Deploying Windows 7 Essential Guidance Free eBook Download

In conjunction with the official release of Windows 7, Microsoft press is now giving away “Deploying Windows 7 Essential Guidance from the Windows 7 Resource Kit and TechNet Magazine” digital eBook in PDF format for those who is looking for guidance specific to Windows 7 deployment. The contents of the eBook are extracted from selected chapters written by industry experts Mitch Tulloch, Tony Northrup, Jerry Honeycutt, Ed Wilson, and the Windows 7 Team with selected Windows 7 articles from TechNet Magazine.


Chapters and topics in the “Deploying Windows 7 Essential Guidance from the Windows 7 Resource Kit and TechNet Magazine” book:

• Deployment Platform.
• Planning Deployment.
• Testing Application Compatibility.
• Developing Disk Images.
• Migrating User State Data.
• Deploying Applications.
• Preparing Windows PE.
• Configuring Windows Deployment Services.
• Using Volume Activation.
• Deploying with Microsoft Deployment Toolkit.
• Migrate Already: Why You Should Migrate To Windows 7 If You Are Still Waffling.
• 8 Common Issues in Windows 7 Migration.
• 9 Things You Should Know About Windows 7.
• Can’t We All Just Get Along? Running Windows 7 in Mixed Environments.
• Integrating Windows 7 and Windows 2008 R2.
• The Good Computing Seal of Approval: Windows 7 Certification.

Download the free “Deploying Windows 7 Essential Guidance from the Windows 7 Resource Kit and TechNet Magazine” e-book in PDF format from download.microsoft.com

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BitSnoop – Demonoid and The Pirate Bay Alternative Torrent Search Engine

Many BitTorrent (BT) network lovers may be looking for an alternative and new torrent search engine as some of the popular torrent indexing services such as The Pirate Bay and Demonoid is in the doldrums. The Pirate Bay is continuing hit by lawsuit to shut it down, while Demonoid is having an extended downtime, and severe torrents submission data lost due to hardware problems. BitSnoop, a new torrent indexing site, may worthwhile to be bookmarked for unfortunate circumstances where two largest BT search engines ThePirateBay and Demonoid is unavailable, a situation that looks increasingly likely.


BitSnoop, bases in Moscow, Russia, is a new torrent indexer which uses robots to roam the Internet for any torrents available, and constantly update the torrent health (availability of seeders and leechers). BitSnoop features a Google-like clean and minimalistic user interface, and most importantly, TrackerMatch technology.

TrackerMatch generates torrents at BitSnoop. Tracker Match scans through and cross-references each torrents record, analyze and filter them to exclude typos, errors and just junk in tracker URLs. TrackerMatch locates all good working trackers and reliable backup trackers (useful when main tracker dead or down) for the torrents and removes duplicated torrents or ‘bad’ torrents (with fake trackers) to avoid slow downloads.

BitSnoop currently indexes more than 1.91 million torrents (of which 1.29 million torrents are active) with more than 1,501.1 TB of total file size. And the stat keeps increasing. In short, BitSnoop is definitely one of the stop where people looking for something to download via BitTorrent worth visiting.

Visit BitSnoop at http://bitsnoop.com/.

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Disable and Deactivate Automatic Scanning for Viruses for Downloads in Firefox

Since Firefox 3, a virus scanning feature has been built-in to protect downloaders from malicious or infectious files. The auto file scanning feature is only available in Windows platform and only if an anti-virus application is installed on the system. The Firefox web browser’s virus scanner scans downloads automatically once the file has been completely and fully downloaded to the local computer.

While the virus scanning by Firefox is good and recommended, it may not be needed. Most anti-virus or Internet security products in the market today provides real-time protection which scan a file for virus, Trojan and malware before it’s accessed and executed.

The Firefox virus scanner can also cause considerable delay to access the file from Firefox’s Downloads window. Instead of allowing users to run the file, open the containing folder, go to download page or copy download link, the just downloaded file will display a green running status bar showing “Scanning for viruses…”. Normally, the scanning just takes a few seconds, but the scanning time duration or period increases with the size of the file.

Other than that, when a file is detected as harmful, where it’s accurate or not (false positive for genuine harmless file), it will be blocked by the anti-virus software, and unavailable by users.

Firefox users who do not want virus scanning function of Firefox can easily deactivate the scanning file for viruses feature. To turn off and disable virus scanning in Firefox, follow these steps:

1. Run Firefox.
2. Type about:config in the Firefox location bar.
3. Click I’ll be careful, I promise! button when prompted with warning dialog saying “This might void your warranty! Changing these advanced settings can be harmful to the stability, security, and performance of this application. You should only continue if you are sure of what you are doing.”



4. Search and locate browser.download.manager.scanWhenDone preference name. Type in the string into Filter box to get to the parameter immediately.

   The default setting value for browser.download.manager.scanWhenDone is true (default status), which instructs Firefox to scan completed downloads automatically.

5. Double click on the line to toggle the value to false (user set status) to deactivate and disable automatic downloads virus scan. Firefox will no longer scan any downloads with immediate effect. No browser restart required.

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WinAutomation Tasks Automator Full Version License Free Giveaway

WinAutomation is a automation tool for Windows operating system that helps users automate any repetitive task on the computer. In Mac OS X, there is a application called Automator to serve as personal robotic assistant, while in Windows there is no easily usable and customizable GUI-based (graphical user interface) actions automator app available, unless with WinAutomation installed.


WinAutomation records mouse clicks and keystrokes for replaying and executing the exact steps in exact sequence later. WinAutomation also supports advanced high-level actions or steps, which users can define each step in the tasks using graphical interface. Once an automated task is created, WinAutomation will automate and execute your tasks whenever is needed. The app can greatly increase productivity, save time, eliminate errors, and automate repetitive jobs.

Thanks to Softomotive for sponsoring, My Digital Life is giving away 5 licenses of WinAutomation Professional, which worth $199 each, at its latest version, WinAutomation 3.0, to My Digital Life readers, making the giveaway contest worth almost $1000. WinAutomation 3.0 Professional Edition comes with a Job Compiler which can compiles tasks as standalone executable.

How to Win A License of WinAutomation Professional

Note: Participants must have a Twitter account, which can sign up for free here.

1. Follow WinAutomation tweets at http://twitter.com/winautomation (click on Follow button on the page).
2. Tweet the following:

   @winautomation free WinAutomation giveaway (worth $199) at #mdlblog http://bit.ly/LbmYs

   Copy and paste the above to “What are you doing?” box and click “Update”.

3. Write a comment on how you plan to use WinAutomation (need it for any specific processes to automate) or how you feel WinAutomation can benefit (e.g. in terms of time, cost, more time for more valuable tasks etc).

   Remember to include your Twitter ID in the comment too.

The giveaway contest closes on 23:59 PM on October 31st, 2009, based on server time (which is UTC+8). The winners will be selected based on five best comments on why you need WinAutomation. So wait no more, and start participating for a chance to win a license of WinAutomation.

My Digital Life’s decision is final, and My Digital Life reserves all rights to change any terms and conditions without prior notice.

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Download FILEminimizer Office (PPTminimizer) To Reduce Word, Excel and PowerPoint File Sizes

Many people may heard of PPTminimizer before, which is an optimization utility to compress and reduce the size of the Microsoft Office PowerPoint presentations and Word documents file format. PPTminimizer is now been renamed and renewed as FILEminimizer Office, currently at version 5.0 with added features and functionality.

FILEminimizer Office compresses PowerPoint, Word and Excel files and reduces the file size by up to 98% using an intelligent office file compression software technique which compresses pictures and embedded objects while still preserving the original file format and quality. The advantage of FILEminimizer Office is that the much smaller optimized office files remain in the original format. Which mean a PowerPoint .PPT file remains in .PPT format. The files are not zipped or compressed as archive, which requires user to unzip or extract when opening.

FILEminimizer Office is useful to compress Office files to a smaller size in its original format so that end-users can open, view, modify, edit, or print the file directly using corresponding Office applications. The smaller file size is ideal for sharing on web or sending via email attachment too.

Features of FILEminimizer Office v5.0:

• Office compression for PowerPoint, Word and Excel by up to 98% – a 50MB document is compressed to 1MB in size.
• Compresses PowerPoint 2007, Word 2007, Excel 2007 files – full optimization of PPTX, DOCX, XLSX files.
• Compresses “old” PowerPoint 97 to 2003, Word 97 to 2003, Excel 97 to 2003 files – full optimization of PPT, DOC, XLS files.
• Compresses pictures and embedded objects and reduces the size of Office files.
• Keeps the original file format – simply edit, view and change it without the need to unzip.
• Compresses StarOffice and OpenOffice files provided they are saved in a Microsoft format.
• Compact edition runs directly from CD or USB flash drive – no installation required.
• Integrated search function finds all optimizable files on the PC.
• “Drag & Drop” files directly into FILEminimizer to optimize several files at once (batch processing).
• Add-ins for PowerPoint, Word, Excel and Windows Explorer.
• Pack and Go: send optimized email attachments with one click.
• Outlook Add-in: compress PowerPoint, Word and Excel attachments automatically before sending.
• Fully compatible with Windows Vista.

FILEminizer Office works best on Office files which contain images, pictures, photos, and embedded objects such Excel tables, Excel charts, Word documents, Visio diagrams, CAB drawings and etc. To maximize file size reducing, FILEminimizer Office can convert these embedded objects to simple pictures (flatten the objects), significantly reduce the size of objects, though some users who require to deal directly with the objects are not advised to allow the objects been flatten. For Office documents with just text, the percentage of reduction in file size is ignorable, or there won’t be any file size reduction at all, as shown in illustration below.


One of the main compression routine of FILEminimizer Office is pictures, photos, graphics, and images in the Office documents. Similar to FILEminimizer Pictures, users can select from default strong, standard, and low compression, or define custom compress for custom image resolution, keep or adjust JPEG (.jpg) compression factor (quality) and quality for DOC and XLSX formats.

FILEminimizer Office is priced at € 34.95 per license, or bulk order discount. 12 free optimizations (registration required) and 5 free optmizations trial of FILEminimizer Office is also available from download from balesio.com. For users who yet to convince on FILEminimizer Office, and do not want to install anything on the PC, FILEminimizer Office Compact Edition (Standalone) executable, which does not have add-ins for Microsoft Office and Outlook and can run directly from a USB flash drive or CD, is also available: FILEminimizerNR.exe.

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Spring Design Alex Android-Based E-Book Reader With Dual Screen of 6″ E-Ink EPD And 3.5″ Color Touchscreen

The provider of innovative e-reader solutions, Spring Design has announced the first Google Android-Based e-book reader to incorporate full Internet browser capabilities (over Wi-Fi or mobile networks) and patented dual screen interaction technology (Duet Navigator) – Spring Design Alex, which features earphones, speakers, SD memory card slot, 6-inch E-Ink EPD (electronic paper display), and 3.5-inch color touchscreen display that supplements as well as enhances original text with web-based or linked multimedia content including video, audio, photos and notes, bringing readers to a whole new level of reading experience.


“This is the start of a whole new experience of reading content on e-books, potentially igniting a whole new industry in multimedia e-book publishing for secondary authors to create supplementary content that is hyper linked to the text. We are bringing life to books with audio, video, and annotations,” said Dr. Priscilla Lu, CEO at Spring Design. “This gives readers the ability to fully leverage the resources on the Web, and the tools available in search engines to augment the reading experience.”

No words on the pricing and availability date of Spring Design Alex eReader yet.

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Download YouTube Uploader To Upload Multiple Videos on YouTube

YouTube has enhanced its uploading feature to facilitate YouTube users to upload multiple video files simultaneously via its web interface. If you are an active user who does frequent uploading, perhaps uploading directly from the computer instead of using web browsers could be more convenient and easy to manage. YouTube Uploader is one way to assist YouTube enthusiasts to do simultaneous multiple video uploading from the desktop.

YouTube Uploader is a free application which can download via the link here. Once it is installed, users will be required to enter their YouTube account login and password when they run it. Once it is logged in, users can start using the program to browse and upload the video directly from the desktop. The program allows users to add in title, description, tags and categorize their video. It also allows users to use a proxy server via settings in the “Use proxy server” option. Users can change language and set “Turn off computer, if the process was finished successfully”.


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