Indian Broadband forum

This is only for people from India (Editor - Yeah... like your blog is world-renowned)

I recently switched to MTNL's Broadband service (which has been pretty good the first month), and thought I'd share a Broadband forum link that I found very useful.

http://broadbandforum.in/mtnl-broadband

Picked up a lot of useful information related to router configuration, and other useful tips from some of the posts.

If you are using some other Broadband service in India, you might be interested in checking out your service provider's forum at

http://broadbandforum.in/india-broadband

Nirsoft.net

Check out this link: http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/index.html

It contains tons of very useful freeware utilities. The best part is that all of the programs on this site are no-installs. Which means that there is no installer for these programs, just unzip the downloaded zip file and extract them into a new folder. In case you want to uninstall the file, just delete the program folder.

The advantage of this is that one can be sure that no garbage is left behind, which typically is the case with installers that leave behind DLLs, registry keys, Start Menu items etc that they installed.

Another advantage of such apps is that they are easily portable. Want to transfer a no-install program from your work laptop to your home PC ? Just copy the program folder over, and you're done. No messing with registry keys, and the like.

Of course, no-installs are recommended only to advanced users, since most simple folks prefer an installer, as they can just launch the program off their Start Menu once the installation is complete. They are not aware about what havoc a badly written uninstaller may wreak on their computers, when the program is uninstalled :)

Finally, I would like to clarify that far from all installers/uninstallers behave this way, but I've encountered enough, for this to be a problem for me.

Hope you have a fun time exploring the tools on Nirsoft !

AutoHotkey utlities

AutoHotkey has got to be my most favorite freeware program of all time.

Here is a list of tiny, but interesting (not to mention useful!) freeware tools created using AutoHotkey

AutoHotkey tools from Donation Coder

Tabbed File Managers

Most of you have probably already seen and used the the latest killer feature in Web Browsers - Tabs.

This feature can be seen in action in Firefox, Maxthon, Avant Browser, Slim Browser, Green Browser, DeepNet Explorer, and many other freeware web browsers.

Tabs are really cool, because you don't need to open a new window for each web page that you're browsing. Each page opens in a new tab in a single main window. This prevents your taskbar from getting cluttered up, and helps you to navigate between open web pages more easily because you can see the tabs for all open pages at once.

Since tabs make a program that much easier to use, why restrict this feature only to web browsers ? Another category of applications that lends itself well to this feature are File Managers.

Many freeware dual pane file managers already exist, but, IMO, the inclusion of tabs in file managers is a really great addition. With each folder opening up in it's own tab, you can have as many folders as you want open at the same time in a single main window, and quickly navigate back and forth between them to carry out copy / paste, and other common file operations.

Here are links and screenshots of some freeware tabbed file managers:

1) xplorerª



This one is my favorite, and is what I'm currently using. This one does dual pane, as well as tabs, and has tons of other handy features like in-built file preview, mass renaming of files, shredding files, splitting files into chunks, and much more.

2) XYplorer (Formerly TrackerV3)



This is another very popular tabbed file manager. As you can see in the screenshot above, the bottom panel allows you to access a host of powerful features such as previewing files, searching for files and folders, and generating a quick report of all files in a folder, among others.

3) ExplorerXP



This a small, fast, and compact program. This one might not pack in as many features as the other 2 programs above (e.g no file preview is available), but has a useful and innovative set of features nonetheless. One unique feature of this program is Groups, which are collections of folders displayed in a small dockable window (seen at the bottom left in the screenshot above), using which users are able to quickly access folders, or drag & drop files to them.

In addition to these, there a few other useful freeware file managers, dual - pane, but not tabbed, which deserve a mention here :

FreeCommander

A43

Pablo Commander

FileAnt

Hope some of you found this information useful, and if you ever use any of these programs, leave a comment here letting me know how it went !

Useful Freeware

Here's a list of programs (all free) that I find useful, and use on a daily basis :

Process Explorer 9.0 (Process Manager)
http://www.sysinternals.com/ntw2k/freeware/procexp.shtml

QCD Player 4.51a (Audio Player, sounds better than WinAmp)
http://www.quinnware.com/

ATNotes 9.5 (Sticky Notes, Alarms)
http://atnotes.fr.st/

Kerio Personal Firewall 4.1.2 (Firewall)
http://www.kerio.com/kpf_home.html

AutoHotkey 1.0.26.1 ( Automation / Hotkeys / Scripting language. A must have for hotkey / automation aficionados like me ;) )
http://www.autohotkey.com/

CLCL 1.1.1 (Clipboard Manager)
http://www.nakka.com/soft/clcl/index_eng.html

Copy Handler 1.26 (Explorer Shell extension for quick file copy / move operations)
http://copyhandler.com/

DialogMate 1.54 (Minimize to tray, shorcuts in Open / Save dialogs etc)
http://www.weird173.net/apps/dlgmate.html

Maxthon 1.1.120 (Web Browser [Yes, I actually prefer this to FireFox])
http://www.maxthon.com

ThunderBird 1.0 (Email / Newsgroup client)
http://www.mozilla.org/products/thunderbird/

NetMeter 0.8.6 (Bandwidth Monitor)
http://readerror.gmxhome.de/

PowerPro 4.01 (Hotkeys, Application launcher, scheduler and lots more)
http://powerpro.webeddie.com/

MJ RegWatcher (Registry Monitor. Prevent spyware / trojans from making harmful registry changes)
http://www.jacobsm.com/#downloads

SlickRun (Application Launcher. Another must-have. Try it, will change the way you work.)
http://www.bayden.com/SlickRun/

SpywareGuard (Real-time spyware hijack protection)
http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareguard.html

TrayWizard (System Tray Manager)
http://www.gratilog.net/systeme1.htm

xplorer Lite (File Manager)
http://www.zabkat.com/x2lite.htm

AVG AntiVirus 7.0.3 (Anti - virus software)
http://www.grisoft.com/us/us_dwnl_free.php

PSPad 4.3.2 (Text editor)
http://www.pspad.com/

HandyFind (Incremental global search in IE, Outlook, Notepad etc.)
http://www.handykeys.com

Locate32 (Indexed Desktop Search)
http://www.uku.fi/~jmhuttun/english/softwares.shtml

Hope you find these links useful.

Note that some of the above are not free for commercial use. So please check the license before use.

Anna Kournikova !

For those into Anna K... presenting her in an Indian avatar :

(Be patient - this may take some time to load)

Free Image Hosting

Some sites that provide free image hosting services:

http://photobucket.com/
http://www.imageshack.us/

You can upload images to their site, and link to those images from a forum, web page, blog etc:

As a test, the following image is linked from a jpg that I uploaded to Image Shack :



Here is a list of many other popular free image hosting services :
Free Image Hosting Services