where technology is simplified
Archive for October, 2007
Why I picked Avant over Internet Explorer
Oct 31st
Avant browser is a relatively lesser known competitor to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. But it has quite a few interesting features that make it an attractive alternative to IE 7 and undoubtedly a winner over IE 6.
Why I chose Avant over the XP’s built in IE 6?
Avant offers several significant enhancements over IE6 such as tabbed browsing, integrated search, delete browsing history and temporary interfiles with one click, integrated password manager and several others. Al of these features combined make it a very attractive alternative to IE6. From download.com review:
… options for blocking the download of Flash media, pictures, video, sounds, and ActiveX components, so users can efficiently use their bandwidth and speed up page loading. All opened pages can be stopped, refreshed, closed, or arranged with one click. It also comes with built-in RSS reader.
Why choose Avant over the Vista’s built in IE 7?
Both have tabbed browsing features and pretty similar looks. In fact Avant uses IE’s core – this means under the hood Avant is basically Internet Explorer with a few extras. But the primary reason why I chose Avant is speed. And not just millisecond speeds. Avant takes just an eye blink to open since the time you click on its icon.
Unscientific Experiment
I tested both browsers on a 2 year old Dell machine running XP with a 3GHz processor and 1GB memory. IE took anywhere from 3 to 5 seconds depending on how soon after computer start up I clicked on the shortcut. Avant on the other hand took less than 1.5 seconds – even when I clicked the shortcut directly after computer startup. I understand this is not a scientific test by any measure. But according to CNet statistics downloads for Avant has crossed 18 million mark while Firefox is at 11 million. Obviously I am not the only one noticing an advantage by using this browser.
Features
Avant also has a bunch of other features. I will let the Avant site say it like it is. The several awards received by Avant are displayed on a dedicated page. It has also been featured on Download.com and has a 4.5/5 score.
Top Rated Features of Avant Browser (from Avant’s site)
Online Profile Storage AutoFills Flash Animation Filter Built-in AD/Pop-up Blocker Built-in RSS/ATOM Reader Additional Mouse Functions Multi-Window Browsing Real Full Screen Mode and Alternative Full Desktop mode Built-in Search Engine Full IE Compatibility Control Your Privacy Safe Recovery Customizable Skins
Yahoo! Search – The Next Generation
Oct 31st
Google vs. Yahoo – the two major internet giants go head-to-head against each other in online search. According to the latest Nielsen-NetRatings U.S. Search Share Rankings Google caters to 54% of the total web-searches trailed by Yahoo coming in at about 20% But this has not slowed down the development of Yahoo Search in any way – in fact Yahoo seems to have taken on this challenge. Yahoo is currently testing out their next generation search engine on an isolated corner of the web – on the Yahoo Australia site.
Yahoo! alpha search results include a sidebar on the right showing results from a variety of other sources in addition web-search results in the main window. This is quite similar to the Searchmash results that I had previously discussed. Sidebar shows results from – Photos by Flickr, Yahoo!7 Answers, Videos by YouTube, News by Yahoo!7 News Search, Wikipedia, Opensearch & Sponsored Results by Yahoo! Search Marketing. This can be customized to a great extent by going to the Preferences page. If you search for ebay auctions a lot more than Yahoo Answers then you can set your preferences accordingly.
Y! Alpha Search provides a number of site-search widgets that can be customized for your site. You can select the color of the search box, copy paste the code and done!
Simply customize the sources for your users (such as adding your site as the primary info source), prioritize the layout then copy and paste the code below into your web page and voila! Your users will be getting a great search experience in no time.
Reclaim Your Disk Space
Oct 30th
Disk space usage largely depends on how you use the computer. If you primarily use it to store videos, audio files or lots of pictures then it will fill up faster than expected. This happens to all users no matter how experienced you are – mostly due to human nature. We try to ‘save a copy’ of everything that we like – on top of that we also prefer to backup all our copies. As content is being duplicated disk space is being used up at a linear rate. Apply this view to a community and disk usage will grow exponentially.
The best way to clear disk space is to delete unnecessary files, directories, uninstall programs no longer used. This comes quite easily to the tech-savvy but not so easily to the average user. Moreover in Windows there are still a lot of hidden locations that most users fail to cleanse such as temp directories, temporary application data, unused registry data just to name a few. Deleting these files manually can be tedious and dangerous (especially registry). One fatal mistake in the registry can lead to computer crash and/or boot problems. But have no fear! There are tons of software utilities out there to make everyone’s life a lot easier.
CCleaner is a very effectively tool in deleting unnecessary files folders and hidden items. It can be downloaded directly from their site. Detailed tour and installation info can be also be found there.
Cleans the following:
- Internet Explorer – Temporary files, URL history, cookies, Autocomplete form history, index.dat.
- Firefox – Temporary files, URL history, cookies, download history.
- Opera – Temporary files, URL history, cookies.
- Windows – Recycle Bin, Recent Documents, Temporary files and Log files.
- Registry cleaner – Advanced features to remove unused and old entries, including File Extensions, ActiveX Controls, ClassIDs, ProgIDs, Uninstallers, Shared DLLs, Fonts, Help Files, Application Paths, Icons, Invalid Shortcuts and more… also comes with a comprehensive backup feature.
- Third-party applications – Removes temp files and recent file lists (MRUs) from many apps including Media Player, eMule, Kazaa, Google Toolbar, Netscape, MS Office, Nero, Adobe Acrobat, WinRAR, WinAce, WinZip and many more…
If you think CCleaner is difficult to use check out the following video procedure. For a complete CCleaner review check out the TeqEdge article on CCleaner.
CCleaner Review – A funny movie is a click away
Windows Disk Cleaner is a built-in windows utility & is another safe & easy way to clear disk usage. It resides under the Accessories -> System Tools folder on the start menu. It will help you clean up some but not all files. When you run Disk Cleanup tool it will scan the disk for files that can be deleted. Depending on the size of your disk this process might take a few minutes.
Following this scan the Disk Cleanup will tell you how much space you can recover by deleting the selected files. Select the locations that you would like to clear and click OK.
Defragmenting the hard disk is another way to clean up some space and increase performance. It might sound difficult and complicated but I assure you it is very straightforward. If you would like to know more or for a step by step tutorial see TeqEdge article showing how to defrag the hard disk in greater detail.
Feel free to visit tips to How to Clean Disk Space and more on TeqEdge.com
Google v2.0
Oct 29th
Google is the king of internet search there is no doubt about that. I can say with some certainty that each and every computer user has at some point used Google’s excellent search service. More importantly these users found what they were looking for with relative ease and accuracy. But most do not know of the secret Google – Searchmash.
From Searchmash site – SearchMash lets you search the internet in new ways. It is constantly evolving as we come up with ideas and figure out what works and what doesn’t. Check back here from time to time to see what has changed, and also to tell us which ones are useful to you. Please bear with us when the site is unavailable as we are limiting its use.
You don’t have to have your cursor in the search box to start typing your query. Your previous query will be replaced with whatever you type.
Click on “hide details” in the title bar to collapse the display of web or images results, allowing many more results to fit in view.
You can see other types of results, such as images and blogs, in the blocks to the right of the standard web results. Expand a block by clicking on its title.
Click the “more results” bar at the bottom of the page (or hit the space bar) to show more results instantly.
You can watch a video by clicking on its thumbnail. Click on the video that’s playing to pause it.
But keep in mind Searchmash Terms of Service only allows for personal use and NO automated searches – SearchMash is made available for your personal, non-commercial use only. You may not use SearchMash to sell a product or service, or to increase traffic to your Web site for commercial reasons, such as advertising sales. You may not take the results from a SearchMash search and reformat and display them, or mirror any SearchMash page or results pages on your Web site. You may not “meta-search” SearchMash.
A typical search on Searchmash provides the normal Web search results in the main window on the left. But it also comes with a sidebar on the right with expandable search results for – Images, Blogs, Videos, Wikipedia. Notice the “hide details” link on top of the web search results. You can click it to only display the page results of the searches (restricted to one result per line)
The Ultimate Media Player
Oct 28th
A typical computer has outgrown the simple internet search and email capability. Almost all households are now using some form of streaming audio and/or video. Be it radio, talk shows, user generated videos or full blown TV episodes – every possible kind of entertainment has been ported to the Net. For a computer to be able to play all the various media a variety of conditions have to met – browser plugins must be installed, media players must have all the required audio and video codecs. For example Windows Media Player often spits out errors for ‘missing codec’ or ‘unable to play video’. You might upgrade to the latest version but to no avail. VLC on the contrary is able to play anything that I throw at it.
From VLC website – VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, …) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.
Features – I have been able to play any and all kinds of video with VLC – from mp4 to ogg and from avi, wmv to DVD’s & it can even play Flash files (.FLV). How cool is that! Check out the full feature list on their site – http://www.videolan.org/vlc/features.html The only place VLC falls short is playing video/audio inside the browser which Windows Media Player and Real Player are adept at. You can learn more about VLC and download VLC completely free of charge or any subscription service. It is licensed under GPL and is completely free to use.
Skins – VLC allows for various skins to be applied. See the wide range of skins available here -http://www.videolan.org/vlc/skins.php
Screenshots – If you wish to check out the player before downloading and installing it VLC site has a large selection of screenshots – http://www.videolan.org/vlc/screenshots.html
Install Procedure – A detailed installation video is available on the TeqEdge site. It shows how you can have a personalized media player which is completely free, allows you to skin it and plays any media. Install is straightforward and very easy as seen in the video. Check it out – http://teqedge.com/doku.php?id=all-in-one.media.player
