Bharath's Tech Blog

There are sites that offer to provide downloadable video links for Youtube videos, but their problem is that Youtube videos are downloaded in FLV format and its not playable by usual media players and require FLV players. Not to mention that FLV format is not playable on DVD players, mobile phones etc.

So, the best option is to convert Youtube videos to our preferred formats before downloading them.
Here are two sites that are tested and found to be working perfectly.

http://www.convertyoutube.com/ (best choice, video quality is best)

http://all2convert.com/index.html
Also check out how to view Youtube videos in higher quality.

Update: www.vixy.net is first on Google.

Labels: download, video, youtube

Posted by bharath at 4/14/2008 03:28:00 AM | Permalink | Comments

Most of the vista users complain about the confirmation prompts like "Windows need your permission to continue" or "Are you sure you want to do that"?. Such prompts are not just to annoy Vista users, they are in place to prevent any system process from performing any malicious activity, like preventing viruses.
Anyway, most users would like to turn off UAC, sacrificing security for ease of use.
This is the procedure to disable or turn off UAC in Vista.

Method 1 :Using control panel
1.Open Control Panel.
2.Under User Account and Family settings click on the "Add or remove user account".
3.Click on one of the user accounts.
4.Under the user account click on the "Go to the main User Account page" link.
5.Under "Make changes to your user account" click on the "Change security settings" link.
6.In the "Turn on User Account Control (UAC) to make your computer more secure" click to unselect the "Use User Account Control (UAC) to help protect your computer". Click on the Ok button.
7.You will be prompted to reboot your computer. Do so when ready.
(In order to re-enable UAC just select the above checkbox and reboot.)

Method 2: Using MSCONFIG
1.Launch MSCONFIG by from the Run menu.
2.Click on the Tools tab. Scroll down till you find "Disable UAP" (this should probably change to UAC in next Vista beta builds and in the RTM version). Click on that line.
3.Press the Launch button.
4.A CMD window will open. When the command is done, you can close the window.
5.Close MSCONFIG. You need to reboot the computer for changes to apply.
(You can re-enable UAC by selecting the "Enable UAP" line and then clicking on the Launch button.)

Labels: uac, uap, vista

Posted by bharath at 4/12/2008 11:21:00 PM | Permalink | Comments

Downloading using Torrents:
Step 1: Get the torrent file , this is the file with the .torrent extension and it contains information about where the files are on the torrent network. (for ex, torrentz.com is a worldwide tracker, tamiltorrents.net is a website for tamil stuff)
Step 2: Get a torrent client ( Bitspirit is one nice client)
Step 3: Open the .torrent file using BitSpirit software, it will ask where to save the file, specify the location and the downloading will start.
Note:
Always make sure that a torrent has enough seeders before starting a download (atleast 1).

Technical part:
BitTorrent is a protocol developed by Bran Cohem in April 2001.
In a torrent network, files are not stored on a central server, rather, files are stored with clients and a tracking server holds the information about where the files are on the network and the tracker coordinates the transfer of files between the peers.
Its architecture is as follows,

Data flow -> Actual file to be downloaded.
Index flow -> Flow of index details, ie, where the files are.

Labels: how-to, p2p, torrent

Posted by bharath at 3/19/2008 05:34:00 AM | Permalink | Comments

Many applications in languages like PHP and frameworks like AJAX require the use of a local webserver to test and debug applications.
IIS can be used in Windows, but, PHP and mySQL needs to be installed separately for IIS.
As an alternative, WampServer can be used.




WAMP = Web server + PHP + mySQL
Wamp can be downloaded from here
WAMP is a one click install web server, just install the software and it will start to run in system tray, click on it and select "Put online".
Your website / web application needs to be placed in "C:\wamp\www" folder, if "C" is your system drive.
Your webserver can be accessed at this location, http://localhost/ or http://127.0.0.1
Make sure to allow firewall exceptions in order for the server to work.

Labels: programming, server

Posted by bharath at 3/19/2008 05:17:00 AM | Permalink | Comments

While viewing Youtube videos on Youtube website, your url looks like this,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJkRilZdL14

Just append &fmt=18 to the url and press enter.
Now the url will become like this,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hJkRilZdL14&fmt=18

The video will load in high clarity, will take more time to load, but clarity will be very good.

BTW, the above link goes to pulsar mania video.

Labels: advertising, pulsar, video, youtube

Posted by bharath at 3/16/2008 02:11:00 PM | Permalink | Comments

Warcraft 3 can be played online as if playing on a LAN without getting into battlenet.
Here is the procedure to play warcraft 3 online, without using battlenet.

(Note that this procedure is for warcraft: Frozen throne.It was not tested with warcraft alone, but it should work.)


1.Install Warcraft 3

2.Install Warcraft : Frozen Throne

3.If you do not have version 1.21, download version update patch from here
(version details can be found at the right bottom of game menu )

4.Download and install GG-Game client from here

5. Sign up at GG-Game by clicking here
Make sure that any firewall is disabled (or allow exceptions for client as well as game)

6. Start GG client and use the username/password you used to signup and login.

7.Click on "Settings" button on top right and select "War3 TFT" and enter the path of the warcraft frozen throne game executable and "OK" it.

Screenshot:


8. Select War3 TFT on the "LAN Games" left pane and goto to your desired room (like yahoo chat room), you can play only with the people inside the room, so, if you plan to play with your friends, inform them to come to the room you wish to play (Double click a room to enter into it).
Screenshot:




9. After entering a game, click on "Start Game" and if any message appears, press "OK"(sometimes).Your game will start.




10. In the game menu, goto "Local Area Network", create a game, and everyone in that chat room can join your game, or you can join in their game.

11. Enjoy the game !

In case of any doubts, leave a comment with your email address, or use this form.
If you encounter any problems in this procedure, use the above link to get support.

Comments are welcome.( anyone willing to play w3 with the author can contact here)

More maps can be found at the GG-game forum and this is a must play map.

Labels: battlenet, india, multiplayer, online, warcraft

Posted by bharath at 3/13/2008 12:41:00 AM | Permalink | Comments

These numbers speak for themselves!

Labels: digg, reddit

Posted by bharath at 3/06/2008 11:21:00 AM | Permalink | Comments

It is interesting to note that the chinese already have a commercial magnetic levitation train in operation, that too from Jan 1, 2004 !

Shanghai Maglev train line construction began in March, 2001, and public service commenced on January 1, 2004. The train was made in Germany with German technology.

The line is operated by Shanghai Maglev Transportation Development Co., Ltd.
The train can reach 350 km/h in 2 minutes, with a maximum speed in normal operation of 431 km/h .
The Shanghai Transrapid project took 1.33 billion US dollars and 2.5 years to complete the 30.5 km track.

The train takes 7 minutes and 20 seconds to complete the journey, and its top operational speed is 431 kilometers per hour.
The train, which consists of 9 compartments, is capable of carrying 959 passengers.

How Magnetic levitation works,

- Train is propelled by electro-magnetic system in the sides of the "guideway" instead of onboard engine

Photos of Shangai Maglev Train,








Shanghai's Maglev Train displays the current speed of the train in every compartment.



And, has its own crew of attendants as in Airliners.



This train is a symbol of proudness for the chinese people, indeed!

Labels: china, maglev

Posted by bharath at 1/17/2008 01:42:00 AM | Permalink | Comments

Just bought a Lenovo Y500 series 47Q laptop last week, it costs about57,000INR in Chennai, India.
Configuration is as follows,
Centrino core 2 duo,Intel Mother board,
15 inches widescreen,2GB DDR2 RAM,
128 MB nvidia graphics card, 160GB SATA HDD,
dvdwriter,card reader,dolby speakers,1.3MP webcam,
Tv tuner card with remote, Bluetooth, Wifi and more.

Its a superb model and i would recommend it to anyone looking to buya laptop.It has integrated face verification system that can even lock the system if you are away from your lap for a predefined period oftime,and as well as verification at login.It comes with vista home basic, vista home premium could have been better.

Labels: laptop, lenovo, review

Posted by bharath at 11/12/2007 11:57:00 PM | Permalink | Comments

Google's smart pricing feature automatically adjusts the cost of a keyword-targeted content click. So if our data shows that a click from a content page is less likely to turn into actionable business results - such as online sales, registrations, phone calls, or newsletter signups - we reduce the price you pay for that click.

Some info about smart pricing,

• Smart pricing affects an entire account. It is not on a per page or per site basis.
  One poorly converting site can result in smart pricing impacting an entire account, even sites completely unrelated to the poorly converting one.
• Smart pricing is evaluated each week. So removing ads from sites you suspect are converting poorly could result in seeing an adjustment to a higher smart pricing percent in as little as a week.
• Smart pricing is tracked with a 30 day cookie, so you could be rewarded for new conversions that saw the initial click from your site up to 29 days earlier.
• Image ads are also affected by smart pricing.
• With smart pricing, an advertiser could end up paying less than their minimum bid, which would theoretically include the minimum bid price available, meaning publishers earn less for even the minimum valued clicks.
• Conversions for smart pricing publisher accounts are tracked by those advertisers who have opted into "AdWords Conversion Tracking"

Labels: adsense, advertising, adwords, smart pricing

Posted by bharath at 9/19/2007 03:32:00 AM | Permalink | Comments

Click fraud rate, that is, number of fraud clicks for every hundred clicks counted.
From this data, it is presumed that 25% of clicks are fradulent !



This data is compiled from http://clickfraudnetwork.com

Labels: adsense, advertising, click fraud, YPN

Posted by bharath at 9/19/2007 03:15:00 AM | Permalink | Comments

Here is a map showing the source of click frauds throughout the world.




“Click fraud has become the new spam and it’s clearly a problem that is getting worse, not better,” said Tom Cuthbert, president and CEO of Click Forensics, Inc. “A significant percentage of today’s click fraud traffic can be attributed to two growing areas of concern for search advertisers – traffic that comes from botnets and from parked domains or made-for-ad sites. Advertisers running campaigns on content networks are especially vulnerable as they are increasingly targets of this growing pool of savvy fraudsters.”

More @ http://clickfraudnetwork.com/

Labels: adsense, advertising, adwords, click fraud, map, world, YPN

Posted by bharath at 9/19/2007 03:07:00 AM | Permalink | Comments

Click on image to enlarge...

Labels: cycle, deletion, domain, hosting

Posted by bharath at 9/01/2007 01:50:00 AM | Permalink | Comments

This site converts FLV videos from Youtube to WMV or 3GP format and provides link for downloading.
Cool...
http://vconvert.net/

Labels: 3gp, conversion, flv, wmv, youtube

Posted by bharath at 9/01/2007 01:46:00 AM | Permalink | Comments

Google updated their policies to allow upto 3 link units on a page , rather than the previous 1 unit.

In their policy statement, this line says,
"Up to three link units may also be placed on each page. "

This means that publishers are not limited to just a single ad unit, they now can have up to three, so you can now have a link unit in the footer as well as in the navigation.

Thoughtful comments:

The right education degree can get a handsome job easily. Professional certificates like 70-299 as we as the 310-202 can help you finding a good post in a company. Many colleges are offering training classes for the 642-445 and the Cisco 646-362 exams at affordable cost. You can also make a good living by teaching students to translate english to spanish.

Labels: adsense, advertising, google

Posted by bharath at 6/10/2007 02:01:00 PM | Permalink | Comments