0 7-Zip Review

Hello everyone, I will be reviewing 7-Zip today. 7-Zip is an open source file archiver for Windows. I stumbled upon 7-Zip after years of using WinRAR, and I can say I've been missing out for years.

First things first, I can easily say that 7-Zip is the fastest file compressor out there. I've compared it to the other popular file archivers such as WinRAR and WinZip, and it turned out that 7-Zip was significantly faster than both of them when it came to file compression.

7-Zip also offers the highest compression rate among all of its competitors which is the main reason that we all use file archivers nowadays.

It's also open source and completely free which once again puts it ahead of other file archiving software.

I would highly recommend using 7-Zip if you are using any other file archiver as this will be a significant change for your archiving needs.

You can read more about 7-Zip at http://www.7-zip.org/

or you can download it directly at http://downloads.sourceforge.net/sevenzip/7z920.exe

I hope you enjoyed this short but useful review!

0 The Essential of Keeping Your iPhone Safe and Secure

How much personal information are you carrying around on your iPhone? Contacts, text messages, e-mails, pictures - quite a lot, am I right? Because your iPhone phone holds a lot of personal information, it's important to know how to keep that information safe and secure.

The following are the 7 essential things you should to in order to keep the information on your iPhone safe and secure:

1. Password protect you iPhone and set the phone to automatically lock itself after few minutes of inactivity.

2. Use remote wipe application. There's quite a few remote wipe apps available for iPhone smartphones. I would recommend you to go with an app called Find My iPhone. With Find My iPhone, you can always find the location of your phone on a map as well as delete all data input from the phone remotely.

3. Don't sensitive data such as passwords, bank information and so on on your iPhone. I think this one is pretty obvious, isn't it?

4. Don't connect your phone to unknown WiFi networks, use 3G/4G instead. If you are connected to a Wifi network, somebody could possibly attack your phone and install malware on it.

5. Don't open shady links on social media networks and other sites. Your friend Bill shared a link of a teenage girl doing what on Facebook? Your friend Bill is 42, married and has children - do you really think it was him?

6. Use firmware and make sure that you always have the latest version.

7. Don't trust strangers alone with your phone. Yes, that nice young girl on the street only asked your phone to call her parents but are you sure she didn't actually install spyware on it?

If you are also concerned about how well your iPhone is running, then look here - it's a great guide on how to reset your iPhone. Resetting your iPhone can fix a ton of different problems and make your phone work a lot faster.

0 Exin Green IT Foundation Certification Exam

Hello everyone! Today's topic will be slightly different than what I talk about most of the times. In this post, I will be talking about Exin Green IT Foundation exam.

The Exin Green IT Foundation exam is an entry level professional certification test geared specifically for advancing the knowledge and abilities of IT personnel to contribute to corporately responsible and economically sound organizational IT initiatives. This Exin certification exam certainly has its benefits for IT professionals, including the acquisition of highly valued skills in the job market, skills which will only become more valuable in the future as more and more organizations recognize the importance of Greener IT on business success.

Candidates for the Exin Green IT certification exam don’t just include IT professionals. In fact, the exam is applicable in the professional development plans of individuals working in a range of other capacities, including business and sustainability managers and business and financial analysts, to name just a few.

Successfully completing the Exin Green IT Foundation exam increases your value with your current employer and provides you additional clout with prospective employers or clients as well. To achieve success, you’ll need to focus your studies on the testing materials, and ideally utilize practice exams for measuring your knowledge attainment prior to taking your exam. Training options are available with Exin approved training services, and there are full length practice exams, as well as tutorials and other self study materials, offered through online prep services like TestsLive.com.

There are a total of 40 questions on the exam and you’ll need to achieve a score of 65 percent or higher to pass. Exin recommends a minimum of one year IT experience prior to taking the test, and encourages candidates to dedicate at least 30 hours of study to their exam prep. 

0 Sound Blaster X-Fi Go! Pro Review

Hello everyone! Today I will be reviewing the external sound card I bought lately, Sound Blaster X-Fi Go! Pro. The reason I bought this card was mainly because I wasn't satisfied with my laptop's onboard audio. Now, I also use it with my desktop computer instead of using the onboard function. I can say it's easy to feel a difference.

When you open the box, you'll see the USB stick which is the card, a pair of headphones with microphone attached, (I must say, they're a lot better than the 30-40$ Sennheisers I often picked up for my iPhone) driver CD, (you can also install the drivers on the internet if you wish) and a USB extension cable. (since the card is bigger than a usual pen drive, it might block out other ports if you don't use this)

It's pretty straight forward to install the card on your computer and start using it. Just plug it into a USB slot, install the drivers, hook your headphones up and you're good to go. It shouldn't even take you 10 minutes.

The drivers also come with Creative Entertainment Console, where you can find EAX (environmental) effects, THX effects (such as virtual surround or crystalizer), a graphic equalizer, a sound mixer (it's connected to the Windows one), and microphone effects where you can change your voice into sounding really interesting and weird.

Although I am really happy with the card and it's definitely worth the pick up if you're using onboard and looking for something better, there are known issues about X-Fi cards (not just about this one, all the X-Fi cards) such as crackling and popping sounds which happened to me as well. It makes it impossible to use the card, so if you experience issues like this, here are a few advices.

- Update your BIOS (this solved my crackling issue, it was my last resort)
- Pull your other USB cords out to see if anything causes conflict with the card
- Download the latest drivers from the internet instead of using the CD

These are the things I can think of right now, and I think there are many other alternate solutions going on around the internet (which I tried with no help, but then again a different solution might work for someone else) that you should try. You can also try to mail Creative Support if you have tried everything with no success. I found the fix to my problem before I got a reply from them, but they still sent me a really helpful e-mail where the solution I used was also included.

All in all, ignoring the little drawback which took me 2 days to fix, I definitely recommend this card. The sound is much better compared to both onboard audio on my laptop and desktop. I picked the card up for around 60$ (electronics are expensive where I live), but you can pick it up at Amazon for 30$ if you have the possibility. Considering that it also includes a pair of headphones with a microphone, (like I mentioned, better than the low tier Sennheiser earbuds I've used) it's an amazing opportunity to take.

Thanks for reading!

0 Steelseries Sensei RAW

Hello! My old faithful Logitech G9X broke as of yesterday, so I decided to set sail for a new mouse. I ended up buying a Steelseries Sensei RAW since I'm a big fan of Steelseries products. I have to say, I really loved the G9X, and I always thought I would buy a new one if the one I had broke, but I just felt like I should go for a change this time.

First things first, I must say I'm really impressed with the product. It comes in a nice small box with its manual, a Steelseries sticker, and the mouse itself. It works as soon as you plug it in with no problems at all. I suggest you download Steelseries Engine from the website to fine tune your mouse. The mouse cable is braided like many other good mice, so that you don't rip the cable apart at some point.

There are two versions of Steelseries Sensei RAW, glossy and rubber. I picked the glossy one up since I don't really like the rubber feeling, but it's different for everyone I suppose. The mouse has 7 buttons, (LMB/RMB/MMB/M5/M6/M7/M8) where M5/M6 is placed at the left side, and M7/M8 is placed at the right side. The buttons are easily reachable without any problem even though the right side buttons look uncomfortable at first glance. There's also a button right under MMB, which allows you to toggle between 2 DPI modes. (you can set them in Steelseries Engine) You can also configure every button as you like, to execute some macros, or launch applications. I use my M7/M8 for Next/Previous song in Winamp.

The mouse has a nice LED Steelseries logo, which is also fully configurable via Steelseries Engine. You can change the intensity of the illumination, and make it blink if you want. I personally keep it illuminated all the time, since it looks quite good.

Technically speaking, the mouse is 5700 DPI, which is a lot more than enough. There are mice with over 10000 DPI now, and I just don't get why anyone would something like that. I think even 5700 DPI is a lot, and I doubt many people use it that fast.

I thought it would be hard to get used to this mouse after using the G9X for so long, but once I set the DPI to the value it was on my old mouse, I got used to it with no problem at all. I can even say that I like the glossy surface more than the surface of the G9X.

The mouse is quite lightweight, (lighter than G9X with no weights attached) which I like. As someone who plays games a lot during the day, a light mouse makes my arm feel like heavens. I would categorize it as a medium-large size mouse. If you have a small hand, you might not be so comfortable with it.

All in all, I recommend this mouse with my whole heart. I'm glad that I went for a change instead of buying another G9X. I'm not saying this mouse is better than G9X by any means, (I can't betray the old faithful this fast!) but I can say it's as good. If you're looking to buy a new mouse, and if it fits your budget (60$ in Amazon), make sure you give Steelseries Sensei RAW a chance!

0 Virtual Private Servers (VPS)

Hello everyone! After a week, we are together with a new post again. Today's topic is Virtual Private Servers. First things first, as always, let's start with learning what a Virtual Private Server (VPS) is. A VPS is a Virtual Machine, hosted on the internet. It's like having your own computer which you can access remotely via the internet.

You can use a VPS for many things, such as hosting a (IRC, games, VoIP, web, email, etc.) server, using it to test software out without modifying your own computer, downloading & uploading, (if your internet is slow, you can download stuff on your VPS and use it instead) or just playing around on it.

A big advantage of using a VPS is that they're really cheap, and you can have plenty of them running different operating systems for full flexibility. That way, you'll be able to do everything you need without even touching your main computer. Virtual Private Server also come with disadvantages like anything else. They usually have really low resources since many Virtual Private Servers are being ran on one computer to reduce expenses. If you are looking for something with high resources, then I suggest you buy a dedicated server instead of a VPS. Although, buying a dedicated server will cost you a lot more than a VPS.

There's also a confusion between VPN and VPS which I would like to clear out. First of all, they aren't the same thing. A Virtual Private Server is a virtual machine, hosted on the internet like we've talked about before. A Virtual Private Network (VPN) is a tunnel. Basically, it's an IP address which you can use to connect to the internet instead of using your own. This way, you can use country-specific services which you can't use in your country by using a VPN.

That would be all about Virtual Private Servers, at least for now.

See you later in a different post!

0 Managed Server

Hello there! Haven't been able to write lately because of New Year's Eve and all that stuff. Happy (late!) New Year to everyone to start with, I hope you had fun! Today's topic is Managed Server, also known as Managed Dedicated Server.

I want to share information about what a managed server is, since I talked too much about data recovery for long time, and it feels like it's a good time to change that.

A managed server is a server, as you might appreciate, where the hardware and the software is already included. They also have system administrators which are working on the servers all the time, and they are obligated with maintaining the server. In this case, of course, they are more expensive than unmanaged servers, for obvious reasons.

Although they are more expensive, I believe it's always better to choose managed over unmanaged, since you might have problems that you can't overcome on your own with an unmanaged server, and spend hours on it to solve the issue. In the other hand, the administrators in managed servers are always there in order to fix your problems.

Security is also a concern in unmanaged servers since there isn't anyone on the spot who can access the servers, and all you got is remote access. When you consider all of these things, it's a smarter move to choose a managed server over an unmanaged one.

This way, you won't have to worry about things like software & OS updates, firewall & antivirus services, backups, database management and server monitoring.

So, if you're looking to buy a server, make sure that you buy a managed one. Even the most experienced users & developers sometimes stumble upon problems which they can't solve on their own.

I will have to keep today's post short since I am really busy with other stuff at the moment. I will write more about this subject later on in a different post.

Until the next time, see you!

0 RAID Recovery for Windows

Hello hello! We are together with yet another data recovery related post, since I noticed that I skipped something after all. I've been talking about how RAID arrays work and all the technical information, but I just noticed that I never mentioned anything about how you can recover your data from your RAID array in a real life scenario.

Hence, today's topic will be RAID Recovery for Windows, also the name of the software we will be using.

First things first, you're supposed to remove all the disks from your RAID array, and connect them to your computer as individual disks. This might require some time since you will end up having to open your computer up in order to connect the disks.

After you're done connecting the disks to your computer one by one, it's now time to download the software we are going to use. For this, we are going to use a software called RAID Recovery for Windows, which works on every Windows platform. One downside is the fact that the software costs 99$, which is pretty expensive (in my opinion). You can find more information about RAID Recovery for Windows here.

After you obtain RAID Recovery for Windows, you're simply to choose the RAID array type you're using, (only RAID 0 and RAID 5 are supported) check the disks, and let the program do your magic. As we've talked before, there's a fault tolerance of one disk in RAID 5, so you can connect one disk less and still recover all of the data. In RAID 0, even though there's no fault tolerance, the software will try to save as much data as possible provided that your computer detects the disk.

After that's done, you will be able to access your files in an explorer window where you can copy them into another disk. You can also use disk images instead of the disks itself, if you're making images regularly. That will save you from the trouble of reconnecting the disks to your computer, and you can rebuild your RAID data quickly and put your array back online with a new set of disks in the case of failure.

I personally haven't gave RAID Recovery for Windows a try myself yet, since I haven't experienced problems with my RAID array in a long time, but I've been recommended by my colleagues to use it, as they said they had success with it. Maybe in the future, if I get into a position to need to use it, (hope not!) I wrill write a more extensive review about the software itself.

That would be all, I guess. It's a pretty straight forward process that every user can follow easily in order to recover their data. The same company also offers software for NAS data recovery if you're interested, since these these things pretty much go hand in hand.

Thanks for reading folks, I hope this makes your life easier!

0 QNAP RAID Recovery & NAS

Hello everyone! I've talked about RAID 5 data recovery in one of my earlier posts. I've mentioned that if more than one drive fails in a RAID 5 array, it won't be possible to recover data, and that's the way it works. But lately, I've come accross something while I'm browsing the web. It's a service called by a company called QNAP, and they allow you to recover your RAID (works with RAID 0,1 and 6 as well) even though more than the allowed number of disks are crashed.

The reason why I give credit to this company in my post is because before looking on their website, I didn't know such a thing existed. It always makes me happy to learn new stuff that I haven't known about before. I don't know if other companies offer services like QNAP RAID recovery, but it's definitely worth taking a look. I will keep you updated if I find anything else about other companies. (maybe a comparison post)

From what I've understood, this system works with a NAS. (Network-attached storage) For those who don't know, a NAS is a data storage which is connected to a network. Although, unlike hard drives, a NAS isn't just a file server, as it has its simply a computer by itself. It has its own parts and its own Operating System, and the RAID array drives are attached in it.

Using a NAS for your RAID array has many advantages such as being able to change the hard drives in your RAID array without too much hassle, better and easier volume management, better back up options (such as a cloud back up or a NAS replica), and a higher performance than a DAS on a network.

Finally, the main reason for me to write this article, the recovery of RAID arrays. Thanks to the QNAP RAID recovery software in the NAS, you can recover your RAID array even more than the expected amount of disks crash. Note that this isn't guaranteed, but I've heard good things about QNAP RAID recovery after reading about it on the internet. I haven't tried it myself, but I've heard many people had success with it.

They offer a variety of NAS drives which you can see on their website. It would be unfair to an extent for me to recommend QNAP & QNAP raid recovery right off the bat, as I haven't done much research about other companies and see if they offer services like this & their success rates, but I can only say that I've heard good things about it. So if you're looking for a NAS drive, make sure that you check their website out. Personally, back ups are really important in my view, (I'm sure it's the same for everyone) and this can save your life one day.

I usually write about the things I know about, but today was different for me as well. I hope you enjoy the post and find something which suits your needs!

You can learn more about QNAP RAID recovery in this page.

0 VLC Media Player

Nowadays, we all watch movies and listen to music on our computers, instead of watching them or listening to them in our stereo or DVD players. That being said, everyone knows that they need to use a program in order to do this. There are many alternatives to do this such as Windows Media player and Winamp. My recommendation though, if you haven't heard about it yet, is VLC media player.

The main reason I prefer VLC player over anything else is because it supports all the media formats that I've come across so far. With another players, there would be usually the trouble of finding codecs and everything in order to play media. VLC producers must've been aware of the issue before creating VLC, hence you can play anything you want with no codecs or anything on it.

The next important thing (for me) is that you can sync audio/subtitles easily in the settings. There are many cases where I can't find synced subtitles for the movie I'm watching. Luckily, it only takes a minute to sync the subtitles in VLC by simply going to Tools -> Track Synchronization.

There are many other fancy options in the software which I'm not using, but some people might find use for such as recording a part of the video you're playing, slowing & speeding up, taking snapshots, a fully customizable video effects panel where you can change the graphical attributes of the media you're watching and many more. (cropping, rotating, color filters etc.) You can also download plugins for VLC media player which makes it fully customizable compared to other media players. (although there are media players which support plugins, they're usually very limited)

All in all, if you like playing media on your computer and you're looking for a software which you can use, then VLC media player is the right way to go. Even if you're not going to use its fancy options in any way, it's still the best media player out there just because of its extensive support of different file types.

If you are interested and want to try VLC media player out (it runs on all platforms too!), you can download it here.

0 Hard Drive Repair Software

Hello there everyone! Today, our subject is something which has really troubled me in the past, repairing my damaged hard drive. It was the days didn't know so much about this stuff so it took me a while to figure out, and there wasn't so much information in the internet about it. That's the reason I felt like sharing this with you guys today.

There are many different hard drive repair software, also known as hard drive diagnostic software which can help you recover your hard drive. These software vary depending on the brand of your hard drive, so it's important that you choose the right one. Above is a list for the repair utilities of the brands I can think of right now.

Seagate SeaTools for Seagate & Maxtor hard drives (Available for Windows & DOS)

Hutil for Samsung hard drives (Available for DOS)

Western Digital Diagnostic Tools (Available for DOS)

Note : For the tools which are available for DOS only, you're required to burn them to a CD, since they will only work on boot. It's also recommended that you use this method rather than the Windows one as it is more effective.

I remember the time when I couldn't format my Seagate hard drive anymore, and I just happened to find a SeaTools disc which I've gotten out of a magazine by luck. It was the last thing I tried before I threw my hard drive away, and was quite shocked to see that it actually fixed my hard drive. I believe it was a MBR issue now when I think about it. (which I had no clue about at the time, so format not working scared me a lot)

Keep in mind that these software are capable of erasing/writing data on your hard drive as well as reading, so it's not recommended that you use these if you have any data which you can't afford losing at the time. You should back your data up before using any of these.

The working principle of these software is quite simple. It attempts to read all of your hard drive to start with to see if there are any bad sectors which interrupt data flow. The master boot record is also checked as there are master boot record viruses which can't be removed by ordinary format. (Low-level formatting is required for those who are interested) If the software detects anything unusual, it will report back to you so you can decide what to do. Nowadays, all the hard drive repair software are implemented with low-level formatting tools, so you can solve your problems right on the spot. Bad sectors however, are physical errors on your hard drives and there isn't much you can do about them.

All in all, make sure you run hard drive repair software on your hard drives to see what's wrong with them before throwing them away right off the bat. There's always a chance that these tools will save your life!

0 RAID 5 Data Recovery

Hello everyone! After a long break, today's topic is RAID 5 data recovery! First things first, let's start off with what RAID is. RAID (redundant array of independent disks) is a storage system where more than one disk is used. The data is distributed into those disks to prevent data loss in a case where one or more disks malfunction depending on which RAID level is used. There are different RAID levels from RAID 0 to RAID 6 (and RAID 10), each with different attributes.

Today, I will be specifically talking about RAID 5 since it's the most popularly used, (although being replaced slowly by RAID 6) and the safest RAID level.

Image from Wikipedia.

Link

First things first, let's start with how storage space works in RAID 5. Let's assume we have 4 disks for this example, and our disks are 2 TB each. In this case, we would have 6 TB of space in this array, which is calculated by the formula X * ( Y - 1 ), where X is the smallest disk in this array, and Y is the number of disks. A minimum of 3 disks are needed for a RAID 5 array.

As you can see in the picture, the data is divided into 4 disks, which allows data on the different disks to be accessed simultaneously, which is an upside of the RAID 5 array.

With all that being said, now we can talk about the main point, which is RAID 5 data recovery. In RAID 5, the data is striped between multiple disks like we have talked before, and a parity bit is added to each disk (which are calculated between the cylinders) , which is the reason why we see a decrease in total storage space in the array. For those who don't know what parity is, I will explain really quick.

Parity in RAID 5, in simplest terms, are digits which contain information (calculated by XOR of data). But how does that help in order to recover lost data incase one of the disks malfunction? The answer to this is the XOR function. Using the XOR function on the undamaged disks' parity bits give you the parity bit of the damaged drive, which can be used to reconstruct all the data on the damaged disk. Since we brought that up, let's also see how XOR works.

XOR is the principle where if there's a difference between numbers, then the result is 1, and if they're same, the result is 0. Therefore 1 xor 1 would be 0, 0 xor 0 would be 0, 1 xor 0 would be 1, and 0 xor 1 would be 1.

Since we know how XOR works now, let's see an example. 

Drive 1: 010111001

Drive 2: 110011100

---------------------

Drive 3: 100100111 is found by using the XOR function. This means the damaged drive's parity bit is 100100111, and can be used to reconstruct the data on the disk. The same method can be used over and over for each disk, given that only ONE disk in the array is damaged. If more than one disk is damaged, then the XOR function cannot be used, which means RAID 5 will be ineffective.

Of course, there are billions of numbers and calculations being made in a real life case, and this is just a stripped down example in order to learn how RAID 5 data recovery works.

According to the things we talked until now, you can see RAID 5 has a big advantage in the name of data recovery, and is also a good system if the disks are being read more than written on (which I've mentioned earlier)

RAID 5 also comes with its disadvantages like everything else, and that's no surprise. Writing on a RAID 5 system will surely be slow, since the parity data should be kept updated all the time. Therefore, RAID 5 shouldn't be used in places where constant writing to the disks is applied. RAID 5 will also require more RAM, and it makes you lose some part of your storage space.

All in all, I believe RAID 5 data recovery is one of the most miraculous things to happen in computer history, since everything is being stored in computers in this age, and losing important data could be a matter of life and death for a company or a business owner. I'm sure many of you heard the term RAID and wondered how it worked, so I hope this article made you understand it in a better way!

0 Making A Multiboot USB Stick

Hello everyone, today's topic is making a multiboot USB stick! I must say having a multiboot USB stick saved me a lot of time when I got in trouble with my current Windows installation. You can add many things to your multiboot USB stick such as a linux distro, a partition manager, MSDaRT, (this one saved my Windows so many times) hard drive utilities, rescue disks and so on depending on what you need.

Creating one is rather simple, and you're going to need the two programs above.

1) RMPrepUSB
2) SARDU

RMPrepUSB is the piece of software which prepares your USB Drive to be bootable, and SARDU adds the ISO files which contains the things you need on your USB stick.

After downloading both of them, we start by running RMPrepUSB. The settings in RMPrepUSB should be like the ones in the picture above.

After you selected these settings, click Prepare Drive and wait. Note that your drive will be wiped, so if you have anything important on the drive, make sure you get rid of them beforehand.

Now that we're done with making our USB stick boot ready, we can add the ISO files we want in it. Launch SARDU which we've downloaded beforehand.



Click the button which says ISO, and navigate to the folder where all the ISO files you want to add your usb stick are. (gather all the ISOs you want in one folder if you haven't done that yet)

Now you're ready to make your multiboot USB stick! Click the USB button on the right hand side, and wait until SARDU is done preparing your USB. (If SARDU has problems detecting your USB stick, use the Search USB button first)

And we're done! Now you have a multiboot USB stick with all the emergency system tools instead of having different CDs for them. When you're using the stick, make sure that your USB is the first boot option instead of your hard drives, cause then it's not going to work.

I hope this tutorial helped you, see you next time!

0 Cloud Computing

I'm sure many of you heard the term cloud computing a lot of times lately. Cloud computing is getting more popular every day and it's slowly taking over physical computing.. But what is cloud computing? That's probably the question all of you are asking if you're reading this right now.

Cloud computing, in most basic definition, is the usage of computer resources over a network, which includes internet. The computer resources could be anything depending on the type of the cloud computing, as there are many types of it.

Image from Wikipedia, created by Sam Johnston.

The most basic type of cloud computing is infrastructure as a service (IaaS). In this cloud computing type, you're basically given a computer which you can access via internet. These computers can either be physical computers or just virtual machines running on physical computers. IaaS is mainly used for the storage space, the ability to use different operating systems without altering your computer, being able to use an IP address of an another country, (for instance to be able to watch Netflix without living in US) and many more things you can do with a usual computer. In IaaS, you're only given the hardware and it's your responsibility to install the operating system, the software you need, to keep it updated and so on. Google Compute Engine is an example to this type of cloud computing.

The next type of cloud computing is platform as a service (PaaS). In PaaS, unlike IaaS, the operating system  and the features to test applications such as an execution environment is included. PaaS is used by application developers in order to test their software easily, instead of buying a new set of physical hardware to do so. Note that different PaaS providers support different programming languages, so you're supposed to find one which supports the language you are developing your software in. An example to PaaS is Google App Engine.

The ones who are familiar with gaming will know this one, which goes by the name software as a service (SaaS). In SaaS, a software is hosted on the cloud and it's accessed by people via a web browser. The upside of this system is that the software you're running via SaaS won't take any resources on your computer, since the computers in the cloud will be providing it. The first example I think of for this is certainly  Quake Live, as a gaming fan. OnLive is also a different example of SaaS cloud computing, and is considered as the future of gaming lately. SaaS is also used in different areas such as accounting.

STaaS must be the one that everyone is familiar with, unlike the others, because STaaS is being used by many home users. STaaS stands for Storage as a service, and is the principle behind many popular storage services such as Dropbox, Google Drive, iCloud and more. In this model, you're only given a storage space which you can access by using the internet wherever you have to.

There are many more types of cloud computing such as security as a service, database as a service, data as a service etc, which I won't be talking about right now, but maybe in the future.

I hope this helped you clear the question marks in your head about cloud computing!

Let's move on to the advantages of cloud computing now.

First things first, mobility is what makes cloud computing an amazing thing. You can't really have access to a physical thing all the time, but you can access your cloud wherever you want just with an internet connection. This plays a major role in the SaaS/STaaS system.

Second advantage would be cost, as it is cheaper than buying a physical computer to buy a cloud instead. IaaS and PaaS are the examples to this advantage.

Third advantage, in my eyes, is performance. You can always rely on big companies' cloud systems more than you can rely on your own home computer.

That being said, the only disadvantage which comes with cloud computing is the fact that if you don't have internet connection, you won't be able to access anything. But in the world we are living right now where even mobile phones are connected to internet 24/7 via 3G, where cities are covered in Wi-Fi coverage, I really doubt this would be a problem.

All in all, cloud computing has an answer for each one of your needs, if you are a home user, if you are a gamer, if you are a software developer, or if you are the owner of a business. I really believe it's the start of a new era in computing as it is growing so rapidly.

That would conclude everything I wanted to say about cloud computing for now, so see you all later in a different post!

0 Small But Powerful Software

Hello there! Today, instead of talking about a single thing, I decided to make a small compilation of software which I think would be really handy to have installed. You can pick whichever you want from the list and try it out to your likings. You might or might not have heard of these software, but I'm sure you wont leave them out of your toolkit once you got them.

Our first software is TeraCopy. TeraCopy is a file copying software which replaces the usual Windows one.

I don't know if it ever occured to you, but most of the times when you copy high amounts of files, or large files, the copying process either freezes or goes really slow. I've experienced freezing with Windows' own integrated copying software so many times, which made me look for an alternative. After using TeraCopy, I've noticed an increase in my copying speed, and also the freezing was gone. It's a great tool which should be installed right after formatting your computer, since it swaps itself with Windows' own copying software so you don't even have to run it. TeraCopy also features pausing/resuming which I personally haven't used so much, but I'm sure some people will find it useful.

You can download or find more about TeraCopy here.

Next up is Connectify, a software which saved my life many times. This one goes to the laptop users who don't have access to a wireless network. With Connectify, you or any of your friends who has a 3g/4g modem can turn the laptop into a wireless hotspot, and share the connection. I've experienced this problem many times when I went to holiday, and I was the only one who had a 3g modem. Luckily, I managed to share the connection with my family using Connectify.

Using Connectify is pretty simple and straight forward. All you have to do is choose a network name, a network password, and choose the connection which you want to share. Note that you will need the Pro version in order to share your connection, which I think is well worth for the money you're paying. Without Pro, you can only relay a WiFi connection, which is sort of useless if you have a router in the house.

You can find more about Connectify here.

I'm sure all of you know about Daemon Tools, but I'm sure I should mention it here. For those who don't know, Daemon Tools is a virtual cd/dvd-rom software, where you can mount CD/DVD files such as .iso or .cue in order to use them. Daemon Tools also lets you make images of the CDs or DVDs you own already, which you can use later on with Daemon Tools.

The usage is pretty simple again. All you need to do is to create virtual drives by clicking the DT plus sign in the main window, drag your iso files into the empty screen, and then mount them to the drives you want to by right clicking and selecting mount. The biggest advantage of this software is that you can create virtual copies of your CDs or DVDs, and keep as much of them as you want mounted with Daemon Tools instead of replacing a physical disk in your rom every single time. I personally find it such big of a hassle to replace a physical disk every single time I need to use something different.

To learn more about Daemon Tools, you can click this link.

This would be it for now, but I will be returning with a part 2 of this post after a while. I hope you enjoyed the read and found something which will make your life easier!

0 Spotify - Music anywhere

Spotify is a music streaming software which is a must have for any music fan. (at least in my opinion!) With Spotify, you have access to millions of songs anytime you want, (provided you have an internet connection) without downloading them.

There are many great features about Spotify, but let's look at the subscription plans since the features change depending on which one you have.

Spotify Free - You have access to the songs, but you can listen to a song only five times until it gets disabled. You will also have ads inbetween some songs.

Spotify Unlimited - The ads will be gone, and the five time limit will be lifted compared to Spotify Free.

Spotify Premium - You will have offline mode, where you can add songs to your offline playlist which Spotify will let you listen to even without an internet connection. You will also be able to use Spotify on your mobile phone.

In Spotify, you have the ability to make as many playlist as you want, so you won't have to worry about categorizing. Talking about playlists, there's also a function called "collaborative playlist", where you can link your playlist to your friends and they can add songs into them as well, making it a great function for sharing music with friends.

There's also a pretty interesting thing called the Radio, which actually isn't a radio, but better. You simply choose a genre (or more than one genre), and Spotify starts streaming music which belong to those genres. The reason why I said it's better than a radio is because that you can actually skip the songs you don't like. It's a great way of discovering new songs and making new additions to your playlists.

The next interesting thing about Spotify is the App Finder, where you can download "apps" for your Spotify. There are many different apps for many different purposes, such as Moodagent, (my favorite one) TuneWiki,  and so on. These apps serve purposes like finding playlists you like, giving you lyrics of the songs you are listen to, and lots of different things.

Spotify also serves as a local music player. It will detect the local music files you have under a category called Local Files where you can play them, making it a great place to collect all of your music. You can also download the tracks you like off Spotify in exchange for a little bit of money.

Spotify also supports iPhone/Android sync through WiFi, which is an easy way to update the songs on your phone. Facebook integration is also supported in Spotify for the ones who are interested. (personally I'm not really a big fan of this, but I'm sure there are people who would like it.)

Lastly, you can always take a look at the Top Lists, where Spotify shows you the hit tracks, albums, and artist at the time. It's also a great way of finding new songs to listen to.

I've been using Spotify since the beta, and it's truly an amazing software. It's adding more features day by day, (there was no app finder, no Spotify Mobile, no top lists or anything similar back in the day) which surely looks promising. So if you like listening to music, if you like sharing music with your friends and family, and you want to have a big archive of music under your hand, then Spotify is the right choice for you!

I hope you enjoyed the read!

0 Dummy File Creator

Hello everyone! I wasn't planning on writing something today, but I felt the need to share a really interesting software which I've just stumbled upon a few hours ago. There's not much to say about it, as you will notice that it's a pretty simple software to use.

This one is called Dummy File Creator. You can download this software here in its official page.

As it is obvious from the name, this software creates dummy files, which basically aren't anything, but just things which take up space. All you need to do is fill the size box, and the software will create you dummy file(s) of that size.

I'm sure everyone has the same question right now. "What could be possibly a good use of this software?" That's exactly what I asked myself when I saw it, and then I started thinking to myself if I can do anything useful with this piece of software.

When you think about it, there are actually many great uses for this software. I remember the days I didn't do my projects in high school, so I just downloaded a random file and named it myproject.ppt, then told my teacher that the file was corrupted and I will bring my project the next day. 90% of the time, it earned me another day to finish my project. That's probably the best purpose I can think of for this program!

Putting the jokes aside, you can do things such as filling your hard drive to see if there are any problems in your hard drive's sectors, (you'll experience errors at some point if you have bad sectors) you can check the writing speed of your hard drive, you can make dummy files after you deleted something so that they become unrecoverable, (since the dummy files will be written on those sectors) and many more things that I can't think of right now, or that I shouldn't be speaking about here.

All in all, using this software and deciding what you're gonna do with it is totally up to your creativity. This is what I would call a simple, but a powerful tool.

I hope you enjoyed the read!

0 CCleaner

Ever wished there was a software which would clean your computer from every single obsolete thing in one click? Then CCleaner is the software you are looking for! With one click, CCleaner will clean your computer and make it ready for daily use.

As you can see, the software cleans things like browser cache, Windows Explorer cache, and system cache which we are usually too lazy to clean by ourselves one by one. But of course, there's no reason to waste your computer's performance by not cleaning them since this can't get simpler.

CCleaner also supports cleaning cache of the applications you have such as Skype and such, which makes it a quite good bundle overall. You won't ever have to clean any cache manually anymore after you start using CCleaner.

It also has the option to analyze and tell you what you should clean by giving statistics about the software you are using in the right pane. You can see which cache is taking how much space by looking at the right pane and clean the ones you want, and leave the others.

CCleaner also offers registry cleaning, which is kind of a sweet feature. Registry entries tend to get messed up and stay there for long time even if they aren't used anymore, so it can't hurt to scan for registry issues every now and then and clean it.

Lastly, there are some extra tools in the software such as a built-in uninstaller, a startup manager similar to msconfig, a system restore utility, and a drive wiper. The drive wiper is also quite useful, since it deletes the files that are deleted before, (similar to Revo Uninstaller, which I covered in one of my posts) opening up more space and making them unrecoverable. The drive wiper also gives you the option of deleting the whole drive, also known as formatting. 

My recommendation would be to run CCleaner's Cleaner & Registry tools once per day right before you close your computer, so you can start fresh the next day. That's what I personally do and I can say I'm satisfied with the results.

I hope you enjoyed the read!

0 Revo Uninstaller Pro

Many times when I uninstall something off my computer, the things I uninstall usually leave lots of unneeded files and registry entries. It becomes pretty annoying when all this stuff stack up and take unneeded space or create conflicts. Icing on the cake, sometimes the uninstallers don't even work and you have to manually clean out a whole program...

After being annoyed at stuff like this, I started a research to see if there's any software which would help me to get rid of all these problems, and I found Revo Uninstaller Pro. You can find more information about Revo Uninstaller Pro here.

The main function of the software, as you will appreciate, is to uninstall software. In order to do this, the software follows a 3 step process which consists of making a system restore point, uninstalling with the integrated uninstaller, and cleaning the leftovers by scanning.

This way, if you uninstalled something which will cause a problem, you can just system restore without any problems, (I disabled the feature cause I doubt I need it) and you won't have any leftover files which will annoy you later on.

It also has extra features like cleaning your browsers' caches, cleaning the recent documents history of your Microsoft Office, and cleaning things in Windows such as the clipboard, temporary files and many more which I will be showing in the picture.

The Evidence Remover tool is also a quite nice tool in my opinion. It makes sure that the stuff you delete from your hard drive is totally unrecoverable by recovery softwares which I covered in one of my older posts. Note that this will only works for the deleted files, so you can safely use this to make sure noone digs out information off your hard drive.

Unrecoverable Delete tool is the alternative for Evidence Remover tool, where you can select files on your hard drive which will be deleted completely like the Evidence Remover does to your deleted files. It's better than deleting files by using Windows' own deleting tool since it won't give any room for recovery.

Junk Files Cleaner is a scanning utility which scans for the leftover files from the previous uninstalls you've done without Revo Uninstaller Pro. It is a good idea to run it once in a while just to make sure that every leftover file is cleaned and gone.

Autorun Manager is something that I don't really use since I'm used to using msconfig and it works just good for me, but it's simply a Startup manager where you can add/remove programs to/from your startup.

Lastly, there's the Hunter Mode, which is sort of an interesting feature. When you click Hunter Mode, you will get a crosshair which you can drag on the items on your desktop. After you successfully drag the crosshair on one of the windows (I use chrome for this example), it will give you choices such as uninstalling it, killing it, or removing it from the startup. I can't say I used it, but it looks like a really interesting feature which I might be using later on.

That would be all the features of Revo Uninstaller Pro. It's a really good software to have in your after-format software package, since I'm sure you will need something like this one day or another.

I hope you enjoyed the read!

0 Notepad++

Are you still using the original Notepad in Windows? It's time for a change! Notepad++ is an advanced version of Notepad which comes with many more features, and I promise it will make your life easier. It's especially good for people who are coding, but it's still an amazing upgrade for a home user nonetheless.

Notepad++ comes with great features such as highlighting / folding, opening your notepad documents in tabs instead of windows, making macros, (it records the things you do and you can recall it later) launching the notepad file in different browsers, (good for web programming) auto completion, customizable GUI, document map, plugin support for anything you might possibly need in Notepad, and many more.

The plugins include various things such as spell checking, exporting your file, quick translation, automatic saving, and the list goes on. There are too much plugins for me to actually talk about one by one here!

There are a few popular Notepad++ plugins which everyone using Notepad++ should have in my opinion. My recommendations in this case would be having Compare, Explorer, Multi-Clipboard, CharM, TopMost, AutoSave, and SpellChecker. Let's see what these plugins do one by one.

Compare : Shows you the changes between the saved document and the one you are working on at that moment.

Explorer : Think of it as an integrated Windows Explorer. It allows you to open any files on your system via Notepad++.

Multi-Clipboard : This one is pretty straight forward. It gives you more than one clipboard where you can see all your copies stored.

CharM : A special character map for the things you can't insert via your keyboard.

TopMost : Allows Notepad++ to be always on top.

AutoSave : Saves your document every X seconds where you choose the value for X.

SpellChecker : It's a spelilng checker!

You can find more information about Notepad++ here. I doubt you will look back to the original Notepad after using Notepad++, with all these great features.

I hope you enjoyed the read!