GeekStudios presents "Scheduling Picasa Uploads"

Ok, So I am back after a blogger's lull.

The past 1 month, I have spent plenty of time taking traveling and taking photos. But when it comes to uploading those photos to Picasa Web Albums or post it here on my blog, I have never been able to do that. The simple reason is, each of my picture taken in my camera is around 5 MB and I have around 800 such photos in my memory card. Choosing the best pics, importing to Picasa (the desktop version) and then uploading to the web albums takes a lot of time, that I end up not doing it. The upload option available on the Picasa Web album does no good too, it uploads images with their actual sizes and takes long time to upload 5-6 photos (size comes up around 30MB)

So, over the weekend, I decided to put the Geek in me to work and develop a tool that can resize, schedule and upload images to Picasa web albums. Sounds cool right ? :)

And thus, Geek Studios presents "Scheduling Picasa Uploads", a tool created using C# to resize, schedule and upload images to Picasa Web albums so that you can share it online to your friends. With Picasa's integration to G+, this tool should come handy for many of you out there.

Download (Download the zip file and unzip it to a location in your system)

 

8 Simple steps to use it

1. Run PicasaScheduledUpload.exe. Login using ur gmail id and password
2. Create a new album if required. It will be provided ‘private’ access by default
3. Choose the album from the drop down where you want to upload the photos
4. Choose the photos from your system which you want to upload
5. Choose ‘Upload Now’ if you want to upload immediately
6. If you wish to upload at a later point in time, choose the time in the time picker component and click ‘Upload later at’. The tool must be open and should not be closed before the scheduled upload time.
7. Your pictures will be resized to ‘1600*1200’ and uploaded to the picasa web albums.
8. Login to picasa web albums and verify if your files are uploaded and share the photos to your friends. 

4 Advantages of using this tool

1. Resizing images to save network bandwidth and memory space on your albums
2. Scheduling the uploads so that you can choose to upload without affecting your work
3. You can choose to upload images from multiple folders and multiple devices (memory card, external hard disk) to your web albums
4. Save time, this is quick and I was able to upload around 100 images within 5 minutes. This was not the case with Picasa Desktop or the web albums.

Known Issues & Limitations
The scheduling & uploading logic is poorly written, and the UI would appear to be frozen when the upload is in progress. I was just too lazy to spawn a thread and upload in that thread.

The user name and password you provide you on the UI are 100% SAFE and SECURE, it is NOT STORED or DISTRIBUTED ANYWHERE or TO ANYONE else. The login procedure is handled Google's SDKs and if any one out there needs confirmation, the source code will be provided on request.

I would love to hear feedback from you guys. Please try it and let me know. Have fun !

Scheduling torrent downloads using Vuze

In this post, let me explain how you can schedule your torrent downloads using torrent client called 'Vuze' formerly called as 'Azerus'. Most of us have broadband connections that allow free download during certain hours of the day. In my case, my BSNL broadband connection allows me free downloads between 2AM to 8AM. It was practically impossible for me to stay awake till 2 in the night and start the download. So when i searched the internet for clients that allow scheduling of downloads, i came across 'Vuze' along with speed scheduler.

1. Download and install the torrent client from http://www.vuze.com/. The installation is fairly easy and straight forward.

2. Start Vuze and select the 'Installation Wizard' from the 'Plugins' option in the 'Tools' menu as shown below.

3. In the dialog box that opens up, Choose 'By list from SourceForge.net'. Ensure that you are connected to the internet :). Click next.

4. Choose 'Speed Scheduler' from the options and then press 'Next' and then 'Finish'

5. The following dialog box will appear if the installation is complete properly.

6. You can find 'Speed Scheduler' in the 'Plugins' menu. Open it and you can schedule downloads as shown below.

The green tick indicates the schedule that is currently active.

Hope you guys find it useful and happy downloading :)

Installing Ubuntu using Wubi

I have published this article today (10.10.10) to coincide with the release of 'Maverick Meerkat'

What do we normally do with PCs or laptops at home?

• View Photos
• Watch Movies
• Listen to Music
• Browse the Internet
• Play Games

And in very rare cases, work with MS Office or do some random programming

The fact is, we dont need Windows Vista or Windows 7 to do the things mentioned above. Windows Vista/7 takes up a lot of RAM and is damn slow in starting up. And we invariably end of using a pirated version of windows which is always prone to virus attacks. For so many years I wanted to work with an linux operating system, but i was always scared of the installation process. I was scared that I might accidentally format one of my hard disks.

About an year ago, I got to know about Wubi from a colleague of mine. Wubi is nothing but an easy way to install Ubuntu on your personal computer. If you want to try out Ubuntu on your PC for a short period of time, Wubi is your best choice. Wubi installs Ubuntu on your PC as just another application on windows, but actually it installs an OS itself in your PC. That is how easy the whole installation is. Shown below is the snapshot of the installation screen.

It does look that simple, it really does. Choose any drive in your PC where you have sufficient amount of free space. I would suggest to choose 10GB as the installation size. Once you click on Install, it takes about 3-4 mts for Ubuntu to get installed. You need to reboot once and you will be shown with an option to load Ubuntu during the boot process. And thats it !! There you are, a new, stable and fast OS installed in your PC in absolutely no time.

It might take couple of days to get started with Ubuntu.You are not presented with the old problem of mounting the hard disks and USB drives of previous years. Everything is already done for you. The OS comes with pre-installed software that cover up all your basic needs.

Now, let us look at the pros and cons

Pros

• Stable, Secure, Fast Operating system - you dont need to worry about virus attacks
• No need to burn CDs. The iso is sufficient for the installation.
• 100% Free
• All basic software already installed
• An alternate way to recover files if your Windows OS is infected by virus
• Free upgrade of the OS available every 6 months.
• Online repository of free software available.
• Good forums available to answer all your queries and a very activity community.

Cons

• Ubuntu installed using Wubi is not as fast as it can be. To get the full speed of an OS, you need to install it using the traditional procedure.
• By default, Ubuntu does not support mp3 and other audio/video formats. This is done to avoid legal issues. To overcome this, you need to install VLC or install unrestricted-audio-packages from the online repository.
• You might face some problems if you have graphic cards installed. This problem however has been fixed from Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala)
• Few of your special keys in your keyboard might not work. For instance, your wifi-enable or bleutooth-enable key might not work on the keyboard. Workaround is to boot up the OS with those features already enabled.

If you guys face any problem in the installation or in using the OS, you can contact me at rmnforever@gmail.com or post your queries at Ubuntu forums

TeamViewer - Remote Access to PCs

Now that we have friends and family geographically placed in different locations, there arises situation where you need to help some one with an installation or configure some software in the PC. Previous ways of doing it included sending mails with detailed steps and snapshots to do the job or guiding them over phone while they perform the job. This however does not work all the time. I started searching for software that would let me remotely access PCs and control them and I came across Team Viewer.

The software is relatively easy to install and use. I had no problems in the installation or the usage. There is very minimal latency involved while you remotely access the PC. It has few nice features such as chat & file transfer.

The entire steps involved are explained here.

Other software that you can use are GotoMeeting, GotoMyPC.  Teamviewer is totally free for non-commercial usage, which is good enough for us. There are trial versions available for GotoMeeting and GotoMyPC over a short period of time. Hope you guys find it useful !!