I miss sitting in the lab waiting for my lecturers to get samples so that we can learn new parts of the body or how an organ functions. I don't know when I'll go back to school again and learn more. But, what I can do is explore the wonders of the human anatomy for free online through Visible Body demo.

I spent about 2 hours on this cool tool and was awed by the amount I could learn by just exploring this tool. I think this is an awesome tool for teachers and students who want to learn more about the human anatomy. There is search option to isolate the organ, nerve, bone that you are looking for.

On the downside, it requires you sign up for the tool and it takes quite some time to load. You need to have a good connection to make the most of this tool. Once this is up and running its very easy to use. The site says "The first time you launch the application, your browser will automatically download our highly detailed anatomical models. This download can take several minutes to complete, depending on the speed of your internet connection. As long as these models remain in your browser cache, you won't need to download them again on future visits. " which I didn't agree with cause it took longer for me the second time around, but it was well worth the wait.

You can zoom in and zoom out, you can make parts of the body invisible. You learn the various parts of the body. It is very detailed so if you are interested in the nerve that connects eyeball to the brain you can isolate it and find out its name.

You can explore:
- Circulatory System
- Digestive System
- Endocrine System
- Integumentary System
- Lymphatic System
- Muscular System
- Nervous System
- Reproductive System
- Respiratory System
- Skeletal System
- Urinary System

I thoroughly enjoyed using this tool and would recommend this to anyone who is curious to learn more about themselves. Happy exploring.

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5 minutes Life Videopedia is a website where you can find short video solutions for practical questions and a place for people to share their knowledge. Categorized into Arts, Business, Extreme, Fashion, Fitness, Food, Games, Health, Home, Music, Parenting, People, Pets, Spiritual, Sports, Tech, Travel, Wheels, Life, Tips and Knowledge, 5 minutes is the perfect website to gain knowledge on a specific subject in less than 5 minutes without having to read through a lot of content that you would otherwise do to get your information. 

This video from 5 mins explains itself:

Here are a few interesting 5 mins videos worth checking out:

Guitar Lesson: Introduction to Bar Chords

How to Do the 90 Degree Turn with a Car

How Can I Get Over My Shyness And Ask A Girl Out?

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Yes, Obama won! And I'm happy. I decided to go and revisit the Presidential debate on Youtube. There was this peculiar little tag on the top left, that said "Theater View" and "Lights Off". I tried both and absolutely loved it both.

The theater feature allows you to have a red curtain around the video and turns the lights off.

The lights off just switches the lights off. I like this feature.

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How many times has copying in windows crashed on you? You end up with part of the files copied to destination and part of the files remaining in source. You do not have the option to pause files while copying just incase copying is slowing your system. Copying files from one location to another is generally a nightmare in windows. This is where Teracopy comes to the rescue.

Teracopy beautifully integrates into windows explorer and provides you with options to copy and paste from a simple right click on files you want to copy or move to a destination of your choice. The snapshots below clearly indicate the ease of use of this software





Teracopy features as mentioned in their website:

Copy files faster. TeraCopy uses dynamically adjusted buffers to reduce seek times. Asynchronous copy speeds up file transfer between two physical hard drives.

• Pause and resume file transfers. Pause copy process at any time to free up system resources and continue with a single click.
  
• Error recovery. In case of copy error, TeraCopy will try several times and in the worse case just skips the file, not terminating the entire transfer.
• Interactive file list. TeraCopy shows failed file transfers and lets you fix the problem and recopy only problem files.
• Shell integration. TeraCopy can completely replace Explorer copy and move functions, allowing you work with files as usual.
• Full Unicode support.

You can download teracopy here. A portable version for USB Flash drives is available here.

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All right, now you have a bootable USB pendrive as well as some of the best data recovery & drive partitioning utilities on your pendrive. How about adding some of the best applications for your day-to-day usage, like browsers, office apps, e-mail, etc. Let's get on with it then.

Just launch your favorite browser and go to PortableApps.com which provides a truly open platform that works with any hardware you like (USB flash drive, iPod, portable hard drive, etc). It's open source built around an open format that any hardware vendor or software developer can use. It's convenient. Now you can carry your favorite computer programs along with all of your bookmarks, settings, email and more with you. Use them on any Windows computer. All without leaving any personal data behind. The PortableApps.com Suite and Platform is free. It contains no spyware. There are no advertisements. It isn't a limited or trial version. There is no additional hardware or software to buy. You don't even have to give out your email address. It's 100% free to use, free to copy and free to share. Hey! it's also available in lots of languages.

What is a Portable app? Here are some answers to your questions directly from their website. There are a lot of applications for you on PortableApps.com. In fact, they have divided the download into 3 types. You can download the package of your choice depending on the amount of space you want to allocate on your pen drive or you can just download the "Main Platform" for portable applications and then customise to your whims and fancies. Given below are the options from their website:
Platform Only: which is basically the "Launcher" for Portable applications. It looks and works like the the Windows Start Menu.
Light Suite: This one is a 35MB download and takes up approx. 100MB of space after installation. This, according to them, is meant for pendrives with 256MB+ free space.
Standard Suite: This is a 113MB download and will eat up around 350MB. If you have a pen drive with 512MB+ capacity, this is a must have. It contains OpenOffice.org suite of office applications which are compatible with Microsoft Office and have almost all the features of Microsoft Office.

Hmmm, I have a feeling you want to customise this. oh! well. Let's start. If you want to, you can also download and install the Light Suite or the Standard Suite and then customise it according to your liking.

1) Download the Portable Apps "Platform". Click on the Download link under Platform Only. Please do not Right Click and try to download. It does not work.
2) Once the download is complete, I recommend that you install this directly to your pendrive. Insert the pendrive into a free USB port, launch the installer & follow the instructions. You will be asked to select the destination. Just hit Browse and select your pendrive from the list the pops up.
3) After the install completes, you will have an option to Launch the PortableApps Menu. Click Finish to see the Menu. You can also access this Menu by clicking on the Taskbar Icon which just got added to your taskbar. You should also know that this Menu will be launched automatically when you insert this pendrive into any USB Port. Absolutely brilliant.
4) I'll give you an example of adding one of the applications. Then you can add how many ever you want using the same steps that we follow here. Please note that there may be some changes depending on the application. Just read the notes section for that application for instructions.
5) Click on this Applications Link and under the Internet section, click on Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition. Please read the entire page regarding features and other important notes and then click on the download link to download the file.
6) Please close the PortableApps Menu now. When the download is done, double-click the file and follow the instructions to install it. Please install it to the same pendrive where you installed the Menu earlier. These files are known as "Portable Application Format" files or PAF, in short. After the installation is over, launch the PortableApps Menu by browsing to your pendrive and double-clicking on StartPortableApps. You should now see Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition listed in the menu.
7) Phew! That's it for now. You can go ahead, download and install the applications of your choice.

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Most people know that linux distributions are available for free download. Most people also think that linux is for the geeks and not for the common man. While this might have been true a few years back, linux is slowly ramping up its adoption with a better user interface that makes it user friendly for average users who don't want to deal with the complications of remembering commands for the shell. Of the existing linux distributions out there, Ubuntu is the most popular one amongst those looking for an easy-to-use version of linux. Ubuntu is now being commonly distributed with the Asus Eee PC and is an option for some of the Dell Desktops. There is also an unofficial version of Ubuntu that works with Playstation 3.

Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'Humanity to others', or 'I am what I am because of who we all are'. The Ubuntu distribution brings the spirit of Ubuntu to the software world. Ubuntu is a community developed operating system that is perfect for laptops, desktops and servers. Whether you use it at home, at school or at work Ubuntu contains all the applications you'll ever need, from word processing and email applications, to web server software and programming tools.

Ubuntu is available for free download and is sponsored by Canonical Limited, a company owned by Mark shuttleworth - the second space tourist ever and the first South African. Canonical makes its money from the paid support service it provides for ubuntu. There are various flavors of Ubuntu that you can choose based on your requirements though there is a priamry version which is simply called Ubuntu. The other distributions are:

Edubuntu, a distribution designed for classrooms using GNOME
Gobuntu, a free software distribution
Kubuntu, a desktop distribution using KDE rather than GNOME
Xubuntu, a "lightweight" distribution based on the Xfce desktop environment instead of GNOME
Ubuntu Studio, a multimedia-creation form of Ubuntu
Ubuntu JeOS (pronounced as "juice"), is described as "an efficient variant ... configured specifically for virtual appliances".
Ubuntu Mobile, an Ubuntu edition that targets mobile Internet devices.
Ubuntu Netbook Remix, designed for ultra-portables such as the ASUS Eee PC.

The latest version of Ubuntu is version 8.10 and is codenamed Intrepid Ibex - Ubuntu has had a history of interesting codenames pairing adjectives with wild animals like Warty Warthog, Hoary Hedgehog, Breezy Badger, Dapper Drake, Edgy Eft, Hardy Heron, Gutsy Gibbon etc.

You can get your free CD copy of Ubuntu or download it from their website.

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Have you been showing off your new bootable pen drive to your friends? You must be having a halo behind your head right now. Wanna make that halo stay there for a longer time? Ok, here are a few utilities and links to their official pages.



I will say this again and again, please back up all your important data on your PC or anybody else's PC before doing anything that involves Disk partitioning, formatting, recovery etc. You get the idea.

Before you proceed, please download & install the following software to extract files from a compressed archive. We are assuming that you know about compressed files and folders and how to work with them - 7zip and/or Universal Extractor.

Utilities to be copied to your Pen Drive:

1) TestDisk
TestDisk is a powerful free data recovery software! It was primarily designed to help recover lost partitions and/or make non-booting disks bootable again when these symptoms are caused by faulty software, certain types of viruses or human error (such as accidentally deleting a Partition Table). Partition table recovery using TestDisk is really easy. TestDisk has features for both novices and experts. For those who know little or nothing about data recovery techniques, TestDisk can be used to collect detailed information about a non-booting drive which can then be sent to a tech for further analysis. Those more familiar with such procedures should find TestDisk a handy tool in performing onsite recovery. We recommend using the DOS version of this utility if you are not able to boot into Windows. Just download it, extract it and copy it to a folder on your pen drive. Remember to rename the folder to TestDisk as Long File Names are not supported in DOS.

2) Super Fdisk
Super Fdisk is the free DOS Partition Manager. With Super Fdisk you can quickly and easily create, delete, format partitions in DOS. There is a free Windows version also available at the website. Download, extract and copy to a folder of your choice on the pen drive. If necessary, rename the folder. A detailed FAQ and step-by-step screenshots are available on the author's website.

3) Undelete Plus
Undelete Plus is a quick and effective way to restore accidentally deleted files. It can also recover files that have been emptied from the Recycle Bin, permanently deleted files within Windows using the Shift + Delete, and files that have been deleted from within a Command Prompt. Undelete Plus works under Win 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista operating systems. The program supports all Windows file systems for hard and floppy drives including FAT12/16/32,NTFS/NTFS5 and image recovery from CompactFlash, SmartMedia, MultiMedia and Secure Digital cards. This utility does not have a DOS version. Download the version without the installer. Just one single file. Copy it to your pen drive and you are ready to go. To launch this utility, just double-click on the file.

4) Recuva
Recuva (pronounced "recover") is a freeware Windows utility to restore files that have been accidentally deleted from your computer. This includes files emptied from the Recycle bin as well as images and other files that have been deleted by user error from digital camera memory cards or MP3 players. It will even bring back files that have been deleted by bugs, crashes and viruses! Runs on Microsoft Windows Vista, XP, 2003, 2000 and 98.

These are some of the best free recovery/disk utilities I have come across. Please use these with care. In our next part, we will come up with some Windows based applications & utilities which will make you a "Portable" guru.

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We've written about Google Phone Search before. And recently Google Phone Search is released in New Delhi. Again the number is the same 1-800-41-999-999

Here are 5 things I like about the phone search.

1. Anytime information - Getting the information when you want, where you want is amazing. I just need to dial the toll free number to get the number to the nearest Chinese restaurant.

2. Really low call wait time - I've never had to wait for more than 15 seconds (Yes I've counted) for someone to lift the phone on the other end

3. You get the information sms'd quickly - Sometimes I've received the information on a sms while on the call with Google.

4. I trust Google not to sell my number to cold callers - I've asked the agent and they've assured me that they don't keep a record of the number. In fact the agent asks you if you want the information sms'd or over the phone and you give your number just incase you want it sms'd

5. Free call forwarding - They offer to forward the call to the number that you require for FREE!

3 Things I don't like about Google Phone Search

1. Speech Recognition - It could work better, much better. But right now it doesn't work all that well. Sometimes you've got to repeat 3 to 4 times to get the computer to understand what you are saying. With thick Indian accents it might be difficult for users to get their desired number soon.

2. Agents google the queries- I've asked one of the agents how they get their information and he simply said "Ma'am I google it". So when I asked for a launderer in my area, they were unable to provide information as it wasn't available in their search result. 

3. Enough local content - I wonder if there are enough local results online. Are local businesses putting their information online? 

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Sumo paint is a web based image editor which at first glance looks exactly like photoshop. A quick glance at the drop down menus seems to indicate support for most things that photoshop is capable of. For this reason Sumo Paint can boldly claim to be the most advanced web based image editor. For the price tag of free comapared to the $700+ you pay for photoshop, Sumo paint is fantastic tool for your image editing needs.

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Ever wanted a software to quickly edit that image you captured with your camera phone? Don't want to go through the pain of installing an image editing software on the hard drive? Want to quickly optimize the quality of an image you shot and upload it? Picnik is what you are looking for and it does a lot more than the basics.

Here are some key features:

1) You do not have to register to use it

2) One-touch autofix colors, red-eye and exposure issues

3) Rotate, crop, resize and sharpen your images

4) Pull your photos straight from flickr, facebook, photobucket, myspace, webshots and picasa web album, edit and upload them

5) Undo your image editing mistakes

6) All this for free

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ImgBurn is a free CD, DVD, HD-DVD and Blu-Ray Burning Software. With a file size of 2 MB this is a lightweight application that goes easy on system resources unlike some of its paid counter parts. You can burn any of the aforementioned type of media besides being able to directly burn disc images, create disc images from disc in the drive and also verify burned data.  There is also graph data available to measure burning performance. Click on the image to go to the download page.

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I love signing up for new online tools, new websites, new fun stuff. And what I end up doing is forgeting the username and password and then it takes me ages remember it. What if I could have a single username or password for all my tools? How do I search for something like that. I found a cool tool called Usernamecheck.com.

Its very very easy to use. It took about 1 minute for the site to check all the 69 sites (a lot of them are very very popular sites - gmail, technorati, jaiku etc) for a username of your choice. This is one tool I've bookmarked and recommend you do it too. Hope you find your user ids for all the sites easily.

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I have been using Avira Antivir for about 6 months now and of all the antivirus softwares I have sampled this has been the best. It has caught atleast 4 viruses (for someone whose systems almost never have viruses) in this time frame. It checks for virus signature updates very frequently ensuring that you have protection from the latest viruses floating around. It is low on system resources and does not slow the system down like Norton and McAffee. The only downside I have come across is the occasional pop-up suggesting us to upgrade to the paid version. It is not very intrusive but we could definitely live without it. If you have the money (20 Euros) to spare, the software is definitely worth buying.

Avira offers some neat tools to download for free:

Avira AntiVir Removal Tool: Portable virus scanner and remover that you can keep in your USB flash drive(make sure you check your flash drive first)to check for viruses in any system.

Avira AntiRootkit Tool: A rootkit is malware which consists of a program (or combination of several programs) designed to take fundamental control (in Unix terms "root" access, in Windows terms, "Administrator" access) of a computer system, without authorization by the system's owners and legitimate managers. This tool helps detect and remove Root kits while keeping in mind the false detection of genuine software that interact with the system at kernal level.

Avira Boot Sector Repair Tool: Bootsector of the computer is the part of the hard drive where the Operating system (Windows) keeps the files needed for it load when you power on the computer. If there is a boot sector virus in the computer, you cannot remove the virus from inside of windows. This tool helps create a CD from which you can remove the virus from outside of windows.

Avira UnErase Personal: Ever wished that you hadn't deleted the file accidentally? This tool helps recover deleted files from a hard drive. This is possible because when you actually delete a file, you just remove the link between the actual content and the file listing. The data remains on the hard drive until the location on the hard drive is overwritten with another content. Until, then tools like this can help you recover deleted data.

Avira AntiVir Rescue System: Avira AntiVir Rescue System is a Linux-based application that allows accessing computers that cannot be booted anymore. It can help repair a damaged system, rescue data and scan the system for virus infections.

AVG Antivirus is another free alternative which is quite popular especially because it does not pop-up any windows. However, I have found it not catching some common viruses. You can download it here if you want to check the alternative.

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Have a picture you got from the web but don't know where you got it or who the creator is? Want a picture similar to the picture you already have? Your typical image search engines like Google image search just cannot help you with your problem. This is where TinEye Image search shines. Using TinEye you can input to the website the picture whose details you want and TinEye gives you the location of this picture across the web. I tried some pictures and got some some positive results thought not all. For a website in beta, TinEye results are fantastic and I hope they accuracy gets better. You need to sign up for an account and once you login, you see this:

You can search for images either by:

1) Uploading and image from the computer

2) Proving the link to an image already on the web

3) Use the TinEye Images bookmarklet to choose from several images on a web page

4) Install the TinEye browser plugin to right-click any web image from Firefox or IE

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Evernote allows you to easily capture information in any environment using whatever device or platform you find most convenient, and makes this information accessible and searchable at any time, from anywhere.

You can install evernote on Windows, Mac or simply use it from a web browser or your mobile phone (iPhone or any Windows Mobile phone). Notes can be taken in the form of voice recordings, pictures or text messages. Notes are automatically synchronized on all your computers and devices using a single account that is free to create.

This video shows how evernote works

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Ever wished movies you watched on your PC had better quality? Ever wished for all the decoder related error messages and media player not able to play the video file to go away? Follow instructions below and configure your PC for enhanced video playing experience and compatibility with almost all commonly used video formats.

1) Uninstall all existing video playing software (you cannot uninstall windows media player) including real player and quick time player.

2) Download and Install the following:
a) Codec Pack (install all except AC3 Filter)
b) Real Alternative
c) Quick Time Alternative
d) Media player Classic (Extract to C:\Program Files and create a shortcut to the desktop)


3) Now to configure your video decoders (you should find the decoder configuration utility in Start Menu> Program Files):
a) DivX Decoder
- Under decoder - uncheck ‘support decoding of generic mpeg4 video’
- Under playback, set post processing level to ‘Full deblocking with sharpening’
b) XVid Decoder
- Under post processing options, check all ‘de-blocking’ and ‘de-ring’ options
- All option under ‘FourCC support’ should remain unchecked
c) Quick Time Decoder
Under AUDIO Config, choose the speakers (2.1,5.1 or 7.1 as appropriate) and decoding bit depth/rate (I use 24bit, 96KHz)
d) CoreAVC Decoder
Check the "Preferred Decoder" box
e) Mplayer Configuration
-Under Playback > Output, select directshow renderer as ‘Haali renderer’, under VMR settings – select ‘use texture surfaces and render in 2D’, and check ‘VMR9 mixing mode’
-Select “DirectX9” under both Quicktime and RealMedia.
-Under DirectShow Audio> select “default directsound device”
-Under internal filters, check ALL options under both ‘internal filters’ and ‘transform filters’
-Go the AC3 filter/Mpeg audio properties > Change output sample rate to 24bit, AC3/DTS decoder option to Speakers (according to the speakers you have 2.1, 5.1, 7.1, etc); Check the LFE ; Dynamic range control options.

Use Media Player Classic as your video player. Though it doesn't look fancy, it is light weight, has a lot of customizable features and does not slow the system down. Enjoy!

Thanks to Vivek Ramchander for these tips.

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Ever wished transferring files between multiple computers were as easy as drag and drop? Fear not, for dropbox is here. File transfer between multiple computers is as simple as dragging and dropping. Setting up dropbox is as simple as signing up for a free account and installing dropbox on your computer. Dropbox works on Windows, Mac and Linux. Installing dropbox will create a folder called "My dropbox" on your computer. This folder behaves like any normal folder. However,  any file added, removed or modified in the dropbox folder in one computer affects the files the same way on any other computer in which dropbox is installed with your account.

To get started, goto http://www.getdropbox.com

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It is told that the best things in life are free and software isn't any different. There are a plethora of softwares out there that you can use in Windows which are free and provide functionalities as good as paid softwares. Being an anti-pirate, I have sampled many free /open-source softwares and found these to be the best in their respective categories.


Web Browser (replacement for Internet Explorer)


OPERA



Image Editor (replacement for Adobe photoshop)



GIMP



Image Viewer (replacement for windows picture viewer)



PICASA




RSS feed reader


FEED READER



Instant Messaging Client (replacement for Google Talk, Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger and more)
PIDGIN




Music player (replacement for Windows Media Player)
WINAMP

Video player (replacement for windows media player)
VLC



PDF reader (replacement for Adobe Acrobat Reader)
FOXIT


Office packages (replacement for Microsoft Office)
Open Office

Windows Cleaning utility
CCleaner


DVD/CD Burning utility
IMGBURN

Programming IDE

DEV C++

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You are looking for a job and need to know whether the resume you toiled over the entire night was opened and read by the HR of the company or not.

Or what about that ex-flame that you still have the hots for, want to know if she reads your mail or not? 

Spypig will give satisfy a part of your curiousity. You just need to add the image of the pig along with your email and voila you're done. 

There are limitations though, the email should be HTML-formatted and not a plain-text or rich-text formatted email. And then this is what spypig does "SpyPig works by using a tracking image (SpyPig image) whose reference to its location on our server is embedded in your HTML email message. When the recipient opens your email, the tracking image will be automatically downloaded from our server, triggering the "email opened" alert on our system."  

I tried it out several times and works like a charm. There are a few things that we need to keep in mind, since this is a technology that is image based, if you open your own sent message several times it will take that into count too. Also when your recipient doesn't download the image it won't be counted. 

Another great thing to remember that spypig can't read your email so the content of the email is just shared between you and your recipient. Its very very easy to use. It took me less than 2 minutes to understand and implement in my email.

All in all, love the tool, will definitely use it when I need to know what's happening to my emails.

Moo Score - MOOO/MOOOOO

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India's skyrocketing economy is producing tons of electronic waste like discarded computers & televisions. Though we can't help throwing away those things that don't work and well get the junk status from us, there are a few things that we can keep as souvenirs.

Blog.makezine.com has some interesting ideas. The 1-megabit cufflinks and Capacitor Robot Charm.

Fzkl and I had plans of making burned out chip set earining - chic don't ya think?

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