What Is It?

Cuil is a new search engine. It has been the subject of posts on the popular tech blogs in the last few days (1 posts, they all post )

While I haven’t read them all the only thing I really picked up was that the pictures disabled didn’t always correspond with the search result.

So Why Am I Posting?

Well, because I gave it a try and was surprised at the results (or lack of them returned).

Cuil have some very good PR words on their About page and on their Philosophy page. They talk about some very interesting values for web searches which I am mostly in agreement with if only they can deliver them.

Some of the main points Cuil make are:

(Please click on any image to enlarge where necessary)

The Internet has grown exponentially in the last fifteen years but search engines have not kept up—until now. Cuil searches more pages on the Web than anyone else—three times as many as Google and ten times as many as Microsoft.

Rather than rely on superficial popularity metrics, Cuil searches for and ranks pages based on their content and relevance.

and

Cuil’s goal is to solve the two great problems of search: how to index the whole Internet—not just part of it—and how to analyze and sort out its pages so you get relevant results.

it’s well worth reading their About Us and Philosophy pages if you are interested in what Cuil (and good search engines should) strive to achieve.

The current problem seems to be that they are failing to meet their aims by a rather long way.

So What’s the Evidence

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Popularity: 16% [?]

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What Is It?

AceCad DigiMemo can best be described as a sort of portable scanner and graphics tablet for capturing handwritten notes and sketches or diagrams using a standard paper pad and a special pen/tablet combination. Essentially it provides a method of remotely storing these notes and drawings electronically and transferring them to your PC or laptop. Software is provided to manage the stored notes and convert them to standard image or pdf formats. It will also work as a PC Tablet device while connected to your computer and synchronize writing/drawing on the DigiMemo with your computer while connected. Handwriting can also be recognised using the optional My Script Notes software and then transferred to MS Word. The DigiMemo comes in 4 different sizes depending on your needs:

1. Letter
2. A4
3. A5
4. 6” x 9”
5. There is also an optional portfolio case

Why Would You Want It?

If you take notes or sketches while away from your computer such as at meetings or out on site the DigiMemo provides a way of quickly and easily transferring them to your computer. The included software helps you manage the information and also to convert the notes/drawings to standard graphic and pdf formats. If you don’t want the optional handwriting recognition you could achieve the same results using an ordinary paper pad and pen then scanning the pages, this is however a convenient and easy way to transfer the information to your computer.

Why Do I Want It?

I use my AceCad DigiMemo A402 to take notes at meetings and at conferences. I use the optional handwriting recognition to help convert notes to word documents. (My handwriting is fairly poor and the recognition software needs a bit of manual help from me )

What Does It Do – The Essentials?

Summary:

• Stores handwritten notes and sketches electronically
• Transfers notes/sketches to computer
• Acts as a graphics tablet when connected your computer
• Optional handwriting recognition

Pros: What’s Good?

Features & Benefits

• Easy to use

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Popularity: 27% [?]

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What Is It?

NetLimiter Monitor is a freeware “limited functionality” version of Netlimiter Lite or Pro which are shareware. NetLimiter monitor provides realtime and historical values for the data transfer of any process either across the Internet or across your Local Area Network (LAN). Information is provided on the application, process number, IP address and port being used for both sent and received data. Historical data can be exported to file.

Why Would You Want It?

There are many reasons that you may want or need to know the data being sent and received by your PC, these may include:

1. Bandwidth and total data capping or limitations by your ISP
2. Identifying processes that hog bandwidth
3. Checking if a process is communicating or has stalled
4. Identifying the external IP address that a process is communicating with
5. Idle curiosity

Why Do I Want It?

I use it as another general monitoring tool that I can run in the background without much strain on system resources. If I then need to try and identify some particular problem or trend of bandwidth use then there is both current and historical information available. A recent use has been checking the uploading of posts from Windows Live Writer to my host server which on occasion has been problematic. NetLimiter Monitor helped me identify this has an ISP problem and not my host server. I have also used it to get an idea of the amount of data transfer when my Windows Home Server was backing up my computers. Finally it has been useful in determining whether a process is communication with an IP address that I consider legitimate (such as a version update check rather than sending usage stats to a third party).

What Does It Do – The Essentials?

Summary:

• Measures data transfer across a computer network
• Identifies the different Zones:

1. Internet
2. My Computer
3. Local Network

Pros: What’s Good?

Features & Benefits

• Freeware

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Popularity: 30% [?]

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or Several Good Reasons for Using Portable Firefox

What is This all About?

Making it easy to use Firefox with different settings for different users and/or different purposes as well as being able to quickly and easily create Firefox backups.

A standard installation of Firefox keeps the programs and data (your profile with all the settings, cookies, cache, etc) in separate areas of your hard drive. Normally (unless you have specified a different location at installation or in your OS Setup) Firefox programs will be installed under C:/Program Files/Mozilla Firefox/ and the data will be stored under your Microsoft “Documents and Settings” area with a path like – C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\.

With a Firefox Portable installation you can have all your Firefox programs and data under a set of folders such as:

• C:\Firefox_Main
• C:\Firefox_Small
• C:\Firefox_Blogging

Or you could have:

• C:\FirefoxPortable\

containing

• • Firefox_Main
  • Firefox_Small
  • Firefox_Blogging

and C; can be substituted for any other drive including memory sticks/flash drive and network drives.

Not only is this easy to quickly backup everything using standard backup software or by simply copying the folder structure using standard copy and paste, but it is completely portable using a portable hard drive or USB flash memory.

Update: Following a comment from Ray (see comments below) I should make it clear that the idea is to use multiple copies of Portable Firefox each with it’s own settings instead of creating multiple individual profiles within Portable Firefox.

This is how have Firefox set up on my main PC and I transfer this complete or in part to other PC’s at home and work on a removable hard drive or flash memory.

(Click on Screenshots to enlarge where necessary)

You could even run Firefox over an Internet connection using remote connection software like Logmein or even Windows Home Server, although unless you have a fast broadband connection this could be very slow and you would be better pulling (downloading) the installation to the local machine.

What Do I Do?

Well, I have already said some of the things that can be done based on what I am already doing. The next screenshot shows the files and folders under my Firefox Portable folder:

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Popularity: 30% [?]

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What Is It?

Unlocker is a program that will unlock or release files and folders that have been locked by the system. It is simple to use as a standalone solution when a locked file or folder situation occurs or it can run in the background and monitor for problems.

Warning

Deleting some files may make the system crash or unbootable, or it may stop certain applications working. So proceed with care. Only use Unlocker on files you are sure it is safe to move or delete. The file/folder was originally locked for a good reason so be sure that it is now safe to unlock. As always make sure you have adequate backups of your system and data. .

Why Would You Want It?

Locked files or folders are generally ones that are currently opened by an application or a system process. They are automatically locked to prevent another process from changing them (when they may be altered by the process that already has the file open). Sometimes the lock is not released due to a malfunction or crash somewhere in the system or with an application. This leaves a file that cannot be moved or deleted.

A typical error message will show:

(Click on pictures to enlarge where necessary)

Other typical error messages may say:

• Cannot delete file: Access is denied
• There has been a sharing violation
• The source or destination file may be in use
• The file is in use by another program or user
• Make sure the disk is not full or write-protected and that the file is not currently in use

Why Do I Want It?

Unlocker provides a simple and unobtrusive way for me to unlock files quickly and easily when a problem occurs with moving or deleting a file. This may be using Windows Explorer or a file manager, Teracopy, Duplicate Cleaner or some other utility. I generally have Unlocker (Assistant) running in the background on my main PC’s and laptops.

What Does It Do – The Essentials?

Summary:

• Unlocks files whose locking handle is set
• Can be set to monitor for lock file/folder error messages

Pros: What’s Good?

Features & Benefits

• Freeware

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Popularity: 18% [?]

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What Is It?

Duplicate Cleaner is a nice utility to manage duplicate files on your PC or laptop and across your network. There are plenty of similar utilities of varying complexity, Duplicate Cleaner works relatively quickly and efficiently and the ability to work across the network is very welcome.

Why Would You Want It?

Over time it is likely that many files can be duplicated in various places, particularly when creating backup sets for security reasons. There is a balance between keeping your data safe which means there may be several backups in different locations taken at different times, the time available to manage the data files you need to keep and the available storage you have. A way of managing or at least locating the duplicate files is an essential utility in the data management process.

Warning – You should take great care when deleting files flagged as duplicates as they may be essential to the running of your system. At the very least backup the files before you start and if you are doing anything with files in system folders it would be a good idea to clone the partition. Duplicate Cleaner provides options to Move files to a different folder or deleting them to the recycle bin. It may be best to use one of these options and then delete the files permanently at a later date. Using a folder name like “Duplicate Files To Delete after 2008-09-01” may be helpful.

What Does It Do – The Essentials?

Summary:

• Finds Duplicate Files
• Selection of drives and folders across a network and PC
• Provides alternative methods to select duplicates to be managed

Pros: What’s Good?

Features & Benefits

• Freeware

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Popularity: 18% [?]

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What Is It?

The Wonderful Icon (TWI) is a small utility that sits in your system tray (windows notification area) and gives you access to numerous system commands, Windows manipulation/placement functions, hotkey options, sounds options, shutdown options and a user defined Start Menu. This is an amazing little application that has been around for a long time and never seems to have gotten the recognition it deserves.

Why Would You Want It?

If you want a simple, single click system tray icon that gives you access to all sorts of system commands using the mouse or hotkeys, combined with all sorts of user definable options then this is the one for you!

Don’t be put off by the lack of development in recent times and lack of a fancy GUI with icons – this is simplicity and functionality defined

It appears that The Wonderful Icon even works with Vista despite it the fact that it hasn’t been updated since Vista was released. N.B. I haven’t tested it on Vista, I am relying on comments posted elsewhere.

Why Do I Want It?

Because it gives me access to so many different functions in a system tray menu that I can define myself as well as defining items to be activated by Hotkeys. In fact I thing the most amazing thing about The Wonderful Icon is that it hasn’t been more widely recognised.

What Does It Do – The Essentials?

Summary:

• System Tray Menu
• Hotkey Functions
• Select Sounds
• Access Common Tasks
• Access Common System Commands

Pros: What’s Good?

Features & Benefits

• Freeware

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Popularity: 15% [?]

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What Is It?

A wonderfully simple utility that safely removes (ejects/unmounts) USB disks from a Windows system in the way that the MS Windows “Safely Remove Hardware” utility should but doesn’t.

Why Would You Want It?

Because the inbuilt Windows Safely Remove Hardware utility is a triumph of obscurity and poor design. Why? – I will tell you.

Left click on the Windows Safely Remove Hardware tool icon is the system tray and what do you see:

(click on any picture to enlarge where necessary)

Now unless you have previously assigned drive letters to particular USB drives and then can remember those assignments you have no idea which drive is which.

Or you can right click-

Then left click on the Safely Remove Hardware menu item

(Why – As it is the only item wouldn’t it be a triumph of the programme developers art to have it open the program window straight away?)

This shows the Safely Remove Hardware Window

Well this is even less helpful until you click on the “Display device components” checkbox

and now you get far more information, in fact enough to be confusing but not enough to easily work out which device is which!

Compare this with the USB Disk Ejector utility window:

Now this isn’t perfect (See What Could make this Better? at the end of this post) but it certainly is a lot less cluttered and far more informative.

Why Do I Want It?

I use several different USB drives often at the same time. These include portable drives, memory sticks and flash card readers. Trying to “Safely Remove” one of these often requires opening “My Computer” to help determine which drive is allocated to each drive letter before running the Windows “Safely Remove Hardware” utility. Finally getting totally fed up with this process I searched for a tool that would do the job more efficiently and found USB Disk Ejector.

What Does It Do – The Essentials?

Summary:

• Lists the currently mounted USB drive devices.
• Allows these devices to be ejected (unmounted )

Pros: What’s Good?

Features & Benefits

• Freeware

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Popularity: 15% [?]

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So What is This About?

I have been running Windows Home Server for about 9 months. I always intended to write some posts about my experience but hadn’t got around to it yet. Anyway, I woke up a couple of mornings ago and switched on the PC in my bedroom (while lying in bed – yes how sad is that!!) to be greeted by the Red WHS (Windows Home Server) system tray icon warning me of a “Network health is critical” Problem.

Well nothing startling about that as WHS seems to find I have a disk problem fairly regularly despite the fact that the system is less than a year old and built from good quality components including the disk drives. In fact the health warning relating to disk drives has been going on since the first couple of weeks so I treat it as just another “MS annoyance”. I just take the appropriate remedial action and it goes away (but now I am wondering if it is an indicator of some deeper problems with WHS like the well known data corruption bug!).

So I opened up the WHS Console to find the following:

(Click on screenshots to enlarge if necessary)

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Popularity: 31% [?]

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What Is It?

A very simple and uncluttered utility to measure the distance between two points on your PC or laptop using the mouse. BitRule from Charten allows you to measure in pixels, inches, centimetres or pica units. It also gives the angle between the two points in degrees.

Why Would You Want It?

Screen measurements can be useful to try and determine the distance on a map or the scale of a value on a bar chart or graph. It can also be very useful when laying out web pages for a website or blog.

Why Do I Want It?

I use it for all of the reasons mentioned above. I have also used it with photos to try to estimate distances and heights by relative measurements of near and far objects where one of these has a known height or length.

What Does It Do – The Essentials?

Summary:

• Measures on screen distances
• Gives the angle between points

Pros: What’s Good?

Features & Benefits

• Freeware

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Popularity: 13% [?]

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