A little more than a year back, there was a great hue and cry about downloads. There are tonnes of cases where several organizations went after small and big timers and owners of websites.

In such a situation, where everything can be tracked, the need for privacy is at its peak. This where

I’m back with another sponsored review, this time of iRemotePC – Remote Support Service.

iRemotePC is a web based remote assistance product for IT technicians and especially useful for product/software vendors to remotely support their clients and customers. The service allows them to remotely control clients PCs with ease and fully encrypted security without pre-installing any software on the remote side.

As usual, I signed up for the service and gave it a test drive.

Signing Up

Signing up is quick and I received the welcome email immediately. They don’t have any email verification process during the signup process and your account is immediately activated.

On signing in for the first time, you are presented a survey which you can choose to fill or skip for later.

You are given five support tickets to use when you signup. Additional tickets can be purchased at $5/ticket or you can also opt for monthly or yearly subscriptions for unlimited tickets (useful if you have more than 10 tickets a month)

Starting Up

Before you begin, I suggest you read the walkthrough that explains how the entire system works.

I decided to test the service myself and being equipped with a laptop ensured that I could play the role of both the technician and the client. An additional test is that the laptop runs Windows Vista and is also connected to the internet via a proxy server.

I decided to play the technician on the laptop and the client on my PC.

Step 1 – Create a Support Ticket

I logged in as a technician and created a support ticket which I sent to my alternate email.

Once you create the ticket you will be given the option of launching a session. You can also do this later. An email is also sent to both you and the client with the link the client needs to use to launch a session.

Step 2 – Client Responds

The client clicks the link in the email and starts the process of launching the iRemotePC Support session.
This involves him entering a chat room which the technician has access to as well as launching the temporary client application.

When the client chooses to start the session, he will be prompted to download a 444KB file that will then download and run the main client. This client application is another 2.8MB, so if you are on a slower connection, be prepared to wait a while. However, you can use the same application again in the future by simply entering a new ticket ID.

Step 3 – The Technician Controls

The technician can then launch his own session and he can connect to the client’s PC.

I ran through all the tabs. The Diagnostics tab allows you to view the disk space, processes, time and registry among other functions.

The Remote Monitor tab is redundant when you also have access using the Remote Control which is the most powerful feature of this application. I was able to control my PC from my laptop completely. It was as if I was sitting in front of my PC. Additionally, the actions were immediate as iRemotePC links your two PCs directly and not via the iRemotePC server (though if this fails then the iRemotePC server comes into the picture).

I also tried the File Transfer tab to transfer the above screenshot to the PC from where I am blogging.

I ended the session on both systems and deleted the ticket… I now have four tickets with me.

Overall View

iRemotePC – Remote Support does what it promises and does it well. The application is quick to use and easy to understand from both technician and client point of view which makes it a major plus point.

The pricing is something that a technician or the Support Company will have to evaluate for themselves.
If you are getting occasional tickets, i.e. less than 10 per month then you can buy tickets adhoc at $5/mo. However, if you are getting more than 10 per month, you can go in for a monthly subscription. Buying a yearly subscription saves you around USD100.

Additionally, you will also have to make sure you’re charging your clients more than that!

One point that I am critical about is the Ticket Validity Period which can be a max of 24 hours. From my understanding beyond 24 hours you will need to create a new ticket. It would be better if the technician decides how long to keep the tickets valid, or the sessions can be launched until the ticket is closed.

Referrals

iRemotePC also has a referral program that allows you to earn $50 per referral.

So, if you do plan on using this service, do signup using my referal id.

The following post is a paid review of Trendio and my second review from ReviewMe.

Are you the kind of person who regularly monitors search engines for the most popular words? Every year, several search engines publish the most popular search keywords for the year.

What if you could wager with these keywords? Maybe use your experience to make some money? What if I tell you that you can become a millionaire by trading in keywords, would you believe me?

Trendio tries you give you your shot at name, fame and fortune. Trendio is a stock market where the stocks are words from the news: politicians, celebrities, companies, sport events, etc… The price of a word is relative to its popularity in the media. As is in the real stock market, you compose your portfolio with words that you believe will rise, and you win if your predictions prove to be right.

Ok, if you go ahead, let me confess, you won’t become a millionaire using Tredio, but you can definitely become a Trendillionaire.

Trendio sounded like fun and while I have zero experience in the stock market, I decided to give this a shot.

Signing Up

Signing up for Trendio was extremely simple. It requires you to select a username and password, enter your email, date of birth and few other details. A verification email is sent to your email address (which arrived immediately) and you can then follow the link and activate your account.

Once your account is activated you receive $10000 with which you can begin your trading. You can also earn more money by inviting your friends. Trendio can import contacts from your Hotmail, Yahoo or Gmail accounts, to whom you can send the invites.
This process threw up PHP errors for me and so I wasn’t able to do this.

Starting Off

Like I said before, I have zero experience in the stock market and so went through Trendio’s Presentation on getting me started.

Trendio offers several categories from News, Politics, Business, Entertainment, Sport and Technology and thus tries to offer everyone something.

You also have a live ticker at the bottom which presents you news from over 3000 news sources with keywords hightlighted, so you can use that too to influence your decision.

Being more familiar with technology I decided to buy 6 shares of the keyword “Windows” for 358.09 each and 7 shares of Google for 312.75 each.

The reason I chose Windows was because of the news results that I saw and the reason I chose Google was because of its recent acquisition of DoubleClick.

Apparently my choices weren’t all that great, because both the keywords saw a fall.

So, I took the smart option and sold off both the keywords. Next time, I shall try some other choices…

Other Things

Besides just trading in words, Trendio also offers you several contests. I haven’t given these contests a shot because they are over several day period and hence I won’t be able to review them in this post. However, this is an option I shall be looking into.

Trendio also has a complete French version of the site to cater to that set of the population.

Overall my experience with Trendio has been good so far (though I did lose Trendillions )
It is a good deal of fun in the spare time. If you have less time on your hands, then even 10 to 15 minutes a day are enough. If you really want to rise in the rankings out there, then you can always devote a lot more time to trading.

ReviewMe officially launched today.

And with their launch the very first site that you are offered to review is ReviewMe itself and hence this review.

What is ReviewMe

ReviewMe, backed by Text Link Ads, works with Advertisers and Bloggers.

Bloggers are hired by Advertisers to write reviews about their services. Reviews start at $40 which is a one time fee.

How do you get paid

The obvious ofcourse. You need to write a review. The minimum requirement for writing a review is that it should be atleast 200 words. This shouldn’t be a problem if you are writing a detailed review, which is what an advertiser should expect.

You receive 50% of the payment for the review. Hence, bloggers can get paid from $20.00 to $200.00 for each completed review.

ReviewMe pays you either by PayPal or by Check. I’ve chosen the PayPal option. I can’t comment on a payment, because this is my first review. I will update this post or post a new one based once I get a payment

One significant difference about ReviewMe from other pay-per-review sites is that they ask you to mention that the review is a paid review, which you shall see at the end of this post.

Signing up

The signup process is extremely simple and quick. I was surprised that there was no email verification, though you do receive a signup email.

Getting Started

On signing up I added this blog to the system. Your blog is rated based on your Alexa Rank, Technorati rank and your estimated feed subscribers. I am not sure how the estimate the feed subscribers.
I was also a bit disappointed because I got only a 2/5 for my Technorati rank and my rank is in the top 400!
It strangely also writes it as (N/A). I have written to ReviewMe and am awaiting their reply.

Also, I am not sure if this rating gets automatically updated as your blog popularity changes.

First Impressions

The interface is extremely easy to use, easy to read and highly functional. So you won’t have problems adding your site, editting it or submitting your reviews.

You also have an RSS Feed for your account which tells you the latest happening in your account.
However, this feed is not password protected hence it is best to keep the feed to yourself.

Things I would like to see

• Top on my list is the ability to update your ranking, or an auto change when your blog popularity changes.
• More documentation. The site lacks an About page, FAQ, Privacy Policy etc. as of now. Getting help is a little difficult as a result.

Why would you use ReviewMe

Let me close this review by answering this question. I saved it for the last on purpose.

Firstly, the Why? page on ReviewMe should be sufficient to answer that question.

But, to answer in short, for small business startups which struggle to get the word out, this is a good way to get people to blog about your product.
While I usually believe a product should speak for itself, publicity is never a bad thing.

Additionally, you would want to get the word out from more influential bloggers.

For bloggers, this works well because it is a good way to earn some additional cash, especially when you would possibly have reviewed it in the first place

Lets end the review here. Why don’t you signup for yourself, submit your blog. Do comment below with feedback for your experiences.

And if you hurry, you can get to review ReviewMe as part of their $25,000 giveaway.

Note: This post is a paid review of ReviewMe

Logged in yesterday to my Windows Live Mail account and was completely blown away.

Firstly, the interface loaded in a jiffy, which was a really good experience from my past experiences with Windows Live Mail.

Next, it had a whole new look. You now have several user selectable themes and colors available at the click of a button.

For those unaware, Windows Live Mail is the new revamped interface of the old Hotmail. It has an Ajax interface with complete drag and drop support for emails. It also intergrates Live Contacts, Calendar and MSN Spaces.

Messages can be read either by themselves or in a Reading Pane.

You also can choose a light version of the interface, though I don’t think it needed with this update.

Hotmail is my oldest email account, registered way back in 1998 and I will confess that I haven’t used the email features of the account much, as I have always preferred Yahoo! Mail.

However, MSN has been a primary chat client, besides Yahoo! and GTalk.

I actually started using Windows Live recently after the beta version of the Mail interface released. And this was a little frustrating because the design had a lot to be desired.

I may however, start using Live Mail more often given this update.

So does your sidebar look cluttered with a huge collection of FeedButtons? Well, users do have different choices and we are eager to make it as easy as possible to add our feed to their feed reader.

The result is a highly cluttered sidebar. FeedButton hopes to change all that. You can use them to generate a single button. On Mouseover, the button expands and the user is presented with several buttons for ready subscription.

Found via Tech Buzz

Have just created a new category on this blog, which shall contain posts exclusively about some of the best apps out there.

And let me inaugurate this category with one such software I cannot live without. It goes by the name Notepad++ and it could very well have been called Notepad++++ !!

For those of you not aware of this great application, Notepad++ is a free Notepad replacement for Windows, which supports several programming languages.

It comes with a huge list of features:

• Syntax Highlighting and Syntax Folding
• WYSIWYG
• User Defined Syntax Highlighting
• Auto-completion
• Multi-Document
• Multi-View
• Regular Expression Search/Replace supported
• Full Drag ‘N’ Drop supported
• Dynamic position of Views
• File Status Auto-detection
• Zoom in and zoom out
• Multi-Language environment supported
• Bookmark
• Brace and Indent guideline Highlighting
• Macro recording and playback

You can get a detailed explanation of the features from their site.

Few things that I really can’t live without is the multi-document, syntax highlighting and the brace and indent guideline highlighting.

All my PHP and a good deal of HTML development work takes place exclusively in Notepad++.

Non-English users too have nothing to complaint about, because the software also comes in several languages.

You also fantastic Find & Replace features, including the very important Find in Files, which you can use if you are searching for a specific string in a whole folder. This can however do with some improment.

Download and start using Notepad++

Hosting Plans at WebberZone Hosting Solutions is a service provided by WebberZone Web Solutions have just been upgraded.

We now offer 15GB and 25GB plans for just USD75/yr and USD150/yr!!!

Both the plans come with a free domain name, mySQL, eMail, 24/7 customer support, 30-day money back guarantee and many other features.

Though targetted at small businesses and corporates, the plans are available to anyone who wants that huge disk space and bandwidth at their disposal.

To begin, simply enter your domain in the box below

Oslo, Norway – September 20, 2005

Opera Software today permanently removed the ad banner and licensing fee from its award-winning Web browser. The ad-free, full-featured Opera browser is now available for download – completely free of charge

Related Posts:

• Free Opera for a Day!
• How to Fix Google Reader in Opera
• Spyware, Trojans and Virii : A threat to security and privacy
• Admin @ C-F-H.com
• IImage Browser Hack
• Powered by Contextual Related Posts

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Opera Eliminates Ad Banner and Licensing Fee was first posted on September 20, 2005 at 1:52 pm.
© 2003-2009 "Ajay - On the Road called Life". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me.

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]]> http://ajaydsouza.com/archives/2005/09/20/opera-eliminates-ad-banner-and-licensing-fee/feed/ 0 http://ajaydsouza.com/archives/2005/08/28/w3-compliant-sites/ http://ajaydsouza.com/archives/2005/08/28/w3-compliant-sites/#comments Sun, 28 Aug 2005 10:37:52 +0000 Ajay http://ajaydsouza.com/archives/2005/08/28/w3-compliant-sites/

I had signed up for W3 Compliant Sites a long time ago.

W3 Compliant Sites is a website to promote web sites that are designed to comply to the web standards.

I have long believed in designing my websites using compliant code and so immediately got about adding MegaThemes and this blog to the list.

Will ofcourse add other as and when.

The reason I am posting here is because I found myself to be the top referrer to W3 Compliant Sites in the last two months.
I have referred more than twice the number of visitors to the same than any other site in the past few months.

My Profile on W3CS

If you have a standards compliant website I do suggest you signup at W3CS.

Related Posts:

• Now create your very own Search Engine
• SpringWidgets Plugin
• My site’s interesting, notable and funky!
• Site Movement…
• A New Look for MegaThemes
• Powered by Contextual Related Posts

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W3 Compliant Sites was first posted on August 28, 2005 at 4:07 pm.
© 2003-2009 "Ajay - On the Road called Life". Use of this feed is for personal non-commercial use only. If you are not reading this article in your feed reader, then the site is guilty of copyright infringement. Please contact me.

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