http://salostorm.com/blog/ Blog dealing with technical and programming stuff en-us Nucleus CMS v3.22 © Weblog http://backend.userland.com/rss http://salostorm.com/blog//nucleus/nucleus2.gif http://salostorm.com/blog/ http://salostorm.com/blog/index.php?itemid=139 1. Empty your recycle bin
This is the most obvious one! Don't forget to empty your recycle bin from time to time. Consider also disabling it. To disable it, right click on the recycle bin and choose properties, and finally check 'Do Not move files to the Recycle Bin. Remove files immediately when deleted.' If you disable your recycle bin, be careful when deleting files.

2. Remove unwanted and unused programs
Go to your Control Panel, and choose 'Add or Remove Programs'. Go though the list of programs you have installed and remove any programs you don't use and don't need anymore.

3. Remove unwanted Windows components
This is similar to the previous tip, in your 'Add or Remove Programs', choose to the left 'Add/Remove Windows Components', this will show you a list of windows components where you can remove any not used component such as IIS if you are not hosting any web applications or even removing windows games if you don't want them.

4. Use the disk cleanup utility
This utility comes pre-installed on Windows XP, to access it, go to your start up, then programs, accessories, system tools and finally disk cleanup. The tool will scan your hard disk and show you a list of files that could be deleted. It is safe to delete 'Temporary Internet Files' and 'Temporary Files'. Others are left to your own judgment.

5. Use a Duplicate File Finder tool
After some time using your hard disk by saving, copying and moving files, you end up with some file duplicates. You need to find all these duplicates and delete them. There are a lot of freeware utilities that would do the job for you. I used Easy Duplicate Finder and it seems to do good.

6. Install and use the windows installer clean up utility
This utility is available for free by Microsoft. You can download it from Microsoft. As Microsoft says it: 'You can use the utility to remove installation information for programs that were installed by using Windows Installer. Be aware that Windows Installer CleanUp Utility will not remove the actual program from your computer. However, it will remove the installation files so that you can start the installation, upgrade, or uninstall over. '

7. Compress rarely used files
Any big files (especially text files and documents) that you access rarely should be compressed to save disk space. I recommend using Winrar for this. Winzip is also a good option.

8. Turn off 'System Restore'
In order to turn off system restore, go to your control panel, then double click on the 'System' icon. In System, choose 'System Restore' tab at the top and there you can turn it off. You can also decrease the disk space it uses (the default is 12% of your hard disk space). Be aware that turning off this feature will not allow you to restore your system to a previous point.

9. Consider upgrading your hardware
This had to be mentioned :). If after doing all the previous steps you are still running out of disk space, consider upgrading your hardware by buying a bigger hard disk, or even buying an external hard disk to store some big files (like your movies or music).]]> General http://salostorm.com/blog/index.php?itemid=139 Thu, 2 Jul 2009 09:36:00 -0700 http://salostorm.com/blog/index.php?itemid=138
1. Write Useful Articles
People are always looking for useful and interesting articles. Make sure that you are familiar with what you are writing. Make it useful and informative. Writing an interesting article specific to your niche can be a magnet for web surfers.

2. Make Something Funny
People also like to have fun and take a break. Take a funny picture, write something funny or post a funny video and people will come.3. Get People to Trust you
Trust is very valuable on the Internet. If you build yourself a good name in your niche and people trust you for your information and ideas, this will be a gold mine for your site(s).

4. Get Visitors to Interact with you
Always allow visitors to interact with you in one way or another. Some of the ways to make your site more interactive for visitors is to create a forum or to create a blog.

5. Build a Community
Whatever service you are providing to your customers, try to make a community out of it. As an example, you have a site that sells dogs food, create a community where customers of your product can post pictures of their dogs and talk about dog caring ideas and tips. This will make them feel more at home when visiting your site.

6. Create a Newsletter
Allow your visitors to subscribe to a newsletter. But make sure you don't abuse the newsletter. Use it only to send really interesting and important information. People don't want more junk mail in their inboxes.

7. Spend Money
Sometimes you have to spend some money to advertise your site. PPC, banner ads on some selected sites and other methods can be useful to attract quality traffic.
]]> Marketing http://salostorm.com/blog/index.php?itemid=138 Thu, 25 Oct 2007 06:22:13 -0700 http://salostorm.com/blog/index.php?itemid=137 mciSendCommand function.
First you need to include mmsystem.h in your code and you also need to link with Winmm.lib
Next we need to open the CD/DVD device. We do this using the following:

MCI_OPEN_PARMS MCIopen;
ZeroMemory(&MCIopen, sizeof(MCI_OPEN_PARMS));
MCIopen.lpstrDeviceType = (LPCSTR) MCI_DEVTYPE_CD_AUDIO;
MCIopen.lpstrElementName = drive;

DWORD flags = MCI_OPEN_TYPE | MCI_OPEN_TYPE_ID;
mciSendCommand(0, MCI_OPEN, flags, (DWORD) &MCIopen);

the drive is a char * of the drive letter to open for example d:
Issuing this command open the CD/DVD device and returns the device ID in the MCIopen variable. Yhis ID is to be used in later commands.
Now to issue open request, we write the following:

mciSendCommand(MCIopen.wDeviceID, MCI_SET, MCI_SET_DOOR_OPEN, 0); // To open the devic
mciSendCommand(MCIopen.wDeviceID, MCI_SET, MCI_SET_DOOR_CLOSED, 0); // To close the devic


Finally, we should close the device using this following:

mciSendCommand(MCIopen.wDeviceID, MCI_CLOSE, MCI_WAIT, 0);


One thing to note that we should check if the command issued to open the device succeeded by checking the return of the first mciSendCommand call. If the command returned an error, we can't continue with opening/closing the drive.]]> Programming http://salostorm.com/blog/index.php?itemid=137 Mon, 22 Oct 2007 08:50:00 -0700 http://salostorm.com/blog/index.php?itemid=136 During the first 5 years of the next decade, IE with the king of browers and continued on gaining figures until reaching 90% of the total web browsers usage in early 2006. This domination of the market changed when FireFox was launched and it quickly gained 10% of the market in very few months and it continues to grow till now.
Now, these figures are as follows (according to TheCounter.com taken from Wikipedia.org):
IE: 81.63%
Netscape Navigator: 0.06% (all birds fall down eventually!)
FireFox: 13.49%
Opera: 0.66% (my personal favorite, but having a very low usage!!)
Safari: 3.00%]]> Internet http://salostorm.com/blog/index.php?itemid=136 Wed, 17 Oct 2007 08:47:00 -0700 http://salostorm.com/blog/index.php?itemid=135 Password Spyer 2k will not be useful in recovering the password since Password Spyer 2k recovers passwords hidden IN the password field. In order to recover dialup passwords, we use another program named Dialup Password RecoveryDialup Password Recovery extracts the password hidden in Windows for all saved dialup passwords. Dialup connections can be made public (available to all users) or private (available to the user who created them). Dialup Password Recovery is capable of recovering both types. For private connections, you need to be logged in as the user who created the connections in order for the recovery to work.
Finally, here is a screenshot showing the software recovering some dialup passwords.]]> General http://salostorm.com/blog/index.php?itemid=135 Wed, 10 Oct 2007 09:39:00 -0700 http://salostorm.com/blog/index.php?itemid=134 Password Spyer 2k, recoverying such passwords is just one click away. Simply opening the web site that contains the password and waiting until the password field is filled with the password as asterisks and then opening the registered version of Password Spyer 2k and clicked on show web passwords will give you a listing of all IE browsers having a saved password in any page.]]> General http://salostorm.com/blog/index.php?itemid=134 Sat, 6 Oct 2007 09:31:00 -0700 http://salostorm.com/blog/index.php?itemid=133 http://dictionary.reference.com/, and search for google! Yes Google has become a verb, from 'Webster's New Millennium? Dictionary of English':
Definition: to search for information on the Internet, esp. using the Google search engine
Example: We googled to find the definition of the new word.
]]> Internet http://salostorm.com/blog/index.php?itemid=133 Wed, 18 Jul 2007 08:49:00 -0700 http://salostorm.com/blog/index.php?itemid=132 Fast File Splitter since most still don't know how powerful this software can be. First a small description of the software: Fast File Splitter (FFS) is a tool to split large files into smaller files so that they can be put on floppies, sent by email or for any storage purposes need. Here is a quick list of features FFS supports:1. Customizable split file size.
2. Customizable split files count.
3. Self joining files.
4. Encrypt split files.
5. Compression of split files.
6. Add your comments to split files.
7. Add your copyright material to split files.
8. Select your custom icon.
9. Self join in silent mode.
10. Join/Split to any selected directory.]]> General http://salostorm.com/blog/index.php?itemid=132 Mon, 16 Jul 2007 09:04:00 -0700 http://salostorm.com/blog/index.php?itemid=130 Big Spanish Castle, and here is another one.]]> Fun http://salostorm.com/blog/index.php?itemid=130 Sat, 14 Jul 2007 10:07:00 -0700 http://salostorm.com/blog/index.php?itemid=128 Fast File Splitter is used.Fast File Splitter is a simple and easy to use file splitter with a load of features including security and compression. With a few clicks, you are set to go. The receiver dosen't have to have the software to re-construct the original file. Here is a tutorial to use to split your first file.]]> Internet http://salostorm.com/blog/index.php?itemid=128 Fri, 13 Jul 2007 08:54:00 -0700