Notepad replacement Notepad++ Review

Notepad is probably most basic application included with all versions of Windows.Notepad is a simple text editor.On Windows if you are looking for something better than Notepad, you may choose WordPad for text editing.There are certain features that are not available in Wordpad, like tabbed document support.Also, Wordpad purpose is more likely basic word processor where you can make text bold italic etc.But if you are just looking for a text editor which do much more than Notepad.Its Notepad++,it is free and open source as well.

For casual programmers who modify code this is must to have,it support syntax highlighting of almost all available language.A good tool to modify your html or php files.It support tabbed documents.Some of the other features of Notepad++ are

  • Auto completion
  • Line numbering
  • Regular expression support
  • Find and replace in multiple files support – To search for string or literal in files in certain directory,its useful tool
  • Show all characters support – It help you see control characters like – new line character etc as well.
  • UTF-8 support to edit even files in Hindi
  • Column Editor – If you want to add certain text before each column of certain number before each column, this feature is useful
  • Indent support
  • Block select mode- where you can select columns instead of row and use column editor if you need.

Overall a must have text editor for everyone.A right replacement for your notepad.You may download Notepad+= from their website.

Facebook overtakes Orkut in India

Recently, Facebook crossed 500 million user threshold globally.Although, Orkut was never popular than Facebook in USA,however, Brazil and India were two stronghold of Orkut. Recently, Facebook overtook Orkut in India.

Alexa was showing this for sometime.Alexa is popular among webmasters to find rank of their website in the world or in specific country.Its free to use.Alexa top websites in India shows Facebook at number 3 position and Orkut at number 7 position.

On 25th of August Comscore reported that Facebook is now number one social networking site in India.Comscore’s data is considered more reliable among investor communities.Comscore  data excludes visit from public computers such as internet cafes and access from mobile phones. When ever I visit a internet cafe I found Orkut opened on many computers. Orkut seems still favorite among internet cafe users.Comscore has reported total unique visitors, aged 15+, accessing internet from home or work for Facebook as 208,73,000 while for Orkut 198,71,000.Percentage growth of Facebook is 179% while that of Orkut is 16% only, from last year.In my opinion if you include access from mobile phones Facebook may have a wide lead.As a few mobile operators have provided free Facebook access or access plan for Facebook in recent month.

Personally, in last one year I have seen almost all my friends are now available on Facebook. So, Brazil in only prominent country where Orkut still have dominance.This is another reason for Google to come with new social networking site, and their are rumors as well that Google is building “Google Me” to counter Facebook in social networking business.For time being “All is well” for Facebook.

How to know when someone unfriend you on Facebook.

Facebook has a feature, when you add someone as a friend, it is being shown to everyone in your list.However, it doesn’t tell you when someone removes you from his/her friend list. Earlier there was an application named “Unfriender”, which use to do the job of notifying you when someone removes you from his/her friend list. Facebook seems to have banned “Unfriender” application.

There is another new application which let you know when someone removes you from his/her friend list.Application name is “Unfriend Detector”. You may install it from this url.Additionally, you may choose to get notified by an email when someone “unfriend” you. However, it won’t tell you about the friends who have removed you their list before you installed this application.It only works if someone removes you from his/her list after application is installed.

What to expect in new social network from Google.

There are a lot of buzz that Google is building a a new social network “Google Me” to counter Facebook.Since 500 million people are on Facebook,there are little incentive for users to make a switch.What Google can possibly do to make the switch? PC World, has a story on it. Highlights from the article.

  • Before Google Me – Orkut,Buzz and Wave – These services haven’t managed to reach critical mass but some of their features may be part of Google Me.
  • Privacy – Facebook users have a lot of privacy concern, Google can address it.
  • Games,Gifts and Third-Party Apps
  • Finding your niche – Article suggests to start with Google Me will have to cater a niche and initially even Facebook catered for American college.
  • More user control – More user control to personalize it.

Read complete article on PCWorld.

Convert webpage,doc,docx,xls or anything to PDF using PDFcreator virtual printer

There are numerous tool available online and offline to convert a particular type of document to PDF.People love PDF because it give sense of inactive document.Also, it is easy to carry PDF for reading purpose.I convert a lot of web pages to PDF just to carry it in my USB drive for printing purpose.

PDFcreator is an open source virtual printer which converts  anything like webpage,doc,docx, xls,text file to PDF.It installs as a virtual printer.So if you want to convert a something to PDF all you need to print it using PDFcreator virtual printer

How to procure and install PDFcreator

You can get the software from source forge, http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator/ .Download the software,you will need to have administrative privilege to install it.Also, if you choose all default settings at install time, besides installing PDFcreator virtual printer installer, it also installs PDFForge toolbar for Internet Explorer and Firefox.PDFforgetoolbar also redirects all 404 error pages and DNS error to mybrowserbar.com. I don’t like it,so you may choose to deselect these add-on install at the install time.

Installation

  • start installer, first screen is “choose language” – default is English
  • Next screen - “welcome to PDFcreator setup wizard”,click next
  • Next screen - “License Agreement”
  • Next screen - “Type of Installation” – leave default, Standard Installation
  • Next screen - “Printer name” – leave default
  • Next screen “Select Destination Location”, by default it is c:\program files\PDFCreator, modify it if you want.
  • Next Screen - “PDFcreator Browser Add on” - “Set Yahoo! as my default search engine and notify me of changes” is checked.Uncheck it.Please refer image

browser-add-on

  • Next screen - “Select Components” - “PDFCreator browser add on for Internet explorer and Firefox” checked, Uncheck it.Please refer image

select-componets

  • You may choose default setting on subsequent screens.
  • PDFCreator will be installed as a printer named “PDFCReator” and you can access it from any program using “print” menu.

print driver

Did you find this utility useful? please share.

Installing/Creating Ubuntu Linux in Windows using VMware Image

Use cases :

  • You are a Windows user who want to experiment with Linux desktop version.
  • You have used Linux in past and love some of tools/utilities on Linux.You can have a virtual Linux environment.
  • You are domainer and do a lot of whois query possibly automated using shell scripting,but prefer Windows as primary OS.
  • You love perl scripting and want to enhance your skill on perl or shell scripting.
  • You want safe virus free environment for browsing.
  • There can be number of user case where although you need Primary desktop on Windows but want to have access to Linux as well.

Solutions

  • You can have more than one machine one for Windows one for Linux.
  • You can have have dual boot machine. Problem with dual boot is you have to decide at boot time which operating system you want to use.
  • Third option is running Windows as primary OS and using a virtual machine to run Linux.Virtual machine solutions come from a few companies,however most popular solution is from VMware.

Proposed Solution

  • Install Vmware player from VMWare and use existing Virtual appliance based on Ubuntu.

Steps

  • Go to Vmware and download VMWare player for Windows.You will have to register with Vmware for that. https://www.vmware.com/tryvmware/?p=player&lp=default . Installation is pretty standard as any Windows install.You will have to login as an account which has administrative privilege on your Windows machine.
  • Next download VMware virtual appliance/image from a location.I used http://chrysaor.info/?page=images&filter=Ubuntu . Chrysaor.info maintains up to date VMWare images of Ubuntu. Choose latest one, while writing this blog version Ubuntu 10.04 Desktop VMware image is latest. Download size is 1.1 Gb and download is via torrent. So you will need a torrent client.
  • Downloaded file is in tgz format.You will need an unzip utility to unzip this file,7-zip does the work.You should have at least 8 Gb of space free to download the zip and unzip it.Once you unzip downloaded file it will create a tar file (file with .tar extension).You will again have to use 7-zip to untar it in some folder.Once files are untared you may delete .tar file to save space.
  • Now start VMware player and choose “open a virtual machine” and browse to the location where you have extracted the file.Choose ubuntu1004desktop.vmx file and open it.
  • You may customize memory etc.by default it the image allocates 500 Mb of RAM.
  • Once you added the Ubuntu image to VMware player you may change memory allocation etc using edit virtual machine settings.
  • You are all done, now you need to start Ubuntu 10.x desktop as guest OS on Windows.Click on Virtual machine just added  and then click “play virtual machine”.
  • When you start virtual machine it may prompt you to download “vmware tools for linux”, you may choose “remind me later”.
  • Now Ubuntu 10.x is booting,after a few seconds it will stop at login page, a user is displayed with user name “user”.Password for user “user” is “chrysaor.info”.You may change the password after you login.root user password is not set,once you login you terminal to set root password using command “sudo passwd root”.Alternatively, you may use sudo command to perform actions as root.

ubuntu-login

In case,you you face any difficulty post in comments.

Extracting unzip gzip tar bzip tgz etc on Windows using 7 zip

If you use Windows you must be aware of Winzip utility.Winzip is not free and after evaluation version it forces you to wait for sometime before you may use it. Also, Winzip doesn’t  support all type of encrypted files zipped on Unix platform. There are cases where one have to Unzip files on Windows compressed on Unix system.Unix system typically uses tar,bzip2,gzip,tgz format to zip files.
7-zip is free open source alternative which supports files even compressed on Unix system.7-zip provides command line interface as well as GUI based File manager.7-zip supports packing/unpacking of 7z,zip,gzip,bzip2 and tar files.7-zip also support unpacking only of arj,cam,chm,cpio,deb,dmg,hfs,iso,lzh,lzma,msi,nsis,rar,rpm,udf,wim,xar and z files.
I am using 7-zip and I am very happy with this.Please share your experience.You may download 7-zip from http://www.7-zip.org/ website.

Broadband in Bihar and Jharkhand a nightmare.

There are lack of internet penetration in Bihar and Jharkhand. Major problem is high internet cost and very unreliable services.Even for people who want to pay the premium the services are highly unreliable.

BSNL Broad band in Bihar and Jharkhand : BSNL is national broadband ISP which provides broadband services using DSL technology.While I used to stay in Gurgaon,I found BSNL DSL services were excellent there.While in Patna, BSNL is good when it works.Sometime 3-4 day outage in not uncommon.If you want to build a business around web like blogging or website building it hurts.

Worldphone of Sify connection using franchises in Bihar and Jharkhand :  Worldphone and Sify provides broadband services by their franchises.They provide service using two modes, first by RJ45 cable from their location to your computer or by installing a wireless device at the roof of your building and pulling a RJ45 cable from aforesaid device to your computer.Installation charges in either case is high.I used service from worldphone using one of their franchise and service was horrible.For most part of the day their was no or very low connectivity.

MTS Mblaze Mobile broadband in Bihar and Jharkhand – MTS has launched a service based on CDMA network which they claim can attain a download speed upto 3.1 Mbps.Entry level device cost is around 2000 Rs and unlimited fair use based plan is 999 Rs per month.I recently used this service at Ranchi.It was horrible experience.Service was disconnecting every other minute.Customer care had satisfactory explanation of the situation.

Tata Indicom Photon plus mobile Broadband in Bihar and Jharkhand : It is CDMA based technology. One has to buy USB based access device from Tata Indicom.There plans are costly and your mileage may vary.if you are in area where they have good coverage(signal strength) your connection will be good and reliable.I know a person who is satisfied with their service at Patna.

Their are few other options also.But in General its tough to get affordable and reliable Broadband connection in Bihar and Jharkhand.

It’s now or never,Develop your Hindi .COM IDN now!

You have invested on Hindi IDN waiting for it to go prime before you start developing or selling it to right buyer,if this is your strategy it won’t work.Accept the fact that Hindi IDNs or for that matter Indian IDNs are different that Chinese or Russian IDN. Except parked domains and minisites, no one have ever visited a real IDN.com Hindi site.Except domainers no one knows about it.Well, people will know about .com Hindi IDN one day that may be your point! Unless a at least few hundred Hindi IDN.com is developed right now it may not happen.
To put my point, I will use IDN.भारत for proposed Indian version of IDN.IDN and IDN.कॉम for aliased version of Hindi IDN.com.
What may happen if Hindi IND.भारत is released and Hindi IDN.com domains remains  undeveloped
  1. .com is King because of first usage of .com. All major companies adopted it. dotCom boom marketed this TLD as they all almost opted for it.Millions of dollars (or should I say billion)were spent on indirect marketing of .com TLD. But, consider a scenario when Hindi IDN.com are not developed and Hindi IDN.भारत is released. The competitor of IDN.भारत will be IDN.कॉम aliased version of IDN.com TLD.Given a choice that I have to type complete domain name in Hindi including the TLD part भारत or कॉम, both extension will be new for me..com will no more remain .com it will become कॉम.Someone needs to market this “new” .com(कॉम) extension.
  2. If Hindi tld.com remains undeveloped the first site(if it is very big) or first few site which goes online  may set the trend of कॉम or भारत choice.You may say that .com(कॉम) may be used for global content and .भारत will for local content.That may not happen as almost all Hindi tld will be targeted for Indian, Hindi speaking population.In sense,they will be true competitor.
  3. Also keep in mind,if company like Google ever opt for IDN Hindi domain,they may choose .भारत.So if you wait,you are on mercy of outcome of early adopters.
  4. Also, keep in mind, millions of native users are not online because language do have barrier for them,there are a lot of house wives in India who do have Internet(computer) at home but don’t simply use it because they don’t know English.Adoption of Hindi in general and Hindi IDN in particular will open door for many millions of internet user in coming decade.For them .com won’t matter as well.
  5. Even for Bilingual users (who will form initial user base for Hindi IDN based websites.) it would be easy to remember complete name including after .(dot) in Hindi(devnagri) unless they are used to type in domain name in Hindi (devnagri) and and they can form a habit to type .com in roman(it’s some work as you have to change keyboard layout) after first part of the domain.Unless, this window of opportunity is capitalized  to get attention of these user (which is now, before release of country level IDN..भारत), advantage of being .com will be lost.
  6. On bright side to see this is, that even .net investor will be at par with .com if none of them is developed soon. Because,after aliasing both will be “new” extension.
  7. Adult domain may still survive even if Hindi IDN.com is not developed now,because Indian registry doesn’t permit use of domain for adult content.So, if Hindi IDN .com left undeveloped your only hope will be if someone develops few popular adult sites and make .com or कॉम competitive.
I have not invested in Hindi .com  IDN, a lot but I do have 4 Hindi IDN.com. 3 are one letter .com which are better left undeveloped. I am planning to register my 5th one soon (yes, I have decided the name) and develop it.That’s means I will develop 20% of my portfolio, are you committing to develop at least 10% of your portfolio?