Convert a Youtube video to MP3

Ever wished you were able to get your hands on only the audio content of that youtube video you can't stop watching? I did too and he's how I did it in 3 easy steps

An alternative to Revo Uninstaller on 64-bit version of Windows 7

Revo Uninstaller is one of the several excellent freewares out there that provide an improvement over the built-in "Windows Add or Remove Program" feature. The additional thing these apps do is that they look for additional files or registry entries that applications tend to leave behind. Over time these left-overs eat up diskspace, cause errors, etc. If you haven't yet, I would certainly recommend using one of the several choices.

But when I recently moved to 64-bit[huh?] of Windows 7, I found that my current favourite - Revo Uninstaller was not able to cleanup my 64-bit applications. It's commercial version does offer this feature, but I was on the lookout for a free alternative. This post should also give you an idea of how to look for an alternative to existing software application.

Prevent your signature from showing up in your email to blog post

I recently started evaluating mobile blog posting apps. But the omnipresent Google just isn't as 'there' when it comes to my recently acquired Blackberry. But given Blackberry's superb email handling abilities the email-to-blog option seemed just what I needed. The idea is simple - compose what you need in an email, attach whatever you want and hit send! Blogger automatically converts it into a post. Perfect!

Setup was easy, but the first problem I've faced was that my signature turns up in my blog post! The signature is automatically added as a part of Blackberry's email settings. And there's no way that I know of to turn it off for a particular email (Groan!).

But here's a way to stop that signature from showing up in your post. Simply add a #end at the end of your email.

It's that simple! Happy posting :)

My vi settings files - *still* avialable for all.

Wow, It's been nearly 6 years since I uploaded the first version of _vimrc (vi settings file). And near 11 years since I first started using it . By now I have used it on nearly every platform I've worked on - and those have been quite a few.

And still there isn't a single day that I don't discover something new I can do with Vi(m). Surely, there is no better proof that this little application has stood the test of time.

Translating articles with Wikibhasha

The up-to-date article on the recent earthquake in Japan is a testament of Wikipedia’s ability to help bring together people from around the world to produce something useful – and fast! At the time of writing this post, the English version of this article is already being translated into a mind-boggling figure of over 48 unique languages! A tool that may perhaps makes this translation effort a bit faster – Wikibhasha from Microsoft Research.

My favourite portable applications

I am a big fan of portable applications.  Every time I download a new app, one of the first thing I check for is whether it has a portable version. And these days most popular tools do. I’ve often spoken about these and I thought I should put together a small list of the ones I absolutely cannot do without. So here they are!

How to avoid being phished.

Yes, I spelt that right. Phishing is actually a word :-) Internet-based banking has led to a substantial increase into internet based fraud. One popular method of extracting your private internet banking related details is through the use of “phishing” by email. Here’s a walk through of what such an attempt would look like. The idea is to learn to spot such attempts and remain safe.