(0) I strongly suggest you rename your existing connections to something shorter and simpler. Microsoft have introduced naming of the type ‘Local Area Connection’, ‘Wireless Network Connection’ etc. While there certainly is reason behind that decision, for a home/office computer I personally find LAN and WIFI better. Go to Start button and type View network connections in the search field. Click on View network connections contol panel widget. Then rename ‘Local Area Connection’ to LAN and ‘Wireless Network Connection’ to WIFI.

(1) Open Notepad and copy the following 3 lines. Each line should start with the command netsh:

netsh interface ip set address LAN static <ipaddress> <subnetmask> <gateway> <metric>
netsh interface ip set dns LAN static <dnsaddress1>
netsh interface ip add dns LAN static <dnsaddress2>

On the blog the <gateway> and <metric> are on a second line, but they belong to the first.

Substitute <ipaddress>, <subnetmask>, <gateway>, <metric>, <dnsaddress1> and <dnsaddress2> with the values, provided by your ISP or corporate network administrator. Metric can be substituted with 1.

Example:

netsh interface ip set address LAN static 192.168.0.100 255.255.255.0 192.168.0.1 1
netsh interface ip set dns LAN static 192.168.0.1
netsh interface ip add dns LAN static 192.168.0.2

(2) Save the file as something descriptive for the location, e.g. home.bat, office.bat or university.bat, giving it a .bat extension, instead of the default .txt. Make sure Save as type: is set to All files (*.*), otherwise Notepad will append a .txt extension automatically.

(3) Now open a new Notepad window and paste the following lines to have the settings automatically acquired by the network:

netsh interface ip set address LAN dhcp
netsh interface ip set dns LAN dhcp

(4) Save as auto.bat, again observing the Save as type: All files (*.*).

(5) Keep all the files together at a convenient place (e.g. a folder on your Desktop or elsewhere).

(6) Activate the appropriate settings by right-clicking the corresponding file and selecting Run as Administrator from the context menu.

Same approach can be used for creating WiFi presets, substituting the word LAN from the commands with WIFI.

Note: In the commands above, LAN is the name of the network connection. If you have not changed it, substitute with the default ‘Local Areas Connection’ or any other name you have chosen. If the name contains spaces, make sure it is surrounded with quotes, otherwise they can be omitted.

There are many commercially available software tools for creating and manipulating mindmaps. The premier free and open source alternative is called FreeMind. It is a high productivity tool, written in Java (runs on any platform that has Java – Windows, Mac, Linux, etc.) and provides all needed functionality for creating, editing and printing mindmaps:

So you want to write a completely new metaphysics? Why don’t you use FreeMind? You have a tool at hand that remarkably resembles the tray slips of Robert Pirsig, described in his sequel to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance called Lila. Do you want to refactor your essays in a similar way you would refactor software? Or do you want to keep personal knowledge base, which is easy to manage? Why don’t you try FreeMind? Do you want to prioritize, know where you are, where you’ve been and where you are heading, as Stephen Covey would advise you? Have you tried FreeMind to keep track of all the things that are needed for that?

Here is a nice overview/tutorial on FreeMind‘s main features:

• capture the whole screen – press Shift + Print Screen to copy the whole visible screen, then paste in an application (can be either a graphic editor like Photoshop, or rich-text editor like Word)
• grab the current (active) window only – press Alt + Print Screen to copy, then paste in an application

These shortcuts apply to Windows, but there are the equivalent shortcuts in MacOS also. Just try different combinations of Shift, Option and Command keys together with Print Screen to see which does what.

Bear in mind, that some applications (video or games) use advanced techniques to display content, utilizing what’s called an overlay surface. In such cases, you may or may not be able to capture the window’s content.

Additionally, if you wish to record video of your interactions with a program, you will need to use a dedicated screen capturing application.

TinEye is the “reverse image search engine” you need – you just have to upload your image (or give the URL-address, if it is published on a webpage), and you will get results from other pages, containing the same image. It gives you the chance to learn what it is, since you will probbably get pages, containing info about it. Here is how it works:

It is also a good tool to see who is using your images

Open up Google and write: define:<term> in the search field, where <term> is the word you want defined. You will then get one or more definitions of the term from different sources like Wikipedia, Princeton WordNet, etc. You can also find definitions in languages, other than English, if available.

Example: define:blog

Scenario: you have to enter a lot of similar rows of data, for instance the cells in column B, column C and column D. Column A is the position number (1., 2., … ) and columns E, F, etc. perform some calculations from the data you have entered.

Now, there is a fast way to enter data (especially using the numeric keypad) without even touching the mouse, or needing to use the arrow keys to navigate:

1. enter the number in the first cell in the row (column B)
2. press TAB
3. enter the number in the second cell in the row (column C)
4. press TAB
5. enter the number in the third cell in the row (column D)
6. press Enter

MS Excel automatically makes active the cell below the one, that you started from (Column B / next row). In this way you can only use the keyboard and not waste time with moving around the worksheet (arrow keys and/or mouse).

Mobile computers are everywhere now. Many people need to connect to networks (wired or wireless) in more than one place – at home and at work. One of the annoyances of current Windows interface is that you cannot easily store connection profiles – the way you can in MacOS X (called “Locations”) for quite a long time.

There is a workaround for that, involving a simple preliminary network setup + creation of a shortcut. I will briefly describe it here in 3 steps (you will have to repeat for each connection profile you would like to create). Here is how it goes:

[preparation]
Open a command prompt (click START – Run… then type cmd and click OK),
type md %windir%\netsettings (or copy it from here and paste it in the command prompt with a right-click) and hit Enter. Don’t close the command prompt yet.

1. Make all network settings for the current profile (e.g. Office) – go to Network Connections, select the appropriate connection (wired and/or wireless) and set IP-address, network mask, default gateway, DNS servers, etc.
2. Execute in the command prompt the following command
   netsh -c interface dump > %windir%\netsettings\office.txt
   and hit Enter.
3. Create a shortcut on your desktop by minimizing all open windows, right-clicking on an empty place on the desktop and selecting New -> Shortcut…
   In the new window that opens, type (or better paste) the following
   netsh -f %windir%\netsettings\office.txt
   and click Next…
   Type a name for the profile (for instance Office settings) and click Finish.

Repeat steps 1-3 for as many profiles you need to create, changing office.txt with home.txt (etc.) in steps 2 and 3. Give each profile shortcut a distinguishable name.

You can now switch between different network profiles by simply clicking the appropriate icon on the desktop!

Note that this approach creates a full network profile (including settings for all network interfaces – wired and wireless), so in rare situations you might need to create different combinations of settings. It is also useful to have a setting with all connections set to auto, in case you need to access networks in hotels, airports and other public places.

There are several ways to access news via RSS. One is to read an aggregator website, into which somebody has pre-selected sources based on a common criteria – all technology news or all blogs from a certain country. The other is to select the sources yourself and display the new items in some sort of an application – either web-based or a program, installed locally on your computer. Most common web-based applications include Google Reader, Bloglines, Netvibes, Technorati and My Yahoo! to name just a few. The local application approach relies on an installed program, most commonly the very browser you are reading this site with – Mozilla Firefox‘s Live Bookmarks or Internet Explorer’s Feeds, a mail client (Outlook, Thunderbird or Apple Mac OS X Mail) or a standalone RSS-reader.

After having tried a lot of different approaches and solutions, my personal favorite is now the Thunderbird application. And you can start by subscribing to the Digital Day’s RSS Feed.