Placing a seperate hibernate button on the shut down screen

Every time you need to hibernate your OS, you need to put one of your fingers to work in pressing the shift key. Thank god there is an alternative. We can place a hibernate button alongside the standby button by performing certain tweaks in the registry.
Open regedit ( click on start > run. Then type in regedit), create a key as shown below, "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\System\Shutdown". Then under this key create a dword value "ShowHibernateButton" and set it's value to 1 as shown "ShowHibernateButton" = dword:00000001 .
Rejoice now you can just check out your work by jumping on to the shut down screen and notice the change.
Now you will see four buttons appearing on your shut down screen. Now you will not have to bother your finger ever time you put your PC on hibernation.

Working Of LED's

LED's or Light Emmitting diodes are semiconductor devices which emit light when electricity is passed through them. An LED consist of a p-n junction in which electricity is passed through it in forward biased mode as shown in the figure. Also a load resistance is applied to it so that the excess current does not harm the LED.
LED's are available in various colors to suit your need like red,blue,yellow,white etc. But the white and blue LED's are particularly costlier compared to the other colored LED's.
These LED's are tiny bulbs which can be used for various purposes like in calculators. Most significant use is the one in seven segment display, the one we see on our watches. These small bulbs are arranged in a particular pattern to create a beautiful display of a number.
There also exist the bi-colored and tri-colored LED's. So just check out the various available LED's and create something innovative out of it.

Associated Links :

• Baby's toy using LED
• Solar Lights for Walkways
  

Plasma Display

We all want to have a Flat screen, large size TV hanging in our living room. These flat screen televisions use either the LCD display or the Plasma display technology. I have already talked about the LCD display in my last post. Here I will stress on the Plasma display.
A plasma display consist of two glass panels holding an inert(that is, the gases do not react) mixture of noble gases(neon and xenon). These gases are exited by electricity converting them into plasma(ionized gas). This plasma then excites the phosphors to emit light which in turn lights up the pixels.
The pixel is a point which make up the entire screen. This pixel is in turn divided into a three subpixels. In a Plasma screen each subpixel can produce millions of colors. With the combination of all such pixels we get the so-called perfect picture quality.

Associated Links :

• USB Plasma Ball
  

Technology behind LCD

LCD(Liquid crystal display) is a technology which is now fast being used in the monitors for the desktop PC's and already being used in the laptops. LCD consist of a thin liquid crystal gel sandwiched between two thin polarized materials. This gel is divided into small dots called as pixels. In order to darken a pixel the pixel is polarized 90 degrees to the polarizing screen. For a bright pixel the polarization is 0 degrees.

Related Topics :
Cleaning an LCD TV
Free LCD TV

Scheduling a computer for shut down

The computer is downloading a heavy file, and you are getting late for the work. If this is the situation we certainly have to schedule the computer to shut down after some time. Here, the Task Scheduler( you can find it under Start>Programs>Accessories>SystemTools ) comes in handy.
To shut down the system at a specific time

• Open Task Scheduler and double click Add Scheduled Tasks

• A wizard opens, click next. You will be presented with a list of programs you can schedule to run.
• Click on browse, locate the %SystemRoot%\System32 folder. Then find the file named Shutdown.exe and click open.
• Specify a name for the task and when do you want the task to run. Click next.
• Specify the starting date and time and click next.
• Then you will be prompted to enter the user name and password. Supply the information and click finish.

• Now you are done with the process of scheduling the computer to shut down and can go to your work without worrying about terminating the download.

You can also visit the Task scheduler log in case you want to see the performance of the task scheduler.

Get your voice on Air ( Internet Radio )

You like listening to radio, so do I. But how many of us have ever tried to broadcast our voice over the internet radio. There are a few websites that allow us to create our own online radio station and broadcast our voice. One such radio broadcaster is Live365.
Live365 is an internet radio provider in which members can create their own radio station and air your voice over it. You can also listen to other such members you have uploaded their voices. To get such access you have to purchase the "Broadcaster's" membership. Different packages are available to choose from depending on your requirements. In the very basic package, one can upload an MP3 file created by him, which will be relayed on the internet. Advanced members can upload the music at their home by getting handy a microphone. Get a quick access to Live365. So, if you think you play an instrument good enough or your voice is worth listening to, just start broadcasting your voice and see fame coming your way.

Recovering files deleted from the Recycle bin

Have you lost an important file from your hard drive, then this content is for you. Whenever a delete a file using Shift+delete or deleting the files in the recycle bin, most of us consider to be that file a thing of past. But we can rejoice for it can still be recovered.
Whenever we delete a file using the above said methods, the file is not deleted rather that file is removed from the list of files in the folder and the memory area in which the file is stored is available to windows to write something else. So, longer the period since when you have deleted the file, lesser will be the chance of it being recovered.
Defragmentation frees the space occupied by such deleted files, so if you have defragmented your hard-disk recently, you can forget the idea of recovering your file. There are many tools that help you recover your files, some are paid and some for free. So here is one such free tool named "Restoration". It helps you recover the deleted files with ease. Just give it a try.

Wireless Monitor for your desktop

So you have a wireless mouse and keyboard combo sitting on your computer table, but do you think that's ample to call your PC a wireless one. Well, give yourself a second thought. Still you have the monitor along with it's wires eating up the space and look of your PC. So here is how to make your desktop PC completely wireless.
For the same you need a wireless monitor connector. Many such gadgets are available like WID101 from Teq Gear, Avocent LV3500W longview wireless extender, and many more.
A pic of the WID101 is shown below :
This device connects the DVI port situated in your PC with the one on your monitor over an encrypted network. It can provide you a resolution of 1366*768.
But in order to have this wireless connectivity you need to have a DVI(Digital Video Interface) port. This port is mostly available in the flat panel LCD monitors and some of the CRD(cathode ray display) monitors.
The DVI port looks similar to the following figure :
Well this technology does come for a price(around $1000), but it is worth a buy if you are wretched by the amount of wires on your table.

Internet on the Go

As people have rapidly started switching over to the laptops from their traditioal desktop PC's, the need for having an internet connection that travels with you is rapidly becoming a necessity.
Thankfully many compaies are trying to take advantage of this situation, thereby simplyfying our lives. There are data cards available in the market that can be connected to the laptop or the PC.
Basically, the companies have introduced this technology using two media. First is the data card which can be inserted in the card slot embedded in your laptop. A picture of it is shown below.

These cards however have certain disadvantages :

• They cannot used on every laptop as not every laptop has such ports in them.


• They obviously cannot be used on a desktop PC unless you have bought an external such card reader.

The alternative to this is the USB modem which has been launched necessarily to overcome the above weaknesses. The USB modem is simply inserted in the USB port of your laptop or desktop PC. A USB modem is shown below:

But with this advantage of internet on the go you have to bear with the slow speed these tools offer. They offer a speed of around 144kbps, but one is able to get a speed of around 50kbps only. But this downside of these tools sure is overpowered by the mobility it provides to the internet connection.

These cards can be purchased for anything arount 2500-3000 bucks plus the monthly tarrifs. Providers for these technologies now a days include : Airtel, Reliance, Tata Indicom and so on. So the next time you go out on a long trip you don't have to worry about the availability of the cyber cafe.

Dynamic Link Library

Most of us must have seen a few windows files with a dll extension, but did we care about what these files really are and what they actually do.
DLL(Dynamic Link Library) is a file consisting of number of functions that can be called by other programs running on the computer. DLL files that help in the operation of certain devices are known as the device drivers(These are the same files that are provided in a CD with your motherboard, the so called "driver CD").
DLL files help save memory as they are not loaded into the RAM along with the program making a call to it, rather it is loaded only when an explicit call is made to it. This property of DLL's help save the precious RAM memory. A DLL file simply acts as a repository of functions which can be used by a number of applications at the same time. Also the dll file is not compiled, only a reference is provided tothe dll file to use it.
A DLL file is often given a dll extension. A DLL file differs from an exe file as it can not be run directly, it must be called from other code that is already executing. In order to use a DLL file we have to register it by providng its references in the registry. To do this goto the command line(Start>run) and type in "regsvr32 filename.dll". This will register the dll file.
In order to open up a dll file you have to use a file named ILDASM.exe. This file can be found at "C:\Program Files\Microsoft.NET\FrameworkSDK\bin" if you have the .net framework installed.
So, now don't be puzzled in seeing all those dll files on your system and try checkingout a few of them.