Getting Widget-Happy With Yahoo Widgets 4

About two days ago, Yahoo made Yahoo Widgets 4 available for download. As soon as I found out about it today, I wasted no time and immediately downloaded the widget application engine which is an upgrade of the formerly known Yahoo Konfabulator with its newly added widget dock and minimal memory usage. I have never seen so much widgets, in all my geeky existence. Yahoo actually did a good job of categorizing the different widgets based on the functionalities. With the added dock, Yahoo made it easy for users to customize the widgets by customizing the preferences. The widget dock itself can be set to collapse or to hide automatically.

Wait a minute, what is a widget? A widget is just a little file usually represented by icons or graphic symbols and it does pretty much any function that is assigned to it such as a calculator, a desktop calendar, a currency converter, a mail checker, a music player, a shortcuts folder, a daily reminder, a site updater, an RSS feed aggregator, etc.

With these widgets made available, your computing life is made ten times more convenient because these widgets can be set to sit on your desktop and with just one click of your mouse, summon them to display or perform their assigned function.

When did multi-tasking become so much fun? I tell you, the widgets can be arranged in a wonderful fashion such that they may also serve as a nice desktop enhancement. They’re really visually appealing, and at the same time, functional.

With all the many widgets to choose from, it was so easy to get widget-happy and just download as many widgets as you can. Some widgets though that were presented more or less serve the same functions so it’s up to the user to decide which widget to add to Yahoo’s own preset widgets. The endless list of widgets is made possible by many contributors or widget authors who dared and bothered to upload their own widgets for the consumption of the internet market for free. The fact that Yahoo featured these individual authors gave these programmers a chance to shine and be infamous in the widget category. This also gave us users a little hope on the safety of these widgets having been included in Yahoo’s category list, however, it is still the user’s sole responsibility to make sure that the widgets that are downloaded are free of malicious bugs that may harm their system.

Guess what? I was too overwhelmed and didn’t realize that I downloaded most of the widgets that were made available in the Yahoo widgets directory. Here, I’ll give you a rundown of the different widgets that are sitting on my desktop right now:

• Affirmation Planet


• Crawling Ant


• Daily Tips


• Draw Demo


• FunMass Game Downloads


• Hangman


• iTunes Bar


• iTunes Companion


• Kalc


• Memory Cards


• Mess-O-Notes


• Neon Gauges System Info


• Phone Notify


• Picture Frame


• Teddy Bear


• Translation Dictionary Toy


• Vista Meter-CPU


• Vista Meter-Memory


• Widget of Change


• Widget of Happiness


• WiFi Signal

All that, apart from the preset Yahoo widgets. To make it easy for me to view all my widgets, I also added the Widget Launcher which displays a listing of all my widgets.

So how’s my computing time now with all these widgets sitting on my desktop? As I listen to iTunes, I can see a picture that is randomly displayed inside the Picture Frame. My affirmation message today says, “My inner vision is always clear and focused.” The Translation Dictionary Toy that I set to translate English to French displays “nowadays = de nos jours”. The Daily Tips is showing one health tip that says “Wake up at the same time everyday.” I can see my Wi-Fi signal strength and my resource meter indications both for CPU and for memory, while a red ant busily crawls around my screen. There’s more that I can use when I need to and I’m glad that these tiny little widgets are making my geek world a little more interesting.

DriveImage XML: Backing Up Your Data With A Sense

Like I said in my previous post we will be doing a big move soon and one of my major undertakings prior to the move is to make sure that the data in my laptops--a Toshiba Satellite; a Toshiba Portegé; a Fujitsu Ultraportable; and an HP Media Edition--are backed up. I'm enumerating them so more or less you get a picture of how much is there to carry just in case we decide to have all four laptops hand-carried from source to destination. No way!

I don't know yet, but my best guess is, we'll probably take only two of the four to be hand-carried and the other two will either be air-shipped or put in the check-in luggage. With that, there is a chance that something could happen with the laptops and their data en route. Worse case scenario would be that the data will be corrupted. You know electronic devices, usually when they are subjected to certain temperature changes, shock, impact and other unwarranted handling procedures while transported, they have a tendency to malfunction and with respect to computers, the only sure way that you can preserve your data no matter what happens along the way, is to back it up.

How do we back up data? Typically if there isn't much data to back up any form of storage media can be used like CD-ROMs, usb memory sticks, flash memory cards and other removable memory devices that don't necessarily have to hold much memory capability. On the other hand, if the data that you want to back up already spell Gigabytes of content then an external drive or any mobile storage media will suffice provided it has ample storage space that ranges typically from at least 40 Gb to up to 120 Gb depending on the need. If you notice also, there are a lot of online backup services. They are mushrooming everywhere and it's up to you to verify how stable the sites are because these days’ internet sites come and go like the changing of the seasons. If you do have highly sensitive information, you do not want to compromise data security so making sure that you can trust the site is really a very important consideration.

What's my choice? Well, for now I'm still not ready to use online backup services--not that they cannot be trusted but because I just don't want to go through the hassle of sharing my data and uploading them from point x, my relative location, to some point y somewhere in the internet. Besides, I feel that I will still have full control of my data if I just back them up myself. I got a Matrix mobile storage device with a 40Gb memory capacity since I have about 27 Gb of data to backup. That still leaves me ample space for storing other stuff.

Now, comes the hard part. How do I backup these data? For those of you who do not know, you can back up your data using Windows XP's (this is my OS) utility software--Backup. You can activate this by going to your Accessories folder then clicking on System Tools. I didn't want to go through the hassle of downloading a third party software to do the task so I opted to use Windows XP’s backup utility only to find out that I cannot complete the task because it required me to insert a bootable disk as soon as the backup session was almost completed. The disk I believe will contain all pertinent data about the backup and the interface for recovering or restoring data and without it, it's not possible to recover the data that I just backed up. I didn't have a bootable disk drive in my laptop so I ended up aborting the sequence.

So I was left with a dilemma as to which third party software to download so I can efficiently back up my data. After a thorough search, I came up with two possible candidates: SyncBack and DriveImage XML. Both of these backup software are downloadable for free. Both are very popular. Both have good reviews. The first one being an old favorite, the latter being a new favorite, as well. Naturally, I went for the one with the unquestioned record in terms of performance--SyncBack. It has a good interface. It was easy to use, though, I didn't know what happened when I used it. It worked a little slower than I expected. There were moments when I literally have to bite my finger, as I try to figure out what the software was doing when all I can see on my screen was just the hourglass instead of my cursor and it was really getting on my geek patience meter. It seemed as though it takes a painstaking while for it to refresh after you browse the different drives to set up both the source data to be backed up and the destination where the backup files will be stored. Actually the interface was easy to work with. There was even an option to select easy (for beginners) and expert (for advanced users) menus to work with. I just didn't have the patience though for its time-consuming browsing of drives.

After giving up on SyncBack, I downloaded DriveImage XML and used it. Voila! It was just great. I was able to backup my data at a breeze. The interface was very user-friendly and I think this backup software is much better than most popular backup software out there. The good thing about this DriveImage XML is that it creates image files of the data that you back up and store them in XML files, thus, after backing up your data, you can browse through these images, view them and extract files using third party tools. You basically get a glimpse of what sort of files and documents are sitting in your backup file. Take note that most backup software create backup data whose value only comes to light as soon as you lose your data, so the backup data literally sits there until it's needed. An ordinary user wouldn't be able to appreciate it because the backup data cannot be viewed unless you have used it to recover data that you have already lost. This on the other hand creates a backup that is never useless. DriveImage XML even lets you copy directly from drive to drive. For now though, this backup software can only be used with Windows XP, Home & Professional editions, and Windows Server 2003.

If you need a good backup solution for a Windows-based environment, one that doesn't leave you in the dark in terms of what kinds of files and documents you have just backed up, you should give this freeware a try. You will not be disappointed, that I can guarantee you.

Think Geek: Getting Things Done With Thinking Rock

I've been really preoccupied these days with a lot of tasks, thoughts, anxieties and it's all because in the next few days we'll be relocating to another part of the globe. Hence, it was so easy for me to lose a lot of sleep.

Doing something big like a move is really taxing. Every detail has to be carefully kept an eye on. Thought-provoking scenarios in your head kept replaying every minute of each day until the big day. Wouldn't it be nice if you can just sit for 15 minutes and be able to unload your thoughts--just any random thoughts that is boggling you? Would it be nice if there's one application that helps you manage your tasks more efficiently and more effectively?

That's exactly what I needed at this time when it's so easy for me to get lost in my own train of thoughts because of the many tasks that are set to be accomplished right before me prior to the big move.

Normally I would just gather all my colorful stick-ons and colored pens to lay out everything on paper to clear my head. But no, not this time. There are piles of stuff that I need to sort out and put in respective containers and the thought of having more paper to work on is just not appetizing to me at the moment. If only I can just do away with the paper thing and still be able to unload my thoughts, I'll be a happy camper.

With some stroke of luck though, something came to me at the right time. Didn't I tell you that to me del.icio.us is as good as yummy mmmmm! I visit the site quite often to view new postings of useful sites, being bookmarked by other del.icio.us users.

And there, I found this Thinking Rock software. It is a neat software written in Java that can run on several platforms like Linux, Macintosh, or Windows and is based on GTD(getting things done) methodology. It has a simple and user-friendly layout. It also comes with a guide on how the software works and it's free. Yes, you heard me right, it's free, but you have the option to give back to the site if you find the software useful.

I find it useful indeed. Why? Simply because it lets you organize your thoughts and be able to do something about it. It even includes a schematic diagram on the flow of processes after you enter your thoughts until the task is done or completed.

The good thing about the software is, it lets you just add any new thoughts whether you can act on it or not. If an action can be performed on it you can tick on a box just for that. It asks you for the outcome if the action is completed, and if the thought involves more than one action you can even start a project on it. It asks you how soon you want it done--ASAP or you can even set a date and time to have the action fulfilled.

In the end after you are being able to break down your thoughts, and dissect it into minute pieces, you will be presented with a quick list of things you need to do now based on your input. Right away you'll get a glimpse of the things that you can take action on, instead of worrying about the things that you still need to accomplish.

I tell you, I sat in front of my computer for only 15 minutes and the software already has freed my mind of a lot of anxieties about the big move. It gave me the feeling of being purged from anxious thoughts and worries about a big undertaking.

My description alone won't be enough to elaborate on the functionality and usability of the software. You've got to experience it yourself. Forget about your pen and paper for now. Let the geek in you experience something more technologically refined. And if you are thinking about procrastinating, you definitely have to get the software now. You'll thank me.