Sometimes, you need to protect sensitive data from others opening it. Sometimes, friends have this annoying habit of opening files on your laptop or something that might embarrass you. Even company confidential files need to be protected. This will be helpful incase you lose your laptop or something. So, there are so many reasons to encrypt files, folders or even the entire partition for that matter. There are so many utilities. Most famous of them is AxCrypt. We’ve been using it for quite sometime. It is tried and tested by more than 1.5 million across the globe. AxCrypt is Open Source and Free. Very simple to install and use. It integrates seamlessly with Windows to compress, encrypt, decrypt, store, send and work with individual files.

Popularity: 47% [?]

Proxy websites allows us to bypass our current ISP’s IP and connect to targeted website with a different IP; thus hiding our actual origin from detectable. Internet users use proxy websites for various reasons, some to access websites potentially blocked by their colleges or workplace, some use it to test their scripts. I frequently used them to test geo-location ads or to check if DNS are properly propagated when I adjust their settings.

I’ve decided to bring this entry back from archive to front page after receiving tones of emails asking for alternative proxies. Instead of the previous 2 proxy websites, here’s my personal collection on proxy websites. Full list after jump.

Popularity: 2% [?]

I encountered this post on my weekend reading. 91 Surefire Ways to Become an Event Greater Developer contain a comprehensive guide linking to all sort of blog posts providing insights on improving your skills as a developer.

While the list is very long and sometimes debatable it does have some interesting pointers. If you do nothing else, delve into item #8: Learn Programming by Not Programming referring to the following post by Jeff Atwood.

The topic in question is why some developers outperform their peers regardless of their accumulated experience:

But the dirty little secret of the software development industry is that this is also true even for people who can program: there’s a vast divide between good developers and mediocre developers.

A mediocre developer can program his or her heart out for four years, but that won’t magically transform them into a good developer. And the good developers always seem to have a natural knack for the stuff from the very beginning.

The answer lies in the quotes taken from Bill Gates remarks:

Popularity: 2% [?]

Running Outlook 2010 offline can be useful if you want to perform any task other than email. But what if you have 100 emails and it is taking forever to download them? By default Outlook 2010 downloads both the emails and the attachments and does not ask the user about this setting when setting up an account for the first time.

In Outlook 2007 you could hit Ctrl+Alt+S to open your Outlook Send and Receive Groups, but this is not the case in Outlook 2010. You first need to head over to the Send/Receive tab and Go to Send/Receive Groups -> Define Send/Receive Groups as shown in the screenshot .

Popularity: 12% [?]

Microsoft Office Outlook 2010 is quite stable but not perfect, if your PST file becomes corrupt then you will need a repair tool to fix it. PST stands for Personal Storage Table(also referred as Personal Folder File) and is used to store all your Inbox, and other information. If it becomes corrupt, then your Inbox will also get corrupted.

If Outlook 2010 is crashing, you could try running in Safe Mode and determine what is causing the problem. If you can’t find a problem, then there is a high chance it could be due to corrupt PST file. So how do we fix it? There are two methods, either use an official tool or a 3rd party tool.

Popularity: 7% [?]

The curtain has closed on Apple’s big event. While we’re still recovering from all the big news surrounding Jobs’ return, the new and improved Nanos, the arrival of iPhone OS 3.1, and the fact that iTunes 9 comes with sharing, we’re now able to actually play with our new toys and we’ve discovered something remarkable.

Amid all the hype around iTunes 9 was one new instrumental feature for iPhone owners — app management. We were thrilled by the possibilities of finally being able to organize and manage our apps via iTunes, and now we’re even more impressed by the reality.

After toying with the new feature, we can officially say that the iTunes 9 application management features are fantastic. Gone are the days of painstakingly moving apps one-by-one on our iPhones. Today we welcome effortless drag and drop app management and syncing, and here we’ll walk you through how to create application harmony between iTunes and your iPhone.

Popularity: unranked [?]

We all download software from the Internet or install applications off a CD or some other media. While some companies decide to just distribute their applications packaged in zip files, most of them use some form of an installation program, which is usually an EXE – Executable file – that runs you through a series of steps to install the said software on your machine.

Have you ever wondered how those EXE files are created ?

Well, there are a lot of software that can help you create install packages to distribute your software, and today we’ll walk you through using one that has been been there on your Windows system all along. This unassuming utility is called iExpress and is (probably) the easiest utility you’ll ever find to make an EXE file for your software.

So, if you’ve ever wondered how those installation programs are created, how the “magic” happens during the installation wizard and how a simple single executable spits out hundreds of real useable program files, we’ll answer that question for you today.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Office suite applications are ubiquitous. There are so many options available if you want to a create a document or a spreadsheet.

There are open source free desktop applications, then there are free cloud-based applications. Microsoft has been working on a free version of its popular Office franchise as well. The free version would be available via the cloud. Microsoft recently launched a tech preview. It is an invite-only preview, however you just need a Skydrive account and some URL tweaking to try out the Microsoft Office Web Apps Preview. Here is how:

• The following steps seem to work only if you have ?mkt=en-us appended to the Skydrive URL. So click here.
• Create a Skydrive account (Windows Live Account) if you don’t have one, or log into your existing one. It gives you 25GB of online space you can use to store/backup your files. We wrote about it some time back.

Popularity: unranked [?]

I am an organizational nut case. My desk has nothing on it except what I am working on right at the moment. Likewise, my computing is clutter-free. I have my desktop, my browser, the ‘My Documents’ folder, and my drives organized and efficient.

My desktop has only the documents that I am working on today, plus the shortcuts I use each and every day. If I don’t use it within 48 hours, I create a folder and file it. Much like the situation with my desk, keeping my computer organized improves productivity. It also helps my less organized co-workers. The moment they can’t find an important email or paper, they ask me for it. I find it – quickly.

Let’s look at some simple and basic tips to organize Windows that you may be overlooking and won’t cost you a nickel.

Folder Structure

Many people go through their day to day computing work not even realizing they can create a new folder practically anywhere by right-clicking and then selecting New –> Folder. You can then rename the folder to whatever you would like. Your desktop, in Outlook Mail, within My Documents, within My Music, and in your browser’s “Favorites” or “Bookmarks” are all places you can create new folders.

Popularity: unranked [?]

If you are a serious gamer, then you do not want to skip this post. Who doesn’t love a little clan war during a LAN party? If not properly organized, a night of fun can easily turn into a nightmare. Hours of scheduled fun can turn into hours of troubleshooting hell. No connectivity, not the right sockets or plugs, lack of space and food, uninvited guests – these are just a few of the setbacks that can and will happen.

If you are planning to host your own LAN party, then here are some LAN party tips on how to go about it to make your night a hassle-free and enjoyable one.

1. Planning the Event

This is something that you want to get right before you begin sending out your invites to your friends. Planning is crucial. There is a quote by George Hewell, “Those who fail to plan, plan to fail”, and I know that you don’t want to embarrass yourself with all your mates over at your house. So here are some LAN party tips to help with your planning.

Determine who is coming

If you live in a small apartment, you don’t want to be overcrowded, so carefully select who you invite. Try not to do what Australian Corey Worthing did. Carefully select who you want game with, and make sure you don’t invite your mates that may worry you.

Popularity: unranked [?]

Today, Flash is everywhere. Animations, music, games, advertisements or even streaming presentations. Speaking of games, here’s a list of site with the best flash games.

The use of Flash plug-ins in browsers is now almost obligatory. Yes, it’s easy to view and enjoy the rich media content delivered by interactive Flash embedded pages. But what if I want to download some of these files as keepsakes? The greatest benefit – I can watch them offline in my own jolly time. Convert them to a format of my choice. Or embed them again in a PowerPoint presentation. Or even transfer them to my mobile phone.

Flash animation files are embedded as SWF (Small Web Format) files in webpages. Rather than depending on any software or a third-party website, downloading Flash content is dead simple. The only tool required is a browser and a bit of patience to do the rummaging around.

Just one note: As we will be heading into the internet cache folders of the respective browsers, it pays to clear it of all old files before navigating to the desired page. It makes the Flash file search a lot easier.

So, here’s how to do it in three of our popular browsers.

Popularity: unranked [?]

I like Firefox but it’s not as fast as it used to be. This is a comprehensive, safe guide to optimizing Firefox 3.5 for speedy browsing. For each suggestion, your mileage may vary. Before you proceed, create a new profile.

Quit Firefox, run “firefox.exe –profilemanager”, and create a new profile to experiment on. Use the new profile as your default only if your performance improves. Only those changes needed from a default installation are mentioned in this guide.

Popularity: 3% [?]