I was playing with open book theme by jbj for crankup. One of the theme options required me to enter Category ID. I searched all the admin pages and couldn’t find the ID for a particular ID. I was able to find the category ID after some googling. In case you are struggling to find the ID for a category, here is how you can find it.

1. Login to your wordpress admin
2. Navigate to Manage -> Categories
3. Click any of the Category and you will see the Category ID in the resulting page’s URL

cuil (pronounced cool) is a new search engine. So what’s special about it?

Cuil was started by a former Google employee along with her husband and few other Google alumni. It promises more relevant search results than Google. I decided to give it a try today and to be honest, I was not that much impressed.

I always first search for my name in every (new) search engine. I decided to do the same here so I quickly typed in “Shoban kumar” and hit the search button. To my surprise (or shock!) I couldn’t find any search result which is related to me. Below is the screenshot

I did the same thing with Google and I loved the results :).

As you can see each and every result in the first page is correct.

OK now.. I thought I will give a try with my blog name. I typed in “crankup.net” (note that I typed in my URl and not just the word ‘crankup’). And just as I expected the results were not up to mark. You can see it for your self.

Personally I will rate cuil at 2/10 (2 points goes to the idea as I have always thought that Google dominated the search world and we need some thing new)

Google search is doing a great job in Gmail, Google reader and most of its services. cuil has a long way to go. They should stop concentrating on marketing cuil and make it a better search engine than Google. Giving us a better search is important and better than boasting “Search 121,617,892,992 web pages“.

Lets hope that cuil will improve in the coming days. Have you used cuil? What are your thoughts?

IamaTechie is writing a interesting series on making your car wifi enabled. Read the first part here

All super heroes are special and they save the world from dangers. But some heroes do a better job than others.  Who is your favourite super hero and why? Lets see who is the “real” super hero.

[polldaddy poll="815004"]

Here is a list of 25 portable applications that you can carry around in your pen drive.

1. 7-Zip : 7-Zip is a file archiver with high compression ratio. Supports RAR, CAB, ISO, ARJ, LZH, CHM, Z, CPIO, RPM, DEB and NSIS file types.
2. Firefox : Mozilla Firefox is a fast, full-featured web browser that’s easy to use. It has lots of great features including popup-blocking, tabbed-browsing, integrated search, improved privacy features, automatic updating and more. Plus, thanks to the PortableApps launcher bundled in Portable Firefox, it leaves no personal information behind on the machine you run it on, so you can take your favorite browser along with all your favorite bookmarks and extensions with you wherever you go.
3. CDex : CDex is a CD-Ripper, extracting digital audio data from an Audio CD. The application supports many Audio encoders, like MPEG (MP2,MP3), VQF, AAC encoders
4. VLC : VLC (initially VideoLAN Client) is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, …) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network.
5. Winamp : Winamp Lite enables you to listen to music, watch videos, rip and burn CDs and much more.
6. FileZilla : FileZilla is a fast and reliable FTP client with lots of handy features. It supports resume on both downloads and uploads, timeout detection, firewall support, SOCKS4/5 and HTTP1.1 support, SSL, SFTP and more, all with an intuitive drag and drop interface.
7. Baby FTP : This Baby FTP server has only the most necessary features and is yet powerful enough to be a basis for a more complex server.

   Features:
   - Supports most RFC959 FTP commands
   - Supports PASV and non-PASV mode
   - Only allows anonymous connections
   - Multi threaded
   - Real time server log
   - Configure home directory (same for all connections)
   - Set permissions for download/upload/rename/delete/create directory

8. Mega Mario : Clone of Super Mario Brothers, which expands or improves upon just about every feature of the original.
9. Faststone : astStone Capture is a powerful, flexible and intuitive screen-capture utility. It allows you to capture anything on the screen including windows, objects, full screen, rectangle regions, freehand-selected regions and scrolling windows/web pages. It has innovative features such as a floating Capture Panel, hotkeys, resizing, cropping, text annotation, printing, e-mailing, screen magnifier and many more.
10. GIMP : The GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is an image editor for photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. It can be used as a simple paint program, an expert quality photo retouching program, an online batch processing system, a mass production image renderer, an image format converter etc. Portable GIMP is a portable package for the GIMP, so you can take your images with you and do your editing on the go.
11. Convert : Convert is an easy to use unit conversion program that will convert the most popular units of distance, temperature, volume, time, speed, mass, power, density, pressure, energy and many others, including the ability to create custom conversions!
12. Angry IP : Angry IP scanner is a very fast IP scanner. It can ping a range of IP addresses to check if they are alive, then optionally resolve hostnames, scan ports, etc. It is useful for network administrators to monitor and manage their networks. Note: AngryIP.exe may trigger warnings by anti-virus software. This can be safely ignored. AngryIP.exe can be safely trusted.
13. Bitcomet : BitComet is a BitTorrent/HTTP/FTP download management software, which is powerful, fast, very easy-to-use, and completely FREE. It contains many advanced features for BitTorrent download and extends its leading BitTorrent technology to HTTP/FTP to accelerate downloading up to 5 - 10 times faster, or more. It supports simultaneous downloads, download queue, selected downloads in torrent package, fast-resume, chatting, disk cache, speed limits, port mapping, proxy, ip-filter, etc. Warning: This app writes some items to the registry, but this does not effect its portability.
14. Opera USB : Opera is a fast and secure web browser that features pop-up blocking, tabbed browsing, integrated searches, built-in email and RSS client etc. OperaUSB is a portable package for Opera that does not write to the registry nor leave any data on the guest machine where it is run.
15. Skype : Skype is the insanely popular P2P IP telephony client that has taken the world by storm. Starting from V1.4, it is now possible to run Skype in a portable manner through new command-line switches.
16. Trillian : Take Trillian, your preferences, and your contact list with you wherever you go. Use a fully functional Trillian anywhere, on any computer with an internet connection instead of online clients with limited functionality such as AIM Express and ICQ Lite.
17. Thunderbird : Portable Thunderbird is the Mozilla Thunderbird email client packaged as a portable app. You can also configure it with GPG and Enigmail to encrypt and sign your email.
18. Open Office : Portable OpenOffice.org is a full-featured office suite that’s compatible with Microsoft Office, Word Perfect, Lotus and other office applications. It’s easy-to-use and feature-rich, performing nearly all of the functions you’d expect in an office suite, but at no cost.
19. AcroPAD : AcroPAD is a simple Notepad-like program with PDF production capability. Handy for quick generation of simple PDF documents.
20. Cmd Prompt : Command Prompt Portable is a simple utility that allows you to have a custom command line setup on any Windows computer you come across. It has built in support for the command line interpreters on both Windows 95/98/Me and Windows 2000/XP/Vista as well as the ability to customize using simple DOS commands by editing the .bat file within CommandPromptPortable\Data\batch after you’ve run it once. You can customize the prompt, colors, window title, columns and more. A basic batch file is included with some simple settings.
21. Resource Hacker : Resource HackerTM is a freeware utility to view, modify, rename, add, delete and extract resources in 32bit Windows executables and resource files (*.res). It incorporates an internal resource script compiler and decompiler and works on Win95, Win98, WinME, WinNT, Win2000 and WinXP operating systems.
22. Dekart Light : Dekart Private Disk Light is free disk encryption software for Windows. This free disk encryption software creates a virtual encrypted disk within a file and mounts it as a real disk. All data encryption is extremely fast, automatic, on-the-fly and with no performance penalty. Private Disk Light uses NIST certified AES 128-bit encryption to protect confidential information.
23. IE Privacy keeper : Whether you are using Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox, IE Privacy Keeper automatically cleans up the browser history once you are done surfing the net. The program will correctly clean up all index.dat files without the need for a Windows restart. IE Privacy Keeper will also take care of your offline (system) activity. Opened or deleted documents, viewed pictures and movies, applications run… Everything is gone forever…
24. Defrag GUI : Power Defragmenter is based on Sysinternals defragmentation “engine”. Basically its just a very advanced GUI for the Sysinternals core application which takes defragmentation process to a whole new level. Very high defragmentation speed, efficiency and ease of use. Such high speed is only available with Sysinternals defragmentation “engine”.
25. HijackFree : a-squared HiJackFree is a detailed system analysis tool which helps advanced users to detect and remove all types of HiJackers, Spyware, Adware, Trojans and Worms.

If you think managing all these applications in your pendrive will be difficult, then try out the USB Drive menu system by dailycupoftech.

We all know that we save a lot of time by using shortcuts. You can save even more by using Keyboard shorcuts. AutoHotKey lets you create your own keyboard shortcuts. Let see how you can configure your windows to open Winamp when you press [Windows]Key and W key.

Download and install AutoHotKey software from here. [Its a free download]

Create a new .ahk file by Right Click - > New AutoHotKey Script and type in the following

#w::
Run, %A_ProgramFiles%\Winamp\winamp.exe
Return

Save the file the file and exit.

Double clic this file to run it.

From now on whenever you press [Windows] Key + W keys windows will run winamp.

Visit here for more hotkeys.

Go Green : Do your bit to save mother earth

In your home

1. Turn off equipment like televisions and stereos when you are not using them.
2. Choose energy-efficient appliances and light bulbs.
3. Save water; some simple steps can go a long way in saving water. E.g.: you should always turn off the tap when you are brushing your teeth. And try to collect the water used to wash vegetables and salad to water your house plants.
4. Let clothes dry naturally. Avoid dryer.
5. Keep lids on pans when cooking to prevent your cooker having to work extra hand. Prefer to use gas ovens, Geysers etc in place of the electric ones.
6. Recycle your paper, glass, plastics and other waste.
7. Plants emit Oxygen. So take home these earth saving friends to live with you.

While on the road

1. Less traffic is less pollution and less petrol consumption.
2. Follow traffic rules and leave left lane, tomorrow we might be the one in ambulance caught in traffic jam
3. Prefer to share your ride to reduce traffic jams and pollution.
4. Prefer to use public transport.
5. Set an example by not littering and cleaning litter.
6. Keep a litter bag in your car and bring one with on day trips in case no waste bins are available.
7. Prefer to turn off engine at traffic signals.

Save wood and paper

1. Always use both sides of a sheet of paper.
2. Use email to stay in touch, including cards, rather than faxing or writing
3. Reuse envelopes. Always reuse paper for making scribbling pads.
4. Share magazines with friends and pass them on to the doctor, dentist or local hospital for their waiting rooms.
5. Use recyclable paper to make invitation cards, envelops, letter pads etc.

Reuse and recycle

1. Use washable nappies instead of disposables if you can
2. Give unwanted clothes, toys and books to charity shops or jumble sales.
3. Use mains electricity rather than batteries if possible. If not, use rechargeable batteries.
4. Use a solar powered calculator instead of one with a battery.
5. Instead of a plastic ballpoint, use a fountain pen with bottled ink, not plastic cartridges.
6. Store food and other products in ceramic containers rather than in plastic wrap.

At your workplace

1. Use printers that can print on both sides of the paper; try to loom into this option when replacing old printers.
2. Use the back of a draft or unwanted printout instead of notebooks. Even with a double sided printer there is likely to be plenty of spare paper to use!
3. Always buy recycled paper – for your business stationary and to use in your printers.
4. Switch off computer monitors, printers and other equipment at the end of each day. Though in standby mode they are still using power – and that adds to global warming.
5. Always turn off your office lights and computer when you go out for lunch or to a meeting.
6. Prefer green roofs, gardens and natural plants in your office.

While shopping

1. Prefer carrying your own bags and avoid plastic usage. Prefer paper or jute bags.
2. Prefer on-line shopping, bill payments and reservations as this will reduce fuel consumption and pollution by not driving to shops/offices.
3. Purchase solar powered products.
4. Send e-cards if you can, rather than buy paper cards.

There are many anti iphone videos and articles in the Internet. Here is one of the best. India is busy getting ready for the arrival of the iphone but do you really think its worth buying it? Think again! There are very nice(really useful) and cool looking phones in the market other than iphone.

For the first time in India (May be in the world) BlogCamp is organised in a House Boat on 16th August. Kerala Tourism is the platinum sponsor for the first Blogcamp in Kerala.

Here is the ink to the official BlogCamp website and here is the list of attendees. The House boat can seat only 150 people so if you are planning to attend the session register here soon.

Here are some of the pictures of the house boat. See you there!

Want to send some one a message in Mission Impossible style?? Now you can do it in 3 easy steps

1. Go to https://privnote.com/
2. Type in your message
3. Send the generated link to the person.

The message self destructs itself as soon as the recipient reads the message.