Track PC Power Consumption With Microsoft Joulemeter

Track PC Power Consumption With Microsoft Joulemeter: "

Tracking a PC’s or Laptop’s power consumption can be helpful in several ways. It can for instance be used to analyse power usage to reduce the energy bill or find ways to increase a laptop’s battery life by reducing the overall power usage.

Microsoft Joulemeter is an experimental program for Windows that can track the PC power consumption. It is compatible with desktop and mobile computers.

The application places an icon in the Windows system tray on startup. A click on that icon displays the main interface where the power consumption and statistics are displayed and constantly updated.

The power consumption is divided into base, cpu, disk and monitor which are added to get a total power consumption. The application currently is not measuring the gpu’s power consumption which – on modern computer systems – uses lots of power.

It also has to be noted that the values are estimations if the application is installed on a desktop computer. The connection of a WattsUp power meter and the calibration module of Joulmeter is said to return accurate statistics.

Laptop users do not need a WattsUp meter. They simply have to pull the plug if the laptop is at least 75% charged to get more accurate power date.

Microsoft Joulmeter is an interesting program for Windows that can track a computer’s power consumption. The software can be downloaded from Microsoft Research.

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Post tags: microsoft joulemeter, microsoft software, pc power consumption, power consumption, windows software

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Duplicate Music Files Scanner Similarity

Duplicate Music Files Scanner Similarity: "

If you are like me you probably have a big music collection on your PC. Mine was created by ripping music CDs, recording streaming Internet radio and downloading music from the Internet, all perfectly legal of course. It is likely that duplicate music files exist in large music collections that have been build from different sources.

A duplicate file scanner like Similarity can aid in the detection of duplicates to free up disk space and make the music collection more accessible.

Similarity uses three different detection types for finding duplicate music files. It looks at the content, music tags and an experimental networks mode which basically utilizes P2P technologies to discover duplicates.

Usage of Similarity is pretty straightforward. You point the program to one or multiple directories and hit the start button afterwards. Supported are local directories, network directories, removable storage devices and Windows 7 libraries.

The application then scans all music files in the selected directories, a process that can take a while depending on the number of music files and the speed of the hard drive, memory and processor.

Similarity scans several music formats including mp3, wma, ogg, flac and wav and supports ID3, WMF and Vorbis music tags.

The results listing displays the potentially duplicate music files. Files are listed with their path and name, the percentages that they are similar in content (using sound analyzing and not byte to byte comparison), tags or precise, duration and size.

The standard parameters for detecting duplicate music files will result in lots of false positives. The program came up with about 7500 duplicate music files after scanning 4800 songs.

It is recommended to change the lower thresholds in the Tools > Options menu to avoid this. Another possibility is to sort the duplicates using the content, tags or precise column so that the files with the greatest similarities are displayed on top.

Similarity not only finds identical music but also different versions of a song. This is the main reason why the initial scanning variables have been set to 75%. This basically means that songs that match a 75% similarity in content or tags will be displayed as duplicates.

You can adjust sensivity of searching criteria to find exact or similar files. In this way it is possible to identify similarly titles with smaller differences. Duplicate files can be deleted or browsed. The list of duplicate files can be sorted, exported to playlist, and acted upon.

Other features of the duplicate music files scanner are a tag editor, tag and file renaming tool and exporting results into playlists.

Similarity is compatible with 32-bit and 64-bit editions of the Windows operating system. The software can be downloaded from the developer’s website.

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© Martin for gHacks technology news, 2010. | Permalink | Add to del.icio.us, digg, facebook, reddit, twitter
Post tags: duplicate music files, duplicate-files, music, music files, similarity, windows software

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Project Emporia: Microsoft e l'analisi dei social network

Project Emporia: Microsoft e l'analisi dei social network: "

L’approccio di Microsoft ai social network avviene seguendo canali molto diversi tra loro: quello forse meno evidente è legato agli investimenti su Facebook quando nel 2007 la multinazionale acquistò l’1,6% della piattaforma per $240 milioni. Tenendo conto di ciò, sono tre le vie perseguite da Redmond per accostarsi al web 2.0: la prima è Windows Live, che permette da tempo d’integrare sul profilo utente i più disparati servizi esterni.

Un secondo avvicinamento riguarda Bing, che da un lato contribuisce alla ricerca di Facebook e dall’altro implementa vari mashup di Twitter. In ultimo, Microsoft lavora assiduamente sui social media attraverso FUSE Labs — noto per la creazione di Docs.com (o, più semplicemente Docs). Dopo la nascita di Spindex è un altro progetto a fare “capolino”: Emporia è sostanzialmente un aggregatore di stream recuperati dai trending topic di Twitter.

Quanto FUSE Labs intende predisporre col progetto Emporia, ancora in fase di alpha preview, è una sorta di playground alla Google Reader che agevoli la consultazione degli argomenti popolari su Twitter introducendo una forma di “like” alla Facebook. Non è necessario disporre di un account sul famoso servizio di microblogging, ma gli inviti per Emporia sono ancora pochi: l’uso di Silverlight 4 limita molto la diffusione della piattaforma.

Project Emporia: Microsoft e l'analisi dei social network é stato pubblicato su downloadblog alle 08:00 di domenica 30 maggio 2010.

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Drum machine su internet: Monkey Machine

Drum machine su internet: Monkey Machine: "

Se siete appassionati di musica, su internet potrete trovare tantissime risorse per accedere ai vostri brani musicali preferiti. Ci sono infatti servizi web di ottima qualità, che permettono di ascoltare in streaming la musica che…"

Mettere a fuoco le foto sfocate con Focus Magic

Mettere a fuoco le foto sfocate con Focus Magic: "

Quante volte vi sarà capitato di scattare una foto con la propria fotocamera digitale e successivamente scoprire che è venuta sfocata, prima di eliminarla definitivamente possiamo provare a mettere a fuoco la foto e sperare che la qualità sia migliore.



Per eseguire questa operazione non è necessario utilizzare costosi programmi ma può essere fatto con un software gratuito e scaricabile direttamente da internet, si chiama Focus Magic e il suo unico obbiettivo è proprio quello di mettere a fuoco le foto sfocate.

Nell’immagine in alto a questo articolo vengono mostrati alcuni esempi di immagini messe a fuoco, ovviamente il risultato non è perfetto ma almeno la qualità dell’immagine aumenta rispetto a quella originale. Una volta scaricato Focus Magic dobbiamo installarlo e infine avviare il programma, successivamente carichiamo la foto sfocata e andiamo a selezionare dalla barra dei filtri la funzione “Focus“, ora non ci resta che cliccare sul bottone a forma di semaforo e attendere che il processo sia finito, è possibile settare varie opzioni per avere una migliore qualità dell’immagine. Il programma è disponibile gratuitamente in inglese sia per Windows che per Mac OS.

Scarica gratis: Focus Magic.

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Walking On Water

Walking On Water: "Thank you to Tom Furman for posting this to a forum I frequent.

In my younger years, I worked as a life guard. After closing, we would put the flexible pool covering over the water and have contests to see how far we could run before sinking - the technique that worked w. it (running "lightly" with quick feet) seems to be what they are using here. We never thought to actually try it on bare water!!! Amazing. :)

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Gestire L’Hardware Del Computer Con Un Live CD

Gestire L’Hardware Del Computer Con Un Live CD: "

Sappiamo tutti quanto possano essere utili i Live CD (quei CD in grado di rimettere a posto un computer anche quando questo non parte), tant’è che sono oramai tantissime le software house che hanno rilasciato un loro Live CD. Quello che vi presentiamo oggi è un Live CD che utilizza un’interfaccia piuttosto spartana, accessibile ad utenti smanettoni o che hanno dimestichezza con l’interfaccia DOS.

Come gestire l’hardware del computer con un live CD

Si tratta di Ultimate Boot CD. una distro Linux contenente una serie di software free per la gestione dell’hardware e il rilevamento e rimozione di virus: il funzionamento è quello di ogni altra Live CD, per cui una volta masterizzata la iso bootabile, basterà avviare il computer con il disco inserito e fare il boot da CD.

A questo punto si aprirà il menu di Ultimate Boot CD, con tutto l’elenco dei tool integrati, includenti utility per la gestione delle partizioni, il rilevamento di errori sull’hard disk, test per la Ram e per la CPU ecc… I tool integrati sono davvero tanti e tutti freeware, ma utilizzabili tramite l’interfaccia DOS, il che fa di Ultimate Boot CD un software non alla portata di tutti gli utenti.

Per il rilevamento e la rimozione di malware è integrata la suite di Avira e antimalware toolkit.

Maggiori informazioni

Sito ufficiale di Ultimate Boot CD

Download

Guida perusare Ultimate Boot CD dalla pen drive (in inglese)

© 2008 Ziogeek.com

Tag: gestione hardware, Hardware, live cd

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Шикарно

Шикарно: ""

MeeGo 1.0 for netbooks and N900 now available to download

MeeGo 1.0 for netbooks and N900 now available to download: "

You've seen it teased, and now it's time to shelve whatever you had planned for this evening (or morning, depending on your current coordinates) and slap the first bona fide 1.x MeeGo release onto whatever device you've got handy. As of right now, MeeGo v1.0 for Netbooks and v1.0 for Nokia N900 are available for download, with the former supporting Atom-based machines and the latter supporting... well, we'll let you take a stab there. The API that's being released includes Qt 4.6, and while the current SDK is tailored for netbooks, the next version -- slated to hit devs in June -- will support 'touch-based devices, such as handsets and tablets.' We're also told that v1.1 will be outed in October, with the development tree already being open. We're certainly digging the layout shown here at a glance, but why not give that source link a visit and find out how it suits you in real life? We heard Snooki totally digs it, too.



[Thanks, Ernst]

MeeGo 1.0 for netbooks and N900 now available to download originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 26 May 2010 18:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | MeeGo, MeeGo Blog | Email this | Comments

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Paragon Drive Copy Review

Paragon Drive Copy Review: "

Paragon Software is known for an extensive catalogue of applications related to backup, hard drives, virtualization and data recovery. They release new versions of their programs each year and often give away older versions for free for a limited period of time.

Drive Copy 9.5 Personal is offered for free today at the Giveaway of the Day website. Some users might believe that Drive Copy is a backup software but it is listed under virtualization at the Paragon website.

Drive Copy can be used to create a virtual clone of the PC. This includes all data on the PC including the operating system, drivers, settings as well applications and files.

Drive Copy supports two virtual file formats: VMWare and MS Virtual PC. The user needs the software from the developer of the virtualization solution to use the virtual clone of the PC.

Drive Copy 9.5 Personal is offered as a 32-bit and 64-bit edition at the Giveaway of the Day website. Installation involves the usual registration at the Paragon website to receive the product key and serial number to register the product. This is done during installation.

Users can open the registration page for Drive Copy 9.5 right here to request the license information while they are downloading the virtualization software.

The Drive Copy interface lists the available tasks at the right hand.

• Migration: Migrate to another hard drive, adjust OS to new hardware
• Migrate to virtual machine: Migrate from a physical to a virtual machine
• Disk Copy and imaging: Copy partition, clone hard disk, create a compressed image of a hard drive
• Rescue and recovery: Burn recovery CD, undelete partition, file transfer wizard, log saver

Migration

The Migrate to another hard drive option allows the user to move the operating system, all files and settings from one hard drive to another on the same computer. This can be helpful if a new hard drive has been bought and connected to the computer that is either faster or more space than the old one. It could for instance be used to move the operating system to the new hard drive to get rid of the old hard drive at all in the end. All contents on the target disk will be overwritten.

Adjust OS to new hardware has to be used if the user connects a migrated operating system to another computer. This process makes the OS compatible with the computer hardware it was connected to.

Migrate to a virtual machine

This option basically creates a virtual image of the current operating system and data so that it can be used in a virtual environment.

Disk Copy and imaging

The copy partition option can be used to copy a hard drive partition to unallocated space on the same or a different hard drive.

Clone hard disk will create an exact copy of a hard disk to a different disk. All contents on the target disk will be overwritten.

Create a compressed image of a hard drive

This creates a compressed image of the hard drive which can be restored at any time using the Recovery CD. This compressed image cannot be used in a virtual environment.

Rescue and recovery

The user should start by burning the recovery CD which aids if something goes wrong.

Undelete partition can recover a partition that has been accidentally deleted.

The File Transfer Wizard can be used to copy files and folders from images.

Verdict

Paragon Drive Copy offers several interesting features. The option to migrate the operating system to a new hard drive or new computer system while adjusting the OS to the new hardware can be indispensable if a new hard drive or PC have been purchased.

Paragon Drive Copy 9.5 can be downloaded from the Giveaway of the Day website for free today. The developer website contains additional information about the software.

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© Martin for gHacks technology news, 2010. | Permalink | Add to del.icio.us, digg, facebook, reddit, twitter
Post tags: drive copy, drive copy personal, gotd, migrate, migrate data, paragon drive copy, windows software

"

Create HTML Signatures Right Inside Gmail

Create HTML Signatures Right Inside Gmail: "

This tip describes how you can create sleek and professional looking HTML signatures for your outgoing Gmail messages right inside Gmail itself without requiring any extensions or add-ons.

HTML Signatures for your Google Email

Gmail does support email signatures but the problem is that it limits you to plain text – you can’t add graphics (like your company’s logo) to the signature and there’s absolutely no support for HTML so you can’t use different font styles or colors for the signature text.

There are workarounds. For instance, you can create an email signature in Outlook or some HTML editor and then copy-paste the whole thing to your Gmail message. Or you can get one of these browser add-ons to create rich HTML signatures directly on the Gmail /Google Apps website.

There’s a third-option as well – it’s easy, it’s fun and doesn’t require extensions. Best of all, you can create multiple signatures for the same Gmail account and use them depending on who you are corresponding with.

Gmail Signatures Step-by-Step

Step 1: Go to Gmail Settings –> Labs and enable “Canned Responses” as well as “Inserting Images.”

Step 2: Compose a new message in Gmail and create a signature just like you would compose any other email message. Be creative!

You can either upload logos and icons* from the computer or use images that are already on the web. I suggest the former style as that will permanently embed the image into your email signature.

[*] You can find images of icons through Google Image Search. Go to Advanced options under image search and type 12 for height and width (use 16px if you are looking to add slightly bigger icons). While optional, you may also select the filetype as PNG or GIF for transparent backgrounds -- see example.

Step 3: Once your happy with the formatting and layout of your new “HTML signature,” go to the Canned Response menu and Save – give some logical name like “Personal” for a signature that you want to attach to your personal emails.

Now whenever you are composing a new message in Gmail or replying to an existing message, just select the relevant signature from the Canned Responses drop-down and it will be inserted inline as in this screenshot.

See this page for additional Gmail tips & tricks. Thanks @Ree and @Asfaq.

Create HTML Signatures Right Inside Gmail

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

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Train Near Miss

Train Near Miss: "That photograph must be pretty damn important...

________________________________________

Here's another...Mere seconds from a major fail!

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