Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Windows XP Lives
Rumors that Microsoft would release Windows XP Service Pack 3 this week aren't true; but if you're feeling adventurous, the folks in Redmond did make the second release candidate of XP SP3 available for download today. [via]
Use Vista cursors in XP
Looking to spruce up the look of Windows XP? Installing the Vista cursor theme is an easy way to do so, and the Alan Le weblog demonstrates the simple process. After downloading and unzipping the cursors, right click on install.inf and select install. You can then go into Mouse Properties and change your cursor theme. The change is subtle, but nice. Not ready to make the switch to Vista? Here are a few ways you can get Vista's look and feel in XP. Thanks, Dylan!
Dual boot Windows XP on a pre-installed Vista PC
You just got a new PC with Windows Vista pre-installed, and you want to dual-boot Windows XP for old programs - or just nostalgia's sake. You already know how to dual-boot Windows Vista on your XP machine, but you can also set up Windows XP to boot from a separate partition on your Vista PC.
First you'll need to repartition your hard drive inside Vista, install Windows XP on that new partition, and then use previously-mentioned VistaBootPro to set up your bootloader. A poster at the ProNetworks forum has the detailed rundown, along with helpful screenshots. —Gina Trapani
Install Windows XP in a Dual Boot with Pre-installed Windows Vista [ProNetworks]
Windows XP Tips
Yahoo! News offers up their top 10 Windows XP tips of all time. They've covered a wide range of topics from display tips to bits on how to increase disk space and performance.
This tip is one of our favorites because it always works. Running in the background of Windows are scores of services, small processes used by Windows and many Windows applications. The thing is, you don't need all these services — especially for applications you never use — and many of them actually slow your PC down.
Top 10 Windows XP Tips Of All Time [Yahoo! News]
This tip is one of our favorites because it always works. Running in the background of Windows are scores of services, small processes used by Windows and many Windows applications. The thing is, you don't need all these services — especially for applications you never use — and many of them actually slow your PC down.
Top 10 Windows XP Tips Of All Time [Yahoo! News]
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Fireclip Brings Mac-Like Web Clipping to Firefox
Windows/Mac/Linux (Firefox): Fireclip, a free plug-in that monitors specific sections of web pages, puts the at-a-glance convenience of the OS X widget screen in a Firefox tab.
Using Fireclip is darned easy. Activate with a shortcut (Alt+Q) or from the Tools menu, and its sidebar pops out. Hit "Select Clip," and you can mouse around to see the pre-defined sections of the page. Click once, and you'll be asked to re-size your selection with the familiar two-directional arrows at the edges of your area. Double-click inside the area, and it's locked in:
You don't have to be precise at all with your selections, so leave any dead space or visual cues you want around the edges. Opening Fireclip's page with the same shortcut gives you a space you can re-arrange however you'd like with your clips:
So, okay, Fireclip actually works and all, but what use would it be to the average surfer? Amit Agarwal's screencast of Fireclip might explain it better than my words:
Fireclip is a free download, works wherever Firefox does. I encountered a recurring pop-up ad while launching the clips page, but wasn't sure whether it was Fireclip itself or one of my clips.
Using Fireclip is darned easy. Activate with a shortcut (Alt+Q) or from the Tools menu, and its sidebar pops out. Hit "Select Clip," and you can mouse around to see the pre-defined sections of the page. Click once, and you'll be asked to re-size your selection with the familiar two-directional arrows at the edges of your area. Double-click inside the area, and it's locked in:
You don't have to be precise at all with your selections, so leave any dead space or visual cues you want around the edges. Opening Fireclip's page with the same shortcut gives you a space you can re-arrange however you'd like with your clips:
So, okay, Fireclip actually works and all, but what use would it be to the average surfer? Amit Agarwal's screencast of Fireclip might explain it better than my words:
Fireclip is a free download, works wherever Firefox does. I encountered a recurring pop-up ad while launching the clips page, but wasn't sure whether it was Fireclip itself or one of my clips.
Google Quick Search Like Quicksilver from Google
Mac OS X only: We've been crazy about Quicksilver—a free application launcher for Macs—for years now. Today Google is releasing a new search-and-launch application called Google Quick Search developed by Nicholas Jitkoff, the developer of Quicksilver.
Like Quicksilver, Google Quick Search not only searches for and launches files and applications—it also can drill down into content and perform context-specific actions. So, for example, Google Quick Search indexes my Address Book contacts; if I perform a quick search to pull up my contact card, I can hit Tab to drill down into possible actions to perform—like composing an email or starting an IM chat.
Google Quick Search integrates with Spotlight, so it's not reinventing the wheel, either. Where it really covers new ground, however, is its integration with Google search. Much like the previously mentioned Google Mobile iPhone App, Google Quick Search offers as-you-type search results from both your desktop and the web. It features quick and easy site-specific searches (also just like Google Mobile for iPhone), indexes items from your Google account (Google Docs and Picasa Web Albums, for now, but presumably more to come), and even offers handy keyboard shortcuts to quickly start a new site-search (for example, invoke Google Quick Search and hit Cmd-3 for Wikipedia).
The application is currently just a prototype, so expect to see some rough edges. That said, in my experience with it so far, it's been smooth and responsive for such an early release. It's feature set isn't up to the level you'd expect from Quicksilver, but it's a great start, and an exciting application to keep an eye on. Google Quick Search is a free download, Mac OS X only. Best of all: It's open source—just like Google Chrome. If you give it a try, let's hear what you think in the comments.
Like Quicksilver, Google Quick Search not only searches for and launches files and applications—it also can drill down into content and perform context-specific actions. So, for example, Google Quick Search indexes my Address Book contacts; if I perform a quick search to pull up my contact card, I can hit Tab to drill down into possible actions to perform—like composing an email or starting an IM chat.
Google Quick Search integrates with Spotlight, so it's not reinventing the wheel, either. Where it really covers new ground, however, is its integration with Google search. Much like the previously mentioned Google Mobile iPhone App, Google Quick Search offers as-you-type search results from both your desktop and the web. It features quick and easy site-specific searches (also just like Google Mobile for iPhone), indexes items from your Google account (Google Docs and Picasa Web Albums, for now, but presumably more to come), and even offers handy keyboard shortcuts to quickly start a new site-search (for example, invoke Google Quick Search and hit Cmd-3 for Wikipedia).
The application is currently just a prototype, so expect to see some rough edges. That said, in my experience with it so far, it's been smooth and responsive for such an early release. It's feature set isn't up to the level you'd expect from Quicksilver, but it's a great start, and an exciting application to keep an eye on. Google Quick Search is a free download, Mac OS X only. Best of all: It's open source—just like Google Chrome. If you give it a try, let's hear what you think in the comments.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Revealed: the environmental impact of Google searches
Performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea, according to new research.
While millions of people tap into Google without considering the environment, a typical search generates about 7g of CO2 Boiling a kettle generates about 15g. “Google operates huge data centres around the world that consume a great deal of power,” said Alex Wissner-Gross, a Harvard University physicist whose research on the environmental impact of computing is due out soon. “A Google search has a definite environmental impact.”
Google is secretive about its energy consumption and carbon footprint. It also refuses to divulge the locations of its data centres. However, with more than 200m internet searches estimated globally daily, the electricity consumption and greenhouse gas emissions caused by computers and the internet is provoking concern. A recent report by Gartner, the industry analysts, said the global IT industry generated as much greenhouse gas as the world’s airlines - about 2% of global CO2 emissions. “Data centres are among the most energy-intensive facilities imaginable,” said Evan Mills, a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. Banks of servers storing billions of web pages require power.
Related Links
How you can help reduce the footprint of the Web
Though Google says it is in the forefront of green computing, its search engine generates high levels of CO2 because of the way it operates. When you type in a Google search for, say, “energy saving tips”, your request doesn’t go to just one server. It goes to several competing against each other.
It may even be sent to servers thousands of miles apart. Google’s infrastructure sends you data from whichever produces the answer fastest. The system minimises delays but raises energy consumption. Google has servers in the US, Europe, Japan and China.
Wissner-Gross has submitted his research for publication by the US Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and has also set up a website www.CO2stats.com. “Google are very efficient but their primary concern is to make searches fast and that means they have a lot of extra capacity that burns energy,” he said.
Google said: “We are among the most efficient of all internet search providers.”
Wissner-Gross has also calculated the CO2 emissions caused by individual use of the internet. His research indicates that viewing a simple web page generates about 0.02g of CO2 per second. This rises tenfold to about 0.2g of CO2 a second when viewing a website with complex images, animations or videos.
A separate estimate from John Buckley, managing director of carbonfootprint.com, a British environmental consultancy, puts the CO2 emissions of a Google search at between 1g and 10g, depending on whether you have to start your PC or not. Simply running a PC generates between 40g and 80g per hour, he says. of CO2 Chris Goodall, author of Ten Technologies to Save the Planet, estimates the carbon emissions of a Google search at 7g to 10g (assuming 15 minutes’ computer use).
Nicholas Carr, author of The Big Switch, Rewiring the World, has calculated that maintaining a character (known as an avatar) in the Second Life virtual reality game, requires 1,752 kilowatt hours of electricity per year. That is almost as much used by the average Brazilian.
“It’s not an unreasonable comparison,” said Liam Newcombe, an expert on data centres at the British Computer Society. “It tells us how much energy westerners use on entertainment versus the energy poverty in some countries.”
Though energy consumption by computers is growing - and the rate of growth is increasing - Newcombe argues that what matters most is the type of usage.
If your internet use is in place of more energy-intensive activities, such as driving your car to the shops, that’s good. But if it is adding activities and energy consumption that would not otherwise happen, that may pose problems.
Newcombe cites Second Life and Twitter, a rapidly growing website whose 3m users post millions of messages a month. Last week Stephen Fry, the TV presenter, was posting “tweets” from New Zealand, imparting such vital information as “Arrived in Queenstown. Hurrah. Full of bungy jumping and ‘activewear’ shops”, and “Honestly. NZ weather makes UK look stable and clement”.
Jonathan Ross was Twittering even more, with posts such as “Am going to muck out the pigs. It will be cold, but I’m not the type to go on about it” and “Am now back indoors and have put on fleecy tracksuit and two pairs of socks”. Ross also made various “tweets” trying to ascertain whether Jeremy Clarkson was a Twitter user or not. Yesterday the Top Gear presenter cleared up the matter, saying: “I am not a twit. And Jonathan Ross is.”
Such internet phenomena are not simply fun and hot air, Newcombe warns: the boom in such services has a carbon cost.
While millions of people tap into Google without considering the environment, a typical search generates about 7g of CO2 Boiling a kettle generates about 15g. “Google operates huge data centres around the world that consume a great deal of power,” said Alex Wissner-Gross, a Harvard University physicist whose research on the environmental impact of computing is due out soon. “A Google search has a definite environmental impact.”
Google is secretive about its energy consumption and carbon footprint. It also refuses to divulge the locations of its data centres. However, with more than 200m internet searches estimated globally daily, the electricity consumption and greenhouse gas emissions caused by computers and the internet is provoking concern. A recent report by Gartner, the industry analysts, said the global IT industry generated as much greenhouse gas as the world’s airlines - about 2% of global CO2 emissions. “Data centres are among the most energy-intensive facilities imaginable,” said Evan Mills, a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California. Banks of servers storing billions of web pages require power.
Related Links
How you can help reduce the footprint of the Web
Though Google says it is in the forefront of green computing, its search engine generates high levels of CO2 because of the way it operates. When you type in a Google search for, say, “energy saving tips”, your request doesn’t go to just one server. It goes to several competing against each other.
It may even be sent to servers thousands of miles apart. Google’s infrastructure sends you data from whichever produces the answer fastest. The system minimises delays but raises energy consumption. Google has servers in the US, Europe, Japan and China.
Wissner-Gross has submitted his research for publication by the US Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and has also set up a website www.CO2stats.com. “Google are very efficient but their primary concern is to make searches fast and that means they have a lot of extra capacity that burns energy,” he said.
Google said: “We are among the most efficient of all internet search providers.”
Wissner-Gross has also calculated the CO2 emissions caused by individual use of the internet. His research indicates that viewing a simple web page generates about 0.02g of CO2 per second. This rises tenfold to about 0.2g of CO2 a second when viewing a website with complex images, animations or videos.
A separate estimate from John Buckley, managing director of carbonfootprint.com, a British environmental consultancy, puts the CO2 emissions of a Google search at between 1g and 10g, depending on whether you have to start your PC or not. Simply running a PC generates between 40g and 80g per hour, he says. of CO2 Chris Goodall, author of Ten Technologies to Save the Planet, estimates the carbon emissions of a Google search at 7g to 10g (assuming 15 minutes’ computer use).
Nicholas Carr, author of The Big Switch, Rewiring the World, has calculated that maintaining a character (known as an avatar) in the Second Life virtual reality game, requires 1,752 kilowatt hours of electricity per year. That is almost as much used by the average Brazilian.
“It’s not an unreasonable comparison,” said Liam Newcombe, an expert on data centres at the British Computer Society. “It tells us how much energy westerners use on entertainment versus the energy poverty in some countries.”
Though energy consumption by computers is growing - and the rate of growth is increasing - Newcombe argues that what matters most is the type of usage.
If your internet use is in place of more energy-intensive activities, such as driving your car to the shops, that’s good. But if it is adding activities and energy consumption that would not otherwise happen, that may pose problems.
Newcombe cites Second Life and Twitter, a rapidly growing website whose 3m users post millions of messages a month. Last week Stephen Fry, the TV presenter, was posting “tweets” from New Zealand, imparting such vital information as “Arrived in Queenstown. Hurrah. Full of bungy jumping and ‘activewear’ shops”, and “Honestly. NZ weather makes UK look stable and clement”.
Jonathan Ross was Twittering even more, with posts such as “Am going to muck out the pigs. It will be cold, but I’m not the type to go on about it” and “Am now back indoors and have put on fleecy tracksuit and two pairs of socks”. Ross also made various “tweets” trying to ascertain whether Jeremy Clarkson was a Twitter user or not. Yesterday the Top Gear presenter cleared up the matter, saying: “I am not a twit. And Jonathan Ross is.”
Such internet phenomena are not simply fun and hot air, Newcombe warns: the boom in such services has a carbon cost.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Boost Performance by Checking IDE Drive Transfer Mode
If you're struggling with decreased performance on a Windows based machine, it's a simple fix to check to make sure your IDE drives aren't operating in a slower, ineffective transfer mode.
When fresh from the box—or your workbench— your computer should have had all it's IDE drives set in Direct Memory Access mode. This is a far speedier method of disk access than Programmed Input/Output mode. The technical side of the two modes is dense but let it suffice: DMA is a the fast and preferred method and PIO mode is the slower method Windows defaults to after having six redundancy checks fail. Things like power outages, doing a hard reset and other disk interruptions can cause these errors. Your Windows box may be operating in the slower transfer mode because mistakenly thinks that your system is unstable or that there is something wrong with your disks. The fix for your computer downshifting into PIO mode is simple. Go to your Control Panel, click on the System icon, open up your Device Manager and pull up the properties for your Primary and Secondary IDE channels. Under the Advanced settings tab you'll be able to set the Transfer Mode to "DMA if available". Reboot and you should be in business. MakeUseOf has a full step by step guide with screenshots if you'd like a visual reference.
When fresh from the box—or your workbench— your computer should have had all it's IDE drives set in Direct Memory Access mode. This is a far speedier method of disk access than Programmed Input/Output mode. The technical side of the two modes is dense but let it suffice: DMA is a the fast and preferred method and PIO mode is the slower method Windows defaults to after having six redundancy checks fail. Things like power outages, doing a hard reset and other disk interruptions can cause these errors. Your Windows box may be operating in the slower transfer mode because mistakenly thinks that your system is unstable or that there is something wrong with your disks. The fix for your computer downshifting into PIO mode is simple. Go to your Control Panel, click on the System icon, open up your Device Manager and pull up the properties for your Primary and Secondary IDE channels. Under the Advanced settings tab you'll be able to set the Transfer Mode to "DMA if available". Reboot and you should be in business. MakeUseOf has a full step by step guide with screenshots if you'd like a visual reference.
gOS 3.1
gOS, the Ubuntu-derived Linux desktop that's focused squarely on Google products and other webapps, has updated with newer versions of its core products, including the Windows-app-running WINE, Firefox 3, and support for newer Google Gadgets.
If gOS is new to you, check out Adam's tour of its monstrous webapp powers. Along with some pretty refined theming and taskbar implementation of the standard Ubuntu look, gOS can run as a fully-fledged Linux system in itself.
gOS 3.1 is a free download, requires an x86-based computer with 256MB of RAM to run or install.
If gOS is new to you, check out Adam's tour of its monstrous webapp powers. Along with some pretty refined theming and taskbar implementation of the standard Ubuntu look, gOS can run as a fully-fledged Linux system in itself.
gOS 3.1 is a free download, requires an x86-based computer with 256MB of RAM to run or install.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Bulk Edit Tags on Delicious
It's tucked away, but bookmarking site Del.icio.us now offers bulk tag editing (in, of course, beta) for group tagging/un-tagging and sharing/un-sharing. Helpful stuff, especially for pesky tag typos. Thanks Gergo!
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