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Completely remove programs with Revo Uninstaller

Freeware application Revo Uninstaller makes removing programs from your computer—not just uninstalling, but removing all traces—a quick and painless process. So why would your use Revo Uninstaller rather than the default Add/Remove Programs dialog?

Well, for one, the default Add/Remove is notoriously slow at loading all of your installed apps; it also only runs the installer, which doesn't necessarily eradicate the program to your liking. Beyond that, though, Revo Uninstaller is feature-packed in ways you didn't even know you wanted.

cross-hair.pngOne of my favorite features is "Hunter Mode," which lets you drag a cross-hair onto any application—from the actual window to a system tray icon or shortcut. When you release the cross-hair, you can perform all of the uninstall tasks. For system tray icons, you can even tell the program to stop autostarting. The cross-hair is especially handy if a rogue application is running and you don't know what the hell it is (think cleaning crap from a friend or family member's computer).

Aside from the Uninstall features, Revo Uninstaller has a startup manager, which lets you tweak what apps start with Windows, and a few other handy tools. Granted, you can accomplish much of what Revo Uninstaller does without it, but I've never seen a program that does as much as Revo Uninstaller as easily as it does. This one's found a quick home among my must-haves.

What happens when you tell it to uninstall itself? He He !

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Efficient String Permutation Program.

The following piece of a code is a very efficient use of recursion to find the possible permutation of a string.


public class Permutations {

public static void perm1(String s) { perm1("", s); }

private static void perm1(String prefix, String s) {
int N = s.length();
if (N == 0)
System.out.println(prefix);
else {
for(int i = 0; i < N; i++){
perm1(prefix + s.charAt(i), s.substring(0, i) + s.substring(i+1, N));
}
}
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
String alphabet = "Test";
String elements = alphabet.substring(0, alphabet.length());
perm1(elements);
}
}

Debugging this code might prove to be a little difficult though but excellent logic though.


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Find loops in a linked list.

There are several algorithms floating on the net to detect a cycle/loop in a linked list. The following code detects cycle in a linked list in time O(N) and space O(1).


/*Algorithm : P2 is moving through the list twice as fast as P1.
If the list is circular, it will eventually get around P1 and meet */

public boolean hasCycle()
{
DoubleNode p1,p2;
p1=p2=firstNode; //Start with the first loop

try
{
while (p2 != null) //If p2 reaches end of linked list, no cycle exists
{
p1=p1.next; //Move to next
p2=p2.next.next; //Move to 2 steps next
if(p1==p2)
return true; //p1 and p2 met, so this means that there is a cycle
}
}
catch(NullPointerException npe)
{
//This means that p2 could not move forward
return false;
}

return false;
}

How to reverse a singly linked list in Java ?

Sometimes the solutions are not quite obvious. Search for an algorithm to reverse a singly linked list using Java and you wont find any good hits except for this code.


public void reverse()
{
Node currentNode, nextNode, loopNode;
if(first==null)
return;

currentNode=first;
nextNode= first.next;
loopNode=null;


while(nextNode != null)
{
currentNode.next = loopNode;
loopNode= currentNode;
currentNode=nextNode;
nextNode =nextNode.next;
}

first = currentNode;
first.next = loopNode;

}

This might not be a very intuitive solution at first sight but infact this is a very clever simulation of C/C++ pointers in Java. Credit goes to my wife for this fascinating algorithm.

Another version of this algorithm can be found here. This is a much improved and efficient way of doing this.

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Add tabs to Windows desktop with Stick

Freeware app Stick adds tabs for RSS, calendar, explorer, notes, and the calculator to the Windows desktop. Stick tabs are highly customizable and can be relocated to any part of the screen. Stick leaves a light (10MB) memory footprint and opens Explorer, Calculator, and the calendar much faster than Windows on its own. By setting your tabs to remain on top and to auto-hide, you can have one-click access to some of your most frequently used apps without disturbing your desktop or existing apps. Stick also acts as a keyword launcher (Windows Key + Space) and has hotkeys baked in so you can access your tabs without the mouse. Stick ain't no Launchy, but its speed, light memory usage, and hotkeys make it well worth the college try. Stick is a free download for Windows only.

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Love Food ? Top 5 Recipe Websites

Looking for simple and tasty or exotic and quick or haute cuisine but aren’t sure which are the best places to search for them? Here is a list of the top (well maybe not the ultimate collection but definitely one of the better ones) places on the web for food-connoisseurs, family cooking and hunger-driven lazy cooks.

The thing that stands out about these recipe websites is the fact that all featured recipes are tried and tested and allow for user commenting/reviewing, so you can be assured of the quality of the recipe. Enjoy!

Top 5: Recipe Websites (again in no particular order)

(1) GroupRecipes
Almost 100% user-contributed recipe website that does an excellent job at making huge recipe database easy to digest and browse through. Browse by flavors (spicy, sour, chilly…), images, ingredients (whats in your fridge), popularity, menus, users, and tagcloud.

(2) SimplyRecipes
A wonderful recipe-based food blog where all recipes have been personally tested by either the blogger, her family/friends. Browse recipes by primary ingredients (chicken, seafood, meat…), meal course (breakfast, desert…), diet type (veg., low carb…). The quality of the recipes is reflected in the number of subscribers (over 230k!)

(3) 101CookBooks
This one is for the foodies…the people who love to eat food with their eyes and would like a short intro for each of the recipes. Basically, another excellent recipe-based food blog (2006 food blog winner) where readers can feel a nice personal bond with the blogger through her writing style (a short personal and technical history for each recipe) along with beautiful imagery. Lets you browse recipes by type (appetizers, baked good, mains, etc.)

(4) AllRecipes
Over 40,000 recipes along with complementary extras i.e. nutritional content, user rating and an interesting meal accompaniment tool that lets you search for accompaniments such as side dish/desert/… to this recipe. Other features include recipe videos and related food guides such as healthy eating etc. (Note: website navigation is slightly confusing).

(5) Chow
Apart from recipes gives other foodie related information such as food events, user stories etc. Simply yet efficient recipe browsing method where users can browse through recipes by sides, mains, sweet and drink. Plus insightful video section which gives a good selection of videos on cooking and food etiquette howto’s.

And some more recipe stuff …

 

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Miro - a free, open source Swiss Army Knife of Video Players

miro.png

Miro - free, open source internet tv and video player (formerly Democracy player) has rolled out offering the ability to play any video file, free internet tv, download YouTube videos and has BitTorrent abilities.

Website Simplehelp has a great "introduction to Miro" that's definitely worth a read as well.

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100 Open Source Downloads

100 Open Source Downloads - links up to 100 Open Source programs that can be downloaded. All the downloads are categorized by type as well, making it easy to find what you might be looking for.

Worth a browse to check out the latest and greatest in Open Source.

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Post to Twitter using GTalk

Techreceipes posted an article today on how to use Gtalk as a Twitter client.  Its pretty easy to setup Gtalk to start twittering...here is how :

1. Go to Twitter and login to your account.
2. On the home page, go to the side bar and click the Activate your IM! link.

3. Under Instant Messenger, input your Google Talk username. Make sure that GTalk is selected from the dropdown. Click the Save button.

4. Clicking the link to verify your account didn't work for me. Leave this page open because it contains the series of letters that you will need to send to twitter@twitter.com to verify the account.

5. Open Google Talk.
6. Click the Add button at the bottom of the Google Talk client to create a new contact.
7. Input twitter@twitter.com into the textbox. Click Next.

8. Click Finish.
9. Open a chat session with [i]twitter@twitter.com[/b].
10. For your initial message, input the series of letters that are in the Twitter page that you left open. Submit the message.
You are now ready to Twitter from Google Talk.

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Firefox 3 is almost here.

Mozilla moves Firefox towards its 3.0 release slated for the fall of this year with Gran Paradiso Alpha 6, now available for testers. [via CNET]

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New Quicksilver for Windows app Skylight

Freeware application Skylight is a file and application launcher of the Quicksilver ilk, providing quick access to programs, files, and then some. Anyone who's spent much time with Quicksilver on the Mac knows what a huge productivity boost the wildly extensible Quicksilver can provide.  Skylight looks like the most promising Quicksilver-for-Windows app I've seen yet.  That's not to say there isn't a lot of room for improvement. Here's a few things I'd love to see from Skylight:

 

  • The ability to customize scanned folders
  • More plugins, of course! And more customization in general of folders and filetypes scanned.
  • It looks like Skylight is supposed to have folder browsing capabilities like Quicksilver, but so far it doesn't seem to be implemented. The documentation says navigation up and down a folder structure will use the arrow keys, and I'd love to see Skylight incorporate the backslash like Quicksilver uses to navigate up and down a folder structure.

At this point, I probably wouldn't recommend ditching Launchy in favor of Skylight—mostly because of Skylight's current lack of customization. However, if Skylight continues to develop in the same direction as its currently heading, it looks to be developing more quickly in the direction of a strong Quicksilver-like app for Windows than any alternative I've seen. Keep an eye on this one, folks. Skylight is free, Windows only, requires .NET 3.0.

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Building a BitTorrent Box

While most of our time on the Internet is spent IM’ing, e-mail, or just browsing the Web, you may run in to situations when you need to do some powerful file transfers. If you have got an old computer collecting dust, Why not turn it into a downloading monster? The Nerdica weblog offers an exhaustive guide on how to transform an unused computer into a BitTorrent downloader using Ubuntu.

In this guide, you'll learn how to set a small headless Ubuntu server used to retrieve BitTorrent files, while even saving them to a external USB hard drive that can be disconnected on the go. You even discover how to remotely administer your server from the Web using SSH, VNC, and an inuitive HTML UI, while being able to retrieve files while you're away from home.

Build a BitTorrent Box [Via - Lifehacker - Nerdica]

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Minimize Everything to Tray

Chances are that your taskbar is always cluttered and you hate it and you are helpless. MinimizeToTray Extension can help reducing Firefox and Thunderbird clutter but still, you might want to minimize other application to System Tray to reduce the clutter. There are some cool free application that allow you to do exactly this.

Windows users can save space on their Taskbar by downloading the nifty little program TrayIt. While viewing a maximized window, press CTRL as you minimize it on your taskbar. The program will no longer show up as a regular rectangle on the taskbar, rather, it will be a little icon in your tray. Just double click on the icon when you want to maximize the program again. Try TrayIt 

4t Tray Minimizer minimizes programs to your system tray, much like TrayIt. 4t Tray Minimizer, however, has many other features - such as the ability to 'hide windows' and to launch applications on the desktop through a menu in the system tray. 4t Tray Minimizer adds a 'hide window' and 'minimize to tray' button next to the minimize, close and restore/maximize buttons. 'Hide window' hides the window, not sending it to the tray, and the only way to restore it is to launch the main window of 4t Tray Minimizer. Minimize to Tray, meanwhile, simply minimizes it to the system tray. 4t Tray Minimizer is Windows only, and is available for download as both freeware and commercial software. 

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