TMS Network Blog

Google Chrome: How to Save/Capture Entire Web Page as Image

whiztech — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 16:09:13 +0000

Quick tip. Sometimes, you might want to capture and save entire web page as an image file. Normally, if you take a screenshot using the ‘Print Screen’ key, you can only capture what is displayed on your screen. If you are a Google Chrome user, you are lucky because there is a helpful extension available to help you to save entire web page as an image.

Webpage Screenshot, an extension for Google Chrome, will let you save a web page as image. The extension will save a long web page as a single image. Because the extension ran on the browser itself, you can actually save a web page that requires you to log on.

After you’ve installed Webpage Screenshot, just hit the camera button (1) when you want to save a web page as an image. Google Chrome will open a new tab with the image of the web page and you can save the image or copy it to the clipboard. However, the extension will gives you a warning if the image size is more than 2MB and you can only copy the image to the clipboard (according to the developer, there is a bug in Google Chrome that prevents you from saving image larger than 2MB).

[Google Chrome Extensions: Webpage Screenshot] via TinyHacker

Use Middle Mouse Button to Display and Access Shortcuts to Programs/Files/Folders

whiztech — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 13:38:56 +0000

For most average computer users, the most passive mouse button is usually the middle one. The middle button is usually used to scroll documents or web pages, and almost for nothing else. In case you are wondering if you can put the middle mouse button to a good use, you might want to try MouseExtender.

MouseExtender is a small program that ran on the system tray and it will display a nice menu that contains shortcuts to file, program, folder and URL by clicking the middle mouse button. You can group shortcuts which belong in same category using tabs.

By default, MouseExtender will override other programs’ function that uses the middle mouse button. For example, clicking the middle button on webpage in a web browser will gives you the ability to scroll the webpage using the cursor, and when you’re running MouseExtender, it will bypass this function and displays shortcuts. However, MouseExtender allows you to exclude programs from displaying the shortcuts and let the program uses its default middle click function.

MouseExtender is free and open source. MouseExtender is available for Windows operating system and requires Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 SP1. MouseExtender doesn’t require installation so you can run it from your portable drive.

MouseExtender

Developer Description: MouseExtender is a cosy utility with shortcuts to programs, folders and system functions (Control panel, Restart and Shutdown). This program allows you to improve your productivity. It is extremely simple and fully customizable.

Version: 1.9.5.5

Size: 238 KB

License: Open Source (GPLv2)

Operating system: Windows operating systems

Website: mouseextender.net | me.codeplex.com

Quick tip: Mount Folder as Drive (Windows)

whiztech — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 19:25:21 +0000

Windows only. If you are looking for a way to mount your frequently accessed folder as a drive (and you don’t feel like having a shortcut on your desktop), Visual Subst might be the application for you. Visual Subst is a simple and small application that will let you mount any folder as virtual hard drive easily.

How to use Visual Subst to mount a folder as a virtual drive

1. Choose the drive letter that you want to point to the folder. (1)

2. Select the folder that you wish to mount as virtual drive. (2)

3. Click the add button to mount the folder. (3)

Visual Subst is freeware and available for Windows. Portable version available.

[Via: LifeHacker]

Visual Subst

Developer Description: Visual Subst is a small tool that allows you to associate the most accessed directories with virtual drives. It uses the same API similar to the console 'subst' utility, but makes it easier to create and remove virtual drives in a GUI way.

Version: 1.0.6 (portable)

Size: 78 KB

License: Freeware

Operating system: Windows

Website: ntwind.com

Download DotA Allstars 6.67b AI Map

whiztech — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 06:22:08 +0000

*Updated on 21st June 2010 for Rev 2c*

~~*Updated on 16th June 2010 for Rev 2b*~~

~~*Updated on 11th June 2010 for v06/11/2010*~~

Finally, after the long wait, AI for the latest DotA map is here! After BuffMePlz stopped developing AI for DotA maps, Harreke from PlayDotA.com took the job to bring AI to the lastest DotA map. DotA Allstars 6.67b AI is the first AI map released by Harreke.

Credit

This latest DotA AI map requires Warcraft III patch 1.24e to play.

Changelog:

6.67b v2c (06/20/2010) fixed by PleaseBugMeNot & Phaselock
=============================================

1. Fixed the actual skill when Puck`s trying to use Dream Coil with scepter (last fix just added Dream coil to the scepter`s spells dream team).
2. Track`s buff was not visible when in range of tracked enemy
3. Track`s visual on enemy head was not disappearing after Track`s 30 sec end
4. Fixed Soul Steal channeling text in the tooltip
5. Added passive icon for Strygwyr's Thirst
6. Added passive icon for Plague
7. Fixed a rare Mac issue with shared Soul Ring
8. Fixed casting distance exploits with Skewer
9. Changed Soul Ring icon / added the new icon to the map
10. Nerubian Weaver: Added Hardened passive skill icon of the swarm bugs (BTNHardenedSkin.blp)
11. Nerubian Assasin: Added Missile Speed of Carrion Scarabs (undeadunitfunc)
12. Nerubian Assasin: Impale damage reduced from 80/160/230/300 to 80/140/200/260(6.67)
13. Game-wide sound gets muted when Global Silence is used (173422)
14. Fixed memory leak (6.67c) in Silence trigger. (tnx PhaseLock)
15. Curse of the Silent now displays a buff indicator
16. Bristleback - Warpath maximum stacks increased from 4 to 5
17. Fixed error in Broodmother`s item build - she was staying with Wraith and RoR at late end game. Now buys HoT and Linken`s Sphere
18. Fixed the prices of some recipes/items for the AI:
- Manta Style Recipe increased from 500 to 600
- Dagon Recipe decreased from 1350 to 1300
- Sange Recipe decreased from 800 to 750
- Yasha Recipe decreased from 800 to 750
19. Added some new items in Pugna`s item build (now he buys scepter... what a smart guy)
20. Fixed Mekansm not healing Visage's Familiars

===============================
Note: i used WinMPQ to compress the map and i hope it didn`t screw up something. If any problem arise from that i`ll upload it uncompressed.
===============================

6.67b revision 2b:
===============
1. Blademail now works
2. *New visual effect for the offensive use of Urn of Shadows
3. Tracked visual effect by Bounty Hunter on enemy unit
4. Leshrac`s Diabolic Edict was missing the explosion effects on random places when no units in range... thus hitting invisible units
5. Dark Seer Ion Shell stackable(fixed but not tested by me)
6. Puck's scepter now bringing stats up and adds + 50 mana use
7. Nerubian Assassin's scarabs couldn`t use Infestation (clicking the button did nothing). Now fixed - blowing up doing silence and dmg
8. Nerubian Weaver
* Fixed Cleave/Anchor Smash from instantly killing Swarm creatures
* Various performance improvements when casting The Swarm
* Non-hero units now do half damage to The Swarm
* Fixed a bug with lifesteal and The Swarm creatures

6.67b (v06/11/2010)
===============
Bugs fixed:
- Spirit Breaker's Charge of Darkness causes target suicide and then becomes invulnerable.
- Sacred Warrior's Inner Vitality heals instantly .
- Double Click Scroll of Town Portal doesn't go back to fountain.
- Puck's Aghanism doesn't work.
- Goblin Techies doesn't gain XP when kill emey heroes by Land Mines or Remote Mines.
- Other slightly errors.

6.67b (v0.2141)
===============
- Heroes and items were updated from BuffMePlz's 6.66b AI.

The following game modes have been disabled for now:
-vr, -rv, -rd, -cd, -cm, -lm, -xl

The following game commands have been disabled for now:
-afk, -kickafk, -ah, -switch, -fun

Please report bugs to me.

Things that are bugs:
-Crashes with reproducible reasons
-Abilities/items not working as expected (for players or bots)

Things that are not bugs:
-Bots not using certain abilities
-Bots being too strong/weak/cheating. They do that.

Enjoy!

Known bugs:

- Scroll of Town Portal's mechanism didn't change to 6.67b.
- Enemy AI hero might be stuck to the summoned unit of Treant Protector's skill Forest Sentinel.
~~2.Spirit Breaker's Charge of Darkness would cause target become invincible. Please use -repick or -airepick to make human/AI player choose another hero.~~

According to Harreke, the AI map is still incomplete and contains bugs, but it is playable. AI won’t be able to use the new skills modification on hero such as Magnus, Nerubian Weaver and Bone Fletcher. Use -repick to make AI player choose another hero.

[Download: DotA Allstars v6.67b Rev2c AI.w3x]

Size: 6.93 MB
MD5: cd9a55820db0339ac817b556e6fb10fe
SHA-1: 1192f78cf37e3c8a1b86e7ebf0854250899506e0

DotA Allstars v6.67b Rev2b AI fix is done by PleaseBugMeNot from PlayDotA forum.

[Download: DotA Allstars v6.67b Rev2b AI.w3x]

Size: 7.44 MB
MD5: a06fd74dd900ffb008d821d3fef715cc
SHA-1: d354a5abdd6e0371914054b7e56af235dd862fe6
[PlayDotA AI Forum] [via: DotA-Utilities]

~~[Download: DotA Allstars v6.67b AI.w3x (v06/11/2010)]~~

Size: 6.84 MB
MD5: 911eb0739c26363c7e6fc02fe278645d
SHA-1: 2802c8f98b07b21650131feacc8d2e7f99ce12ce

~~[Download: DotA Allstars v6.67b AI.w3x]~~

Size: 6.84 MB
MD5: 25150826aec421be4da1a7453da05691
SHA-1: 0d6a8a4faaa04009d08b868949f99e17fee5d676

[PlayDotA AI Forum] [DotA Allstars AI Forum]

qBittorrent is Now Available for Windows!

whiztech — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 16:53:29 +0000

In my previous post, I wrote about alternative bittorrent clients that are able to get good download speed on TMNet Streamyx. 2 of the clients are based on libtorrent, a C++ bittorrent library. While Linux/Unix users have many choices of bittorrent clients based on libtorrent, there are not much choices for Windows users. On 6th July 2010, the qBittorrent developers announced the availability of the first Windows installer for qBittorrent. With the developers hard work, qBittorrent is now available on all major operating system. If you are looking for an alternative bittorrent client for Windows, you might want to try qBittorrent.

qBittorrent is an open source bittorent client based on libtorrent library and Qt framework. The development was started on March 2008. Previously, qBittorrent is only available for Linux/Unix operating system only. Mac OS port was available on August 2009 and on 6th July 2010, Windows users can easily use qBittorrent by installing qBittorrent using the official installer without the need to compile the source yourself.

Figure 1: qBittorrent main interface

Some of notable features of qBittorrent:

uTorrent like GUI – this should make it easy for new users migrating from uTorrent. (Figure 1)
Built in remote control via WebUI – easily control your qBittorrent from anywhere using the built in WebUI. The WebUI can be easily enabled. (Figure 2)
Spoofing to bypass private trackers whitelisting – just in case the admin of your favourite private tracker don’t want to add qBittorrent to the whitelist without reasons. You can mask qBittorrent as uTorrent, Vuze or KTorrent.
Built in RSS downloader – never miss those TV series!

Figure 2: qBittorrent WebUI

The first installer for Windows is still in beta quality, so you can expect some bugs. If you ask me about the ‘lightness’ of qBittorrent, I would say somewhere between Deluge-Torrent and Halite or uTorrent. The CPU usage for qBittorrent is not as high as Deluge-Torrent, and when minimized, qBittorrent uses very little amount of CPU power. qBittorrent can be a great alternative to Deluge-Torrent.

qBittorrent is open source (GPL v2) and available for all major operating systems (Linux, Solaris, Mac OS, Unix, Windows).

qBittorrent

Developer Description: The qBittorrent project was started in March 2006 to create a lightweight but featureful BitTorrent client that would be multi-platform and very easy to use.

qBittorrent v2 is the closest open source (GNU GPL v2 license) equivalent to µtorrent. qBittorrent is based on Qt4 toolkit and libtorrent-rasterbar.

Version: Windows, v2.2.8 (r10.06.06)

Size: 4.7 MB

License: Open Source, GPL v2

Operating system: Linux, Solaris, Mac OS, Unix, Windows

Website: qbittorrent.sourceforge.net

XMedia Recode: All in One Video and Audio Converter, Encode Video for Mobile Devices Easily

whiztech — Thu, 20 May 2010 06:39:57 +0000

Since I don’t do much video encoding for mobile devices, I have to admit that I am comfortable to use a simple video encoding tool that just works to do the job easily without much hassle. If you are looking for an all in one video/audio converter software, especially to encode video for mobile devices playback, XMedia Recode might be the software for you.

Figure 1

Basically, XMedia Recode is a GUI for FFmpeg, an open source complete, cross-platform solution to record, convert and stream audio and video. XMedia Recode can encode and decode major video/audio containers and codecs such as 3GP, 3GPP, 3GPP2, AAC, AC3, AMR, ASF, AVI, FLAC, FLV,H.261, H.263, H.264, M4A, M1V, M2V, M4V, Matroska(MKV), MMF, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, TS, TRP, MP2, MP3, MP4, MP4V, MOV,QT, OGG, PSP, SWF, VOB, WAV, WMA and WMV. XMedia Recode can also use unprotected DVD as the video source.

What makes XMedia Recode really great to encode video for mobile devices is the built in presets setting, and there are a lot of them. As for version 2.2.2.9, there are more than 530 built in presets. With XMedia Recode, you can easily choose the appropriate video output format to encode video for your mobile devices without having to worry about the technical details.

Figure 2: Built in preset setting

Even though XMedia Recode has a lot of built in presets, you can actually use your own custom setting, especially if preset for your device is not available, or you want to encode video with your own output configuration. There are many advanced options available such as resolution resize, video cropping, padding, etc.. However, I cannot find the option to add subtitle to the encoded video. XMedia Recode also has a bitrate calculator included.

Figure 3: Custom setting

Figure 4: Bitrate calculator

XMedia Recode is freeware and available for Windows operating system. The official website of XMedia Recode is in German, the program itself come with English translation.

XMedia Recode

Developer Description: XMedia Recode can convert almost all popular audio and video formats, including 3GP, 3GPP, 3GPP2, AAC, AC3, AMR, ASF, AVI, AVISynth, DVD, FLAC, FLV, H.261, H.263, H.264, M4A , M1V, M2V, M4V, Matroska (MKV), MMF, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, TS, TRP, MP2, MP3, MP4, mp4v, MOV, QT, OGG, PSP, (S)VCD , SWF, VOB, WAV, WMA and WMV. (Google Translation)

Version: 2.2.2.9 (portable)

Size: 4.7 MB

License: Freeware, GPL and/or LGPL (FFmpeg)

Operating system: Windows operating systems

Website: www.xmedia-recode.de

Mirror: VideoHelp

Quick Tip: How to Disable Flash in Opera Browser (and other plugin too)

whiztech — Sun, 16 May 2010 03:38:07 +0000

I’m pretty sure some of us are actually get annoyed with Flash animations. While Firefox and Chrome have their own FlashBlock extensions, Opera Browser users don’t have the option to install extensions to the browser. However, in Opera Browser, you can actually block Flash (and other plugin) by enabling the ‘on demand plugin’ option. While this is not as inconvenience as using the FlashBlock extension where you get the extra functionalities such as the option to whilelist a site, this is better than nothing for Opera Browser users.

How to Enable On Demand Plugin in Opera Browser

1. Type opera:config in Opera’s address bar. Click the ‘User Prefs’ section and look for ‘Enable On Demand Plugin’ (1). Enable it.

Figure 1

2. Make sure you also enable the ‘Enable On Demand Plugin Placeholder’ (2) option so you can easily see if a webpage contains any plugin.

Figure 2: ‘Enable On Demand Plugin Placeholder’ enabled

Figure 3: ‘Enable On Demand Plugin Placeholder’ disabled

3. In case you need to enable a plugin temporarily, just click on the placeholder icon and the plugin will be enabled for you.

However, I do find sites where the Flash plugin is still getting enabled even when the on demand plugin is enabled and you didn’t clicked the placeholder icon. For example, channel pages on YouTube that have video embedded on the page. I guess this is a bug of Opera Browser itself. Still, you can use this method if you need to block Flash ads.

Mini Tip: Completely Turn Off/Disable Google Buzz in GMail

whiztech — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 03:18:02 +0000

Today, Google just launched Google Buzz, a social networking service that allows a user to share; for example links and status updates. This service is integrated to GMail webmail interface.

Of course, Google Buzz is not for everyone. Some might having trouble to catch up to another social networking service. If you don’t really want to use Google Buzz or you don’t like it integrated to the GMail interface, you can easily disable it.

Login to GMail and click the ‘turn off buzz’ (1) link at the bottom of your GMail page to completely turn off Google Buzz on your GMail.

By the way, if you are planning to use Google Buzz or testing it, you can follow me on Google Buzz here.

If you want to learn more about Google Buzz, you can read Lifehacker’s post: Google Buzz Explained.

[Google Buzz]

Download Latest DotA Allstars AI Map: DotA Allstars 6.66b AI 0.2141

whiztech — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 04:47:17 +0000

On 30 January 2010, BuffMePlz had released the latest AI version for DotA Allstars 6.66b AI 0.214. It was followed by an updated release on 3 February 2010 to fix crash bugs.

Changelog for 0.2141

-Rewrote Overpower and Summon Familiars to prevent AI crashes
-Undid the fix added for Pounce in 6.66b that was causing the game to crash
-Added a workaround for when AI attempt to attack a dropped Divine Rapier (item will be removed)
-Fixed AI from destroying the Aegis after having them attack Roshan

Changelog for 0.214

6.66b (v0.214)
==============
-First update to 6.66b
-Rewrote Jinada, Wind Walk, Chilling Touch, and Essence Shift to prevent AI-specific crashes
-Minor AI changes to use some rewritten abilities (Scorched Earth, Overpower, etc.)
-Added some extra checks to prevent AI from automatically picking heroes with incomplete AI scripts (they can still random them in -ar or -tr)
-Disabled new -unlock command, as -switch is still disabled in AI map

[BuffMePlz Blog] [PlayDota Forum] [DotA Allstars Forum]

~~[Download: DotA Allstars v6.66b AI 0.214.w3x]~~

[Download: DotA Allstars v6.66b AI 0.2141.w3x]

Free Partition Manager for 64 bit Windows (XP, Vista, 7)?

whiztech — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 03:43:01 +0000

Here is the story. A few weeks ago, my brother asked me to re-partition his new laptop’s hard disk. It is a Dell Studio laptop. At the beginning, I tried to use the popular EASEUS Partition Master Home Edition since it received a lot of positive reviews, but unfortunately the laptop is running on the 64 bit version Windows 7 Home Premium and EASEUS Partition Master Home Edition works only on 32 bit Windows. Then, I tried GParted Live USB, a Linux based partition editor. Again, it was not a success because GParted gives me error whenever I tried to re-partition the hard disk. I don’t exactly know what caused the problem but I can see there is a Dell Backup Utility partition and maybe it had caused the error.

After searching for the alternative, I found Partition Wizard Home Edition. Partition Wizard Home Edition is a free partition manager software for Windows. It is free for personal/home use and the best thing is, it supports the 64 bit version of Windows. Basically, Partition Wizard will let you perform partitioning actions such as create, format, convert, explore, resize, move and copy a partition, like any other partition managers. Partition Wizard is very simple and easy to use.

Because it is free, it is not as powerful as other paid partition manager such as Partition Magic. For example, Partition Wizard only supports FAT, FAT32 and NTFS partitions. This means you cannot use Partition Wizard to create, resize or move Linux EXT2 or EXT3 partitions. As you can see from the image below, the partition (1) is actually a EXT2 partition, and it is shown as other in Partition Wizard. If you are only running Windows on your system then this should not be a problem.

Partition Wizard Home Edition

Partition Wizard is also available as bootable CD. It is Linux based and available as separate download from Partition Wizard website. You will be presented with the same simple Partition Wizard for Windows interface when you are running Partition Wizard from its bootable CD.

Partition Wizard bootable CD

If you are looking for free partition manager for Windows (32 or 64 bit), Partition Wizard is worth to try. Partition Wizard Home Edition is free for personal/home usage.

Partition Wizard Home Edition

Developer Description: Partition Wizard Home Edition is a free partition manager software designed by MT Solution Ltd. Our partition manager supports 32/64 bit Windows Operating System including Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. Home users can perform complicated partition operations by using this powerful yet free partition manager to manage their hard disk. Functions include: Resizing partitions, Copying partitions, Create partition, Delete partition, Format partition, Convert partition, Explore partition, Hide partition, Change drive letter, Set active partition, Partition Recovery, Convert Dynamic Disk to Basic Disk.

Version: 4.2.2

Size: 6.79 MB

License: Free for personal/home use

Operating system: Windows operating systems

Website: www.partitionwizard.com

Fast, Light-weight Sticky Notes for Windows?

whiztech — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 02:34:14 +0000

You probably using post-it notes attached to your monitor or desk to make reminders or short notes. If your post-it notes seem very disorganized and messed up your desk, maybe it’s time for you to use a virtual one.

PNotes is a small and light-weight sticky virtual notes program for Windows. It is skinnable and very flexible. Each individual notes can have their own settings, reminders, skins, fonts, colors, etc.. Some features of PNotes:

Fully adjustable – you can set default fonts, colors and dimensions of notes
Individual notes settings
Rich text formatting – any portion note’s text can be formatted separately
Password protection – allows you to set password for PNotes and prevent unauthorized access
Encryption – in case you are running PNotes from USB drive, nobody could read your notes if you lost your USB drive
Skinnable – skins for PNotes are available for download
Scheduling – each note can have its own reminders to alert you about important task
Overdue reminders – just in case your computer is off, PNotes can reminds you about any overdue reminders the next time you run PNotes
Notes grouping - PNotes can group notes under same category so you can manage your notes easily

The notes that you’ve deleted are moved to the recycle bin first in case you need to access them later. You can bookmark important notes by adding them to PNotes favourites list for easy access. You can also perform quick search of your notes either by their contents or titles if you need to find something particular among your notes.

PNotes can be set to run automatically when your system starts. PNotes is open source and available for Windows operating systems. As for the technical part, PNotes uses around 20MB of memory and very little CPU. PNotes is written in C and Windows API.

PNotes

PNotes is light-weight, flexible, skinnable manager of virtual notes on your desktop. It supports multiple languages, individual note's settings, transparency and scheduling. Absolutely portable as well - no traces in registry.

Version: 5.5.110

Size: 323 KB

License: Open Source (GNU General Public License 2)

Operating system: Windows operating systems

Website: pnotes.sourceforge.net

Enable GodMode (Useful Centralized System Settings) on Windows 7 / Vista

whiztech — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 00:51:59 +0000

This tips is only for Windows 7 (32 and 64 bit) and Vista (32 bit only, using this trick on Windows Vista 64 bit will cause Windows to crash). Well, this god mode is not going to make your Windows installation immune to virus or something like that, but instead it provides you with shortcuts to useful system settings.

Enabling GodMode on Windows 7 / Vista

1. Right click on any blank area on your desktop and choose ‘New’ > ‘Folder’.

2. Rename the folder to:

GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

3. Magically the folder transformed into GodMode!

4. You can actually change the ‘GodMode’ text to something else, for example, if you want to name it ‘System Settings’ just name the new folder to this:

System Settings.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

[via Web Talk]

Show Your Name In Windows 7 or Vista Taskbar

whiztech — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 03:16:43 +0000

Quick tip for Windows Vista and 7 only. You can make your Windows installation a little bit different from others by putting a custom text (your name for example) next to the clock on your taskbar.

1. To put a custom text next to the clock on your taskbar, go to Start Menu > ‘Control Panel’ > ‘Region and Language’ options. Click ‘Additional settings…’ (1) and then click the ‘Time’ (2) tab.

2. Change the AM and PM field (3) to the text that you wish to be displayed next to the clock on your taskbar (maximum of 12 characters). Press ‘OK’ (4) to save the options.

3. Make sure ‘Short’ and ‘Long’ time format field have ‘tt’ at the end of it (5) (‘h:mm tt’ for ‘Short time’ and ‘h:mm:ss tt’ for ‘Long time’ format).

4. You can reset to the default setting anytime by pressing the ‘Reset’ (6) button.

[WinVistaClub via TinyHacker]

5 Websites to Check if a Website is Down for Everyone or Just You

whiztech — Sat, 02 Jan 2010 22:35:55 +0000

Quick tip. When we are trying to access our favourite website and the website is down, sometimes we might think, “Is the website is down for everyone or just me?”. If the website is down for everyone, you probably don’t have to worry because the problem is not at your end. If it is just you, then you might have a problem and you need to check your Internet configuration. In this post, you will find 5 websites that let you quickly check if a website is down for everyone or just you. The first 3 are my favourite.

1. downforeveryoneorjustme.com

Plain simple! Just enter the website address that you want to check and the result will be displayed in a simple way.

2. downorisitjustme.com

downorisitjustme.com will let you to quickly check if a website is down or only at your end. Still simple, even though it is not as simple as downforeveryoneorjustme.com.

3. www.downornot.com

downornot.com will check if a website is down or not from 3 random stations from 42 WatchMouse monitoring network. If 2 or more stations find an error or did not get any respond from the website within 4 seconds, then the website will be considered down. Popular checks are displayed in tag clouds on downornot.com website.

4. isthatsitedown.com

Just like #1 and #2, a simple website to check if other website is down or not.

5. isit.down4justme.com

Unlike the other 4, to check a website using isit.down4justme.com, you will need to enter a full URL, for example, http://www.twitter.com. isit.down4justme.com will also show you a screenshot of the website that you check.

Extra notes. If the problem is only on your end, you might want to recheck your Internet configurations. Changing DNS resolver might be the first step. If a website (domain) changes its IP address, your ISP DNS resolver usually caches the old IP record and don’t have the latest DNS information. Using Google DNS resolver or OpenDNS might solve the problem if it is a DNS problem.

Simple yet Effective Download Manager for DepositFiles, FileFactory, Hotfile, MegaUpload, Rapidshare, SendSpace (and More!)

whiztech — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 17:06:02 +0000

I was looking for a simple download manager that will let me to easily queue the download from multiple file hosting site such as Hotfile and Rapidshare. I found JDownloader, a one-click-host download manager written in Java. Unfortunately I don’t really like it especially the part where it uses too much of my precious CPU cycles and memory. As I was looking for the alternative, I stumbled upon MDownloader and it come with ‘Don't click - queue it’ tagline. Well.. another .NET application and the chance of it to use a lot of CPU and memory is high but I decided to give it a try.

Surprisingly, I found that MDownloader is quite good. The first version that I use was MDownloader 0.9. The interface is very simple and despite the moderate memory usage, MDownloader is quite tame when it came to CPU usage. You won’t notice MDownloader is running in the background.

To use MDownloader, copy the links that you want MDownloader to download, and hit ‘Quick Paste’ (1). It will take some time before the downloads popped up in MDownloader. Just as simple as that and MDownloader will automatically download from all the links. MDownloader has built in captchas recognition but sometimes the OCR (optical character recognition) engine fails to recognize the captchas and you need to manually enter them. If you are queuing a lot of files, make sure you check MDownloader every hour or two, or you ended stuck at the captchas without downloading anything!

MDownloader supports downloading from Bitroad.net, DepositFiles.com, EasyShare.com, FileFactory.com, Hotfile.com, Klurk.com (aggregate), Letitbit.net, Load.to, MegaUpload.com, Rapidshare.com, SendSpace.com, uGotFile.com, Uploading.com and zShare.net. So far, MDownloader 0.12 only supports downloading using premium account on MegaUpload.com only. Download resuming is available if the host supports it.

There are 3 built in tools in MDownloader:

- FilesTube Searcher: MDownloader will let you to perform search using FilesTube.com directly within MDownloader. FilesTube.com is a search engine designed to search files in various file sharing and uploading sites like rapidshare, megaupload and mediafire.

- Release Database: You can search for scene release directly within MDownloader from ORLYDB and SCENEDB.

- RSS Monitor

If you are looking for a simple one-click-host download manager, MDownloader is worth a shot. Like most other modern .NET applications, MDownloader requires your system to have the latest Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 SP1 installed. MDownloader is free and open source, and available for Windows operating system.

My first post for 2010, Happy New Year!

MDownloader

A tiny application designed for downloading files available at the most popular file hosting servers. Don't click - queue it.

Version: 0.12.0.53315

Size: 2.7 MB

License: Open Source (Microsoft Public License)

Operating system: Windows XP or later.

Website: mdownloader.codeplex.com

How to Choose Web Browser Before Opening Links

whiztech — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 18:36:42 +0000

Have you been wondering how to choose the web browser that you want to use to open links? Normally, you can open links from non-web browser application using your system’s default web browser, and Windows only let you set 1 default web browser. Browser Chooser is a program that allows you to choose what web browser to open a link that you’ve clicked. However, Browser Chooser can only be lunched if the links that you’ve clicked are not from a web browser.

Browser Chooser will present you with the list of web browsers installed on your system when you click a link from a non-web browser program such as Yahoo Messenger or mIRC. It also works when you are opening a web page shortcut that was created by software installers on your start menu. Browser Chooser is able to detect 6 web browsers installed on your system; Firefox, Flock, Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari, if they are installed in their default directories.

After you’ve installed Browser Chooser, you must first set Browser Chooser as the ‘default’ web browser. Click the small ‘Options’ (1) button and go to ‘Miscellaneous’ tab. Then click ‘Activate Browser Chooser (Make default browser)’ (2). You can also enable the ‘Show URL’ (3) option to make Browser Chooser display the URL that you tried to open. In the Options dialog, you can choose what web browser that will be displayed by Browser Chooser. Browser Chooser can display up to 5 web browser. Hit ‘Save’ to save the configuration.

When you’re presented with the list of web browsers by Browser Chooser, you can choose to make any URL to open automatically by your chosen web browser. There are also keyboard shortcuts, for example, if Opera is the first web browser in Browser Chooser’s list, you can press 1 or ‘O’ (first word of Opera) to make Browser Chooser open the link that you just clicked with Opera.

Browser Chooser took a few seconds to start whenever I clicked a link on my system. If you got a decent and fast system, Browser Chooser might be for you, and I don’t think Browser Chooser is suitable for slow systems.

Browser Chooser is free and open source. It is developed using VB.Net and your system need to have at least Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 installed. Browser Chooser is available for Windows XP and later only.

Browser Chooser

Browser Chooser is a small tool acting as the default browser allowing you to choose what browser to open the link in. It gives you the flexibility to choose what browser to use for any given task. It is developed in VB.Net and geared towards Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Version: 1.0.9

Size: 3.4 MB

License: Open Source (Microsoft Public License)

Operating system: Windows XP or later.

Website: browserchooser.codeplex.com

How to Force Cancel Stuck Print Jobs Queue

whiztech — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 02:28:35 +0000

Quick tip (Windows only). I’m sure most of us sometimes are unable to cancel a printing job and the print job is stuck on your printer print job list. This is sure a frustrating problem especially if you need to print something urgently. The method below will delete the entire print job queue and cancel all print jobs by stopping the print spooler service and delete its print job files. It should work on most versions of Windows.

1. Run Notepad (Start Menu > Run, type notepad and press ‘Enter’).

2. Copy the command below to Notepad (click the view source icon):

net stop spooler
del %systemroot%\system32\spool\printers\*.shd
del %systemroot%\system32\spool\printers\*.spl
net start spooler
pause

3. Save it as a .bat file. Make sure you select ‘All files (*.*)’ (1). Give it a meaningful name, for example, ‘cancelprint.bat’ (2) (without the quotes ‘’) and save it to a location where you can easily find the file, maybe on your desktop. The .bat extension is important! For example, if you want to name it as ‘stopprint’, make sure you put ‘stopprint.bat’. Press ‘Save’ (3) to save it.

4. Next time you want to cancel a stuck print job, just run ‘cancelprint.bat’.

[Microsoft Support: How to cancel printing or to delete a print job that is stuck in the print queue in Windows XP]

Process Hacker: The Windows Task Manager Alternative/Replacement with Ultimate Features

whiztech — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 19:15:48 +0000

If you are looking for a powerful Task Manager alternative/replacement, or simply a tool to manage the processes and services that running on your system, then Process Hacker might be the right system utility application for you. I’ve been using Process Hacker since version 1.3.x, so far Process Hacker is indeed an ultimate task manager and I can see the developers have put great efforts to improve and make Process Hacker a powerful system tool.

Process Hacker functionality and interface quite similar to Process Explorer’s. However, Process Hacker offers you 2 additional functionalities that Process Explorer don’t have; the ability to manage services and network connections information.

On ‘Processes’ tab, you can do the basic Task Manager actions such as terminating process, changing process priority, etc.. You can also easily search the process file name on Google, upload a process file to VirusTotal, and if you know what you’re doing, Process Hacker offers you advanced features such as terminating process using different methods, inject DLL into a process, inspect process threads, protect a process, write directly to process memory and many more. The processes are highlighted according Own, System, Service, Debugged, Elevated, Job, .NET, POSIX, Packed/Dangerous, Suspended Threads, GUI Threads, Relocated DLLs, Protected Handles and Inherit Handles. The highlighting color can be changed and each of them can be enabled or disabled to allow more visibility of administration of the processes running on your system.

On the ‘Services’ tab, Process Hacker will give you the list of services on your system. From here, you can stop, start, delete or change the start type of any services. On ‘Network’ tab, you will see the network connections that have been made by the process running on your system. Process Hacker allows you to close network connections made by any running process. You can also perform whois lookup on a connection’s remote address, tracert and ping.

Process Hacker is free and open source (licensed under GNU General Public License 3 or later). Process Hacker is actively developed and it is written using C#, .NET 2.0, and some C coding for Process Hacker’s kernel-mode driver. Process Hacker requires at least .NET Framework 2.0 installed on your system.

On the other note, for those who don’t like .NET applications, Process Hacker 2.0 might be written in C with no dependencies on .NET Framework. You can see the progress on Process Hacker’s Sourceforge repositories (link).

Process Hacker

Process Hacker is a free and open source process viewer and memory editor with unique features such as powerful process termination and a Regex memory searcher. It can show services, processes and their threads, modules, handles and memory regions.

Version: 1.9.0.0

Size: 1.3 MB

License: Open Source (GNU General Public License 3 or later)

Operating system: Windows XP SP2 or above.

Website: processhacker.sourceforge.net

Fix SMPlayer Crash and Unable to Play Video on Windows 7

whiztech — Sat, 26 Dec 2009 17:15:27 +0000

Quick tip. SMPlayer is a free and open source cross platform GUI for MPlayer, which is a free and open source media player for major operating systems such as Windows, Linux and Mac OS X (unfortunately SMPlayer cannot run on Mac OS X even though MPlayer is available for this operating system). Some features of SMPlayer are able to play major audio/video format, playlist, remember playback setting of all files you play, audio and subtitles delay adjustment, and many more.

Unfortunately I was unable to get SMPlayer to play on Windows 7 after some time, maybe because I messed up with MPlayer setting (or Windows). After investigating, I found that it was the Freetype support option had caused MPlayer to crash. In the error log, MPlayer crashed after loading font and the crash was random. If you are unable to get SMPlayer to play on Windows 7, you can follow this instruction, and hopefully you can get SMPlayer to work on Windows 7 again.

Disabling Freetype font support on SMPlayer

1. Run SMPlayer. Go to ‘Options’ > ‘Preferences’. Then, you need to navigate to ‘Subtitles’ (1). Unselect ‘Freetype support’ (2). Press ‘OK’ (3) and restart SMPlayer.

SMPlayer

SMPlayer intends to be a complete front-end for MPlayer, from basic features like playing videos, DVDs, and VCDs to more advanced features like support for MPlayer filters and more.

Version: 0.6.8 (SVN r3213)

Size: 13.38 MB

License: Open Source (GPL)

Operating system: Windows, Linux

Website: smplayer.sourceforge.net

How To Password Protect Your Personal/Private Files, The Easy Way

whiztech — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 18:45:27 +0000

There are various tools available to help you encrypt and protect your personal private files. On-the-fly-encryption (OTFE) is one of the popular methods used by disk encryption software. This method allows the data to be encrypted just before it is written to disk and decrypted after it is read from the disk transparently on the background.

R-Crypto is an easy-to-use disk encryption software for Windows to protect your personal and private data, in fact, it is very easy to use. R-Crypto can protect your personal confidential files by creating encrypted virtual disks and each disk is a single file-container. This virtual disk is protected with password. A user can only access the files inside the virtual disk when the correct password is provided. After a user provides the correct password, the virtual disk can be mounted and the user can use the encrypted virtual disk just like a normal drive.

To use R-Crypto to protect your personal files, you must first create a new R-Crypto encrypted disk. R-Crypto encrypted disk is a container file which can be mounted as virtual disk. The container file is stored on your system just like a normal file.

1. In R-Crypto Management Panel, click ‘Run new encrypted disk creation wizard’ [1] and click ‘Next’.

2. Specify the name of the container file [2] and choose the location where you want to store the encrypted disk container file [3]. Choose the size for your encrypted disk [4] and click ‘Next’. As for the encryption setting, you can use the default SHA-1, AES-256. Click ‘Next’

3. On the next screen, you can use the default value. Select ‘Automatically connect this drive after creation’ [5] if you want to mount the encrypted virtual disk after the virtual disk is created. Click ‘Next’ to go to the next page. On the next page, choose the password for your encrypted disk. Make sure you use a strong password. Click ‘Next’ and ‘Finish’ to create the encrypted disk file-container. Depending on the size of the encrypted disk and your system speed, the creation of the container file will take some time. If you choose ‘Automatically connect this drive after creation’, the encrypted disk will be connected once the container file is created.

4. There are several ways to connect (or mount) the encrypted disk so you can access the files inside it or store any personal private file into the encrypted disk.

- From R-Crypto management panel, you can click ‘Connect Disk’ [6] or click ‘Connect’ [7] from the recent list of encrypted disk.

- Double-click the encrypted disk file-container in the Windows Explorer.

- Right-click the encrypted disk file-container in the Windows Explorer and select Connect on the shortcut menu.

- Right-click the R-Crypto icon in the system tray, select Recent Disks on the shortcut menu, then select the required encrypted disk.

- Right-click the encrypted disk's file-container in the Windows Explorer select Properties on the shortcut menu, go to the R-Crypto tab, and click the Connect button.

Before the virtual disk is connected, you will be prompt to enter the disk’s password.

You can set R-Crypto to disconnect any encrypted disk under certain cases, for example if the encrypted disk exceeds inactivity period of 15 minutes or when the screen saver is running. You can set this option in R-Crypto settings. The R-Crypto container size can be resized easily from R-Crypto management panel. However in my test, the resizing process take quite some time and sometimes it was too long. You might want to manually create a new container file with larger size, and copy the files from the old encrypted disk to the new one.

Since it is so simple, R-Crypto lacks of advanced features such as the ability to provide plausible deniability (or hidden container), using key file to encrypt the virtual disk or using multiple keys/passwords. R-Crypto is a perfect disk encryption software if you are looking for a simple and easy-to use disk encryption software. R-Crypto is free for home/personal use and free registration is required to obtain a free registration key. If you are looking for more advanced disk encryption software, you might want to try TrueCrypt.

R-Crypto

R-Crypto is an easy-to-use disk encryption software that protects your confidential information and personal data on a desktop, notebook, or a removable data storage device against unauthorized access.

Version: 1.5 Build 3336

Size: 3 MB

License: Free license for personal/home use, USD 59.99 for corporate license

Operating system: Windows 2000 (less features), Windows XP, 2003, Vista, 7

Website: data-security-software.com

Unlocker Alternative to Force Deletion of Locked Files in Windows

whiztech — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:12:35 +0000

If you are using Windows, you probably ever encounter error message saying that a file is being used by other person or program when you are trying to delete, move or rename a file, or ejecting a USB drive. For example, if Windows Explorer is viewing the thumbnail of a video, then the video file is likely being locked by Explorer.exe. Before this, I use Unlocker to force the delete and move operation of these locked files, or when trying to eject a USB drive with opened files. Unfortunately, I can’t get Unlocker to work on Windows 7, even on the 32 bit version of Windows 7.

LockHunter is a similar tool to Unlocker. LockHunter allows you to release a file or directory that being opened by other application. LockHunter integrates itself to the right-click menu just like Unlocker. LockHunter also allows you to kill or even delete the process that is opening the file that you want to delete. This feature is quite useful especially if you know the locking process is actually a malware.

If you are looking for the alternative of Unlocker then LockHunter might be the solution for you, especially if you are running the 64 bit version of Windows. LockHunter is freeware and available for Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 2003 and 7 (32 bit and 64 bit).

LockHunter

LockHunter is a free tool to delete files blocked by something you do not know. LockHunter is useful for fighting against malware, and other programs that are blocking files without a reason. Unlike other similar tools it deletes files into the recycle bin so you may restore them if deleted by mistake.

Version: 1.0 beta 3 (32 bit)

Size: 1.2 MB

License: Freeware

Operating System: Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 2003, 7

Website: lockhunter.com

Keep Software On Your Windows System Up-to-date

whiztech — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 14:18:33 +0000

Keeping software installed on your Windows system up-to-date with the latest version is important. One of the main reasons to keep software updated with the latest version is because the latest version usually come with bug and security fixes. Security fix is very important because unfixed security flaws in the software installed on your system may lead your system to be compromised by hackers. Keeping software with latest version will also allow you to use new features that came with the latest version of the software. Checking each software that installed on your system manually for latest the version is a tiresome thing to do.

While Linux operating system have their own package manager that connects to software repository that allows users to keep the installed software on their system up-to-date with the latest version easily, Windows users don’t have this. Update Notifier is a small utility that checks if there are updates available for the software installed on your system and display the updates to you in a simple way. If update is available, you can click the download button and you will be directed to the download page for the software. Then, you can download the latest version of the software using your web browser.

Update Notifier is easy to use and straight forward. Update Notifier can be installed as portable application. Update Notifier is freeware and available for Windows.

[Download: Update Notifier]

How to Download Latest TV Shows Automatically Using uTorrent

whiztech — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 06:07:24 +0000

While you can manually visit a bittorrent site to download the latest episode of a TV show, modern bittorrent client with built-in RSS feed reader allows you to automate the download process of your favourite TV shows as soon as the latest episode is available. In this post, you will find the step by step guide on how to automatically download the latest episodes of TV shows as soon as they are available on bittorrent network using uTorrent.

Note: Downloading TV shows can be illegal in some countries. If so, consider moving to another country, download share friendly shows only, or collect the torrents just for fun. Make sure you’ve checked before you proceed.

One of the best bittorrent sources to download TV shows is EZTV. RSS feed for TV shows available on EZTV is available at EZRSS. This guide should works with latest uTorrent. The uTorrent version that I use in this guide is uTorrent 2.0 beta.

1. First of all, you will need to find the RSS feed for the TV show that you want to download. In this guide, I will take ‘Top Gear’ as the example. To find the RSS feed for ‘Top Gear’, go to EZRSS website and look for ‘Top Gear’ [1] in the shows list. Click on ‘Top Gear’ and you will be redirected to the ‘Top Gear’ episode list.

2. Next, we will add the RSS feed URL for ‘Top Gear’ in uTorrent. Right click on ‘Search-based RSS Feed’ [2] and choose ‘Copy Link Address’ (Opera or Chrome) / ‘Copy Link Location’ (Firefox) to copy the RSS feed URL for ‘Top Gear’. Open uTorrent and go to ‘File’ > ‘Add RSS Feed…’ [3]. Paste the RSS feed URL that you’ve copied before in ‘Feed URL’ field [4]. Tick ‘Custom Alias’ [5] and give the RSS feed a meaningful name [6], for example ‘Top Gear’. Select ‘Do not automatically download all items’ [7] because we are going to use the filter system. Click ‘OK’ [8] to add the RSS feed for ‘Top Gear’ [9].

3. We will now configure the filter system to choose which type of release to be downloaded. Go to ‘Options’ > ‘RSS Downloader’ [10]. Click ‘Add’ [11] to add a new filter. Name it with a meaningful name [12]. Usually, there are 2 types of release in EZTV, the normal XviD quality release and the high quality x264 release. On EZRSS feed, a high quality x264 release is tagged with ‘720p’.

To set the filter system to download the normal XviD quality release and skip downloading the high quality x264 release, enter ‘*’ in ‘Filter’ [13] field, and put ‘*720*’ in ‘Not’ [14] field.

If you want to download only the high quality x264 release, set the ‘Filter’ [13.1] field to ‘*720*’ and don’t put anything in the ‘Not’ [14.1] field.

To download both normal XviD and high quality x264 release, set ‘Filter’ [13.2] field to ‘*’ and don’t put anything in ‘Not’ [14.2] field.

Choose the download folder for the TV episode [15]. If you set this field blank, uTorrent will use the default download folder. Select the TV show RSS feed [16] that you add from step 2. Select ‘Give download highest priority’ [17] if you want uTorrent to put the download from RSS feed to the top of the queue. Give a meaningful label name for the download job for this filter [18]. Leave other settings to the default value. The setting will automatically be saved. Press ‘Close’.

4. We will now make uTorrent to remember that it has downloaded the old episodes from the RSS feed so when a new episode is available, uTorrent will only download the new episode. Right click on the RSS feed and choose ‘Update Feed…’ [19]. This will make uTorrent download all episode from the RSS feed that matched the filter you set before, including the old episodes. You may receive ‘Not enough disk space’ warning from uTorrent but you can just ignore it. You probably already have all of these episodes, so you can delete them. Click on the label for the RSS feed [20], click on any of the listed download [21], press CTRL+A on your keyboard to select all downloads. Right click and go to ‘Remove And’ > ‘Delete .torrent + Data’ [22]. Empty your Recycle Bin.

5. Your uTorrent will automatically download the latest episode when it is available from the RSS feed. If you want to add other TV shows, just repeat step 1 to 4.

Thank you Zenix and valveman for the drafting!

Use Keyboard Light Emitting Diode (LED) As Network Traffic Indicator

whiztech — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:21:43 +0000

Standard keyboard has 3 main light emitting diode (LED) which are used to monitor if you activate the ‘Num Lock’, ‘Caps Lock’ and ‘Scroll Lock’ function. If you feel like changing these LEDs function into something else, you can use it as a network traffic network indicator. Talking about the good old Windows 98 dial-up tray icon days =)

A small tool called Network Lights will allows you to use your keyboard LED as network traffic indicator. When there is download or upload network activity, Network Lights will make the ‘Num Lock’ and ‘Scroll Lock’ LEDs blinking. You can impress your friends with your new cool network activity indicator LEDs. Network Lights also works on laptop’s keyboard LEDs (tested on my friend's Compaq Presario v5000).

Network Lights is small, version 1.1 is less than 100KB. When you run Network Lights, it will sit on the system tray. The program uses around 1.3MB of memory. Network Light is freeware and available for Microsoft Windows operating system.

[Download: Network Lights via Raymond.cc]

How To Change/Reduce CHKDSK Countdown Time

whiztech — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:11:23 +0000

CHKDSK is a tool on Windows operating system that displays the file system integrity status of a hard disk and CHKDSK can fix logical file system errors. CHKDSK can fix file system errors without the need to restart your system if it can get an exclusive lock on the drive. If CHKDSK cannot lock a drive (usually the C: drive), the check will resume the next time the computer starts. By default, when CHKDSK starts automatically when your system starts, there is a 10 seconds countdown that allows you to press any key to cancel the CHKDSK process during the 10 seconds period. The 10 seconds countdown value can be easily changed.

WARNING! This method involves editing the registry. Make sure you backed up your registry and system before proceeding with caution.

1. Open Registry Editor. Go to Start > Run and type regedit.

2. In Registry Editor, navigates to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager (1).

3. If AutoChkTimeOut value does not exists, you need to create it. To create AutoChkTimeOut value, right click in an empty area on the right panel of Registry Editor, choose New > DWORD value (2). Set the name as AutoChkTimeOut.

4. Double-click the (newly created) AutoChkTimeOut to edit its value. Choose Decimal (3) as the base and enter the countdown time for CHKDSK that you want to set (4). Setting this value to 0 will totally disable the timer.

5. Press OK (5) to close the registry editor. The change will take effect on the next reboot.

[via WindowsIT Pro]

Google Analytics Alternative With Real Time Visitor Tracking: Piwik

whiztech — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 16:17:42 +0000

Visitors statistic is a crucial information for webmasters. I’m sure almost all webmaster know about Google Analytics. Google Analytics is a free service by Google that provides you with detailed statistics about visitors of a website. Google Analytics is being used widely by webmasters and it is one of the most popular visitor tracking service. If you somehow don’t like to use Google Analytics and you are looking for its alternative, you can use Piwik.

What is Piwik? Piwik is a web analytics software written in PHP. If you have your own web space and your server has a minimum PHP 5.1.3 and MySQL 4.1, you can install and use Piwik. Piwik can provides you with a detailed real time reports about your website visitors. Piwik is written by the developers of phpMyVisites after the last stable release of phpMyVisites 2.3. Some features of Piwik according to the developers:

Piwik’s features are based on plugins so you can easily add new features or remove the ones that you don’t need. You can build your own plugins too.
The statistics data is owned by you because Piwik is installed on your server. The data can be accessed using Piwik’s open APIs.
The interface of Piwik is fully customizable. The Piwik’s dashboard contains widgets and you can drag and drop the widgets that you want to display.
Piwik generates real time web analytics reports.

Piwik Dashboard

The installation of Piwik includes these plugins:

API – Allows you to access Piwik’s analytics data using Piwik APIs.
Actions – Track and reports about page views, outlinks and downloads.
DBStats – Reports the database usage by Piwik.
Dashboard – Piwik’s main dashboard.
Feedback – Send your feedback to Piwik developers.
Goals – Create goals and see reports about your goal conversions such as evolution over time, revenue per visit, conversions per referer, per keyword, etc..
Installation – Piwik installer.
LanguagesManager – Let users display Piwik interface in different languages.
Live – Let you see live visitors, like Woopra.
Login – Login authentication plugin.
Provider – Track and reports about visitors’ internet provider.
Referers – Reports referrers data such as search engine, keywords, websites, campaign tracking, direct entry, etc..
SitesManager – Let you manage the websites that you want to track using Piwik.
UserCountry – Reports the visitors’ country
UserSettings – Track and reports visitors’ settings such as browser, operating systems, screen resolution, etc..
UsersManager – Let you add, edit and change permissions of your Piwik’s users.
VisitFrequency - Reports various statistics about the returning visitor versus the first time visitor.
VisitTime - Reports the local and server time. Server time information can be useful to schedule a maintenance on the website.
VisitorInterest - Reports about the visitor interest such as number of pages viewed, time spent on the website.
VisitsSummary - Reports the general analytics numbers: visits, unique visitors, number of actions, bounce rate, etc..
Widgetize - This plugin makes it very easy to export any Piwik Widget in your Blog, Website or on Igoogle and Netvibes!

After you install Piwik, you will be given the javascript tracking code to be included on the website that you want to track. You can track virtually unlimited websites with a single installation of Piwik, or course this depends on your server’s power and specifications. Piwik allows you to enable or disable anonymous access to your Piwik analytics data. You can also add users to your Piwik installation. You can set these user to have a viewing access to your Piwik analytics data, or set him/her as a co-admin.

In my test, it seems that Piwik missed to track some visitors compared with Google Analytics. I can’t confirm if this is a problem of my Piwik installation or not, maybe some of the visitors blocked the Piwik’s tracking code. As for Piwik’s database usage, tracking a website with 1000 unique visitors per day will cause Piwik’s database to grow around 8MB a month. This will be quite a problem is you are tracking websites with lots of visitors on a shared host with limited space. While Piwik can be the alternative to Google Analytics, you won’t have the Google AdWords and Adsense integration in Piwik.

Piwik is still quite new (1 year and 9 months since the first public alpha release) and has a lot of room to grow. The plugins database is still small and we can expect to see it grows as more developers contribute to Piwik’s development. Piwik was choosen as the Sourceforge Project of the Month for July 2009. Before you use Piwik, you can try the online demo.

[Piwik]

µTorrent (uTorrent) bt.transp_disposition Values Explained

whiztech — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 03:21:25 +0000

µTP (uTP) or micro Transport Protocol is a protocol used by bittorrent client. This protocol aims to reduce latency and maximize bandwidth when the latency is not excessive. While normal bittorrent traffic uses Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) to transfer data, bittorrent client that supports uTP is able to transfer data between clients using User Datagram Protocol (UDP). uTP is supposed to improve bittorrent traffic (uTP can possibly avoid traffic shaping) and you should see improvements in your bittorrent download/upload speed when most of the peers use uTP. So far uTP is used by uTorrent and official bittorrent client.

The bt.transp_disposition value will let you control how uTorrent uses normal TCP or uTP for data transportation. The bt.transp_disposition value is interpreted as a bit field and you probably need to learn binary to understand it. As this post is written, the latest uTorrent 2.0 beta build 16666 accepts these values:

1 – allows uTorrent to attempt outgoing TCP connections
2 – allows uTorrent to attempt outgoing uTP connections
4 – allows uTorrent to accept incoming TCP connections
8 – allows uTorrent to accept incoming uTP connections
16 – tells uTorrent to use the new uTP header. This is an improved communication header, but is not backwards compatible with clients that do not understand it.

Basically, these values can be added together in order to enable the options. Examples of bt.transp_disposition values combinations:

31 (16 + 8 + 4 + 2 + 1) = enables all the options above
15 (1 + 2 + 4 + 8) = uTorrent will attempt both TCP and uTP for outgoing connections, and accepts TCP and uTP incoming connections
10 (2 + 8) = uTorrent will only attempt to create uTP outgoing connections and only accepts uTP incoming connection
5 (1 + 4) = uTorrent will only use TCP for outgoing connections and when accepting incoming conncetions

The default bt.transp_disposition value for uTorrent 2.0 beta is 15. Setting bt.transp_disposition value to 255 will guarantee to enable all options including future options. bt.transp_disposition can be accessed by navigating to uTorrent’s ‘Options’ menu > ‘Preferences’ > ‘Advanced’.

[Download: uTorrent help file]

Guide: How to Properly Burn CD/DVD Image (ISO) to CD/DVD

whiztech — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 16:56:50 +0000

Recently, 3 of my friends asked me how to burn a DVD image (the ISO file) to a DVD. Basically, a CD/DVD image (ISO) file is a archive file just like 7z, RAR or ZIP. Unlike normal archive file, a CD/DVD image file sometime contains boot code and it is usually a complete sector-by-sector copy of a CD/DVD.

(source)

In this post, you will find out how to properly burn a CD/DVD image. I will use the Ubuntu 9.04 CD image as the example. Latest disk burning software should support ISO burning to disk. The keywords to burn ISO file to disk usually sounds like ‘Write image file to disk’, ‘Burn ISO image’ or ‘Burn image’. You can use your favourite CD/DVD burning application as long as it supports burning from CD/DVD image. In this post, I will use CDBurnerXP, a free CD/DVD burning application for Windows. When we burn a CD/DVD image (the Ubuntu 9.04 CD image for example), we want the CD/DVD content to be like (1) instead of (2).

Burning ISO File

1. Insert a blank CD/DVD in your CD/DVD burner. Download, install and run CDBurnerXP. You should be greeted with CDBurnerXP menu. Choose ‘Burn ISO image’ (3).

2. Next, click the browse icon (4) and choose the ISO file that you want to burn. Select your CD/DVD burner (5) and burn speed (6). Choose ‘Disc at Once’ (7) as the burn method. Press ‘Burn disc’ (8) to start the burning process.

Burning in progress

Verifying Disk

1. If you need to verify the disk that you’ve burn from ISO file, you can use ImgBurn (I wonder why CDBurnerXP don’t have the option to verify the disk after burning process is finished). ImgBurn is also a free CD/DVD burning software but I choose CDBurnerXP over ImgBurn because of the simple CDBurnerXP interface. The ImgBurn ‘Verify disc’ function will check if the data written to the disk is readable.

2. To verify a disk against ISO file with ImgBurn, choose ‘Verify disc’ (9).

3. Click the browse icon (10) and select the ISO file that you use to burn the disk. Make sure you inserted the disk that you want to verify to your CD/DVD drive. Select the CD/DVD drive (11) that contains the disk that you’ve burn before. Press the start icon (12) to start the disk verification process.

Disk verification process in progress

[Download: CDBurnerXP]

[Download: ImgBurn]

[Link: ImgBurn Verify Disc]

[Wikipedia: Disk image]

Quick Tip: Turn Off Avira Antivir Audio Alert When Virus Is Detected

whiztech — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 02:35:15 +0000

Quick tip. Avira Antivir Personal is one of the best popular free antivirus. As this post is written, Avira Antivir Personal ranked #2 on Download.com most popular download. I’m pretty sure most of Avira Antivir users found that the ‘beeping’ audio alert when a virus is detected is quite annoying, especially when you can’t turn down the volume because it uses your motherboard’s buzzer. You can actually turn off the audio alert easily.

How to Turn Off Avira Antivir Audio ‘Beep’ Alert

1. Open Avira Antivir main window. Go to ‘Extras’ > ‘Configuration’ (1).

2. Click ‘Expert Mode’ (2) and go to ‘General’ > ‘Acoustic Alert’ (3). Select ‘No warning’ (4) to disable Avira Antivir audio alert. Click ‘OK’ (5) to store the configuration.

Avira Antivir Personal is free for personal use. Avira Antivir Personal is available for Windows, Linux and Solaris operating systems.

[Download: Avira Antivir Personal]

Download Latest DotA AI Map: DotA Allstars 6.64 AI 0.213

whiztech — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 05:03:58 +0000

The latest DotA AI map, DotA Allstars 6.64 AI 0.213 had been released by BuffMePlz on 25th October 2009.

Release notes for DotA Allstars 6.64 AI 0.213:

Changelog:
-First update to 6.64
-Changed the default AI behaviour of creeps and towers to be the same as in the official map
-Fixed the fade on Circles of Protection belonging to other players
-Fixed some numerical errors on Bristleback's abilities
-Added some additional AI ability functionality (Black Hole, Fissure, Epicenter)

[Download: DotA Allstars 6.64 AI 0.213]

[BuffMePlz’s blog] [PlayDotA Forum] [DotA-Allstars Forum]

Release notes for DotA Allstars v6.63b AI 0.212:

6.63b (v0.212)
==============
-First update to 6.63b
-Fixed an issue that was causing AI bots to learn their abilities out of order
-Fixed another issue that was still causing the game to crash when a player leaves the game early
-Added some additional AI ability functionality (Crystal Nova, Storm Bolt, Mana Burn)

Original post:
First release, updated to 6.62 and 1.24b compliant. Note that this is v0.21, and there will be bugs.

Some abilities are not working for bots yet (they learn them but don't use them), and this is expected and will be addressed in future versions.

The following game modes have been disabled for now:
-vr, -rv, -rd, -cd, -cm, -lm, -xl

The following game commands have been disabled for now:
-afk, -kickafk, -ah, -switch, -fun

Please report bugs to me.

Things that are bugs:
-Crashes with reproducible reasons
-Abilities/items not working as expected (for players or bots)

Things that are not bugs:
-Bots not using certain abilities
-Bots being too strong/weak/cheating. They do that.

Thanks to Overflow_GR for his help on this version.

Enjoy!

---
Note: Only for v1.24b, doesn't work for v1.24 and below..

Since this map is based on DotA Allstars v6.63b, Warcraft III version 1.24b is required to play this map. You can download Warcraft III version switcher here.

~~[Download:~~ ~~DotA Allstars v6.63b AI 0.212~~]

[~~BuffMePlz Blog] [PlayDotA Forum] [DotA-Allstars Forum~~]