Links

Continuing the Interesting Find series . Here are the things I was intrigued by: “ Honey Encryption ” - A new approach to encryption beats attackers by presenting them with fake data. Securing the Smart Home, from Toasters to Toilets - It is afterall the era of BigData and Internet of Things (IoT). Bizarre attack infects Linksys routers with self-replicating malware. Bing Code Search for C# - right from within Visual Studio - a boon for the lazy developers (yay!). Better beef up your Legal teams as well - how will one control IP violations at the code level - not quite sure. Visualisation of data is not only about ‘prettying up’ your BI reports, but it can actually also save lifes ! Oakland the city that told Google to bugger away ! Is this the start of a revolt? If you shop at Tesco.com and also have a Clubcard then you were aware that they were hacked ? What is hilarious, and, very poor the way they handled this and the lack of understanding. Want to see a glimpse of that? See this Twitter conversation . You like Pineapples? You can eat one; and you can also use one to break website security - very easily! Scary stuff. Microsoft MS-DOS/Word Source Code Gems - just awesome comments! Raspberry Pi car computer - enough said! Absolutely fascinating! Most Sophisticated #Android bootkit malware ever detected; Infected Millions #Security

Here are the interesting finds of this time around. IDA - A cool debugger which runs on most platforms and different from the MS variety. TypeScript - as the name suggests, it is strongly typed JS which compiles down to standard JS! This can only be good I think given all the crazy things one can so in JS. More details here . Can you hide anything from NSA? TV Tuners - did you know they can let you spy - who knew? grepWin - a powerful regex-based search and replace tool - and can work across multiple files. Twine - is a wireless sensor block tightly integrated with a cloud-based service. What all things one can do with Twine? Here are a few examples for inspiration . Visual.ly - tell your story visually; good resource for infographics and data visualisation Can an $11,111 coffee pot turn out a better cup of joe? What the Internet of Things (#IoT) needs to become a reality? Freescale has an interesting paper (pdf) on it. High expectations Asian Fathers - enough said! How to be a hacker ? 14 Kickstarter projects to watch out for in 2014 Alloy.UI - a really cool HTML and JavaScript library with lots of useful UI features . Builds on top of YUI3 and Bootstrap. DON’T PANIC - The Facts About Population . Very interesting, especially the visualisation. You can find more on that here . As sites and services become product aware, the age of pervasive commerce begins (remember Minority Reports ?).

Been a while since I posted on this series. But starting it again. Here are the latest few interesting finds I have stumbled across. Of course these are in no particular order. UTF 8 Everywhere - Argues the cause on why UTF-16 and Unicode is a default poor choice except for specialized libraries, which deal with text. Data discrimination for the poor - Means that if you are poor (i.e. not rich), then the internet you see and know might be different from the others. Big Data discrimination. Customer feedback to a Tour Operator - It’s enough to make you cancel your reservation. Gartner IT Symposium Factoids - Very cool to see the data on mobility and where we seem to be heading. OpenRemote - open source for IoT (Internet of Things) - think of it the glue stitching everything together . Generation Game - Businesses are worrying about how to manage different age groups with widely different expectations. Overtaxed and over there - Loopy tax rules spur expats to renounce their American citizenship. Greenhouse (alpha) - a creative coding toolkit for spatial interfaces. Dipping your hands in a data pool - with a LeapMotion Tesla Model S Rest API - enough said. :) Cozy Cloud - private cloud for your apps, data, which you control and this is open source.

Next post in the interesting find series. Speccy - an advanced and very cool System Information tool for your PC. Channeling Earth - Rivers Seen From Space The SSD Relapse - Understanding and Choosing the Best SSD Turn off laptop screen – every machine does not have an option to switch off the screen (say at night) and this small app is perfect for those situations – very handy at night. How to save and share ridiculously large files – well the name says it all. :) SQL Server I/O Internals – if you wanted to know how SQL Server handles I/O then this is a very interesting read. Clustered Tables vs Heap Tables – interesting to understand the comparisons in SQL Server (especially if/when you will be dealing with SQL Azure). Cloud Computing footprint – is it time we started measuring our digital footprint just the same as we have our carbon footprint? Zettabytes – Petabytes is so yesterday; hello Zettabytes ! I wonder how one indexes that? Let me Google that for you – perfect for when you get a question from a few lazy people. Let me Bing that for you – same as above, except this uses Bing. 15 RDP Solutions for Linux – good write up comparing the various options you have if you want to RDP to Linux from Windows/Mac. Ninite easy PC Setup - Install multiple apps at once without toolbars or clicking Next. Quite handy if you have less-technical friends/family. :)

Next post in the Interesting Find series. [InstEd It](InstEd - Make packaging more productive) - an interesting tool that allows one to edit MSI files - handy when you don’t want to install the full Windows SDK just to get the Orca editor. (you can also just download the SDK samples and use that instead of the full SDK). WHS backup to LAN - If for some reason you don’t want to use WHS’s built-in backup option and prefer to back it up to LAN 10 Beautiful Login screen for Ubuntu - very nice themes to change your login screen. Fast Car Wallpapers - name says it all. Microsoft Pivot - Pivot makes it easier to interact with massive amounts of data in ways that are powerful, informative, and fun. PlantUML - UML add-in (jar file) for Eclipse. You cannot draw a diagram, instead you describe it using a language . Papyrus 4 UML - another UML add-in (also for Eclipse), which seems to be more professional looking than PlantUML. However this does not support Activity diagrams (yet), which PlantUML does. Spinlocks, page frame number locks (and the meaning of life) - I don’t think any more needs to be said. :) FlipText.net - write upside down (: sıɥʇ ǝʞıl. Google Goggles - use pictures to search the web. Haystack - very interesting idea which encrypts your data and then hides it in regular http traffic. Mainly used to help out the citizens of Iran, but useful elsewhere as well. BeRTOS - a real-time OS hits a major stable milestone.

The next post in the interesting find series. Top 25 ‘most dangerous’ programming errors for 2009 – interesting read as always. :) The 100 essential websites – from the Guardian. Please Rob Me.com – the dark side of geocoding . SSD Optimisation guide - a must read if anyone is thinking of buying a SSD drive. 37Signals – simple web based apps (instead of bloatware) covering things like managing projects, tracking contacts, organizing your business, etc. (Not free in case you were wondering). Never reboot Linux - even when updating the Kernel. When can Windows have this? SSD Tweak Utility - if you still want to tweak more things after reading the SSD optimisation guide above. FsUnit – Test F# with F# - I think the name says it all. devZing - No hassle open source project management hosting (from $10 / month); though I wonder why you can’t use google for this. Jollat – a cool GUI for you AWS (Amazon Web Services) which allows you to manage S3 and EC2 on Amazon – runs on Windows, Linux and Mac. Podcasts from MS – the name says it all. Digging for Sensitive information – how to get details on someone you know. Panopticlick — How unique, and trackable, is your browser? My browser fingerprint appears to be unique among the 641,692 tested so far which is quite scary! SideShow for Windows Mobile Developer Preview – only works with Win7. Large Query performance stats from SQL 2K to 2K8 – quite interesting and covers both x32 and x64. PresentationFx – provides free PowerPoint templates and artwork. Making a cool Vista Screensaver – this should also work on Win7 (not tried this btw).

Wow it has been a while since I posted an Interesting find and instead of the usual list I though I will keep this especially for timers. Timers Galore! So I was looking for a simple countdown timer that I can run on my laptop to keep tracking of a few things and I found a few very interesting things. If you prefer to download an app and run it from your desktop (Windows) then check out Timer from Orzeszek. There are a few other interesting dev projects there such as transferring large files over http . ...

Cloud vs. Cloud – guided tour of Amazon, AppNexus, GoGrid and Google. Azure is missing but given its late-alpha/early-beta state not surprising. SheevaPlug Development Kit – this is a development platform targeted for use as a plug computer , and designed to run network-based software services and has a embedded Marvel Sheeva CPU core ; quite interesting. Office 14 – next version of Office will have “online versions”. Loopa Bowl – the link has all the details; buy it here (in the US). KidsMenu – an OS for Kids - seems to be a shell running on Windows. Boogie – an intermediate verification language. New windows mobile ads – I do feel like throwing the phone sometimes. MachineIP.com – name says it all – pretty cool. Of course nothing new but makes it easy in situations where you don’t have access to the tools or the non-techy friends/families you have out there. Microsoft Web App Gallery – cool, open source tools build on MS stack. Resetting your Admin pwd in Vista – quite scary actually. (via The Dogmatix ). ...

Been missing in action for a while – been extremely busy. Dropbox – store, sync and share your files online via Amazon’s S3. OAuth – open protocol to allow secure API authorization in a web/fat clients. About time we got the Facebooks and Twitters of the world start implementing this (more details on that another time). Scott’s ultimate developer and power user tools – the name says it all - very cool. Microsoft Tags - transform physical media (ads, billboards,product packages, information signs, in-store merchandising, video images, etc.) - into live links for accessing information and entertainment online. Cucku – another service which backs up your data to the cloud. I personally use WHS + Amazon’s S3 – got about 40 GB on it now. 😄 App Store – view Apple’s app store in your browser instead of iTunes. Quidco – an ad-free cash-back cooperative that passes on all referral commissions in exchange for keeping £5 a year as an admin fee. Seems to be quite cool. CloudBuddy – extend you desktop to the cloud (Amazon S3) – in addition to documents you can also use this for Outlook including your calendar, tasks, etc. Cool Machine Names – I will certainly be looking at this whenever I get my next machine. gScreen – dual screen laptops; it sure is cool, but is too heavy to be a “portable”. Maybe vaporware as well? If you are skeptical like I am, maybe MaxiVista is the way to go? ...

Crime Mapping for London – cool. EnvMan – easier way of managing environment variables. Hit Me Later – snooze your email – pretty cool idea; not sure of privacy related issues though. SimplyNoise – white noise generator which helps you find the comfort Zen and either work (blocking distractions), aid sleep, soothe migraines, etc. Pushing the limits of Windows - with 2 TB of RAM running on a 64 proc machine – sweet! I wonder what would the size of Minidump will be on that? Windows Performance Toolkit (WPT) – allows you to capture and analyse traces and state transitions to help improve the performance of Windows. I personally am quite interesting in making my tablet boot faster. Cuil – new search engine; though Google might be safe (for now). Not sure how it searches but searching for this blog interestingly does pick it up, but also picks up some obscure links such as my Oxford page . London Free School – hmm … weird! {via Karan } AutoCollage 2008 – MSR project which helps celebrate important events and themes. Pick a folder, press a button, and in a few minutes this presents you with a unique memento to print or email to your family and friends. Moonsus – cool laptop bags – is it good enough to make the wife forget the stupid bags ? 😉 Full of Kittens – showing off how to use Silverlight and DeepZoom – if you not sure what you are looking at double click on the image and shift-click to zoom out. Midori – a componentized non-Windows Microsoft OS; quite interesting reading talking about a asynchronous-only architecture that is built for task concurrency and parallel use of local and distributed resources, with a distributed component-based and data-driven application model, and dynamic management of power and other resources.

Shared View from Microsoft - a fast, easy way to share documents and screen views with small groups anytime, anywhere and works across physical boundaries, through firewalls, and down to the smallest details. Switcher - gets Expose (from Mac) on Windows very cool! (you need Vista + Aero) VS.NET 2008 SP1 likely to come later this year adds a lot of new stuff. SMS things (only if you are in the US) SMS411 - helps you send SMS to phone’s on specific carriers in the US. Teleflip - goes a step further and automatically figures out the carrier (also only for the US). TFS Admin - seems to do a few interesting things if you admin TFS (I have not used it first hand so can’t say). Many Books - offers thoughts of free eBooks in many formats for your PDA, iPod, or eBook reader. Hadoop - is a framework for running applications on large clusters built of commodity hardware; it is effectively a grid application which under the covers uses a DFS and can supposedly scale up to reliably store and process petabytes. Invisible Computing - research prototype for making small devices part of the seamless computing world. It consists of compact middleware for constructing embedded web services applications and a small component based Real-Time Operating System with TCP/IP networking to make middleware run straight on the metal on several embedded processors. Chumby - seems interesting concept - but I get all that on my phone and will it work in the uk? Delta Copy - robocopy on steroids; this on copies the sectors that have changed. So if you have a 2 gb PST file – only the new sectors are copied instead of the whole file. Note – there as issues with Vista! pptPlex – allows you to present PowerPoint using a zoomable canvas instead of slides – quite interesting. ...

Search of Forever ZuneThings.co.uk - for those in the UK wanting a Zune + Accessories, etc. Cozi - new way busy families stay organized, manage schedules and coordinate with each other. Browsershots - test your site among a host of browsers and see how it prevails; so how well does my blog do ? Ask the Admin How to hide an airplane factory ? Bill G’s history from MS; and his emails . 😄 Windows 7, not that far off . CooTek - alternative keyboard for Windows Mobile phones. Pandora - free Internet radio but only for the yanks. :sad:👎 Pex (Program Exploration) - a MSR project that from a parameterized unit test automatically produces a traditional unit test suite with high code coverage. Gmap Pedometer - excellent if you are a runner or just want to find out how long your walk is. Thanks to the lovely Meenakshi for this. 😄

Pure coincidence that #13 is posted on Friday the 13th! Goosh - the Unofficial google shell (very cool)! Zamzar - free online file conversion. FlashEarth - switch seamlessly between Google maps, Microsoft Virtual Earth, Yahoo!, etc. SiteAdvisor.com - McAfee’s free offering that automatically alerts to Web sites that use or have links to spyware, adware, spam and other nasties. Live SysInternals - all of SysInternals on your figertips. e.g. in a DOS prompt enter: dir \\live.sysinternals.com\tools Windows Search 4.0 - new and improved? Only time will tell. TFS does not have any features for gathering requirements, but if this is something you prefer then check out Caliber RM and TeamSpec . Rosario though might have these out of the box - but only time will tell. BizTalk dev tools - it is almost an year old, but still a very cool list of tools if you are using BizTalk. Xobni (mirror of Inbox in case you did not notice), is Outlook add-on which helps you deal with emails better. Office Search Commands - helps you find commands, options, wizards, and galleries in Office 2007 Word, Excel and PowerPoint; check this out if you are wondering the rational behind it. ...

.NET v3.5 Product Roadmap Information overload in Outlook? Check out ClearContext and Jello.Dashboard Nokia’s nano-technology based Morph Concept - very interesting on where we might be heading! Oh how I am envious of our future generation. 😄 Although SQL 2008 benchmarks are out and quite impressive; if you want to run the CTP before March, it seems you cannot - lol! What is MS thinking? Duh! C5 - Generic Collection Library Visual Studio themes ; I personally like a few of the dark themes. Migrating to gmail becomes easier from Outlook, PST files, etc. However, if you want to backup your gmail (why you would want to do in the first place is besides me), and want want to use G-Archiver , then do so at your own peril!!! Tools galore - check out Hanselman Ultimate Tools List

Squeaky Geek to Silicon Saint ; number 5 is my favourite. Bar da Boa - wait for the flash to finish loading (be patient); enter your First and Last names and click on “Visualizer” - lol. MSR’s InkSeine - which allows you to find stuff with ink, seems quite handy if you use a tablet; some videos here ; you can get it here . TSA is blogging - now you can vent your frustrations! In case you ever wondered, how ASP.NET uses memory ? Especially handy when one started running out of memory. Xperf - a new tool in Windows SDK. Feeling nostalgic? Check out ScummVM . Sony Ericsson’s new Windows Mobile based phone - quite cool. Apparently, multi-functional printers are the latest security threat . Apparently quite a handful of people have had Vista wifi issues whereby a laptop resuming from Sleep/Hibernate cannot connect to the wifi; resetting the wireless card does not help and only a reboot fixes it. It might not be baloney and there is some truth to the matter. Reading these real world examples of online data loss (HA! it was online so you thought you won’t lose it), makes me feel quite smug about my WHS . ...

Synergy - one mouse and keyboard to control them all. 50 Tips, Tweaks and Hacks to make the most of Google Calendar . Wayback Machine - Browse through 85 billion web pages archived from 1996 to a few months ago. e.g. how Microsoft.com looked 12 years ago. Awww … I had forgotten the IE logo. Hamachi remote Wake-on-LAN tutorial . Virtual Wifi - connect to multiple wireless networks at the same time using one wireless card! Cilk is a language for multithreaded parallel programming based on C and is especially effective for exploiting dynamic, highly asynchronous parallelism, which can be difficult to write in data-parallel or message-passing style MSDN Code Gallery - need I say more? Reverse IP Check - see what sites are running on the same web server as your domain. E.g. at the time of writing this there were 305 domains hosted on the same web server as this blog - wow! Airbus A380 Cockpit in 360. London Food Hygiene ratings - don’t concentrate only on how many Michelin Stars the restaurant has, but focus on how clean is it. ...

It has been a while since I posted some of the interesting find (been busy for a change). Slashtop - no more waiting for the OS to boot up; if you want to get online or make a call using skype then this is up and running in an instant; more details here . Exploits of a Mom - need I say more? 5 ways to share big files between co-workers or friends - quite handy when you are in those pesky situations when you need to get something across to someone else. Cellprofile Switcher - you can use the information about the mobile cell your phone uses to do some work for you. For example, your phone can automatically silent itself when you get to work. Of course not too much help when on the tube. Kudocities - I came across this when trying to find out what happened to there was a decent buritto joint (sadly not in the same league as Chipotle ) close to the office which suddenly closed and that was a big deal! Why? Well for all the culture, people, excitement, smoke, crime, tube, etc. that is London there is not a decent Mexican joint. 👎 Crazy about Alarms? Then check out phoneAlarm for your mobile. Vidabox Lux - is this the most advanced Media Centre? It supports HD-DVD, HDTV, BluRay, etc. My Mobiler - interact with your Windows Mobile screen from your desktop (including copy/past, drag/drop, capture, etc.). Or maybe it is this one ? Desktop Wallpapers - quite amazing and hundreds and free. Z Wave Products - of course if you need to “shutdown” then won’t work. Err … what the heck is Z Wave ? ...

Anywhere.FM can be thought as iTunes for the Web. It allows you to upload your music (yes including those songs bought from iTunes), so you can get to your music from anywhere. You can also “share” the music with friends like a “radio station” and of course browse other user’s radio station. Sweet! 😄 If you travel a lot and need a decent solution to manage the various expense receipts (or are just plain lazy then check out Neat Receipts Scanner . Fauxto - think Photoshop for the web. If you really want job security, then check out how to write unmaintainable code . 😄 Search Lab - free Science search tools - just want you needed for any science-related-research. PsExec is a light-weight telnet-replacement that lets you execute processes on other systems, complete with full interactivity for console applications, without having to manually install client software. Splog and sploggers - what? Central Desktop - another collaboration tool. Top 100 Alternative Search engines - alternate to google - worth a spin. Free disk imaging software (as long as you own a Seagate or Maxtor drive). Laptop lid cooling - where the industry might be heading. The daily green - a consumer’s guide to being green. I personally like the weather watch gallery such as sitting on the edge of the world

Find editing host files a pain? Then check out HostsMan (v 3.0.45 is just released) which allows you to automatically update, enable/disable, backup, exclusion, etc. host files. Some old fun programs that we all enjoyed in our time. Fujitsu announces 1 TB 2.5" HDD’s (i.e. for notebooks) - though it might be a little while before they hit the stores and a little longer after that before they are affordable I would guess. Best in Emerging Technology - very cool! Did you know there was a hard drive shredder out there, wanna buy one ? Collaboration between people in teams is a “hot” topic these days and to try and solve it there are many solutions out there - one of those being huddle (which I have not used). But the one that I have used and is quite good is Zoho , and does seem quite promising. I have specifically used the Notebook and Planner . The planner is interesting as well as you can email your page and it will store those emails as content. Tafiti (which means “to research” in Swahili) is a very cool search experience and essentially showcases Silverlight with Live search behind it - now if only we could switch the search provider to google it would be even sweeter. 😄 fsutil - this is new to me although around for a while. It is a command line utility which can perform many FAT and NTFS related tasks such as managing reparse points, managing sparse files, dismounting a volume, or extending a volume, etc.

SOA in the Real World - Microsoft’s eBook for free; alternatively go and buy my book . 😜 Pownce is a way to send messages, files, links, and events to your friends. Microsoft SkyDrive now open to public beta, giving 500 mb of space; but not sure why you would use that when Mozy gives you unlimited online backup for $5/month (which is about £2.50 / month - cheaper than a cup of Flat White coffee ). ...

Fastest residential uplink in the world - 40 GB/sec! Updated programmer stereotypes - updated for “today’s” world. Hotmap shows where people have looked at when using Virtual Earth . Advanced Vista Codec Package (note: I have not used these yet) Vista’s (little known) recovery strategies . My Picture 3D allows you to see your pictures in a 3D environment - probably a bit useless and only for those with a high speed Internet access. Outlook Extra allows to change the default path so you can easily find and delete attachments send in emails among other tweaks. Moo - they print things from your stuff. PHP121 - a php based IM - perfect for internal corporate chat where you don’t (or can’t) access one of the IM’s. Five Tech mistakes to avoid . Visual Studio Robotics tutorial (with Mindstorms NXT of course). Free legal icons for you to leech (they are under GPL). Parking Perfection game - learn how to park! 😄 Warthog anyone? Toshiba’s wireless docking station - though I have had such terrible experiences with my Tecra M3 over the last 3-odd years I cannot recommend a Toshiba to anyone!

Office Live Basics - get it for free. Google Talk Emoticons Speaking of google, they now have hot trends Jing , what is it and how do I use it ? Estetiikka - Free web gallery using PHP (v5) and MySQL. Interested in making Ubuntu look just like OS X ? Zen Computing - some guys are raving about this Linux distro as better than Fedora and Ubuntu. Live Earth Videos now available . Vista Wallpapers , including the one running on the blog here. Domain Keys Identified Mail ( DKIM ) - tool to battle spam ...

Continuing the interesting find series, here are the next set of finds. Grasshopper 2.0 - is a free VS.NET plugin that allows you to code in .NET 2.0, build for Java and run on Linux, without rewriting any code! Sweet! IKVM.NET - is a implementation of Java for both Mono and .NET and includes a Java VM, .NET implementation of the Java class libraries and some other tools which enable interoperability between both .NET and Java. This is more of less compliant with JDK 1.4, though there are some gaps and AWT and Swing are not implemented yet. EasyVMX.com - lets you create virtual machine of the free and awesome VMware Player . I know many others share the same opinion that VMware Workstation is many generations ahead than Microsoft’s VPC. If you are too cheap to pony up the $189 license fee then EasyVMX might just be what the doctored ordered. Solid freeform Fabrication - DIY, on the cheap, and made of pure sugar! This is a project to construct a home-built three dimensional fabricator which allows for a low cost design leveraging recycled components, large printable volume emphasized over high resolution, and ability to use low-cost printing media including granulated sugar. SavaSocket - Allows you to power off standby appliances and as a result save money, energy and the environment! It is like any other power socket, with the exception it has a infrared receiver and can learn a specific button from any infra red remote control allowing the user to control power to the socket and as a result all devices plugged into that. Windows Splash Screens - a trip down memory lane showing all of Windows splash screens thus far from Windows 1.01 released back in 1985. ...

I keep stumbling along many interesting finds online (well interesting to me) which I keep storing in OneNote and finally decided to start posting them here under the .link category. These mostly would be for me when I want to get them to a later stage. Without further adieu, here is the first of many finds: The Phrase Finder - if you ever wanted to know about Phrases, Idioms and their meanings, origins and popular fallacies then check out the phrase finder. e.g. Vis-à-vis eSnips.com - wanted to share files with others? Check out esnips.com which allows you to share any time of information with who and what you share. Read up more here and don’t forget to check out the fine print . JFGI (Just f***ing google it) - need one say any more? 😄 Urban Dictionary - a slang dictionary with your definitions e.g. I recently heard there is something (or someone) called a Neek . ...

I got this via the Avanade communities and was not aware of it. There is SyncToy v1.4 for Vista ! BTW this also works with XP and there is a white paper showing how to do this on XP.