Tweak Master's House Of Useful Tricks

Saturday, March 31, 2012

How to apply a tablet screen protector with no bubbles

Well, recently I needed to apply screen protector on a tablet and as it usually is in real life - something you think you'll manage in a snap, turned out to be quite a challenge. I've applied several screen protectors so far, but only on smart-phones, and based on such experience I thought (quite naive) it will be quite easy with tablet too. It turned out my believes completely failed on me since I just couldn't stand seeing those small dust particles under protector. Even there were only few of them, they bothered me. The bottom line is that this process is not too hard to perform, but it rather requires some (more or less depending on other skills you might have) practice.

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How to open command prompt from folder you're currently browsing (in Windows OS)

If for any reason you ever had to instantly open command prompt from folder you're currently browsing using Windows Explorer (ie. for testing of new great batch script you've just created), you know this procedure required you to:
1st) open command prompt (procedure is dependent regarding Windows OS version you're using) and 2nd) to copy and paste path to desired folder in a very "intuitive" way to just opened (legacy) MS-DOS command prompt, because it will (of course) always open in predefined folder which in most cases is far away from the folder you need to be in.

If all this sounds familiar to you, I have some good news - the time has come to finally relax and to let a very simple and cool Windows shell extension take it from now on. This cool utility is called ContextConsole Shell Extension and will enable you to open command prompt from any folder you're currently browsing. Definitely a must have extension!

Friday, March 2, 2012

reCAPTCHA solving methods - Update (2nd)

This post became obsolete, please refer to this post for more informations.

If you've been here before, you might have noticed that I've already written about automation of CAPTCHA solving and applicable methods in this post and afterwards I also wrote about some updates in this post. Well since then some time has passed and some methods became more popular than other so I thought the time has come to make a quick update again.

The best free cloud storage services

I wanted to write a quick post with an overview of free cloud storage services for some time now, but the things kept changing at such speed I decided to postpone it for a bit. Now I'm finally bringing you my thoughts and quick review of free cloud storage providers. I quite well aware of the fact there are a lot of reviews of this type, but I'm not going to list all of them rather I'm going to present you with my narrowest choices of free cloud storage providers regarding offered space, file size limitations, security and supported paltforms (operating systems).

Quick review of free encrypted online storage/sync services

I know that in my (so far few) published posts I've only wrote about different operating system (Windows) tweaks and utilities, but, as once upon a time Microsoft also perceived how Internet is the real thing and will not go away overnight, and therefore implemented certain Internet related services into Windows, it made me think about stepping out-of-my-box. Therefore, driven by my constant need to expand my horizons I went out and sailed on Internets vast space searching for eternal truth. But, hey, before this voyage ends up in some dead-end alley, let me get back on track.

For certain reasons I needed to find a good and free online storage provider. At first I wasn't thinking too much about synchronization possibilities of such a provider since I wasn't in a need for one, but as it will later come up, now it seems like it is a good idea to keep an eye for this feature as well while evaluating all the options. My first concern whenever I think of any online service is just one - SECURITY. This term is also including several other terms like PRIVACY and ENCRYPTION, and each of those also include some very important facts I'll get back to later, when the time will come for it. I don't share nor spread around any data anyone could find very useful, but even such data is important only to me, I want to keep thinking of myself as a VIP and therefore keep off all the prying eyes away from my data.
I think you get the point so I won't go any deeper and I'll just state what I do care about the most and how are they ranked on my internal scale of importance:

Data encryption - any data leaving your local computer/storage should be encrypted before it actually leaves anywhere. I'll get back to it later in more detail, motivated by some rumors which turned to be true regarding some providers still being able to decrypt stored user's data, which is or at least should be very bad thing at least for a normal security aware user.
Secure connection - it is always a good idea to insist on secure HTTP or HTTPS connections between your local computer/storage and online storage provider, even your data is encrypted prior to leaving your local computer/storage.
Amount of online storage space which provider is willing to give for free - the more they give the merrier you should be.
Transfer limits - obviously you and I can't get just about all for free, therefore some online storage providers came with an idea of limiting maximum file size you can upload, number of simultaneous uploads and finally monthly bandwidth you have as a free user. Some very "nasty" limits are mentioned here, and to make things more "interesting" for us free users, online storage providers often like to combine more than one of them at the same time. So I'll do my best to filter all the online storage providers which don't have some or all of the mentioned limitations on free accounts (at least didn't have them in the moment I was writing this).
Transfer management process - how easy (convenient) is way of sending/receiving/syncing data. By this I mean if you can access your shared storage directly form Windows Explorer, can/need to use some kind of storage provider's specific desktop manager (and level of it's operating system integration) or are you left to struggle with pure web browser (maybe Java, not that it's bad) oriented management tool.
Decent connection speed - it is very likely that you will never ever even come close to provider's transfer peek speed, but still since I'm talking about free storage plans very often some providers do limit data transfer speeds for free accounts.

Just out of curiosity, I will mention two more online storage services so called "Social Storage" I've came across in my Internet wandering and which are a bit different than previously mentioned ones. The main difference is they are based on concept of users (which are always online I hope) sharing their spare free storage space and in return getting more or less the same (service dependent) amount of online storage space. If you feel keen for this type of concept, have spare free space on your local storage media and quality 24/7 internet connection feel free to try Onemo or Symform. There are some concerns related to this kind of storage concept primary regarding varying users quality (speed) of Internet connections. Another issue might be regarding data reliability (redundancy) which I hold for a minor or non existent issue since my guess is this kind of service is more like data block based (data dispersion) along with certain level of encryption rather then one user holding all of the data from another user. My personal attitude is not to like this kind of concept, but you're for sure invited not to share my point of view and to try it out. One is for sure - this way you'll get way more storage space than on any other existent storage service.

Since I've started to write this blog post some time but never actually got to publish it I'll do it now. One of the reasons why I decided to wait is the fact a lot of services entered the scene my thinking was pretty simple - what goes up must come down. In other words I've decided to wait and see which services will become popular and which will disappear and which will pop up on the scene after the standards have been set. And I think I've made a good decision as you still should very seriously take into consideration above mentioned fact to look for. So this post will remain strictly informative while you can check out this post and see which free cloud services I like.

CopyPath - Another usefult Windows shell extension

Another small and free Windows shell extension I've came across and found to be useful is named CopyPath. As it's name says it is quite obvious what it does (should do!?) - it simplifies copying of you current browsing folder path by adding this option to Windows shell menu (the one you get when you press right mouse button while using Windows Explorer). Nothing revolutionary, but definitely very useful and if statistically analyzed it will save you 50% (without it you normally need 3 mouse clicks to carry out this action while with this extension installed only 2 clicks are needed) of all the clicks needed to carry out this simple action. This extension is so simple that you will need to install it manually (don't worry installation is quite simple and instructions are provided) and before you do that you need to choose which version you need - x32, x64 or Unicode version. Anyway this little utility can be downloaded here.

Monday, September 26, 2011

Why doesn't my super-turbo-mega-ultra expensive notebook/laptop have a HDD activity indicator?

So, you've finally bought a new notebook/laptop? And of course, before you've actually bought it, you quadchecked all of it's features googl'd out every single review and user comment, right? And you've just unpacked it and stared using it, maybe even connected on external display? But, you just feel like something is missing ... and you finally noticed - your laptop doesn't have a HDD indicator LED! Or even better if it does have one, but manufacturer (I will deliberately not mention which one it is - all of you who have it will know, all other take a guess!) decided to place it on such a "wonderful" place that you at least will need a mirror to see what it's showing.
For all of you reading this and still not quite getting it, ore even better all of you with HDD activity indicator built in your laptops, just keep reading on or just switch to some more interesting topic as this one will not become more interesting that it actually is! The rest of you will know where I'm heading to ...

Windows 7 Network Activity Indicator - Can You Animate It Please?

So, you're a Windows 7 user which knows it's way through Windows 7, right? But as Windows 7 might be by now most advanced Microsoft's operating system, it is just (to keep it low profile) funny how few (more or less) important things feel like unfinished in Windows 7. And I'm talking about things which have been implemented much earlier in previous versions like XP! By now you must be asking what I'm blabbering about, right? OK ...

reCAPTCHA solving methods - Update

This post became obsolete, please refer to this post for more informations.

There has been some time since I've last time updated my blog, but hey it was summer time, right? OK, this will be just a quick update of my previous post about how to automatize reCAPTCHA solving.

How to automate input of Google reCAPTCHA codes on free file hosts

This post became obsolete, please refer to this post for more informations.

If you, for any reason, have a need to download from various free file hosts which have implemented Google's reCAPTCHA method of verification before allowing you to start free download, you probably know how annoying this can become if you need to download more than one file. Not to mention you have to be present and you simply cannot automate downloading process no matter what you try. It is quite obvious why various hosts decided to implement this method - they simply want to force as many people as they can to purchase their commercial and unlimited version of service. But, not all of you have a need to do so, even free service provides much lower download speeds than paid one.