services posts

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Open Source, Windows x64

Open source tweaking app Vista Services Optimizer adds Windows 7 love in v1.2

by Lee Mathews Sep 30th 2009

If you don't know the app, don't let its name fool you. Vista Services Optimizer is capable of more than just tuning your Windows services to squeeze out some extra performance.

It also allows you to create different profiles, provides a one-touch gaming mode, can take automatic service state snapshots, and offers painless recovery of Windows default settings. Version 1.2 is also Windows 7 friendly (64-bit builds included).

VSO is also a nice app for casual tweakers -- you don't have to know what each Windows service does or whether or not you can do without it. Just answer the (mostly) plain English questions VSO asks, and it takes care of making the necessary changes to your services. The built-in Rescue Center makes undoing changes totally painless.

Vista Services Optimizer is offered both with an installer and as a portable utility (host machine must have .Net 3.5 installed). Downloads from the developer's site can be a bit slow, but you can also find VSO over at Softpedia.

Tags: portable, services, services.msc, tweaking, vista, vista-services-optimizer, windows-7

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Web services

Easily restore Windows services to default settings with a web app

by Lee Mathews Sep 28th 2009

I don't know how they manage to do it, but they do. Every now and then a customer drops off a system for repair and things that a home user should ever need to monkey with - things like TCP/IP settings, registry entries, Windows services - have been mangled beyond recognition.

Services in particular can be a big pain to reset, simply because of how many their are. Fortunately, there's an incredibly handy web app which makes the process a whole lot easier.

Serviceseditor.com supports Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7. Click the appropriate version, and you're presented with a comprehensive list of radio buttons covering all the built-in services. Scroll through the list and toggle any values you don't want set to the default Microsoft settings and press the submit button. You'll receive a .reg file which you can then merge with the Windows registry.

It's quite a bit faster than clicking through services.msc manually to get things back to normal and (obviously) doesn't even require an install. Slick!

Tags: defaults, management, registry, restore, services, services.msc, windows

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Open Source, Troubleshooting, Windows x64

Keep an eye on your system's vitals with Yet Another Process Monitor

by Lee Mathews Aug 4th 2009

Fans of the ribbon interface who want a full-featured alternative to task manager, check out Yet Another Process Monitor.

Apart from showing task manager-esque information about running processes, YAPM also provides details about Windows services and your network activity. The system information panel provides realtime monitoring of processor, memory, and disk activity. Service startup types can be managed, processor affinities specified, and there's a grayed-out option for limiting CPU usage that will likely be active in a future version.

Don't recognize a specific process (say, for example igfxpers.exe)? Highlight it and click the internet search button to be taken directly to Google's results for clarification. You can also put YAPM's Kung Fu to use monitoring remote machines on your network.

In all honesty, there's so much built in to YAPM that you really need to download it and give it a try - assuming you want a better system monitor.

YAPM is free, requires no installation, and open source to boot. I won't go so far as to call it completely portable (the .Net 2.0 framework is required), but I'm all for applications that don't make me click through a setup.

Tags: administration, monitoring, network, open-source, portable, process-manager, processes, remote, services, threads

Filed under: Games, Utilities, Windows, Freeware, Windows x64

Game Booster auto-tweaks Windows for better performance

by Lee Mathews Apr 7th 2009

There are plenty of hardware-free solutions for squeezing a little bit more gaming performance out of your Windows system. Heck, there are even a number of tools built right in to Windows that you can use to cut down on background performance drains before you fire up your favorite game - like services.msc, for example.

Still, it's kind of pain to go in there and selectively turn off unwanted services all the time. Game Booster makes the process totally painless. It's similar to AMD's Fusion tool: when activated, Game Booster will turn off any unnecessary Windows services, do a quick RAM sweep, and offer to close any other programs that are currently running.

Game Booster is useful in non-gaming situations as well - keep it handy to quiet background process noise whenever you're firing up any processor-hungry application.

Game Booster is a free download, and it's compatible with Windows XP, Vista, and even Windows 7 - good news for those of you who are beta testing and looking for compatible tweaking apps.

Tags: gaming, performance-tuning, services, tweaking, windows

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware

Better Windows Service Control With Turbo Services Manager

by Lee Mathews Sep 26th 2008

I spend quite a bit of time during my day tweaking Windows services on underpowered XP and Vista computers, and the services.msc snap-in just doesn't quite cut it.

For the past few days I've been using Turbo Services Manager as an alternative. It's a 123k (311k for the 64-bit version) portable application that performs all of the msc's functions and more.

I'm particularly enjoying the hotkeys, which make stopping, starting, and restarting a lot less cumbersome. I've always hated having to click into a service's propteris screen just to stop it. Highlight a row in TSM and press shift + s to put the brakes on. The main display shows the name, state, dependencies, startup type, and description of your Windows services.

You can even uninstall a service, something that I find extremely useful on the poor, old Pentium 3 rigs that someone's buddy pushed and prodded through a full XP install.

There's even an option to do a "test load," which simulates what would've happened if you actually applied the changes you made. TSM also lets you save states to an XML file, which is a painless way to apply service settings on multiple machines. Nice!

Turbo Services Manager is freeware, and runs on 32 or 64-bit Windows only.

Tags: services, services.msc, windows

Filed under: Utilities, Windows, Freeware

ProcX shows you which Windows services can be safely terminated

by Brad Linder Mar 13th 2008

The Windows task manager might show you a list of running processes, but it does a pretty poor job of letting you know what some of those processes are actually doing. You don't need a Ph.D, to figure out what will happen if you terminate firefox.exe because it's using up 100% of your CPU cycles, but what about spudsvc.exe?

ProcX is a free utility that will show a list of running processes also shows you which applications they're associated with. Sometimes that information might not be particularly helpful, such as when you find out that an process is associated with "services" or "explorer." But it might help you figure out if ending a process will end an application you didn't mean to kill.

You can also use ProcX to show network access, display DLLs loaded by a process, and delete, rename, or suspend/resume a process or DLL. You can also use the program to search for a process name using Google.

[via XFuture Blog]

Tags: processes, procx, services, task-manager

Filed under: Business, Internet, Web services, web 2.0

Bartering online with Giventake

by Chris Gilmer Oct 16th 2007

Do you have something kicking around you don't want but which somebody could still get some use out of? Why not barter?

Goods and services have been exchanged for other goods and services since the stone ages. It's a simple way to trade items between parties without cash. Giventake takes the process online. The website lets people trade items for something they have a use for. Users start off by registering and searching out what they are looking for. When the goods have been found, connect with the owner, work out an exchange and make a deal.

The site has items listed from antiques, books, collectibles, computer equipment, games and jewelry in 26 different categories, largely focused in India. There are no fees involved with using the Giventake service.

Tags: barter, giventake, goods, services, trade, web2, web2.0, website

Filed under: Fun, Internet, Productivity, Google, Search

Google Cheat Sheets PDF

by Chris Gilmer Aug 14th 2007

With so many Google services on the internet, it's easy to get lost on what the search giant provides, where each service lives, and how to search for what you need.

That's where Cheat Sheets come into play. Adelaider has made up some educational cheat sheets that help users navigate to their appropriate Google service like Google Translate, Google SMS, or Google Trends. The sheets also display all of the Google country specific domains, Google contact information and query strings necessary for advanced search operators. The two page document is available as a PDF with active links that link out to the appropriate sites and services.

[via searchengineland]

Tags: cheat sheet, CheatSheet, google, google cheat sheet, GoogleCheatSheet, search, services

Filed under: Fun, Internet, Text, News, Web services, Commercial, Social Software

The Grinch couldn't stop Askville

by Ryan Carter Dec 27th 2006

Amazon just launched its own questions and answers service in beta called Askville. Yup, just like you've seen elsewhere. You have to have an Amazon sign-in and you can ask questions or answer questions people post. Odd that Amazon sees a future where Google did not. What am I missing here? Yahoo! is doing well with its service in the same vein, so apparently there is some pull to such services. Amazon's seems to be very Web 2.0 and purdy, if you are into the answers sort of thing. The Grinch has nothing on me, not a thing. Perhaps he should have asked Amazon's Askville why the Whos are so happy. I'll bet he would have gotten his answer faster than ruining Christmas. Dumb Grinch.

Tags: amazon, askville, grinch, services, software, web

Filed under: Internet, Features, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Palm, Productivity, Web services, Google, Freeware, Social Software, Unix

Google issues major overhaul to Google Reader

by David Chartier Sep 29th 2006

Google has announced what is quite possibly the largest update to Google Reader since its inception, bringing an entirely new UI, more keyboard shortcuts, new bookmarklets and a whole lotta results from user feedback to the table. Overall, as a Google Reader fan for some time, I am pleasantly surprised by this wholly positive and usable update, but it isn't without a few confusing quirks.

The first and most noticeable update is the radical change to Google Reader's UI, bringing it more in line with the tried and tested UI of many other online readers, but still with much of the Google engineers' unique genius baked in everywhere. Above you can see Reader has adopted the typical folder/grouping system on the left, while headlines can be listed on the right.

Tags: app, apps, features, freedbacking, google, google reader, GoogleReader, reader, rss, service, services, ui, update, updates

Filed under: Developer, Internet, Video, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Adobe, Social Software

Vimeo's Flash player controller rocks - why is everyone else's so horrible?

by David Chartier Sep 4th 2006

I found this really intriguing video via kottke's remaindered links of a photographer who took a pic of himself every day for six years, and then threw all the images together into a movie. But this post isn't about the cool video - it's about Vimeo's Flash player controller.

After pressing play, mouseover the video again and note the timeline controller that pops up. Now click anywhere in that controller to jump around the timeline (of video your player has downloaded, of course). For bonus points, click and drag to scrub back and forth a few seconds - awesome, isn't it? You're watching a Flash video that, as long as it's buffered enough, more or less has near-perfect performance in terms of navigating the timeline, selecting specific points and scrubbing footage. In Flash! Why does nearly everyone else's Flash player/controller suck? YouTube, MySpace - I'm looking at you. Embedded QuickTime and Windows Movie files have been able to do this forever.. why can't Flash master this fundamental function?

You can tell Vimeo's controller is custom - it's too 'web 2.0' and gloriously simple and intuitive; there's no way Macromedia-cum-Adobe built it. So what gives? Do you DLS readers have any idea as to why Flash, with Adobe's big video services push, doesn't seem to offer these basic necessities of producing a quality online video experience? Sound off, even if it's just an explanation to help sooth the pain.

Tags: adobe, complaints, control, flash, macromedia, services, streaming, video, vimeo

Filed under: Internet, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Productivity, Web services, Commercial, Freeware, Social Software

Porchlight - bug tracking made simple for small teams

by David Chartier Aug 15th 2006

If your software or web design project is struggling through the fog, let Porchlight show you and your team the way. This web-based project management and bug tracking service offers user-specific milestone and project tracking, so members of your team only need to see the tasks that matter to them. Email updates and RSS feeds for projects, as well as a subscribe-able calendar for upcoming milestones are but a few of the appealing features for this project management app targeted towards software and web nerds alike. Check out more screenshots after the bump, try out the service for free or check out Porchlight's pricing to see if a plan fits your needs.

Tags: bug, bugs, design, porchlight, projects, service, services, tracking, web, web 2.0, web design, Web2.0, web20, WebDesign

Filed under: Internet, News, Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Windows Mobile, Symbian, Palm, Web services, Google, Yahoo!, Social Software

OSNews writer reviews Flickr and Picasa Web Albums

by David Chartier Aug 10th 2006

OSNews writer Adam Scheinberg has written a review of two popular photo sharing services, Flickr and Picasa Web Albums, on his blog. Apparently, enough of the OSNews readers liked the review so much that they pressured him into posting it to OSNews, which made me think there just might be something to it.

To be honest, I think he does a good job of reviewing both services objectively, so I don't want to ruin his conclusion. I personally am an iPhoto and Flickr user since I'm on Mac OS X, but I've heard great things about Google's Picasa, and I've poked around with Web Albums since Google released an uploader app and iPhoto plugin for Mac OS X.

Check out Adam's review of the two big-hitters and see what you think. You might even learn something new about these services.

Tags: comparison, feature, features, flickr, osnews, picasa, reiew, service, services

Filed under: Windows

Guide to useless Windows services

by Jordan Running Jul 20th 2006

Speaking of Windows getting bogged down, you're probably aware that Windows runs a lot of stuff in the background that takes up memory and processor cycles that could be better spent elsewhere, and you might even know how to access the Services control panel, but once you're there it can be hard to know what to keep and what to kill. There is help to be found, however: Guide to Useless Services is an article on TechTree written back in December that identifies and describes 29 services that are probably running on your computer and probably don't need to be. Shut 'em down!

Tags: disable, performance, services, speed, techtree, windows

Filed under: Developer, Web services

MapQuest releases open API

by Jordan Running Mar 9th 2006

Following in Google and Yahoo!'s wake, venerable mapping site (and fellow AOL company) MapQuest has released an open API that third-party developers can use to integrate mappingservices into their own web sites. The new "OpenAPI" supports most of what Google and Yahoo!'s APIs do, like push-pin markers and pop-up info boxes, with the addition of route-planning that competing APIs lack. For free users, OpenAPI has a limit of 50,000 maps and geocodes (combined) and 5,000 routes per day (compare to Google's 50,000 and Yahoo!'s no limit). To get an idea of what can be done with the API take a look at the sample mash-up, Mapzierge. You can also check out the OpenAPI developers' blog, and if you come up with something cool you should enter their Developers Challenge. Though I'm always glad to see a new open API, and even though MapQuest has improved some in the last year, I must say it still feels remarkably clunky. Baby steps, I guess.

Tags: aol, api, developer, directions, google, mapping, mapquest, maps, services, web 2.0, web20, yahoo

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The World's Hardest Game 2.0 - Time Waster

So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do. Yes, amazingly, it's possible to have a sequel to a game called "The World's Hardest Game". It doesn't seem logically possible, since if the first one was actually the world's hardest, how could another one come along and share the moniker? It made me doubt the name in the first place. That is, until I tried the game. The mechanics of the game are very simple. You are a small red square, ...

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