy armpits.

2. The ones who post pictures of all the stuff they’re buying.

People buy expensive things all the time. Sure, you’re cool. I’d be pretty excited for you if you’re getting a new motorcycle and posting a picture of it, after you get it. But I don’t appreciate it when you grab a product image from Google Images and post it, saying “I’m gonna get this in a week/month/decade/when I lose my virginity”. You are getting the latest iPad (which will be outdated in exactly a year)? Cool. Check out my latest photo upload, I’m getting a brand new pair of boxer-briefs. Its black in colour and its so soft and comfortable. And my imaginary girlfriend likes it too.

3. The ones who only post inspirational quotes and posters.

Posting random motivational posters and witty (not to mention well-known) quotes all the time shows that you don’t have anything original to say. Go back to where you came from.

4. The ones who comment with “double like” or “super like”.

There’s a very specific reason why Zuckerberg gave you a ‘Like’ button. Clicking on it lets the original poster know that you like it. If you’ve got something more to add, you can add a dandy comment. Just commenting “super like” or “me likey” makes you look like a retarded school kid who’s got something to say for everything. Stop making a fool of yourself and practice writing sentences with three or more words.

5. The ones who spam groups with stupid status messages like “be proud to be an Indian” and shit like that.

These kinds are always asking for controversy. They regularly spam groups and their own walls (yeah, people can spam their own walls when all they post is links to stupid half-assed advocacy groups) with things like “Some Indian dude pissed on some non-Indian dude. Fuck yeah, proud to be an Indian! Share this if you’re a true Indian. If you don’t, I will bombard your wall with such messages until you submit in exasperation”.

6. Guys who like everything a lady friend posts.

These are the ones I really hate the most. These guys have Facebook accounts for one purpose – liking pictures or really any mundane shit that a girl posts. An album with 200 pictures of the girl’s fingernails? ‘Like’ all 200 pictures! Vague attention-grabbing status message? ‘Like’. This also reminds me of this comic.

7. People who use useless apps all the time and then send invitations to everyone in their friends list.

A cousin’s friend was obsessed with Farmville. He used to spend hours on it. He got super-pissed because I didn’t accept his invitation to “become his neighbour” on Farmville. I wished I could kick his ass and ask him to go outdoors. And there’s this special breed of Facebook users that uses stupid collage apps that create an ugly-ass mosaic of profile pictures of all their friends. As if that wasn’t enough, it tags everyone. And then follow the mindless comments and likes from a thousand people I do not know. I remove the tag and mark it as spam for good measure.

Did anyone say ‘solution’?

A very popular solution is JDownloader. It is platform independent as it is built on Java, and has a great deal of features. However, it hasn’t worked very well for me on occasion, and is extremely resource-hungry. I was looking for a leaner download manager, and then I found Mipony.

Mipony – A small tour

Mipony is a fantastic download manager built especially for managing your downloads from filesharing websites. It is written to run on Windows and has a considerably small memory footprint. Some other great features include —

• Supports 130+ filesharing websites.
• Supports resuming/retrying.
• Has a built-in scheduler, clipboard monitor, file-joiner (for multi-part archives), web-based remote control.
• Can automatically solve CAPTCHAs using the Captcha Trader plugin!

How to fully automate downloads using Mipony

1. Register for a CaptchaTrader account for free. Once completed, login and you can view your credit points. These points are used for automatically solving your CAPTCHAs. You can earn credits by solving CAPTCHAs from time to time.
2. After having installed Mipony (download page), download the CaptchaTrader plugin from the Mipony Plugins page and install it. Now launch Mipony and navigate to the Plugins tab under Options. Now open the CaptchaTrader plugin’s options and enter your account credentials. You can view your credit points here as well.

Wait. How does CaptchaTrader work?

CaptchaTrader is a free and legal CAPTCHA bypass service that relies on the community to solve CAPTCHAs. A user registers on their website for free and logs in and can solve CAPTCHAs (passed on to their service from other users running Mipony or a similar program that requires solving them) to earn credits. These credits can then be used to solve CAPTCHAs using Mipony in turn. Its a win-win for everyone!

Screenshots

Direct Download Links

Mipony Installer (~7 MB)
CaptchaTrader Plugin for Mipony (~90 KB)

Note: This method involves scraping the Indian Railways website, as they do not have an API in place yet. This is purely for educative purposes, and is most likely illegal to implement in a full-feature application.

How I figured it out

I opened up the PNR Status page and with the incredibly useful Tamper Data add-on for Mozilla Firefox, I got to take a look at the HTTP POST request. The website returns the result page as HTML, which can then be parsed to get the PNR status.

Faking the POST request

Using information from the original POST request, we can fake it in our C# application. Here’s how.

string URI = "http://www.indianrail.gov.in/cgi_bin/inet_pnrstat_cgi.cgi";
string Parameters = Uri.EscapeUriString("lccp_pnrno1=4548938794&submitpnr=Get Status");
System.Net.HttpWebRequest req = (HttpWebRequest)System.Net.WebRequest.Create(URI);
//HTTP POST Headers
req.ContentType = "application/x-www-form-urlencoded";
req.Host = "www.indianrail.gov.in";
//You can use your own user-agent.
req.UserAgent = "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows Phone OS 7.5; Trident/5.0; IEMobile/9.0) DELL;Venue Pro";
req.Headers.Add(HttpRequestHeader.AcceptLanguage, "en-us,en;q=0.5");
req.Headers.Add(HttpRequestHeader.AcceptCharset, "ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7");
req.KeepAlive = true;
req.Referer = "http://www.indianrail.gov.in/pnr_stat.html";
req.Accept = "text/plain";
req.Method = "POST";
//Byte size calculation before sending request.
byte[] bytes = System.Text.Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(Parameters);
req.ContentLength = bytes.Length;
System.IO.Stream os = req.GetRequestStream();
os.Write(bytes, 0, bytes.Length);
os.Close();
System.Net.WebResponse resp = req.GetResponse();
request_status = ((HttpWebResponse)resp).StatusDescription;
if (resp == null) return null;
System.IO.StreamReader sr = new System.IO.StreamReader(resp.GetResponseStream());
return sr.ReadToEnd();

Parsing the response

Since it is raw HTML, I’ll encourage the developer to use or build an efficient HTML parser for making using of the PNR status information.

Implementing this method

Although I’d advise you against implementing this method right in your app, if you do decide to do it, here are a few things to keep in mind.

• I will say it again. Web scraping is not exactly legal.
• The IT team at India Railways often modify their POST/GET method implementations, which could end up breaking this method. In such a case, we’d have to look at the POST requests once again and update our method.

I have a huge bunch of North Indian friends – many of them who live with me in Chennai, and have come to love the city. I have had countless hours of discussions with them; about why people hate us and our dear city so much. I will discuss everything they had to share – the good and the bad, here.

A wise man once said – “If you’re gonna whine about a problem, better have a solution for it!”

The weather is so hot!

Well, Geography is the problem here. The weather is just hot in Chennai — not much we can do about it!

Solution – If you can’t get used to the heat, move.

Nobody speaks Hindi!

That is because nobody knows Hindi! If you’re going to pull the “but Hindi is the national language” card, I will have to respectfully ask you to get your damn facts right. Hindi is NOT the national language; in fact, India does not have a national language – it has officially recognized 23 languages – and endorses the state governments to pick their official language.

Solution – Try communicating in English. Also, learning a few Tamil words for getting around certainly wouldn’t hurt.

Chennai isn’t a very happening place

Chennai is one of the most conservative cities in the country; however, that has considerably changed in the past few years. We have a good number of pubs and bars (though not as many as Bengaluru), and a lot of malls too. And to boot, we have lovely beaches!

Solution – You’ve heard wrong. Come over and check it out!

The food is horrible

Idlies, dosas, pongal & idiyappams – if you hate these, it is because you’re used to your naan, poori, aloo paratha & dal. Frankly, I love north Indian food – and a good number of my north Indian friends love sambhar & rasam. If you’re someone who loves experimenting with your food and trying out different food, you’d love it here!

Solution – Try our food at the right place, you might fall in love with it. If you still don’t like it – look for north Indian restaurants (there a great number of those all over the city), or even better, learn to cook!

People are so rude & uptight!

Wrong. Chennai is full of warm and loving people. Sure, people would often look at you disapprovingly if you walk around hand-in-hand with your girlfriend who’s wearing shorts a size smaller than your boxers. That is simply because most of us here, do not do that. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not against girls in shorts. In fact, I’m all for it However, there’s such a thing as local customs. Nothing should stop you from doing that, but at the same time, it makes sense to keep the societal norms in mind. Another common complaint that I often hear is Tamilians at work are so introverted. This again is mostly a cultural thing. However, be nice and soon enough, your Chennai colleague will warm up to you.

Solution – Try to read the people a little bit more carefully. Most of the time, it might just be a cultural thing.

“Daaru achi nahi hai”

I feel you, brethren. Ever since the government took over the alcohol business, the availability of good quality (original) beverages has hit an all-time low. Also, it is extremely difficult to get your hands on draught beer. I, on behalf of all of Tamilnadu, am truly sorry for this grievous inconvenience.

Solution – Pondicherry is all but a hundred kilometres away from Chennai. Plan a weekend trip!

The girls aren’t good looking

I recently had an argument with a bunch of my friends about this point – some of them felt this is true for Chennai. I digress – given; the ratio of good-looking girls to the whole female population is much lesser than a lot of other major cities. However, if you know where to look, Chennai is heaven. Some north Indians I know also feel that the women here are of an ‘exotic’ variety – with their long hair and dusky complexion and demure mannerisms. WIN!

What makes Chennai special

If you’ve read all this and still whining, let me try telling you all the great things about Chennai.

• Great connectivity – the entire city is extremely well connected by road and rail.
• Beaches – we’ve got the spanking new Marina, Elliott’s (Besant Nagar) which is known for great-looking girls and tons of other small & less crowded beaches.
• ECR – ’nuff said!
• Multiplexes and malls – Gone are the days when Spencer’s was the only mall in the city. Now we have a great number of malls and multiplexes, with most of them within the city limits and all easily accessible.
• Medical facilities & hospitals – Chennai has some of the best medical facilities in the world. Many of my friends bring their parents from all over India for treatment here – it’s good, and it’s cheap.
• IT companies – After Bengaluru, Chennai has the most number of IT companies and tech parks. If you’re a north Indian in Chennai, you’d most probably be working in one of these

PhotoRec comes from Christophe Grenier, the same dude behind TestDisk, which had saved my ass more than once in the past. The utility is console-based, but menu-driven and quite simple to use. I’ve posted screenshots of the entire recovery process, which took around 15 minutes and recovered a little more than 1000 files from a Kingston 8GB Class 4 SDHC card.

NOTE: Though this works on all kinds of data storage media, if you are using it to recover data from your memory card or Memory Stick, I suggest using a card reader, as it is much faster and also more suited for data recovery.

Step-by-step recovery

1. Download PhotoRec.
2. Extract the archive to some location and run the photorec executable.
3. Select the drive you want to recover data from.
4. Select the partition that has the data. In most cases, there’s just one FAT32 partition on memory cards.
5. Select the filesystem. Again, the partition would be a FAT partition. (Geek gyaan: Ext2/3/4 are the filesystems used by Linux.)
6. Select ‘Whole‘ to scan the entire media for recoverable files.
7. Now browse for the directory where you want to save the recovered files. Make sure you have enough free disk space! Once selected, press ‘C‘.
8. The recover process starts now and displays status on screen.

Screenshots

Download

Download PhotoRec
Available as ZIP archive for multiple operating systems.

Features

• Great search speeds, without Indexing Service.
• Portable. No need to install.
• Can search for keywords inside files.
• Lots of options for conditional searches, based on file size, attribute and timestamp.
• Integration with Explorer right-click menu. Can be turned off or on at any time.
• Results can be exported to plain text file.
• In-built Hex viewer.

Quick review – The good and the bad

You’ve looked at the feature set and probably jumped to the Download section already. For the curious, I’m writing a quick review and also a few screenshots after. XSearch was extremely quick in simple search, though it froze quite a lot when searching inside files. Also, it does not have an filter to search inside files of specific extensions. If searching inside files is very important for you, I’d recommend AstroGrep. XSearch has a very simple and intuitive UI, and isn’t very CPU or memory-intensive.

Screenshots

Download

Download XSearch
Available as direct download (EXE) as well as ZIP archive.

Note: This tool needs to be run with administrator privileges and works only for Communicator 2007 and later versions.

What does this do?

Communicator supports the default status messages Available, Busy, Do Not Disturb and Away. From Communicator 2007, support for custom states was added. Documentation on how to do this manually is documented on TechNet here. Since it requires cooking up an XML file and making changes to the registry, I decided to write a tool that provides a nice GUI for users to create their own states and does all the heavy lifting backstage.

Features

• Works on R2, unlike another similar tool – Communicator 2007 Custom Presence Tool.
• Nice & intuitive UI.
• Option to reset (rollback) the changes to the registry.
• Detects system’s language and automatically uses the corresponding LCID in the XML file.
• Tons of validations before making attempting to make any changes to the system – administrator rights, valid XML, restart Communicator if running & text length of custom states.
• Bonus feature: Option to enable the ‘Appear Offline’ status!

Screenshots

Download – Updated 20^th July, 2011

Direct Download | Softpedia
Version 1.0.3 – 31.6 KB
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