Knowing what's going on inside your OS is critical to keeping it running smoothly. Sure, task manager and msconfig are built-in to Windows, but they're pretty minimalistic. For something with a little more punch, give Winpatrol a shot - we first looked at it in 2005, and it's bigger and better than ever.
Winpatrol offers a software "Swiss-army knife" of features for protecting and tuning your Windows system. Scotty (the app's mascot) keeps a watchful eye on process, services, startup programs, IE helpers, lmhosts, and a slew of others. It'll even lock your file associations and alert you to attempted changes to your hosts file. If you're interested in paying for the plus version, you'll get more detailed information on processes and tasks via a connection to an online database.
You can also use Winpatrol to help speed your Windows boot time a la msconfig - but not just by enabling and removing unwated startups. You can move and startup item to a delayed group, which allows apps that you want to give priority a little more elbow room when you boot your rig.
Anyone who's looking for tighter control over Windows performance or who wants a little extra virus or malware protection would do well to download Winpatrol. Scotty's definitely a nice addition to any Windows (32 and 64-bit) perimeter defense.
If you've ever used the Windows utility MSConfig to remove your Windows startup menus, you've probably noticed that the applications aren't really gone. They're just disabled. You could go and delete them using a registry editor or a more powerful tool like AutoRuns. Or you could permanently delete entries using MSConfig Cleanup.
Here's how it works. You bring up MSConfig by clicking on "Run" in your Windows Start Menu. Navigate to the "Startup" tab and unselect any applications you don't want to run when Windows loads.
Then fire up MSConfig Cleanup and you should see a list of disabled programs. Check the boxes next to the ones you want to permanently remove, and click "Clean Up Selected." Honestly, we're not 100% certain why you'd want to use MSConfig and MSConfig Cleanup instead of AutoRuns, but if you've already disabled a bunch of programs using MSConfig, this free utility could provide a fast way to make your changes permanent.
One of our biggest complaints with Windows Vista is that it takes far longer to boot up and shut down than Windows XP installed on an identical system. When Microsoft first announced the feature set for Vista, one of the things they claimed was that you would actually have shorter startup times, but we later discovered that what they meant was that there would be power saving features that would make it easy to put your PC into sleep mode when you're not using it and quickly resume.
But if you're a Vista user that likes to completely shut down your computer, you've probably gotten used to waiting a while for it to start up when you next hit the power button. It turns out that part of the problem might not be with Vista itself, but in 3rd party software that doesn't play well with Vista. For example, although we've long been fans of AVG Free Edition anti-virus software, Ed Bott and Dwight Silverman both suggest that it could have a dramatic impact on Vista startup times.
So we went ahead and uninstalled AVG and lo and behold, our system did seem to boot up more quickly. Of course, there are various ways to measure boot speed. For example, you could stop the timer when you first see your Windows desktop. But for many users, what really counts is the moment when you can start clicking on programs and expect them to respond or the moment when your internet connection is ready, allowing you to launch a web browser, chat program or other online applications. And we have to say, the time between the desktop showing up and our internet connection working has gone up significantly since uninstalling AVG.
Our tests were completely unscientific, so we don't have a lot of numbers to share with you. And our system still takes 80 to 90 seconds to startup with Vista, while we can boot Windows XP on the same system in about half the time. But now we're curious. If you're using AVG on Vista, have you tried uninstalling it to measure the impact on your startup times?
We still highly recommend AVG Free if you're using Windows XP. But if you're using Vista, you might want to check out some free alternatives like Avast!, AntiVir, BitDefender, or ClamWin.
Think you have a hot startup idea? Write it down and you could net a little funding.
Bang Ventures from New York is offering $15,000 U.S. for startup CEOs to get their ideas off the ground. "You Be The VC" Candidates start by submitting applications outlining their plans for a new internet startup. These will be judged by handpicked professionals in the startup field to guarantee unbiased results and ensure that funding goes to best idea seen in the public's eye. There are no limits as to the number of ideas that CEO's can submit, just as long as they are in by the deadline of December 2007.
Voting begins March 2008, with the $15,000 prize money, temporary relocation expenses to Cambridge, MA, and living expenses being handed out upon final vote submissions. Winners of the "You Be The VC" campaign will also be able to utilize Bang Venture's support network, resources and materials.
Some internet startups take months or years of planning. Others can be put together in just a matter of days with a good idea and a little pluck. In July a group of 70 people got together in Boulder, Colorado to vote on ideas that had been proposed. Over the course of a single weekend, they chose an idea and created Vosnap, an online polling tool.
This weekend, 120+ people have signed up for a similar "Startup Weekend" in New York City. The group will choose from more than 15 ideas, and try to put together a business plan by Sunday.
Vosnap is up and running, but isn't making money yet. But the process was successful enough to encourage Startup Weekends around the world. Future events are planned for cities including Boston, Atlanta, and London.
How many times have you been befuddled with a product, only to result to the dreaded 1-800 number in the manual to resolve your issue? Hours later only to find no resolution in sight.
Enter Fixya, a startup that has taken on the challenge of supplying online technical support, user guides and repairs by letting users help each other. In a few simple steps users get the help they need with their items by submitting product related questions from a catalog of over 700,000 current consumer products, ranging from baby items to electronic gadgets. Other users can then choose to answer questions to the best of their knowledge, with experts standing by. It's a very unique online service that I'm sure big brands would love to sponsor or be a part of. Can we say no more 1-800 in the neat future? Maybe!
There have been lots of rumors and buzz circulating the past few weeks on whether or not Google was pursuing Adscape, a startup -- only officially launched in February 2006 with $3.2 million in funding -- that specializes in in-game advertising. After a brief quiet period, details are starting to emerge about an agreement to acquire Adscape Media for $23 million. Could this be the next big thing for Google?
In-game advertising insiders say that it will most likely will not do much for the search giant but, I highly doubt that. With this being a potential new advertising category, and with Microsoft already in the mix, there is serious potential for Google to open new doors and show smaller businesses the opportunities they could bring. With all current generation gaming machines having some form of internet connectivity, locally focused in-game advertising could find a whole a new level.
Google specializes in online, and if the ads are kept online in Adscapes dynamic advertisements for video games, all should do just fine. Don't expect and major deals to be worked out yet, as I'm sure Google has a lot of development to do on the project.
The Small Business Administration (SBA) has been around for a while mostly trying to make the life of a small business owner easier, and boy we need it. Running a small business is hard, and for many business owners, getting started, or better yet, keeping the thing going is especially tough. The SBA wants to help by offering a bunch of free podcasts to help you get or keep going with your fledgling enterprise. Here is the list of currently available podcasts:
Check List for Starting a Business
SBA Programs Support Entrepreneurial Veterans
Is Entrepreneurship for You?
The SBA Small Business Training Network-Log On!
Selecting a Business That Fits
Disaster Preparedness for Business Owners
Financing a Small Business
Creating a Business Plan
Making Your Business Plan Work for You
I haven't listened to all of them yet, but they seem to contain some useful information for business owners.
These days it seems like anyone with an idea and some time can crank out a Web 2.0 startup, be it a service, community, one-trick-pony or ambiguously named whichamadinger. It also seems like many of these startups could use some guidance to help them find their way. With goofy names, varying user experiences and questionable goals running amok, we figured it was time to lay down some ground rules. Check out our seven tips to help Web 2.0 startups be all they can be:
Help me make the move: New blogs and communities need easy tools to let their users integrate some sort of blurb about their new hangout on their other sites and communities. For example: I've been playing with Vox for a few weeks now, and just recently they introduced a badge tool that puts together all the HTML users would need to insert in another blog sidebar. This makes it easy for users to tell existing readers they have have (or are moving to) a Vox blog. While it's a smart move and I'm using a badge on my personal WordPress blog, this generator should have existed the day Six Apart, and all who follow in their footsteps, flipped the switch on their service.
Don't make me jump through hoops: ...or give you my e-mail address just to check out your service. Good: Tell me in plain language how your product works and how it can make my life better. Better: Show me with lots of screenshots or even a few screencasts. Best: Just let me start playing with it and worry about registration after I've decided whether it's any good or not.
Tell me what it is, not what's inside: I don't care whether your service is powered by Ruby on Rails, .NET, AJAX, REST, or Vegemite, so don't waste another breath on it. Tell me what it does and why I want to use it, and keep the nerdy chest-thumping on your Developers page.
Keep it simple: ...if you want me to do it a hundred times. If adding a bookmark or a hotspot on a map is a multi-stepped process, the likelihood of me doing it a lot goes way down. This is often the difference between making or breaking the site. Quicker processes mean I'll be back many more times to do it again, and more traffic equals more money for you.
Play well with others: It's great that you have a (hopefully) unique vision for your community, but let's be real: you aren't the first startup on the block. This one comes again from my pleasurable experience at Vox: users can upload their pictures, audio and video to Vox, or they can find this media at other communities like Flickr, YouTube and even iStockphoto to easily plug into their posts. This "friendly neighbor" aspect of Vox earns the site huge points in the Web 2.0 community department, as they clearly recognize there is value in allowing their users to hang out at other sites.
APIs!: Speaking of playing with others: the technical details shouldn't be on the front page, but they should be there. The gold standard of Web 2.0 is a well-documented interface that lets geeky users and other Web 2.0 developers get at all of your site's data and roll it into their own desktops, web sites, and services in a variety of ways. Bonus points for nailing the trifecta: XML, JSON, and YAML.
Don't let your four-year-old name it: Flickr got away with ditching the vowel--you won't. We were through with double-Os long before Squidoo, Calgoo, or Zooomr (triple-O!) came along, and the same goes for your EEs. Domain name scarcity is not an excuse for stupid product names any more than improved traction is a justification for clown shoes.
Simple rules with (ideally) broad implications. We hope these can make their way into the hands of the next Flickrs and del.icio.uses so everyone can have a better time on the web. But is our list complete? Are we missing anything? If you have a rule or two that should have made this list, you know what to do.
Thanks to Jordan and Ryan for contributing to this post
Obvious Corp? Curious name for a company, but this is Web 2.0, right?--At least it's not Obviousr. Obvious Corp is a brand new company founded by Blogger creator Evan Williams and his Odeo co-founder Biz Stone. As its opening move, Obvious Corp has acquired Odeo, Inc.'s assets including Odeo and Twitter. Williams explains the move in his blog, saying, "I believe there is a lot of value in what we've built-both Odeo and Twitter-but I did not believe the structure was going to lead to the kind of success we wanted. In the new company, with a new structure, and a new model, I think they are great investments." He also describes how Obvious will be doing things differently than the Web 2.0 status quo, and the Obvious web site makes clear that it will be launching new products in the future, but "not until we get our current projects on the right path and also find the right people." Having been a fan of Williams since his Blogger days, I wish him lots of success with his new venture, and look forward to seeing what Obvious Corp creates.
Awhile back I reported that Microsoft was considering making it impossible to disable the Windows Vista startup sound, short of physically turning off your speakers. I'm still getting comments on that post. Happily, Microsoft has reversed its position. In a post to the Windows Vista Team Blog product manager Nick White writes, "We heard you loud and clear when it came to discussing our plans to include a default start-up sound that plays as you boot-up Windows Vista: you said you wanted to have the opportunity to mute it if and when you felt it necessary." Going forward, Vista will have a (relatively) easy-to-find option in the Control Panel to disable the startup sound. Thanks for listening, Microsoft!
According to BusinessWeek, Skype co-founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom are preparing to launch The Venice Project, a new start-up that "combines the best things about television with the social power of the internet." Venice--which is just a codename--has been in very limited testing since the summer, but the beta program will expand significantly in November, and Friis says it will be available to everyone by the end of the year. They're currently courting small and large media and TV companies to put their full-length content on the network, which will be accessed through a stand-alone app and work on P2P technology just like KaZaA and Skype. It will have built-in intellectual property controls and will stream media rather than download it, which BusinessWeek naively assumes "makes it much more difficult for users to make, distribute, or sell illegal copies of the content that they watch." At the uber-austere Venice Project web site you can sign up for their mailing list which, presumably, will notify you when that expanded beta program starts.
We all know that if you're looking to speed up the amount of time it takes your computer to boot, the best thing to do is cut down on how many processes start when Windows starts. This is, of course, the obvious advice; if you're starting less things, it takes less time. But what about us chronic downloaders, who can't stand to turn off our favorite utilities? There is an option. It won't make your machine boot as fast as it would without the automatically starting processes, but it will optimize the way in which those processes are started. It's called Startup Delayer.
I know, the name doesn't evoke thoughts of a faster boot, but trust me, it works. The problem with how Windows typically starts, is that it's not very smart about dedicating resources to starting one program before moving on and starting the next. So you end up with a bunch of programs all fighting for CPU cycles and disk-access, and Windows ends up spending more time on mediating between the different starting processes than actually firing up those processes.
So, using Startup Delayer, you can space out the start time for each application so that Windows can focus on starting that application. And once it's done, it can move on to the next one. Although it can take some time and multiple boots to tweak things just right, there is an automatic mode that will make things better than they are right now, which is always nice. And consider, some of the stuff that you want to have available doesn't need to be there within the first 5 minutes your machine is up, in most cases. I'm thinking of desktop search apps like Google Desktop or Copernic - maybe delay these for 10 minutes so that everything else has started before they go about trying to index any recent changes.
The other benefit of this is that you can ensure that the right applications start first, like your anti-virus and software firewall, for example.
Startup Delayer is donationware, so if you enjoy using it, make sure to kick a little something back to the developers.
You may have heard of Hijack This circulating the net, and no it isn't the song where Madonna is screaming expletives at listeners for "illegally" downloading her latest single. Hijack This is a browser-hijacker-killing app that is Windows MSCONFIG on steroids, with lots of espresso and a case of Mountain Dew. Hijack This will x-nay any listing in the group of registry keys that run when your computer starts, with a special emphasis on the browser Hijacking apps that hide there. This registry key section, "RunOnce" is also what feeds the MSCONFIG app (part of Windows XP) but Hijack This digs a bit deeper, and gives a lot more info than MSCONFIG does, not to mention searched in other areas that MSCONFIG does not cover. Hijack This will promptly handle anything you can't and won't find in MSCONFIG. IT techies and system admins use this, and for good reasons. Beware though, Hijack This will trash anything you tell it to, but it cares not for things you actually need to start your PC, so be careful. I wouldn't leave this program lying around where the newbies lurk, it could be dangerous. That's my kind of software.
I can't believe I forgot to follow up with this one: Remember WeblogWire, the experiment by entrepreneurs Jason Baptiste and Brian Breslin to get a profitable startup running from scratch in one week and on $500? Well, they didn't quite make their deadline, but they did do it for under half a grand. Yesterday WeblogWire made a "soft launch," with its official launch today, about a week behind schedule. Even at two weeks, it's an impressive feat, but what exactly is WeblogWire? Well, it's a gateway between bloggers and PM firms, allowing press releases to much more quickly make their way onto blogs, a steadily more influential corner of the media. The service is free for bloggers to join, and PR folks can submit press releases for an introductory $49 fee ($99 after this week). Right now there's already quite a few press releases on the service, which currenly only has a Technology category (which suits me just fine).
These days it seems like anyone with an idea and some time can crank out a Web 2.0 startup, be it a service, community, one-trick-pony or ambiguously named whichamadinger. It also seems like many of these startups could use some guidance to help them find their way. With goofy names, varying user experiences and questionable goals running amok, we figured it was time to lay down some ground rules. Check out our seven tips to help Web 2.0 startups be all they can be:
