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WhatsRunning is up to V2.1. It’s a program that lets you see … uhh … what’s running on your system. From processes to IP connections to startup programs and more. Not only is the program worthwhile but the site itself has a section called Process Information Central which can identify what a process is, what it does and what company it’s from.

The program is free for non-commercial use, $US 25 otherwise.

Another good site that I’ll just mention here and do a more thorough write-up later is AnswersThatWork. Try their Task List for something similar to What’s Running’s Process Information Central.

I’ve added the Snapstream Firefly remote control to my media PC. Good product! It’s an RF remote, not IR, so it can’t control any of my other devices but that’s OK for now … I’m still trying to figure out how to make everything work together anyway. Besides drivers, the remote comes with Beyond Media Basic, a slimmed down version of their Beyond Media application (differences are here) and some other software to allow it to control quite a few applications like WinAmp, Cyberlink’s PowerDVD and Microsoft’s Media Center Edition but nothing for my personal favorite, J. River’s Media Center so I built one over the weekend. It’s not too difficult, just a matter of determining what codes to send to the app (either key strokes or Windows messages). It’s not perfect but it works. Once I shake it out a little more, I’ll post it.

One other product I’ve been looking at is Promixis’ Girder. It’s a tool that allows you to take actions from a remote control device and recode it to control applications. It seem to be quite popular, given how many people reference it over at AVS Forum so I intend to download the evaluation version and give it a try.

More later.

Laplink is giving away free copies of its PCmover program until September 30. Go here.

Update, 9/22/2005: Looks like the offer’s been extended till October 15 (thanks, Chad!).

Until it disappeared from the net a while ago, BlackViper was my reference source for what services did what on Windows XP and which services were OK to shutdown. Well, the site’s back!

From Digg.com again:

http://money.cnn.com/pf/features/lists/global_gasprices/

This probably isn’t ready for primetime yet because it requires too much manual intervention but it’s a promising GreaseMonkey hack. MagicLine tracks where you’ve been, collecting loads of information like URLs, page titles, referrer, author, feeds and organizing it so that later, if you’re looking for something you’ve seen before, it can autocomplete based on any of this information.

Right now it modifies prefs.js with all this info and it will slow things down over time. Unless you really wanna play with this now, I’d squirrel it away for a future look-see … it sounds really promising.

The Firefox extension GreaseMonkey has had its security holes plugged and is now available in a 0.5 beta version.

Microsoft has finally made the download for the new SyncToy available.

What is it? I guess I’d call it Offline Folders on steroids or a superhuge Briefcase. It’s supposed to allow you to synchronize multiple folders across multiple machines, combining directories, handling renames and so on. I haven’t tried it yet but I’m about to.

Update: I don’t think it’ll replace Offline Folders because it’s a manual synchronization. Supposedly you can set it up to run automatically through XP’s Scheduled Tasks but that’s not the same as Offline Folders which allows you to specify that synchronization is to occur at logon and logoff. Not to mention the fact that if your connection disappears, when Offline Folders detects that your connection has been restored it will automatically sync up. SyncToy provides other features that makes it valuable, though. There are 5 “modes” which you can set up:

Synchronize: New and updated files are copied both ways. Renames and deletes on either side are repeated on the other.

Echo: New and updated files are copied left to right. Renames and deletes on the left are repeated on the right.

Subscribe: Updated files on the right are copied to the left if the file name already exists on the left.

Contribute: New and updated files are copied left to right. Renames on the left are repeated on the right. No deletions.

Combine: New and updated files are copied both ways. Nothing happens to renamed and deleted files.

Worth the energy, I think.

engadget has this article on a Ubuntu Linux bundled on a 3GB USB drive for $135 Euros. Seems to me that $200 for a 3GB USB minidrive is quite a deal and you get a bootable Linux that stores all its stuff on the drive, at the same time!

Update: Fry’s has a 2.2G drive on sale for $80. One day sale.

Check out this article from Windows IT Pro. It gives a good introduction to the Windows Genuine Advantage program and a link to the Microsoft website that explains it. Briefly, all downloads from Microsoft, including Windows updates (but not including security updates, from what I hear) will require this. The good news: you don’t need to enter your 25-character product key. This is supposedly the way of the future!