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Digital Inspiration

Digital Inspiration is an award-winning technology blog on all things related to computer software, web applications, Internet and personal productivity.

How to Make your Windows Start-up FasterAugust 31

Does your Windows computer take really long to start-up?

Well, you are not alone with this problem but fortunately, with some minor tweaks, you can get your sluggish Windows to start much faster without re-installing Windows or adding any new hardware.

The logic is fairly simple. Your computer loads quite a few software programs and services during start-up (look at all the icons in your Windows System tray). If you can trim this list, your computer’s boot time will decrease.

I have been testing a free utility called Soluto and it helped reduce the start-up time of my Windows computer from 3.15 minutes to around 1.25 minutes. All this with a few easy clicks and without confusing the user with any technical jargon.

After you install Soluto, it sorts your start-up programs list into three categories:

• No-brainer – remove these programs from start-up with giving a second thought.
• Potentially removable – another list of start-up programs that may also be removed provided you know what these programs do.
• Required – Certain programs and services are required to run Windows properly and therefore should not be removed.

Depending upon the software app, you may

Who Broke the News (or the Embargo) First?August 31

Let’s say a company is about to launch a new product and, as is the standard practice, they have pre-briefed a select group of media outlets and bloggers about the news under an embargo.

The launch date is close and writers have already prepared their news stories so that they can push them as soon as embargo is lifted. And then something strange happens – one media outlet publishes the story ahead of time thus breaking the embargo – intentionally or unintentionally.

Find Who Broke the News Embargo?

Broken embargoes can be frustrating for journalists and bloggers as the limelight (and page views) often shifts to the news publication who did not honor the embargo.

If a news embargo gets broken, here’s a simple way that may help you determine the name of the publication that broke it in the first place.

Step 1. Go to google.com/realtime and type a few words from the story headline.

Step 2. In the timeline, click an area where you have minimal number of tweets around that story. That’s when the news first broke on the Internet and looking at the tweets, you should be able to figure who broke that news.

Poster Compares the Samsung Galaxy S PhonesAugust 31

The Samsung Galaxy S series of Android mobile phones have been a huge success in the U.S. as well as various international markets.

Compare Samsung Galaxy S Phones

The Galaxy S phones are available though all major carriers in the U.S. though with a slightly different set of features and under different names – you get them as Epic 4G on Sprint, Samsung Vibrant on T-Mobile, Samsung Fascinate on Verizon and Captivate on AT&T.

If you are based in the U.S. and are planning to go for a Galaxy S, the following poster from BillShrink should help you narrow down your choices.

The poster compares the common features and technical specifications of the various Galaxy S phones as well as the contract plans. Click here to download a larger version.

Samsung Galaxy S – What’s Common

Samsung Galaxy S – What’s Different

A Periodic Table of Google ElementsAugust 31

A bunch of creative Google employees, working in the Mountain View office, have created a beautiful and informative periodic table on one of their office walls where individual elements represent stats about Google and the Internet.

For instance Pb 10 means that approximately 10 petabytes of information is generated on the Internet every single day.

45 Dcb represents the fact that Google’s DoubleClick platforms serves over 45 billions ad impressions per day while 4.82 Pm means that users spent 4.82 million hours playing the Pac-Man doodle that adorned the Google homepage in May 2010.

Here’s a video of the Periodic Table wall. You may also visit Picasa for more photos.

Add the Quick Brown Fox in Microsoft WordAugust 30

If you want to insert some dummy text in a Word document, start a new paragraph, type =lorem() and hit Enter.

This will add three paragraphs of Lorem Ipsum characters in your document but if you want more text, use the formula =lorem(m,n) where m is the number of paragraphs and n denotes the number of lines that should be included in each of these paragraph. See screencast: