Sunday 30 November 2008

How to monitor the internet speed ?

If you are on look out for one then online eye an internet speed monitor that is able to measure ,track and analyze the connection.

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We could view the following

  • Speed of the data being transferred at the real-time.
  • Shall analyze and view the historical trend data with bar or line graphs
  • To monitor your internet LAN connections.

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  • Track your internet upload and download over a period of time .Helps us to analyze the usage over a period of time.
  • You would precisely able to find the number of MB the data transferred and should check within the limit if your broad band connection charges for any additional upload or download.

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  • You could also set an alert or caution to your limits.
  • Today the cost of broad band connection is cheap and people who have taken unlimited download connection need not think of having this feature.

Otherwise it is a could tool to consider.

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Friday 28 November 2008

Any TV free 2.24

This is a freeware tool we can download and install in the system and watch TV channels worldwide and FM channels.

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This freeware has been launched very recently.But I could not see much benefits on the TV channels which we surf the reason being to view the most of the channels we need to get the licensee.

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But we could watch some channels like BBC news,Sony TV etc.The FM radio of this tool does a fair job.

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If you want to have a web based access on TV channels .It is just Ok click to download.

Wednesday 26 November 2008

To download Youtube videos.

This is in continuation to my earlier post about the downloading the video files through Mozilla Firefox box browser.You can also use the YouTube downloader a free tool.

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We could able to view the video files through offline from 50 0ther sites as well.It requires adobe flash playerv8.0 or a newer one and Vb6 runtime files.

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You can download and save the YouTube videos in.flv format .It also comes with an option to convert the video files into its original formats.

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But in my test with Vista operating system that option was not working.  But instead of considering the down load url like keepvid you can consider having this s/w.

To download click here

Saturday 22 November 2008

Tips to download YouTube Video through Firefox browser

 

To down load Youtube videos normally I used to copy the you tube url and paste in a download site and then down load.I have a free downloaded FLV player installed in my system to play this video.

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I have noticed some setback with some url not allows to download. Then I have found an interesting tip that we could over come such issues without download a clip just play the video once and then you can save as a FLV video format.

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How to do with the Firefox browser?

 

Step 1:

Watch full Youtube video in Firefox bowser till you see the replay button on the youtube screen and don’t close the firefox browser.
Step2:

Go at following folder D:or C:\Documents and Settings\ADMIN(your system name)\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles (one by one)See the screen shot below

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Step3:
Click single folder there you will get folder “Cache”. click on it. You will find a lots of unknown type files in this folder.

Step 4:

You can view the time stamp of your view and the see the size of the file .You could identify the youtube video with the memory size and the time stamp.(there might be so many small files also available at the cache).

Step5:

Copy that file and paste in the video folder and rename the file with the extension .flv.

Step6:

Play the video with FLV player.If you are with Vista’s latest codec’s package you need not worry for having to install a separate FLV player.

Friday 21 November 2008

Crude and the puzzle

The short and most visible bubble is the speculation and the price hike of Crude and the fall of the crude oil.The analysts predictions expects a fall in the range of 40-45$ a barrel.

The OPEC countries had announced a cut in their production by about 15lac barrels a day a safeguarding measure prevented further free fall.

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See the 2 different news over 6 months period.

Source:Money control.com 
News on 21/11/2008
“Crude prices dropped 7% to below the USD 50 per barrel mark. This is the lowest level since May 2005. Prices slumped as bearish US jobs report intensified concerns of a long and deep global recession and further crushed fuel demand expectations. In after hours access trading, Nymex crude is at USD 48.47 per barrel.

Deutsche Bank is now forecasting prices of crude to continue to tumble to USD 40 per barrel before the end of the year. Traders say if the equity markets continue to decline, one may see watch crude follow on their yields. Falling crude is also a positive for consumers. Right now the national average is USD 2.2 per barrel.”

NEWS Dt july 4,2008

Source:uk.reuters.com.


TOKYO, July 4 (Reuters) - U.S. crude oil futures were steady
on Friday after settling at a record the previous day, when they
also hit an all-time intraday high of nearly $146 a barrel before
trimming gains on the dollar's rise against the euro. * Front-month U.S. crude for August delivery CLc1 was up 4
cents, or 0.03 percent, at $145.33 a barrel on the Globex
electronic trading platform. On Thursday, it settled higher by
$1.72, or 1.2 percent, to a record $145.29, after trading from
$143.22 to $145.85, an all-time intraday high. * NYMEX crude has hit a record for five of the past six
trading sessions. Prices are up 51.4 percent from the beginning
of the year and 103 percent from a year ago.
[ID:nL03150097] * Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi reiterated his belief on
Thursday that the current rally in oil prices was being propelled
by speculators rather than any shortage of crude oil.

The Indian oil ministry has not given any favorable reply about the price reduction.The inflation rate has fall down well within the range of 8.9 as of November 2nd week.Inflation rate has fall down without any price reduction in the fuel price.

Any way the government had planned a provision for the oil marketing companies to a tune of 245lacs crore for the oil marketing companies working at a crude price of 125$ per barrel.Definitely government’s burden is getting reduced by not doing any change but at the same the private oil marketing companies are exploiting this opportunity to their advantage.

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The outlook look like the crude may settle at a price of 60-70USD per barrel foreseeing a period of 6 months.Keeping those parameters in mind the government shall consider reducing the petrol price which in turn substantially reduces the inflation.

The soft target and the victim due to this is  the middle class hard working and the earning revenue generating community .But the government’s  inaction is still a puzzle on this with crude.What is happening really?  

 

 

Wednesday 19 November 2008

Read notify –Email tracking utility

What is Read notify?

Read Notify can track all your outgoing email or you can choose which ones you need to track. Read Notify will send you an instant message letting you know that your email is being read right now. You can also log in to track email sent and see which ones have bounced, which ones have been opened, and how many times the email has been opened.read

How it will be helpful?

Useful to track the location and the time of opening and reading the mail and how many times the mail has been opened .How many times the mail has been forwarded and have an idea who reads the mail.

  • Useful for the marketers /sale agents.
  • To locate the geographical location of the readers
  • Investigative journalism
  • To do spy work.

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We can interpret many data based on the read notify mail receipts. It has many features like notifying the PDF readers etc.

How it should work?

This is based on the input of a test conducted through a Gmail account.

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  1. When we send an email to someone and want to get notified when it is opened, we add the domain name of our Email Reading Notification service to the receiver. (readnotify.com in our demonstration).
  2. When the email is sent it goes through the email server of the ERN service, so they add to it an image or more hosted on their web or ftp server for example.
  3. When we open the email, normally a request is sent to the web or ftp server that hosts the image added to the email. (Gmail -as we saw- protects its users by blocking the display of images by default!)
  4. With the request for the image goes lot of informations about the environment from which it was initiated and the ERN services take advantage of that to build their email tracking system.

Grey area:

Normally read notify mails usually will get past firewalls unless you are emailing to large companies. Some ISP's like Earthlink (spamblocker) will kick it out. Also Gmail will sometimes put it in the spam folder.

Over all it is a very useful utility and can be used judiciously.

How to extend Laptop battery life

There are some points we tend to ignore while using the Laptop particularly the Battery life of Laptop.There are some simple useful tips if we follow that can improve up on the battery life.Battery_laptop

  • Dimming the screen.
  • Cutting down programmes running at the background
  • Using less external devices.
  • Using hard disk drive rather than CD/DVD
  • Hibernating systems instead of stand by mode
  • Optimize your power options according to your needs using control panel options.
  • Avoid heavy multi tasking as much as possible.
  • Defrag your hard disk regularly.
  • Cut down external devices
  • Add more RAM

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Apart from the above please Take care of your battery -  Do not leave a charged battery dormant for a long periods of time.  Once charged, you should at least use the battery at least once every two to three weeks. Also, do not let a Li-On battery completely discharge.

Tuesday 18 November 2008

Kaspersky Mobile secuity

With the advent of the latest technology in the mobiles .The more problems start spooking by the way of virus.Already many viruses mobileexist in the mobile phones.The Kaspersky’s recent mobile security7.0(KMS 7) enters the picture with reputation of being very good antivirus on the Desktop segment category.

 

The features includes the following

  • Net work firewall
  • Anti-Spam (SMS through rules)
  • Anti theft.
  • Set up Scan of every file or data every day/weekly or even more.

Kasper

The packaged CD of KMS 7 offers installers for smart phones based on windows mobile 5.0/6.0, and Symbian OS 9.1/9.2(with series 60v3 UI).

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The soft ware can be purchased through internet and the validity period is for an year.Also this offers a trial period also for mobile security.

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Anti theft feature 

Once the mobile is configured the Anti theft feature can be invoked.If you loose the phone.A specially formatted SMS needs to be sent to your mobile phone number, which will be acted up on by KMS7.It then cleans out your SMS inbox, contacts and personal files.So that your mobile shouldn't stuck to a wrong person.If the thief replaces the SIM,the SIM WATCH  automatically sends SMS to 2 specified phone numbers without the knowledge of the thief.

Can consider having this for your mobile too.

Cost :USD29(Rs1200 approx)

Sunday 16 November 2008

Logmein-Desktop sharing utility

What it is Logmein?

It is a desktop sharing utility and you can share the desktop via a website that allows you to remotely access any pc that you have set up on this website.

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You need to register the pc which you want to remotely access on this website. Once you have done this all you need to do is log on to this website and you will be able to access your chosen computer remotely.


Choosing the remote control option once logged in you will see the desktop of the pc as if you were sat in front of it and open files, read and send e-mails and even hear e-mail notifications!

This site is also helpful if you are having computer problems and you know a computer boffin as they can access your computer from anywhere in the world and fix it for you! 

How it is useful?
We shall keep the monitor on at the workplace and shall access at home.

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Points to note:

  • The computer you want to access has to be switched on and have internet access, if not you will not be able to log in.
  • You can drag and drop files from one desktop to another or use the file manager facility to transfer your files between pc's. Printing is no problem. You can either transfer the files from the remote pc to your pc or print remotely ie choose the printer connected to the pc infront of you and print to that.(Note that is available with paid version) .
  • The remote printing option will not work some times and need to transfer the files to your local machines such times.
  • When some on switch off your computer at the other side it will say that the other computer is offline. 

Like Crossloop this is also a desktop utility but there is no need for some one at the other side only criteria is that the system should be switched on.

Tailpiece:

The company has actually been cooking up an application for the iPhone (and iPod Touch), too, called LogMeIn Ignition. The release version seems to be good and impressive.It works well with the windows machine. Logmein client installed in desktop and able to view its desktop on iPhone's screen. The app allows for viewing the entire scaled-down screen of the remote computer or zooming in to a potion of it, just like you would view a photo or a Web page on the iPhone.

Tuesday 11 November 2008

Syncplicity –File/Data Synchronization services

What Syncplicity?

Syncplicity is a new service in the market of file synchronization services where we already have FolderShare, SugarSync and Dropbox.This services can be synchronised with Google Docs and Facebook.

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The key benefits

  • Real-Time Backup:
  • Sharing made Simple
  • Access anytime, anywhere

· View Multiple Computers one view

If you use multiple computers and keep a track of the changes you have made in which machine has which version of the report that may confuse us .This services help us to synchronise the changes uniformly through all the system.

Syncplicity with multi system:

While installing Syncplicity in the second computer or add new folders to the server, it will offer to sync (download) the files already on the server to the second machine. If you agree, you can tell it where to put the folder. If a folder by the same name already exists in your specified location, Syncplicity asks whether you wish to merge the two. If you don't, you can enter a different location. Sending sharing invitations to multiple colleagues can be time-consuming: For each recipient, you have to click 'Add Someone' and then type in their e-mail address; you can't enter multiple addresses.

 

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Effective versioning::

It preserves different editions of your files as they are synced, added, and removed. You can access an older version of a file by right-clicking the file and examining a list of the versions Syncplicity has tracked since the original upload. The list includes buttons for downloading a version to your local computer or reverting to that version.

 

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Limitations:

  • Presently work with XP and vista presently.(not support linux and mobile)
  • Syncplicity lacks a remote-access feature( but work with Windows' built-in networking and Remote Desktop tools).
  • The free account caps 10000 files and 2GB storage and 2 PCS and limit versioning control and the limitation of the period they keep.(Deletes older documents version over 30days).
  • The paid monthly services for 10$ for an account of 40GB and an addition of 50GB at a cost of 10$.Though the best of features it is quite expensive.

Considering the future needs of effective  memory management to keep the data in a secure place(a bank locker kind of) like this kind of services would be a good option.Might be this kind of memory management services may be a very dependable option with more enhanced capacities in future.

To subscribe syncplicity click here

Monday 10 November 2008

Spin Spotter to check media bias and inaccuracies

What is Spinspotter and what it does?

The spin spotter is an  one online spotter to identify the media bias. Through the tool called ‘Spinoculars’ which sits in the user tool bar(browser), the site allows you to flag certain indications of potential biased reporting

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Not only spotting the biased reporting but as well share the info with others.So that a community can get the truth the news articles.

Users of SpinSpotter also get a Trust rating. Accurately mark instances of bias, and users will vote you up and increase your Trust rating. Inaccurately mark statements of fact as media spin, users vote you down and your Trust rating plummets.

SpinSpotter gives much more weight to an experienced and reliable user — a trusted user’s down vote can counteract thousands of up votes from untrusted users.

The site derives its strenght from the advisory board of prominent US journalist who have set objective rules for what constitutes ‘Spin’ uniquely guided from crowd sourcing and algorithm that constantly learn from users as input.

How to use the tool now?

The tool is in Beta version , right now exclusively a Firefox browser 3 but expected with IE browser soon. ’Spinaculars’ installs in seconds (134K). It only takes a minute to register a username for yourself. 

 

Please see the demo given by the company.

Sunday 9 November 2008

Audacity a sound editing tool

Audacity

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I was on look out for converting the old audio tapes into an MP3 format.I could successfully done and it helped me to displace the cassettes which was cluttering at my shelf. I come to know about this open source program and installed in my system. I was amazed to see the performance of such a nice sound editing software.

What is audacity?

Audacity is a digital audio editor application. Audacity is a digital audio editor and mixing platform, complete with a graphical user interface and cross-platform OS support. It's one of the most popular open-source downloads in the world.

What is the typical use?

It is a very simple audio recording tool which can be added in you computer and with ease of use and with the following features.

  • Importing and exporting WAV, AIFF, MP3 (via the LAME encoder, downloaded separately), Ogg Vorbis, all file formats supported by libsndfile library
  • Version 1.3.2 also supports Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC)
  • Recording and playing sounds
  • Editing via Cut, Copy, Paste
  • Multi-track mixing
  • A large array of digital effects and plug-ins. Additional effects can be written with Nayquist
  • Amplitude envelope editing
  • Noise removal
  • Support for multi-channel modes with sampling rates up to 96 kHz with 24 bits per sample
  • The ability to make precise adjustments to the audio's speed while maintaining pitch (Audacity calls it changing tempo), in order to synchronize it with video, run for the right length of time, etc.
  • The ability to change the audio's pitch without changing the speed.
  • Converting cassette tapes or records into digital tracks by automatically splitting one wav (or the other supported types) track into multiple tracks based on silences in the track and the export multiple option.
  • Multi-platform: works on Windows, Mac OS X, and Unix-like systems (including GNU/Linux and BSD) amongst others.
  • Os supported Windows 98/ME/2000/XP/Vista.
  • Audacity can also be used for post-processing of all types of audio, including podcasts.

Other comments:

Audacity uses destructive rather than non-destructive editing. All effects are applied as permanent changes to the waveform, and are not dynamic or real-time.

Audacity lacks dynamic equalizer controls - equilization must also be applied as a permanent effect.

Audacity does not include support for keyframe-based effects. Support for scrubbing is also not included.

Audacity it will be stored as high memory occupying WAV files in the hard disk.Till such time we export into an MP3 or WMV file.

It is really a great audio editing tool.

For the procedural learning click here

For Audacity down load click

To see the Video demo

 

See how to remix

 

 

Friday 7 November 2008

File shredder a useful tool to shred files beyond recovery

What File shredder does?

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File shredder is a free tool that deletes completely or not giving a chance to extract the data even though it deleted from the recycle bin and fear from the hard drive that it can be recovered.

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It enables you to delete files beyond recovery, using multiple passes, DoD 5220-22.M or the Gutmann method. The program can wipe individual files or entire folders (with optional subfolders), and also integrates with the right-click menu for convenient access from within Windows Explorer. File Shredder can also wipe the free disk space on selected drives, allowing you to erase traces of files that have been deleted previously by using standard deletion methods.

What it does?

 

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To remove, or shred files permanently without any trace from your system you have to use a program that is capable of rewriting the files with random series of binary data multiple times. This process is often called shredding. That way, the actual content of the file has been overwritten and the possibilities to recover such a shredded file are mostly theoretical.

You have a choice of five different shredding algorithms. It's as easy a program to use as you can imagine. Just choose your files, tell the program to shred them, and they'll be gone forever.

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It flushes out the old data  completely from the  hard drive.During the flushing process it would use the memory space of the hard disk

This free tool was recommended by magazines like PC world etc.

To down load the tool please click here.

Thursday 6 November 2008

About Wealth and way to riches

I was just reading Dr Jospeh murphy’s power of subconscious mind and I was impressed by this particular page and lines about money.

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STEP UP THIS WAY TO RICHES.

  1. Be bold enough to claim that it is your right to be rich and your deeper mind will honour your claim.
  2. You don’t want just enough to go around .You want all the money you need to do all the things you want to do and when you want to do them. Get acquainted with the riches of your subconscious mind.
  3. When money is circulating freely in your life, you are economically healthy. Look at the money like the tide and you will always have plenty of it. The ebb and the flow of the tide is constant. When the tide is out you are absolutely sure that it will return.
  4. Knowing the laws of your subconscious mind, you will always be supplied regardless of what form money takes.
  5. One reason many people simply make ends meet and never have enough money is that they condemn money.What you condemns takes wings and fly away.
  6. Don’t make a god of money .It is only a symbol. Remember that the real riches are in your mind. You are here to make a balanced life –This includes acquiring all money you need.
  7. Don’t make money as your sole aim.Claim wealth, happiness , peace,true expressions and love and personally radiate love and good will to all.Then your subconscious mind will give you compound interest in all the fields of expression.
  8. There is no virtue in Poverty. It is a disease of mind, and you should heal yourself of this mental conflict or malady at once.
  9. You are not here to live and hovel, to dress in rags or to go hungry. You are here to lead a life in abundant.
  10. Never use the term “filthy lucre” or ‘I despise money” You loose what you criticise. There is nothing good or bad, but thinking of it in either light makes it so.
  11. Repeat frequently I like money I use wisely, constructively and judiciously .I release it with joy, and returns to thousand fold.”
  12. Money is not evil any more so than copper, lead, tin or iron which you may find in the ground.All evils is due to ignorance and misuse of mind powers.
  13. To picture the end result in your mind causes your subconscious to respond and fulfil your mental picture.
  14. Stop trying to get something for nothing. There is no such thing as free lunch. You must give to receive. You must give mental attentions to your goals and ideas and enterprises and your deeper mind will back you up. The key to wealth is application of the laws of the subconscious mind by impregnating it with the idea of wealth.

To  get the details of his Books  please click.

Wednesday 5 November 2008

Snipping Tool Vista

In my earlier post I have mentioned about Z screen automatic screen shot tool. Here for those who are having above version of Vista Basic have the Snipping tool. This tool shall be used for capturing screen shots.

 

"You can capture a portion of your screen so you can save, annotate, or share the image"

I would say most of the Vista users may not have aware of this functionality that they have with their system.

To go to the Snipping tool

Open the Snipping Tool. Click Start>All Programs>Accessories. The Snipping Tool window will open and a white overlay appears over the screen.

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Select the type of snip. Click on the arrow next to the New button and and choose from the options

 

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  • Free-form snip. To draw irregular shapes and lines, such as triangles and circles.

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  • Rectangular snip. Draw a custom and precise line by dragging the cursor around an object to form a rectangle.

 

  • Window Snip. Capture the browser window or dialog box in a snip.

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  • Full-screen snip. Capture the entire screen, such as desktop background.

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Capture the snip. Use the mouse or tablet stylus to drag around or select an area or program for snipping.

You can annotate and share the image. The snip will be automatically copied to the mark-up window. The toolbar hosts options for saving, creating, copying, e-mailing and editing the snip. I would say this is a slight set back with this option the images are copied are not set to any predefined folder /no autonaming and Saving feature when we do multiple screen shots. If you compare this feature Z screen edges out.

To save a snip, press the Save Snip button. In the dialog box enter a name for the file and choose a format if need be.

Annotations in the Snipping Tool include the ability to draw/write with a customizable pen, use a highlighter and clear selections with the eraser. These are simple to use tools for minor edits.

To share a snip, click the arrow on the Send Snip button and select an option from the menu.

To turn off the white overlay projected on the screen when the Snipping Tool, click Options. Clear the check box Show screen overlay when Snipping Tool is active.

To assign a shortcut key to the Snipping Tool, right click the Snipping Tool icon, click Properties and select the Shortcut tab. Enter your preference in Shortcut key.

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Snips can be saved in a range of formats including HTML, PNG, GIF and JPEG.This a plus point where Z screen we have only JPG and PNG formats.

Any how we can do some gimmicks with this tiny application for Sure.

Tuesday 4 November 2008

Do you want Automated Screenshots then it is Z screen

Z screen

SS-20081103233555 Do you want to take automated Screen shots.Have you ever felt a pinch of feeling that when ever you take a screen shot you need to open the MS Paint and then paste it .When ever you want to take screen shots continuously you cant do the laborious process to Paint and paste the screen shots. If you are looking for one like me then you can consider going for using Z screen which performs the job well.

It is an open-source screen capture program that allows for region/window/full-screen screenshots.

  • It would take a screen shot and store in a folder path by default or we can set our own destination folder path. It saves in the folder path with custom naming conventions with variables(%mi to retrieve the current minute (or %t to get the title of the active window for instance)

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  • It can FTP screenshots and put the URL in your clipboard in a single keystroke. Then we can share the url path to any one online instantly. Ie when saving remotely the URL is copied into clipboard with a single keystroke so that a user may paste that link via irc, email, im, etc.The default destination has been taken as Imageshack or Clip board.It has been confirmed by the coder that he is been doing the changes with FTP or File option instead.

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  • It can also interface with image editing software. It is a C#.NET 2.0 program hosted on Sourceforge.net and built by BrandonZ (inf1ni).

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  • It also can interface with image editing software such as Microsoft Paint, Paint.NET or Adobe Photoshop so that editing may be done before a screenshot is uploaded, saved, or put in clipboard.
  • ZScreen uses PNG and JPEG. It uses PNG for anything below 350KB and then switches to JPEG after that barrier.

 

  • Here is the entire process of taking a crop shot with no steps left out. Press your hot key (control + shift + l for instance), click your left mouse button once and drag down and right, and release. Instanteously paste into a chat window (control + v for instance) and press enter.

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Please note the key buttons

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There are other softwares available but they are shareware and paid one like

Ashampoo magical snap,My screen recorder,Gladwin, Screen discoverer,Photo snapper,Vidi windows, Cap True etc.

ScreenShot002 I have tried with Photosnspper with a 30days trial version .It captures the photshots automatically within a preset time and it would cost around 24USD.Also Gadwin in the trial version the screen shots are water marked but it also does a very fair Job.

Gadwin

Gadwin

Any one who wish to have an automated screen shot in their system shall always consider this. In the beta version  it does the job Very well.

Want to down load Z screen.