Profilactic

Profilactic is a lifestreaming website. What is lifestreaming?  Some of us tend to go on a wild signing-up spree when we see amazing new Web 2.0 tools or social networks. We soon realize that we have a staggering number of accounts across the internet and our data is strewn all over the place. Then we wish there was some way to keep all this content in the same place and access them quickly. This is where lifestreaming comes into the picture.

Lifestreaming also helps us to share our online content, profiles and activities with a wide audience including friends and family. Profilactic helps you create a mashup of all your content from various websites and share it with other friends on the site. You can also create a lifestream badge with links to your various accounts and the your latest activity on each of the accounts. This badge helps you display your lifestream on your blog or website for others to see. Similarly, an RSS feed can be generated for all the content you have posted across multiple sites.

Profilactic currently supports 190 social sites.

You can request Profilactic to add new sites which may not be present in the existing list of supported sites. Profilactic lets you aggregate your content with RSS Feeds from your websites. And of course, it counts your tweets in from twitter. Another important features is the ability to save clippings of content where you or your site have been quoted or mentioned on another site. Check this out and trust me, it is pretty useful!

Digsby – The New Age IM Client

The thing that has recently caught my attention is Digsby. I have always longed for a multiple IM client that helps integrate all chat services but is not minimalistic and geeky. Though, Pidgin is a great multiple IM client, it has issues in enabling file transfers and video chat. It calls for extra-geeky meddling with options, if these things are to be made possible.

Digsby is a cool IM client which is sure to be the next big thing like Firefox. And like Firefox, it seems to hog a lot of memory. However, trust me that should not be a deterrent in using Digsby. This is because Digsby can make up for Msn, Yahoo, AIM and Gtalk clients. Imagine running all of these clients individually and it would certainly work out to that much of memory usage.

The setup file is over 11 MB and takes a while to download. Once this thing is installed, it is completely hassle-free. Though, it has the characteristic geek tinge to its minimalist interface, it can quickly be customized. In fact, geeks have more to rejoice for because it allows for back-end customization and a lot of scope for the ones that cannot keep from exploratory coding adventures.

Rightly represented by a friendly cute logo, Digsby is intuitive all the way. You can immediately configure all your IM accounts. But here is the easter egg. You can also configure your Facebook and Twitter into this IM client. It will give you updates about your Facebook pokes, friend statuses and other notifications. You can also update your Facebook status by using Digsby.

As if this were not enough, there is good news for the compulsive twitter addicts. Twitter allows for updates via IM but Digsby also lets you read your friends’ tweets. You can click on the Twitter tab in your Digsby interface to do this.

Digsby allows for tabbed conversations and has amazing skinning options that makes your boring IM windows look really new age. Those who use gtalk must especially be starved for some skinning and emoticon action. Now you can quench those cravings with Digsby.

I personally use Windows but I understand that Digsby is compatible with Linux and Mac as any open-source software is likely to be. They also have support forums and wikis to assist the newbies.

Digsby is here to stay. Check it out!

Demystifying KM for Tech Companies

Knowledge Management or KM is turning out to be the proverbial Elephant surrounded by the blind men. Much has been written on what it is, how useful it is and so on but then there is no definite success formula. One of the major reasons for this ambiguity is that people have yet to define knowledge. While most of us think a completed task constitutes knowledge, what we fail to understand is that real knowledge resides in how the task was completed. The reusability of such knowledge is very high and can form the much needed knowledge platform.

To look at some examples in a technical organisation, some people would think knowledge ideally resides in the minds of professionals and the documents that they churn out. While this might work in certain quarters, what can really work is a collaboration and a capture of ideas while the documentation (documents, presentations, .pdf files and more) is being created.

Email exchanges, discussions, and external research links constitute a huge portion of the knowledge which floats around in an organisation. One classic example is technical documentation in technology organisations. While the finished documents constitute a chunk of knowledge, a larger chunk remains in the ‘journey’ of the documentation. Reusability of this knowledge helps in reducing the timelines for similar activities in the future and also helps build a series of best practices.

It is important for organisations to establish methods by which such useful yet undocumented knowledge is saved and shared for future activities.

By

Jiten Gajaria

Gtalk Themes

Click on the link above to download Help.pdf and MyTheme .rar

Extract MyTheme.rar to your computer

Read Help.pdf and install MyTheme.exe to your computer

This program was given to me by a friend. It is an awesome way to set background pictures in your gtalk chat windows. It also enables another feature that is sorely missed in gtalk. Emoticons! Yeah, you get loads of them with this theme. This is a nice way to add some color to your gtalk! Have fun!

Black XP Theme

I have always wished I could have a black theme for XP and I stumbled upon something exquisite.

Use this link to download the Zune theme from Microsoft – Zune Theme from Microsoft

Install it on your system and voila your system looks totally funky!

Metacafe has a video demo of the whole procedure.
Watch Demo

Enjoy your black XP!

Buxfer – The Ultimate Money Manager

Buxfer is an amazing money management site. I have been using this for a while now and it is very impressive.

The following are some of the functionalities that Buxfer offers:

1. Group Money Management:

If you have roomies or friends with whom you make regular financial transactions, then Buxfer is the place to record them. You can add your friends’ email ids to your group and a transparent system takes care of showing the I-O-Us to the concerned people in the group.

2. Bank Statement Import:

You can import your monthly Bank Statements in Quicken, MS-Money or .csv formats. Buxfer neatly and intuitively lists out all your credits and expenses in your transaction data.

3. Expense Analysis:

By adding tags to all your expenses, you can see a pie chart of how your money has been spent. This would help you understand the areas in which your money is wasted or well-spent, allowing you to alter your spending methods.

4. Scheduled Payments:

You can schedule monthly loan or insurance payments to be automatically debited from your statement. This will save you time while keeping track of your regular expenses. There is also a facility to set reminders for such payments.

5. Budget Maker

You can set a budget for certain expenses and try to keep within the limits. Buxfer gives you an indication when you exceed your budget.

Buxfer has many more tools and features which go a long way in letting you take control of your money.

Some typical Web 2.0 features include:

a) The ability to add a new transaction through SMS.
b) A google gadget that can also be embedded into Netvibes (like everything else. )
c) Intelligent auto-tags
d) RSS feeds for your transactions
e) A frontpage that shows you in a nutshell what your current status is.
f) A site blog with regular update news.

What more are you waiting for? Get in there and explore. Control your money.

Generator Land

Generator Land is a site full of links to hilarious generators of all kinds of things. Ok! I’ll try to contain my excitement and be more decipherable.

The Star Trek Plot Generator came up with these: (of course they have misspelled “whilst” everywhere) (at last I got an opportunity to use sic..hehehe)

1. Whlist (sic) investigating a space warp the guest star gets brainwashed when the Enterprise encounters a horde of little things which tries to ingest them and hijacks the Enterprise so the guest star dies a heroic death, which means everything turns out okay, and everybody forgets it ever happened. Then, finally Sulu says something snappy and they leave at warp factor ten.

2. Whlist (sic) ferrying bigwigs about the crew of the USS Enterprise gets brainwashed when the Enterprise encounters an apparent duplicate of Spock which is in fact an android but their opponent turns out to be mad and vulnerable to a show of emotion and so the guest star dies a heroic death, which means everything turns out okay, and everybody forgets it ever happened. Then, finally Spock says something snappy and they leave at warp factor nine.

The Froo Froo Menu Generator generates exquisite names for nearly inedible dishes:

Ground Chinchilla with a Dusty Broth

Brined Roebuck with a Radish Demi-Glaze

Broasted Cougar with a Headcheese-infused Dressing

Crispy Silver Fox with a Bologna-infused Stew

Pressure Fried Duckbill with a Crunchy Custard

 

The Soap Opera Recap Generator is hilariously creative:

1. Corky lies to Lucky. Erica chases Marlowe at the carnival. Huxley makes a rash decision about McArthur.

2. Greenlee lets the cat out of the bag to Carter. Kitty exacts revenge from Bell in the pool house. Silvia discovers familial ties to Monet.

3. Lily grills Adeline. Astor secretly spies on Calypso in the graveyard. Buffy is stricken with amnesia and can’t remember Raoul.

(Now try substituting all those names with Indian names or kinship terms like chitti, chittappa, paati. Heehee! )

With the Band Bio Generator I came up with my own band and its phenomenal bio: (My band is called Fluorescent Afros )

A history of indie rock icons: Fluorescent Afros

Originally formed in an abandoned laundromat in Tiruchirapalli, Fluorescent Afros rose to the top of the indie rock scene in 2007 with their debut album, Yet to be released. The band’s latest album, Already released, juxtaposes Sharadtriyama’s irreverent lyrical stylings with road-seasoned instrumentation to somehow pump out some seriously inspired crowd pleasers. With standout tracks like “Release,” already certified platinum in Europe, Fluorescent Afros can count on loads of future success.

And finally for the greatest of them all – Dilbert Mission Statement Generator

Want to get a bullshitty mission statement for the work you do? Use this one.
1. Our challenge is to proactively restore quality benefits while continuing to dramatically build long-term high-impact meta-services while promoting personal employee growth.
2. We strive to professionally integrate corporate infrastructures in order that we may seamlessly restore prospective deliverables to set us apart from the competition.

Enjoy! There are many many more out there are Generator Land!

Opera Speed Dial

The latest update to the Opera Browser is the Speed Dial feature. Accordingly the user can add nine sites to the start page and click on them for quick access to those sites.

The Speed Dial automatically opens on every new tab.

I wonder why someone would choose it over the drag and drop bookmark option.

Custom Highlight Color in MS Word

Highlight colors in MS Word cannot be customized. There is a better way to choose custom colors for highlight.

Go to “View” and click “Toolbars” and then click “Tables and Borders”.

Select the text you wish to highlight.

Click the “Shading Color” button.

You can choose a number of colors from the drop-down list.

Now you can highlight your text in any color you want.

Netvibes Halloween Special

There is a nice new theme on Netvibes for Halloween. With their Cinnamon Release, they have brought in a number of cool features including a few theme changes.

There is a module for netvibes customization with which you can change the background image, remove the header and change the opacity of the modules.

Get it here: Netvibes Customize Module