“This is a guest post by Aseem Kishore, a technology enthusiast and lead blogger for Online-Tech-Tips.”

Is your outlook mailbox a mess? Do you miss reading important emails because of the tons of emails you receive on your inbox? Do you want to organize it in such a way that you move a group of emails automatically upon receiving? If you are someone like me who receives more than a couple of hundred emails per day then this tutorial is for you!

Keeping an organized Outlook mailbox is easy by applying rules. In Outlook you can do many things like “move to a specific folder”, “auto delete” and “auto reply”.

» Read the rest of the entry..

Every new application that enters the “temporary data cleaner” category has to stand its ground against established programs like CCleaner which seems to be the application of choice for most cleaning enthusiasts but did receive some bad press lately with the inclusion of the Yahoo Toolbar in the application’s setup routine.

The software iSysCleaner Pro is a new contender and although it is called Pro it is completely free to download and use. It comes with the usual ability to clean temporary data from various applications and the operating system with a concentration on Windows, other Microsoft applications like Microsoft Outlook or Microsoft Office and Internet applications like Firefox and Flock.

A comparison of the default scans had the result that iSysCleaner Pro found roughly 120 Megabytes of additional data that could be removed than CCleaner did. The main difference seems to be that iSysCleaner Pro is cleaning installation files while CCleaner does not. The installers for Quicktime and iTunes for instance that are stored in the iTunes directory would be cleaned by iSysCleaner Pro which attributes to about 55 Megabytes of data.

Both applications provide the option to clean the prefetch folder shows that myths are hard to come by. Cleaning that folder degrades system performance for a while until Windows creates the prefetch files anew. The software is constantly being updated and an alternative to CCleaner.

Many users had a problem with memory usage in Firefox 2 and although Firefox 3 was further optimized it still seems to be a problem for some users. Something that I do not understand for instance is the problem that RAM usage of Firefox is always increasing over time but never decreasing much. I was always under the impression that closing tabs should reduce the memory usage of Firefox (and any other browser of course).

This does not seem to be the case however and RAMBack introduced a routine that reduces the memory usage of Firefox 3. Firefox 3 does keep some files in the cache for performance purposes and RAMBack will cause Firefox to issue an internal notification to free up memory.

A commenter on the add-on page said that this add-on “only clears the internet memory cache of sites not currently loaded in the browser” which makes a lot of sense to me. I had troubles finding a way to find out if the add-on is as useful as it sounds.

Before I forget it. The website of the add-on does not state it explicitly but it seems that the add-on becomes active when the user presses the Clear Caches button in the Tools menu. Would have probably been better if it would automatically do that every x minutes or something instead.

Update:

Before someone says I’m not giving credit. I discovered this add-on in the Delicious Hotlist. Just realized that Lifehacker’s Adam Pash wrote about it as well.

I don’t know how many of you have tried Google Sites, which is a Wiki like application available for Google Apps users. Although the application itself lacks a lot of features (more on that a bit later), the framework, the development and the way things are going is awesome. You can use Google Sites for intraweb documents, customer management, blogging, file storage, sharing photos, anything you want really, let’s take a look at what this is all about.

The main difference between Google Sites and a Wiki is that Sites is tailored very well to a domain. This means that while Wikis tend to be community pages only, with sites you can restrict who is able to do what right down to picking out your Google Apps users. This gives great control over who can do what with the site. For example I use Google Sites for my blog management service Blogtastique, to give customers a cool way to follow what’s going on with their order. I can creqate file repositories, announcement boards, order detail pages. I can also only share the page with the specific customer, so noone else can take a peak into his or her order. The users can also upload files and share their comments, which make for a very rich user experience.

Pages are very easily editable using the type of rich text editor we all know from our Gmail interfaces. Just click edit, start typing, save, and you have your page. You can change the look of your site quite easily with the built in templates, or you can customize one for yourself. Customization is a bit limited, but flexible enough for most purposes. It doesn’t work by modifying css, which means you can’t do anything, but there are enough variables you can modify to dramatically change everything.

There are also some widgets you can place on pages like a timer, a changes tracking module, but the selection here is still a bit limited. In fact, all the shortcommings of Sites is because it is not yet tailored to power users. Development is in progress and they are gradually implementing things, but a lot of work needs to be done to make it as flexible as it could be. To mention just some of the shortcommings, there is no site duplication. So if I spend 10 minutes setting up a page for a client, I need to spend another ten for the next, I can’t just copy and change the name, while this is essentially what needs to be done. The user roles are not well implemented. Separating people who can and can’t view the page is easy and well done, but there is no option for a commenter only. This means that a person can either just view the page and not do anything, or he/she can modify the page and comment. It would be nice to have a role where someone can view but not modify, and be able to comment.

Overall, I suggest trying out this application because it is easy to use and can be used for a multitude of things. It still has some problems, but knowing Google, they will be addressed sooner or later. I don’t know how high up this is on the company’s agenda, so we may still have to wait a bit, but I like how things are shaping up!

It took me a little while to adapt, but I soon grew to find the Vista start menu far more useful and productive then XP’s ever was. Granted I’ve read the comments of a lot of people who disagree, but I personally think the integrated search has again made the Windows start menu my main point of access to all my programs.

Previously I had used a whole combination of toolbars and application launchers so it was a welcome change to remove some of this clutter.

One of the notable alternatives to pop up was the Vista Start Menu, a replacement for both the XP and Vista menus. Developer Dennis Nazarenko created it becuase he says:

“I have always found the Start Menu in Windows to be inconvenient to use. In the new Windows Vista it’s been made more attractive but more inconvenient than even before!”

In fact you can actually get the Vista Start Menu in XP, thanks to the Vista Start Menu Emulator by Folgelsoft. It is a completely accurate version of the Vista start menu for XP, and I think it’s very impressive. In fact I on my XP computer I love using this application as it functions almost identically to the real thing and is a dead ringer looks-wise.

The performance is also impressive, no lag or slow down compared to the default menu and it loads very fast on the initial login. The integrated search is almost instant, and better in some ways then Vista, but that’s becuase the VSME only searches the shortcuts within the menu itself. Vista indexes the entire system.

So if you want to give the new start menu a try without upgrading then this is how you can do it. Admittedly it looks a bit funny when used with the Luna theme as it’s black and transparent, but you can always skin your desktop to match.

Each user account in Windows is connected to a user profile that defines several important parameters like the types of applications that are available for that user, information about files and shortcuts on the desktop, visual settings like screen size, network and printer connections, wallpapers and data like the Internet cache.

From an administrator’s point of view lots of things that can be altered in a way that make the computer or part of it unusable for that user. This can happen in a family that is sharing a computer as well if someone who is not that proficient with computers changes certain settings all the time or likes to “tweak” settings to optimize the computer.

There is a very easy way to prevent users of a computer to change the settings in their user profile permanently. They can still change everything but those settings will only be temporarily changed.

You might have already ready about Windows Alternate Data Streams (also known as System Forks on other operating systems) which are supported by most Windows operating systems that use NTFS (New Technology File System). Alternate Data Streams can contain any kind of information including textual, visual and executable. Malicious users can take advantage of the fact that the size of the additional content is not added to the size of the file in a directory listing. A 10 Kilobyte image will still show a size of 10 Kilobyte if someone else adds a 1 Megabyte executable to it.

Basically anything can be added to an existing file (and directory) which brings up an interesting method of hiding important data on the system. Say you want to keep your passwords on the computer but do not want to use a text document to have them in the open. Using Alternate Data Streams to hide them from prying eyes could be a relative secure method of storing the password list on the computer.

They are detectable if the right software is being used. Windows Vista users can also use the dir *.txt /R which is further explained at Bart De Smet’s on-line blog.

Executable files or other binary files can be added with the type command like this: type c:\text.exe > hello.txt:text.exe which can be executed with the start command start .\hello.txt:text.exe.

Mobile Phones that support WiFi connections have a huge advantage over those that do not. Connecting to a wireless hotspot makes it possible to use services that would otherwise cost lots of money. How about free services like VOIP phone calls, checking emails or surfing the Internet ? Best of all you can do all that with a free software that does all of that for you if your handy is using the Symbian S60 operating system and is currently supported by the developer.

In case you are wondering, HandyWi is the application that can be installed on many Nokia mobile phones including the Nokia N78, Nokia N95 and the N93. A list of supported devices can be found at the developers homepage.

The process is pretty simple. The HandyWi software has to be installed on the mobile phone which will alert the user whenever a free WiFi spot has been discovered. The user can then connect to that spot and start using services like VOIP or Internet surfing for free.

This works pretty well in combination with Notebooks as well especially if your Notebook’s wireless card is not supported by the usual applications like Netstumbler or Easy WiFi Radar.

HandyWi features:

• Filtering of hotspots, separated view for public WLAN networks
• HandyWi clearly shows which access point is secure and which is not
• Single internet access point (HandyWi APN) for all applications (mail, web browser, char etc.)
• Easy account management, several user accounts possible (scratch card, prepaid etc.)
• Access to the location based media information, loaded each time you connect (works on selected WLAN networks only)
• Automatic hotspot discovery and alert feature
• Automatic connection to the hotspot which has stronger signal
• Secure RSA encrypted communication with HandyWi server
• Automatic application startup after install and on boot

HandyWi works pretty well and can be installed directly or by downloading it to the PC first.