Shahid Online - Tech Corner

Ever since Sun MicroSystems released the code to StarOffice, it kicked up a storm in the open source world and we saw the birth of OpenOffice (OOo). It is not about being open source, but this broke down the barriers of sharing documents and collaboration. Microsoft upped the ante with the recognition of collaboration for business and release a free service - Microsoft Office Live Workspace - which is currently in Beta. However, open source has given us a reason to shun the offerings from Microsoft and seek alternatives. In this article I intend on presenting this to you. Office Alternatives First off, what are the alternatives to Microsoft Office? The first choice is (obviously) OpenOffice (OOo). This application is a complete office suite to compete with Microsoft Office: Microsoft Word = OpenOffice Writer Microsoft Excel = OpenOffice Calc Microsoft Access = OpenOffice Base Microsoft PowerPoint = OpenOffice Impress Microsoft Visio = OpenOffice Draw (kind of, but is a welcome a...

Google has recently upped the ante for its presence on the web.  With the recent beta of Google Chrome, Google is contending against Mozilla Firefox and Micorosoft Internet Explorer. To quote from Google, it is intended to be a  browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier. After trying out the beta, I see that this goal is very realistic.  The first thing I noticed is the very fast start up time of the browser and to be greeted with a very nice (and easy) design of the interface. So don't wait any longer... go try it out. http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en-GB/features.html?hl=en-GB&brand=CHMG&utm_source=en-GB-hpp&utm_medium=hpp&utm_campaign=en-GB

While Adobe Reader is common for reading PDF the popular (and powerful) file format for sharing files over the Internet, it is not the only one. After every version it slowed down my system, got slower and started taking up alot of resources. Instead of wasting time in looking at ways to speed up the reader, I took into my own hands to find alternatives. Here's what I found: Sumatra PDF - A open source PDF viewer of a minimilistic design. It is very lightweight and loads up very fast. The bonus is that it has been designed for portable use. Foxit Reader - A free PDF viewer and printer also of a small size. It can convert a PDF to a text file. It also starts up quite fast. Cool PDF Reader - Going by its name, it attempts to be a cool way to view and print PDFs. It can convert Convert PDF files to BMP, JPG, GIF, PNG, WMF, EMF, EPS. PDFescape - A free online tool that can act as your PDF reader, editor, form filler and form designer PDF Hammer - Another online tool that all...

You may have noticed recently a new search engine called Cuil (pronounced 'Cool'), a Irish word which means knowledge - so they claim on their website. This search engine intends on outgoogling Google themselves. Formed by former Google employees Cuil apparently 'combines the biggest Web index with content-based relevance methods, results organized by ideas, and complete user privacy' The founders boast that their 1.2 million web page index is larger than Googles and Microsoft, and that the index orders results by content as opposed to popularity (the Google way). But what really sticks it out is that Cuil does not keep any personally identifiable information, which is appealing to those who are concerned of Google's attitude to personal data. I am impressed by the method of how it lists out the results and allows you to filter them. Definitely, joining my bookmarks. Check it out at www.cuil.com

I was approached by a colleague, who was trying to install some software that I trained him on, and told me that he could not find Component Services on his machine. Doing the usual, I ran through the steps to get Administrative Tools in the Start Menu and pointed him there - for Windows XP. He told me that Administrative Tools is present but there's no Component Services under it, and that he's using Windows Vista. However much I hate Vista, I still have to help my colleague and noticed that there is no direct shortcut to it in Windows Vista. So for anyone else who needs to know: bring up the Run dialogue and type in comexp.msc .

With the plethora of sites out there with information on creating Batch processes, it's easy to get overwhelmed and confused over the series of DOS commands. I have a Batch process which restarts a hungry service daily, only to ensure that it cleans up the memory (which it doesn't do so well). The next requirements is for the Batch process to backup the service's log file... with the date. The command that does this for me is: %date:~-4,4%-%date:~-7,2%-%date:~0,2% log.txt This creates the filename in the following format: 2008-06-02 log.txt If you are including this in long path names delimited with quotations ("), it will still work. Just include the command as if it's part of the filename.

Just recently, my company got their Network support guy email Calendar entries to everyone so that they can update their local Outlook Calendar with details of public holidays in the UK. What a time waste, particularly when not all the days have been mentioned. As a time saver, go to Tools -> Options in the menu. In the dialogue that appears click on Calendar Options and then Add Holidays . In the list make sure your country is selected (or add another country if you like) then click OK . Click through all the OK s to get out of the Options dialogue and you will find that you have all the public holidays in your calendar.