My Insights

Help - What utility is this?

Pranav Sharma — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 15:14:58 +0000

I just discovered a ‘feature’ on my computer. When I press a button on my Microsoft Mouse which (Labeled ‘Instant Viewer’ in control panel), I get the following-

This is basically a window switching utility. Trouble is, I NEVER INSTALLED ANY SUCH UTILITY! I can’t complain - I actually like this. However, I would still like to figure out how I got to benefit this little feature. And just so we are clear, I don’t believe in a guardian angel.

Here is a list of software that I recently installed-

Safari
FolderShare
Digsby
Google Desktop

Please leave a comment with your guess!

Luna Elements XP Theme Screenshots

Pranav Sharma — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 15:07:59 +0000

I recently installed a windows theme on my XP machine. It is fairly simple - you simply have to replace uxthemes.dll with a patched version that allows you to use non-microsoft signed themes in xp. No Bloatware.

Instructions & Download

Now for the screenshots of my machine. Some details have been obfuscated.

TwitterSync

Pranav Sharma — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 12:29:01 +0000

Do you twitter? Do you use the twitter Facebook application to update your Facebook status? If so, then this is for you.

The original Twitter Facebook application puts an annoying "is twittering" at the beginning of the status message in Facebook. The developer of the Twitter app said that this would be removed once Facebook removes the "is" from their status messages. To make a long story short, Facebook removed the "is" but the twitter application still puts in "is twittering".

The solution is to use TwitterSync. Twitter Sync is another Facebook application that not only removes the "is twittering" from your status updates but goes a step further to let you use customized verbs. It also lets you create filters on your twitters.

TwitterSync is worth checking out. [Link]

Transition from Walking to Running

Pranav Sharma — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 12:24:30 +0000

This one is for the readers: How do you know that someone has transitioned from walking fast to running?

Leave your guesses in the comments.

VLC Media Player

Pranav Sharma — Sun, 30 Mar 2008 22:30:09 +0000

This advice is coming from a strong proponent of Windows Media Player - Ditch it! (For Video Playback at least)

I started using VLC Media Player a few months ago (thanks to Sarthak). For those who don’t know, my computer is slow with low RAM and almost all media players have difficulty playing even low-resolution videos on my computer.

VLC stands out of the crowd by allowing me and my crappy computer to enjoy full screen HD quality videos! I don’t know how VLC does it and I don’t care to find out. It is an amazing feeling to use a media player with such a light footprint and such a strong feature-set.

VLC also does an excellent job of managing codecs - I have not found the need to download a single codec ever since I installed VLC.

Check out VLC here.

AT&T will unlock devices

Pranav Sharma — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 02:07:49 +0000

I recently called AT&T wireless and told them that I had to travel internationally and needed my phone unlocked so that I could use a local SIM card in the country that I was traveling to. The customer service rep went ahead and instructed me on how to retrieve my IMEI number and then gave me an unlock code. It was that simple!It turns out that if the customer service rep cannot find the unlock code in their database then a support ticket will be created for you and the ‘unlock department’ will contact you within 7 days with the unlock code.Also, they will NOT unlock dual band devices that don’t work internationally.

Google slow to rollout features to Apps for custom domains

Pranav Sharma — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 02:06:39 +0000

Last Week I finally received the ability to link my AOL Instant Messenger contacts in my Google chat application. I use "Google Apps for your domain" and have found that features are generally first introduced to regular Gmail users and then later rolled out to the Google Apps users. According to Google (03/21/08)-

"Gmail’s faster, more flexible new codebase is now becoming generally available to Google Apps users. This change brings a faster interface and several new features including group chat from the browser, a streamlined contact manager, colored message labels, improved keyboard shortcuts and bookmarkable messages and searches."

I can’t however see my AIM contacts in my Google Talk desktop application. Does anybody have any experience with this?

Windows Live Installer

Pranav Sharma — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 02:05:23 +0000

I have recently been noticing that whenever I try to install something from the Windows Live suite of software, I almost always end up spending more time with the installer than I should be. Let me explain…

Almost always, I get the following message when installing any Windows Live software- "Sorry, this is taking a little longer than expected. Please bear with us just a few more minutes."

The above message doesn’t sound bad but in a lot of cases it is a precursor to the following message- "To try to fix the problem, click ‘Try again later’ and we’ll add the installer to your desktop so you can easily restart it later."

Once you click "Try again later", the installer exits and I end up ‘trying again later’. Is it just me or has anybody else had a similar experience with installing windows live services?

Pictures from Anti-War Protest in DC

Pranav Sharma — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 09:29:35 +0000

There was an Anti-War protest on Wednesday (Mar 19 ‘07) in Washington DC. The protest coincided with the 5th anniversary of the war in Iraq. Here are some pictures from outside our office.

Special Thanks to Eileen Tokunaga and Kevan Marvasti for being the field reporters out there!

UPDATE (From Eileen): "That building in the shots is where American Petroleum Institute is, that’s why it was such a hot spot for the protesters"

UPDATE 2: Here are some more pictures taken by Drew Patriss.

Sync IE Favorites/Bookmarks across computers

Pranav Sharma — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 08:39:17 +0000

I use a personal laptop and a work computer on a regular basis and tend to browse the internet during down times. I also have a lot of bookmarks in Internet Explorer that I wish to access while I am browsing - regardless of which machine I am using. Therefore I looked into different products that could essentially synchronize my IE Favorites across different machines. Up until now, I’ve been using Zinkmo and that has worked flawlessly in the background for me.

However, I recently upgraded to the latest version of IE7 PRO and noticed that IE7Pro offers bookmarks syncing as an online service. I decided to try it out and it seems to work just as seamlessly as zinkmo and it doesn’t place an icon in the taskbar notification area like zinkmo does.

So for now, I’ll be uninstalling Zinkmo and trying out the IE7PRO bookmarks synchronization for a while.