Protect your USB drive from unauthorised file changes, malware, or simply to prevent accidental changes by using a portable write-protection software.

USB WriteProtector is a small (444KB uncompressed) and portable (no installation needed) software that runs off your USB drive and prevents files being written to it or modified. It can help protect your drive from those annoying virus that affect portable drives, and it can also save you from accidentally making modifications to files or losing them altogether.

Just extract the file and copy it to your USB drive along with the ‘Languages’ folder containing the English language file (the original language is German). You can then run it and choose to enable or disable write-protection. Unplug your USB drive from the system and plug it back again for the write protection to be enabled. (Removal is not necessary for removing the write protection.)

For added security and ease, you can rename the executable to anything you want (I named it “usb.exe”) and hide it. It can then be run from the command line like so: X:\usb.exe /on /nogui

Love downloading free iPhone apps? Here’s a way to get notified either by email or sms when a paid app is available for free.

I absolutely love downloading free iPhone apps (who doesn’t). But it’s hard to keep tab of which app goes free and when. By using Google and Feed My Inbox, you can get SMS or email alerts when an app is available for free.

Google SMS: This service has currently been made available only for Indian mobile subscribers and is still a Labs feature. So we might not really know whether this will be around few months from now. Until then, Indian users can subscribe to this SMS channel. Around 3-4 SMS are sent each day, depending upon the number of apps that become free and also the number of SMS you’ve limited Google sending you.

Feed My Inbox: This is actually an RSS-to-Email service that sends you any feed as an email. You can use this feed created by our friends at KRAPPS (based on App Shopper).

Good ol’ RSS: If you don’t want to mess up your inbox and want to know when an app goes free the good old RSS way, use this link.

Quick Links:
Google SMS Channel
RSS Feed (for both RSS readers and Email subscribers)

I’m sure you have come across instances of a task “Not Responding” right? There’s a quick way to kill all such processes without altering the registry.

Create a shortcut anywhere on your desktop [Right-click -> New -> Shortcut]. For the shortcut path, copy and paste the following line:

taskkill.exe /f /fi "status eq not responding"

You can add an icon to it if you would like to make it look pretty. =)

Going a step further, you can run the task using keyboard shortcuts. Something like your very own Ctrl + Alt+ Del. To do so, you can follow the steps I have mentioned in this previously dated article. I set it to Ctrl + Shift + End. Everytime I have a hung process that requires me to kill it, I just hit these keys.

[via Life Hacker]

If you ever wanted to view the contents of a compressed file before downloading it, there’s now a simple way to do it.

This may come in handy if you suspect the file of not having what it claims (a bogus, or suspicious file). Using Google, we can now view the compressed file without installing any additional plugins or software.

Simply add the following before the URL to view the content.

http://www.google.com/gwt/n?u=

In this example, we’ve used Google Transcoder to view the contents of a theme file.

The URL should look like this:

http://www.google.com/gwt/n?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.woothemes.com%2Ffree-downloads%2Fsnapshot.zip

A quick way to view the contents may be to bookmark the following link in the Bookmarks Toolbar, under a convenient name such as “View ZIP”. Give the address (URL) of the bookmark as:

javascript:location.href='http://www.google.com/gwt/n?u='+document.location.href;

Open the download link in a new tab. Cancel the download. Click the bookmark to view the contents. You can then download it by clicking on the ‘View in HTML’ link at the bottom of the page.

Stop searching the Internet for any registry tweaks, because after this article, you won’t need any.

Not all of the tweaks and tips can be written down here on a single post. Ergo, The Harmless Geek has uploaded a compilation of various tips, tricks, tweaks, hidden software, et all. It can be downloaded in .PDF format. =)

Hacking_Windows_XP (15 KB)

Secrets_Of_XP (31 KB)

(PDFs created using Print What You Like.)

You can also continue reading to see a taste of what’s in the two files.

How would you like to restart Windows without having to reboot your computer?

This is what’s called as a ‘Hot Reboot’. Doing so is pretty straight-forward. Just keep the SHIFT key pressed while you click on the Shutdown option.

Have you tried out these Windows XP Hidden Programs?

Windows XP has a lot of hidden programs that is not listed in the Start Menu. Among the many, here’s one:

• iExpress
  This Program is for converting your files to executable files
  Click : Start
  Then : Run
  Type : iexpress

The Windows Registry tool is powerful. Use it!

Have you tried it yet? If not, you really should. Here’s one registry tweak that might make you want to tweak your registry:

If you’re a gamer, you might be sick of accidentally pressing the Windows key and having the game minimize to the desktop or crash. You can prevent that happening by disabling the Windows key altogether.

• Click: Start
  Then: Run
  Type: regedit
  Navigate to:
  [HKEY_LOCAL_ MACHINE\SYSTEM\ CurrentControlSet\Control\ Keyboard Layout]
  In this look for the value “Scancode Map”. Its binary data so be extra careful: Set its value to “00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 03 00 00 00 00 00 5B E0 00 00 5C E0 00 00 00 00″ to disable the Windows key.

Yesterday we wrote about Copy Paste Character.com, a site that lets you copy special characters to your clipboard with ease.

Today, I came across TwitterKeys, which basically does the same function as Copy Paste Character.com, but provides a lot more special characters. Again, this can be pretty useful on a site such as Twitter. =D

You need to double click the character, and then press Control + C. You can then paste the character on Twitter or any other site that supports UTF8.

Here’s the link.

Copying special characters is pretty easy on Windows. All you need to do is run Character Map from the Start menu. That brings up a window that contains hundreds of special characters, some of which, are pretty useless.

You could instead use Copy Paste Character.com, which is a simple site that does what it says – copies the special character that you select, and you can paste it anywhere, even on Twitter. It’s very easy to use too. Click on the character you want and it is automatically copied to the clipboard.

Any Linux Distro has many text processing tools installed by default. We can use these tools to get some of the desired outputs. Although every precautions have been taken in writing this post , still if you find some error please notify us [ WE are HUMAN and to ERR is Human ]

So here starts a short guide on various text processing tools.

1) tail
Short Description : output the 10 last lines of files

usage

$tail /your/path/to/file

the above command will display last 10 lines of the desired file. With the following arguments [ or in technical term switch ] you can get more out of it

$tail -n 2 /file/address

The above will display last 2 lines of your desired file [ you can change the value 2 with your own variable ]

$tail -f /file/address

This command is very useful to watch log files of ur Linux Box. This switch append the output with the changes in the file
$tail -v /file/name
This command will print the absolute file address of the file and then will output the last part of that file

2) head
Short Description : output the first 10 lines of files

usage
$head /your/path/to/file

The above command will display first 10 lines of the desired file. The “ head” command can be further customized with following switches

$head -n 4 /file/name
The above will print First four lines of your desired file [ please change value from 4 to your desired number / variable ]

$head -v /file/name
It will print file name and then will produce the head output

3) grep
Short Description : print lines matching a pattern

grep is really nice utility for searching a text withing a long file . It prints that line where the text is found

usage
$grep search_string /file/address
The above command will search for search_string in /file/address named file [ replace the search_string with what you want to search and /file/address with your file address]

4) sed
Short Description : stream editor for filtering and transforming text.

Usage
$sed -e 's:search:replace:g' /file/name

The above will produce output by replacing search string [ it will not change file ]

Now the main tool that is spell checking tool

5) aspell
Short Description: spell checking utility

usage
$aspell check /file/name
will check /file/name for any error and prompt if spelling error found. User then can replace correct spelling and it will be saved in file

$aspell list < /file_name
This will list of misspelled word from /file_name

So this was some shortlisted and commonly used text processing tools . Please note that this was basic text editing strings which are/may_be commonly used . For further info refer to each utilities manual entry