I guess at times everyone needs to resize, recolor, crop, adjust contrast or brightness of the images or pics you have. Its a feasible option that you open Photoshop/Picasa/or any other tool and edit images if the number of images are limited, how about if you want to edit thousands/hundreds of images at a time.

I used to face this problem many time and today i founded the best solution for it, and it is “Batch Processing” in Photoshop. Why i m saying its the best is because there are other tools also which allow you to batch process but the things you can do in photoshop cannot be done in any of them.

By this you can edit, resize, recolor, crop, give effects, adjust contrast or brightness, save them for web and many more things can be done to multiple images at a time.

Lets have a look how to do that -

1. Open a image in photoshop

2. Go to ” Window > Actions ” and you will see a window like shown below

3. Click on “Create new Action”.

4. A window like shown below will appear, fill the details. You can also assign a shortcut key as “Function Key” to this process. Click Record.

5. Now whatever action/steps you do will be recorded by this new Action you created, here you can resize, recolor, crop, give effects, adjust contrast or brightness, save them for web or whatever you want. When you are done with editing click “Stop Recording” as shown in the image below.

6. Now Go to ” File > Automate > Batch ” and you will see a window like below, choose the source folder where your thousands or hundreds of photos are saved. And also choose the destination folder for output.

Note : check “Suppress Color Profile Warning” to avoid color warning..

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Have Fun

would love to see your thoughts as comments down here..

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The creation of a PDF was once solely relegated to Adobe Acrobat. PDFs are now the accepted standard in businesses and schools for documents that are universally read without having to have the underlying programs or fonts. Acrobat has a free reader, but the Acrobat suite for PDF creation can be an expensive proposition. Here’s some of the many free alternatives to using Adobe Acrobat to create PDFs.

Bullzip PDF Printer -

BullZip PDF Printer is able to output to PDF from almost any Windows application. You can set document properties, watermark your pages and password protect your files. This powerful little program can also output to BMP, TIF, PNG, PCX and JPG.

PDFill PDF Writer -

With PDFill, you can crop pages and rotate pages in PDFs. You can also add descriptions, make slide shows and encrypt your files with different security levels. PDFill PDF Writer will also allow you to fashion PDFs from nearly any Windows application.

CutePDF -

CutePDF does exactly what it says it will. You can use it to print out PDFs from any of the standard Windows applications. It uses Ghostscript, a free program used to translate postscript files, to deliver its PDFs.

doPDF -

DoPDF is a virtual printer that can convert any printable file into a PDF. This application is not a memory hog, leaving a very tiny footprint on your system. It will create searchable PDFs that can be indexed by the popular search engines. It also doesn’t need Ghostscript to create its PDFs like other offerings do.

Scribus -

Scribus will create and read the PDF format, but it can do quite a lot more than simple file creation. It is the free answer to Adobe InDesign, offering many of the same functions and features that its more expensive counterpart does.

PDF Maker -

PDF Maker is best known for doing conversions to PDF without the use of Ghostscript or the installation of a PDF printer. It supports a wide range of graphics and file formats.

PDFCreator -

PDFCreator is free and can be used for both business and personal application. It allows you to secure your documents through encryption and digital signatures. Other filetypes, like TIF, BMP and JPG are also easily created using PDFCreator.

Drumlin PDF Reader -

This program has multi language support and prides itself on its security. Drumlin lets you create files that are fully secure. Users may be able to view your files, but they aren’t able to copy them or otherwise use them without your permission. The program itself has a small footprint in both file size and memory usage.

PDF reDirect -

PDF reDirect creates files that are optimizable for quality and file size. You can encrypt your PDFs, creating reliable and secure files. Merging PDF files is also a feature of this easily upgradable program.

Open Office -

Open Office can open and create PDF files. It is an office application package which offers equivalent programs to the Microsoft Office suite.

All of the programs offered here are free alternatives to purchasing Acrobat for the creation of PDF files. While some of these applications are fully capable of creating encrypted, searchable PDFs, some of them are not. Check out the software to see if it offers the features you desire. These free programs might offer the answer to your PDF creation needs.

When we talk about Alternatives to Google Analytics, there are very less options which come to our mind. Here are few of the alternatives, have a look. I personally like Piwik and Mint the most..

Piwik

Piwik is a PHP MySQL software program that you download and install on your own webserver. At the end of the five minute installation process you will be given a JavaScript tag.

Features

• Real time web analytics reports: in Piwik, by default reports are generated in real time. For high traffic websites, you can choose the frequency for reports to be processed (more info)
• Piwik’s features are built inside plugins: you can add new features and remove the ones you don’t need. If you are a developer, you can easily build your own web analytics plugins!
• you own your data: because Piwik is installed on your server, the data is stored in your own database and you can get all the statistics using open APIs (publishing the data in many formats: xml, json, php, csv)
• the user interface is fully customizable: you can drag and drop the widgets you want to display and create a report especially tailored to you!

Mint

• Visits breaks down site activity from the past day, week, month and year as total page views and unique visitors
• Referrers are broken down by newest unique, most recent and repeat referrers as well as grouped by domain
• Searches filters out referrals from popular search engines which can then be grouped as web or image search results
• Pages illuminates your most popular and most recently accessed content and allows you to flag or watch individual pages for later revie
• Bird Feeder reveals feed subscription patterns for the past week, month and year as well as click-through from individual feed items
• User Agent 007 scopes out browser families and versions, platforms, common resolutions and Flash plugin versions
• Real Estate can help to plot out a target, above-the-fold design size based on your audience’s common browser window width and height
• Painless Panes Mint’s compact, easy-to-digest interface adapts to the size of your browser window and the number of installed Pepper
• Easy-to-install because designing, building and maintaining a website is hard enough

Sitemeter

Site Meter is a free, fast, and easy way to add a web counter to your web page.  Not only can it display the number of visitors to your web site, it also keeps statistics on the number of visits each hour and every day. It also provides detailed information about these visitors. These statistics are provided in real time so they are always up-to-date.

• Site Meter Counter
• Visitor details are tracked
• Location Mapping
• Referring URL and Referral Search Words
• Location Report and Entry Page
• Outclick and Exit Page
• Visits and Page Views and Visitor Path
• Recent visitors export
• Ad free Stats Page
• Full IP address of each visitor is available
• Ranked Reporting for Referring Pages
• Previous year’s traffic records are available
• Moving Average Charts

Clicky

Clicky is an alternative to Google Analytics and a real-time traffic analytics tool that couldn’t be easier to set up – just insert a bit of script into the header of your website, and you’re set to go! Clicky then tracks, down to the crazy and useful minutiae, what’s happening on your site.

Clicky tracks all the basics, right on the homepage for your site. The number of visitors, the pages they’re coming from, the pages they’re looking at, and how much time they’re spending on your site.

Stuffed Tracker

Stuffed Tracker — is a unique package of tools to gather your website statistics, analyze visitors behavior and ad campaign effectiveness, track sales, calculate conversions and ROI. Many of the technologies that are used in Stuffed Tracker are unique, and all of them are aimed at giving you maximum flexibility in statistics analysis.

Features

• Powerful reports constructor : More then fifty different core reports, which you can use to create exactly the reports that you need. Billions of report variations are possible. That’s as close to infinity as you can get!
• Ad campaigns statistics : Advertising effectiveness: incoming traffic analysis, visitors conversion, ROI.
• Sales tracking : The most important information: what have you sold, how much you’ve earned, who are your customers and where they’ve come from.
• Actions tracking : Form submissions, file downloads, newsletter subscriptions — know everything that happens on your site.
• Split tests : Which of your landing pages are the most successful and convert your visitors better?
• Funnels : Identify the bottlenecks on your site. Find out which pages turn away your visitors

Woopra

Woopra has an interface that is irresistable, developed by former Google employees, it boast features such as data sharing via an API, and runs via a thin desktop client (across all platforms).

In other words, it gets all of its data from the web so you have all the processing power of your desktop left for the interface. Data is obtained live, and features the ability to actually talk to visitors on your site if you so wish.  As with reinvigorate many different goals can be set, with alerts to let you know when that visitors has clicked on your buy now buttons.

Features

• Live Tracking and Web Statistics
• Rich User Interface
• Real-Time Analytics
• Manage Multiple Blogs and Websites
• Deep Analytic and Search Capabilities
• Live Chat

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If you know or have used any other similar tool please share it as comments.

Mobilewitch Bluetooth Remote Control is a free of charge program that can be used to control your computer from distance. The main purpose of this software is to turn your mobile phone into a universal PC remote control.

The application is perfect for business as well as for your own enjoyment. Now you can easily remote control your PowerPoint presentations, Mouse Cursor or simply explore the content of your computer directly from your mobile phone.

Features of Mobilewitch Bluetooth Remote Control

• Remotely control Mouse, Keyboard, PowerPoint, Winamp, Windows Media Player and much more
• Get access to your desktop from your phone
• Bluetooth setup free! Simply connect from your phone
• Customize your applications through Keymaps or VB and JScripts
• Supports all PC Bluetooth solutions Toshiba, Windows, BlueSoleil and Widcomm/Brodacom

The program consists of two parts – the client and the server (both being written in Java). The former is located into a J2ME capable mobile phone with Bluetooth capabilities while the latter is placed in the computer you wish to remotely control.

So, all you need for this software to run is a mobile phone with Bluetooth™ support and a Bluetooth dongle installed on your computer.

In order to start using the Mobilewitch Bluetooth Remote Control you first need to download and install both Mobile Application and PC Server. In case of Nokia mobile phones, the Nokia PC Suite will automatically recongnize and promt you to install the application on your handset.

After the installation is complete, please use the following steps:

Step 1
Start the PC Server application first

Step 2
Start the Mobile Application. On Nokia phones the shortcut is located in Menu/Applications/Collection. The phone will automatically start searching for active devices.

Once both devices are connected you will be abble to acces the Mobilewitch Bluetooth Remote Control Menu from your phone.

From this menu you will be able to control your mouse cursor, keyboard and the following programs, if installed on your computer: Windows Explorer, Firefox, Window Media Player, Internet Explorer, Winamp and Powepoint. Please note that each application you would like to control has to be first started from the computer and needs to be Always On Top of your desktop.

Here are few best Data Recovery tools you can use when you have lost your files by chance, by mistake or somebody else deleted from your PC

Recover My Files

Recover My Files data recovery software will recover deleted files emptied from the Windows Recycle Bin, or lost due to the format or corruption of a hard drive, virus or Trojan infection, unexpected system shutdown or software failure.

• Recover files even if emptied from the Recycle Bin
• File recovery after accidental format, even if you have reinstalled Windows.
• Disk recovery after a hard disk crash
• Get back files after a partitioning error
• Get data back from RAW hard drives
• Recover documents, photos, video music and email.
• Recover from hard drive, camera card, USB, Zip, floppy disk or other media

Recuva

Recuva is a user-friendly Windows-based tool. When you run Recuva, you can resurrect missing files using either the file-recovery wizard or the application’s manual mode. The file-recovery wizard is handy when you’re sure your data is gone but you’re not quite sure where it went or how to get it back. The wizard lets you narrow your search type to pictures, music, documents, video, or all files, and you can set the search location to everywhere on your computer, removable media only, in My Documents, the Recycle Bin, or a specified location. If you don’t need the wizard you can jump right into manual mode and get to work searching where you know the file should be.

TestDisk

TestDisk is a powerful open-source tool for recovering your data. Not only can TestDisk perform basic file recovery like undeleting accidentally deleted files from FAT, NTFS, and ext2 file systems, but it comes with a host of additional functionality. With TestDisk you can recover your boot sector from a backup, rebuild your boot sector, fix FAT tables, fix your MFT, locate the ext2/ext3 backup SuperBlock, copy deleted files from partitions to recovery media, and find lost partitions in dozens of formats to help you locate your lost data. It’s a command line tool, so there’s no GUI, but the menus and the documentation in the wiki should get you started without much trouble.

PhotoRec

PhotoRec is a companion program to TestDisk, also included in this Hive Five. Like TestDisk, this app is also devoid of a GUI, but likewise is quite powerful at file recovery. We’re including PhotoRec independently of TestDisk because many users distinctly prefer PhotoRec as a safer alternative when deep disk recovery isn’t necessary. This recovery tool won’t mess with your partitions or help you rebuild your master boot record; it will, however, dive into your disks in a safe, read-only mode and ignore partitions and file systems in an effort to seek out your missing files. PhotoRec focuses on file types, is operating-system agnostic, and despite its name, isn’t relegated to just photos. Overall, PhotoRec is a powerful tool for quickly and safely copying your deleted files to another disk.

Undelete Plus

Undelete Plus used to be commercial software but has gone on a lengthy “limited time offer” freeware run. This file recovery app works on all versions of Windows and incarnations of the FAT and NTFS file systems. Like Recuva, Undelete Plus assigns a recovery probability to files it finds based on how damaged the file is. You can sort files by type, set filters based on time and size to avoid sifting through every deleted file on your disk, and keep folder structures intact when you perform your recovery.

Restoration

Restoration is a tiny, no-frills, portable recovery tool. You can use it in all versions of Windows and Windows file systems. It lacks some of the advanced functionality of other nominees but does have basic file-name search and the ability to sort by file parameters such as size and filename. Despite its tiny size, it performed just as well as the other nominees when tasked with restoring files from our test disks. Restoration weighs in at a mere 406k and would make a great addition to any Windows-based USB toolkit.

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If you know any more tools and softwares for data recovery, please share it as comments and let others get benefit of it

Windows Backup and Restore Center

All Windows 7 editions ship with an integrated backup and restore utility. Please find Windows 7 backup and restore including system imaging discussed in depth in Bright Hub’s article How to Use Backup and Restore in Windows 7.

If you are already familiar with Windows Vista Backup and Restore and first and foremost interested in what’s new in Windows 7 Backup then read this Bright Hub article.

Comodo BackUp -

• Protect yourself against ever losing those critical files that took hours to create
• Easily backup files or folders to local/network/virtual drives, FTP server or online storage
• Quickly restore data with a few mouse clicks
• Fully featured scheduler allows you to run backups at a time that suits you
• Send E-mail notifications to team members about the status of a backup job
• Synchronized backups mean you save a file and it gets copied instantly
• Security features include password protection and data encryption
• Multiple compression options allow you to save disk space
• One – click backup of important items like email accounts and Windows registry
• Step-by-step wizards take even novice users through the whole process

GFI Backup -

• Secure backup of all your important files for FREE
• Easy-to-use wizard-driven interface – perfect for beginners
• Restore your data in minutes using common ZIP format
• Back up to nearly any storage device
• Fast, efficient, full-featured backup solution

FBackup -

FBackup is a free backup software for both personal and commercial use. It protects your important data by backing it up automatically to any USB/Firewire device, local or network location. The backed up data can be either compressed (using standard zip compression) or an exact copy of the original files.

TrueSafe Personal Edition -

• Backup your email, pictures, music, documents, videos, and more.
• Easy to Setup- install and get protected in just 5 minutes.
• Hassle free- automatic operation frees you from backup drudgery.
• Backup to your USB hard disk, USB flash drive, network drive, and more.
• Zip Format – save in a convenient, non-proprietary Zip format file.
• Locked file support- backup files that are in use by other applications. Great for
• backing up your Outlook email.
• Disaster Level Protection- optionally backup your data offsite to another computer
• running TrueSafe.
• Host other user’s backups on your computer and help your friends and family
• stay protected.
• Laptop support- supports users on the go with suspend/resume awareness.
• Email Notifications- let you know when your backup has completed or is past due.
• Unobtrusive- runs in the background so you can keep working.

AceBackup -

AceBackup is a powerful tool to create completely secure backups of your data. Store your data on any local storage device, on CD, DVD or on your remote FTP server!

A special advantage of AceBackup is the possibility to backup single files and groups of files, for example for important or confidential documents. The program can also store different versions of your files. This can be useful if you would like to restore a certain version of your file at a later date.

Cobian Backup -

• Support for Volume Shadow Copy even in 64bit systems
• The user interface doesn’t ask for privilege elevation anymore on Vista or 7
• Simple masks can now be applied to FTP sources
• The timer schedule can now be limited in time
• The main application waits now for any mail to be send before closing
• The log file can now be send per task
• The log file level is now more granular
• The log file can now be splitted, one file per day
• The service and application control executes now depending on the UAC settings
• Fixed a bug when executing batch files with parameters
• The inclusion/exclusion masks way of work has been re-designed
• The backup now can be aborted if some event fails
• A post backup event can now be aborted if a pre-backup event failed
• Mirror tasks can now be created for uncompressed backups
• The type of the backup can now be included in the directory name
• The tray icon signalizes now if there are errors in the last backup
• Better mask support

Karen’s Replicator -

Automatically backup files, directories, even entire drives! Karen’s Replicator copies selected files from one drive/folder to another. Source and Destination folders can reside anywhere on your network.

Options include repeated copies at intervals as short as a few minutes, or as long as several months, copy only files that have changed, and the replication of folder and file deletions.

Recently I came across this technique to increase the speed of wireless network you are using at your home or work from one of my faculty. I searched a lot regarding this got a very simple solution for Wireless as well as for LAN connections..

This technique is all about configuring MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit), which is the size (in bytes) of the largest protocol data unit that the layer can pass onwards.

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Lets start it simply

• Open the Run box by pressing “Windows key + R”
• Type in “cmd” and press Enter.

Now to see the default parameters of your PC or machine enter the below statement and press Enter.

netsh interface ipv4 show subinterfaces

You will get something like this

MTU         State  Bytes In    Bytes Out  Interface
----------  -----  ---------   ---------  -------------
4294967295  1      0           13487914   Loopback Pseudo-Interface 1
1500        1      3734493902  282497358  Wireless Network Connection
1500        1      0           0          Local Area Connection

———————————————————————————————————————————-

Now to change the default values of MTU enter the below statement.

In the following statement i have used “mtu=1400″ as an example. You can set your MTU values on your own. But remember one thing try to keep it unique (by setting it a bit lower than what the mass uses  on the same network).

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If you are using a LAN (Local Area Network) connection:

netsh interface ipv4 set subinterface "Local Area Connection" mtu=1400 store=persistent

If you are using a Wireless connection:

netsh interface ipv4 set subinterface "Wireless Network Connection" mtu=1400 store=persistent

Now start your browser and look what who have done to your internet speed. I m sure you will feel its running more than twice the speed it was..

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If you have any other way out to increase the speed over the network, please feel free to share it here…

Mobile phone operators in various countries lock phones on a particular network to restrict users from using Sim Cards of other networks or in other countries.

Here is a simple software which will help you, unlocking your Nokia Phone on your own.

With this software, users can not only repair their phones but also remove SIM restrictions (network lock and country lock) on their Nokia, Samsung, Siemens, Maxon, NEC, Sony Ericsson, Panasonic, Vitel, AEG, and Alcatel phones. You need to have your IMEI number on hand.

To unlock your mobile phone, you’ll need the following information:

• Your mobile phone number
• The network (and country) to which the phone is locked
• The manufacturer and model number
• The phone’s IMEI number, which you can find by typing *#06# on your phone’s keypad.

Download NokiaFree Unlock Codes Calculator 3.1

If you want to change the date attributes (date of the file created, date of the last modification, etc) of any file or folder.. Here is a simple way to do so..

Just download this small free software, which will take around 1 min (depending on the internet speed).

After downloading, right click on the folder or file (of which you want to change date attributes), and you will get a option called as “Change Attributes” as shown below

Now you will see a similar screen like shown below

Now simply enter the date you want.. and thats it Enjoy