Google Indic Transliterator

Google has come up with a new service which allows you to type text in regional languages and use them in forums/orkut/elsewhere. Google Transliteration offers an option for converting Roman characters to the literals of regional languages in India. This lets you type Hindi/Tamil/Telugu/Kannada/Malayalam words phonetically in English script and still have them appear in their correct alphabet.

http://www.google.com/transliterate/indic/Telugu

Note: This is not the same as translation — it is the sound of the words that are converted from one alphabet to the other, not their meaning.

The transliteration feature is only supported in Internet Explorer versions 6.0 and higher on Windows (preferably Windows XP), and Firefox 1.5 and higher on Windows and Linux. If you use Internet Explorer 6+ in Windows Vista/XP/2000, you should have no problems in viewing and editing Hindi text correctly. Mozilla Firefox requires support for complex text layout, otherwise it might display the Hindi text incorrectly. The support for complex text layout is usually turned off by default. Check out this wikipedia article for detailed instructions on how to add the support.

There is also a software called Baraha IME which allows you to type text directly in several regional languages wherever you want. You need not specifically copy paste the text to the required place. This software temporarily changes the windows default font so that whatever you type, is transliterated into the selected language.

2 Domains + 250 GB Space + 2 TB Transfer – All for $10

The Netfirms Advantage hosting pack include 250 GB Disk Space, 2,000 GB Transfer, 2 FREE Domain Names which costs you 9.95$/month (119.4 $/year). Use the promo code to get everything, for only 10$.

1. Visit the site and click on SignUp
2. Proceed with selecting the domain names
3. Do not select any free offer packs because, they charge you for shipping.
4. Now, enter the promo code as max and recalculate the total.
5. Check out

WordPress.com Vs Blogger.com

I started blogging just a couple of weeks back. I was in a dilemma whether to choose wordpress / blogger for the blog. I just checked the page rank for both the sites which revealed that blogger has 9 while wordpress has only 8. So, I started blogging with blogger. I installed wordpress in my hosting site a year ago and I remember that there are lot of customisations which are present in it are missing in blogger like categories, blogroll etc etc… So, I shifted to wordpress blog leaving the blogger behind. Later, I wanted to change the template by adding some HTML code of Ads, but surprisingly got to know that the feature is not available. Then I realised why many people preferred blogger. Later, I installed wordpress software on my new hosting site.

Anyways, I would like to compare these two services for someone who just want an online service through which they can blog and can not afford/do not want to have a paid account, set up wordpress etc. The comparison is between the Free service of WordPress (Not the Paid one / Software) and Blogger.

• WordPress supports Categories while Blogger doesnot
• WordPress do not support editing of Templates while Blogger does. But, we can still customise the side bars in wordpress very efficiently with a clean user interface while Blogger needs change in the HTML template.
• WordPress do not support User Templates while in Blogger, user can upload his/her own template.
• WordPress supports to create Static Pages where you can manage some content while Blogger doesnot support this.
• Autosave feature is not present in WordPress free version while Blogger autosaves posts at fixed intervals. Hence you can recover your posts in Blogger.
• You cannot display Advertisements in wordpress as template editing is not possible, while you can easily include Ads in Blogger by editing the template. (This is the biggest reason why people prefer Blogger over WordPress).
• File Upload feature is present in WordPress while absent in Blogger. You can just upload some images while posting them.
• WordPress can render and replace the Smileys while Blogger donot.
• Multiple Blogs per Single User is not supported by WordPress while Blogger easily support any number of them.
• The search feature is pretty good in WordPress compared to Blogger.
• Moderation of Comments is possible with WordPress while Blogger do not. But it features spam filtering.
• Its very difficult to manage and view the posts in Blogger. If we want to view some of very old posts in a blog with many posts, it takes ages while WordPress provide good UI for managing our posts.
• Site tracking mechanism is present in wordpress.com while in Blogger, we need to rely on external counters.
• WordPress is still developing while Blogger has become a stable version now.

Anyways, I am not the one to suggest/decide which blogging service to use. It is left to your choice to go with what suits you the best. These are not the only differences present between them, Please let me know if anything to include.

Google Indic Transliterator

Google has come up with a new service which allows you to type text in regional languages and use them in forums/orkut/elsewhere. Google Transliteration offers an option for converting Roman characters to the literals of regional languages in India. This lets you type Hindi/Tamil/Telugu/Kannada/Malayalam words phonetically in English script and still have them appear in their correct alphabet.

http://www.google.com/transliterate/indic/Telugu

Note: This is not the same as translation — it is the sound of the words that are converted from one alphabet to the other, not their meaning.

The transliteration feature is only supported in Internet Explorer versions 6.0 and higher on Windows (preferably Windows XP), and Firefox 1.5 and higher on Windows and Linux. If you use Internet Explorer 6+ in Windows Vista/XP/2000, you should have no problems in viewing and editing Hindi text correctly. Mozilla Firefox requires support for complex text layout, otherwise it might display the Hindi text incorrectly. The support for complex text layout is usually turned off by default. Check out this wikipedia article for detailed instructions on how to add the support.

There is also a software called Baraha IME which allows you to type text directly in several regional languages wherever you want. You need not specifically copy paste the text to the required place. This software temporarily changes the windows default font so that whatever you type, is transliterated into the selected language.

RAM Disk

A RAM-Disk, Ramdisk or Ramdrive is a virtual solid state disk that uses a segment of active computer memory, RAM, as secondary storage, a role typically filled by hard drives. It allows you to create directories, copy files to and from it, etc…. Access times are greatly improved, because RAM is approximately a million times faster than hard drives. However, the volatility of RAM means that data will be lost if power is lost, e.g. when the computer is turned off. RAM disks can be used to store temporary data or hold uncompressed programs for short periods.

Believe me.. Any software that is installed on Ram Disk works with rocket speed… I installed Photoshop for trial..

A ramdisk can perfectly be used to store :

• Web content of web servers.
• Temporary index files and tables of database servers.
• Temporary files ( TEMP and TMP environment variable ) and “Temporary Internet Files”.
• The scratch disk for Adobe (R) Photoshop (R)
• Games and programs in general (1), reloading parts and data occurs many times faster
• Audio and video capture / editing
• Creation and playback of slide shows
• Data that has to be written to CD , to prevent underrun during the burn process
• All kinds of data that may be lost ( or MUST be lost for security reasons ) at shutdown

The installed software can also be reloaded automatically at boot time from an image file or by means of a backup program.

You can use any of the software to setup Ram disk on ur PC. Remember that you must have atleast 512 KB for nice performance although s/w vendors say 256 is sufficient.

Microsoft [sample] RAM DISK driver : (with source code!) for Win2k. I don’t really recommend this unless you are a tweaker/developer. In its current form there is a maximum disk size of 32MB and unfortunately the new disk identifies it self as a “Ram Disk” -not- “hard disk” hence some applications may get confused and not see the disk. Also you have to change registry entries to configure it. The sample driver is good to learn how RAM Disks work however.

Ram disk9x / RamDiskNT : Whilst not free this software provides the richest feature set. There are lots of settings to optimize your Ram Disk including disk images. If you chose this software please read the documentation thoroughly as the various options are VERY powerful. Also it supports both the NT/2000/XP AND Win9x architecture.

RAMDisk for 2000/XP/2003 (and WinPE) : Freeware RAM DISK software based on Microsoft’s sample driver but includes a graphical interface to easily change settings. Easy to install and the disk can be dynamically resized without a reboot. An extended version is available that allows for disks over 64MB and support for WinPE systems. The source for the standard version is also available.

Virtual Hard Drive : File and applications perform up to 340 time faster.Virtual Hard Drive Pro supports an unlimited amount of RAM.

How to watch a video by setting it as wallpaper?

Most of u may know this trick already, but.. for ppl who donno this.. its really a gud tip..

What if we want to chat with some one simultaneously watching movie? Opening a movie in window is quite irksome.. So, how about making the video as wallpaper?? Just try out…

For this, you need VLC player. It is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats. (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, h264, xvid etc…) .If you are having a hard time playing videos, VLC media player will more than likely will solve your issue.Download it from here

Now, Play any movie in VLC player, Right click on the screen and select Wallpaper. Minimize the screen.. Thats it… you can do anything in parellel watching the movie…

You can also find this option in BS Player.

Create a CON folder in Windows

Many ppl dont know that they cannot create “CON” folder in windows. Some ppl dont know why they cant create it? Very few know that they can still create it someway.. but donno why are they supposed to do exactly like that.. Now, After reading this, you will become one of the rest!!

Try out creating a folder named CON…

Not only CON, we cannot create any of these CON, PRN, AUX, CLOCK$, NUL, COM1, COM2, COM3, COM4, COM5, COM6, COM7, COM8, COM9, LPT1, LPT2, LPT3, LPT4, LPT5, LPT6, LPT7, LPT8, LPT9 and more

The reason is that con, prn, lpt1..lpt9, etc are underlying devices from the time dos was written. so if u r allowed to create such folders, there will be an ambiguity in where to write data when the data is supposed to go to the specified devices. In other words, if i want to print something, internally what windows does is — it will write the data to the folder prn (virtually u can call it a folder, i mean prn, con, etc are virtual folders in device level). So if we are able to create con folder, windows will get confused where to write the data, to virtual con folder or real one.

So Now, Try this…

Open the Command prompt by Start -> Run and typing cmd

C:\> md \\.\c:\con

Now, Open My Computer and browse through the path where you created CON folder… Surprising.. ?? Yeah.. you have created it successfully

Now, try to delete the folder from My computer

OOPS!!! You cant delete it…

Now, try this in command prompt console

C:\> rd \\.\c:\con

Yeah!! You did it…

It is just because of the UNC Path (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Univers…ng_Convention). The Universal Naming Convention, or UNC, specifies a common syntax to describe the location of a network resource, such as a shared file, directory, or printer.Since, these conventions did n’t exist under pure DOS, they are not backward compatible. The UNC syntax for Windows systems is as follows..

\\RemoteHost\sharedfolder\resource

where RemoteHost is the computer name / IP address of the computer that you wish to connect through remotely for accessing shared folder. The rest is the path.

(Here \\remotehost\drive:\con doesn’t make sense anyway, because without having a process on the remote host, there is no current ‘console’). It would be a security hazard as well, having the serial and parallel ports accessible for everyone who is allowed to read or write in any single directory.

The “.” in the command \\.\c:\con suggest the local server. Now, you are pointing to your own computer. since, you have all privilages on every folder of ur computer, you can easily create it.

FolderList

FolderList is a utility to generate list of all folders and files within a directory along with their sizes. It saves in a text file with your desired filename and path. After installing this application, Right Click on the desired folder and click “Save Folder List”. Choose the Path, and save with a filename.

Size : 473 KB [Download]

MyTheme : A Google Talk Addon

This is a awesome addon for Google Talk which integrates loads of smileys and customizable chat window backgrounds. It is compatible with any version of google talk and support windows 2000, windows XP and vista.

The features of the theme are

1. Can be installed with a single click. Just run the MyTheme.exe file.
2. Hundreds of smileys integrated.
3. All the smiley codes are compiled in a help file which can be found in Start Menu programs\Dash\MyTheme folder.
4. Includes a utility to change the background of the chat window to ur desired one.

Size : 936 KB [Download]

Sample Credit Card Numbers

Some sites demand credit card numbers for registration although payment is not required. In order to complete such registrations, i have posted some sample credit card numbers which i obtained from http://doc.async.com.br/formcheck_re/ccnums.html. Credit card numbers are not random. They can be checked by a mathematical formula for validity. Each kind of credit card uses a slightly different rule.

Following are the sample numbers for various providers.

Credit Card	Sample Number
Visa	4111 1111 1111 1111
MasterCard	5500 0000 0000 0004
American Express	3400 0000 0000 009
Diner’s Club	3000 0000 0000 04
Carte Blanche	3000 0000 0000 04
Discover	6011 0000 0000 0004
en Route	2014 0000 0000 009
JCB	3088 0000 0000 0009