Saturday, September 8, 2012

Windows 8 and the start screen tiles with a keyboard and mouse

Within Windows 8, tiles can be removed from the start screen by performing a right-click on the entry in question.  A menu bar should appear at the bottom of the page with an option to “unpin” the tile.  A selected tile will have a check-mark in the top right-hand corner of the box.

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Large tiles can be made smaller and vise versa by selecting the tile and using the menu bar.

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To name a group of tiles, click on the minus icon near the bottom right corner of the screen.

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This action should “zoom out” the start screen.

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Right-click on a group of tiles, which should display a Name group option.

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Click on the Name group icon and enter a value for the group.

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When returning to the start screen, the name should appear above the group.

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To create a new group, select a tile and drag it to the left or right until a grey bar appears.

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Monday, September 3, 2012

Start8

Start8 is an free utility for Windows 8 that restores the traditional Start Menu to the desktop, and allows the operating system to be booted directly into the desktop mode.

http://www.stardock.com/products/start8/

Sunday, September 2, 2012

FreeFileSync

FreeFileSync is an open-source folder comparison and synchronization tool.

http://freefilesync.sourceforge.net/

Bro Network Security Monitor IDS

While focusing on network security monitoring, Bro provides a comprehensive platform for more general network traffic analysis as well.  It is a IDS application for Unix-based systems.

http://www.bro-ids.org/

Microsoft PerfView

PerfView is a performance analysis tool focusing on ETW information (ETL files) as well as CLR memory information (heap dumps). It can collect and view ETL files as well as XPERF CSV files. Powerful grouping operators allow you to understand performance profiles in ways other tools can't.

http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=28567&WT.mc_id=rss_alldownloads_all

Saturday, September 1, 2012

Cameyo

Cameyo is a desktop virtualization product similar to VMware’s ThinApp application.  The process is close to ThinApp in that a “snapshot” is taken before the installation of an application.

http://www.cameyo.com/

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Sudo command with Ubuntu

Sudo runs a single command with root privileges.  By default, Ubuntu remembers the password for 15 minutes.  To get a full root shell, use the sudo with the lowercase i.

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To enable the root user account, use sudo passwd root command.

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Permissions can be assigned to a user to use sudo via the visudo command.

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Measurement Labs

Measurement Labs offers a collection of various tools from different sources to test your internet connection and perform diagnostics.

http://www.measurementlab.net/measurement-lab-tools