I Love Stars

Stellarium is a free open source planetarium for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope.
It is being used in planetarium projectors. Just set your coordinates and go.

Screen Shots

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Easy WiFi Radar

Some things in life should be free. Easy WiFi Radar helps you find and connect to open wireless access points with a single mouseclick. It’s WiFi for Dummies. And we’re giving it away for your PC.

If you have ever tried to use Windows XP’s built-in connection manager, you know what a hassle it can be to quickly check your mail or browse the web on the go. You need to browse through a list of access points, find one that you can connect to, manually try to connect to it, confirm the connection and then wait. Even if it says that’s it connected, often it doesn’t open a webpage or you mail will stall. Easy WiFi Radar automates all of this. It’s main goal is to let you get your mail or surf the web without having to go through all of the connection trouble, and without having to pull your creditcard. Just run it and it’ll connect you for FREE to the internet. It doesn’t get easier than this.

Get your mail and browse the web without being charged. The ideal WiFi-tool for frequent travellers and mobile professionals. Easy WiFi Radar will connect to open hotspots automatically and shows you exactly what it is doing in a cool animated radar screen. Access points are represented as green, yellow or red dots. It plays a sound and opens your webbrowser as soons as it succesfully finds a free connection. Works on Windows XP and Windows Mobile, not on Vista.

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5 ways to speed up your PC

By following a few simple guidelines, you can maintain your computer and keep it running smoothly. This article discusses how to use the tools available in Windows to more efficiently maintain your computer and safeguard your privacy when you’re online.

Free up disk space

By freeing disk space, you can improve the performance of your computer. The Disk Cleanup tool helps you free up space on your hard disk. The utility identifies files that you can safely delete, and then enables you to choose whether you want to delete some or all of the identified files.
Use Disk Cleanup to:

•	Remove temporary Internet files.
•	Remove downloaded program files (such as Microsoft ActiveX controls and Java applets).
•	Empty the Recycle Bin.
•	Remove Windows temporary files.
•	Remove optional Windows components that you don’t use.
•	Remove installed programs that you no longer use.

Tip: Typically, temporary Internet files take the most amount of space because the browser caches each page you visit for faster access later.

To use Disk Cleanup

1.	Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, point to System Tools, and then click Disk Cleanup. If several drives are available, you might be prompted to specify which drive you want to clean.
2.	In the Disk Cleanup for dialog box, scroll through the content of the Files to delete list. Choose the files that you want to delete.
3.	Clear the check boxes for files that you don’t want to delete, and then click OK.
4.	When prompted to confirm that you want to delete the specified files, click Yes.

After a few minutes, the process completes and the Disk Cleanup dialog box closes, leaving your computer cleaner and performing better.

Speed up access to data

Disk fragmentation slows the overall performance of your system. When files are fragmented, the computer must search the hard disk when the file is opened to piece it back together. The response time can be significantly longer.

Disk Defragmenter is a Windows utility that consolidates fragmented files and folders on your computer’s hard disk so that each occupies a single space on the disk. With your files stored neatly end-to-end, without fragmentation, reading and writing to the disk speeds up.

When to run Disk Defragmenter
In addition to running Disk Defragmenter at regular intervals—monthly is optimal—there are other times you should run it too, such as when:

•	You add a large number of files.
•	Your free disk space totals 15 percent or less.
•	You install new programs or a new version of Windows.

To use Disk Defragmenter:

1.	Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, point to System Tools, and then click Disk Defragmenter. Click Analyze to start the Disk Defragmenter.
2.	In the Disk Defragmenter dialog box, click the drives that you want to defragment, and then click the Analyze button. After the disk is analyzed, a dialog box appears, letting you know whether you should defragment the analyzed drives. Tip: You should analyze a volume before defragmenting it to get an estimate of how long the defragmentation process will take.
3.	To defragment the selected drive or drives, click the Defragment button. Note: In Windows Vista, there is no graphical user interface to demonstrate the progress—but your hard drive is still being defragmented. After the defragmentation is complete, Disk Defragmenter displays the results.
4.	To display detailed information about the defragmented disk or partition, click View Report.
5.	To close the View Report dialog box, click Close.
6.	To close the Disk Defragmenter utility, click the Close button on the title bar of the window.

For more information on disk defragmentation, Link

Detect and repair disk errors

In addition to running Disk Cleanup and Disk Defragmenter to optimize the performance of your computer, you can check the integrity of the files stored on your hard disk by running the Error Checking utility.

As you use your hard drive, it can develop bad sectors. Bad sectors slow down hard disk performance and sometimes make data writing (such as file saving) difficult, or even impossible. The Error Checking utility scans the hard drive for bad sectors, and scans for file system errors to see whether certain files or folders are misplaced.

If you use your computer daily, you should run this utility once a week to help prevent data loss.

To run the Error Checking utility:

1.	Close all open files.
2.	Click Start, and then click My Computer.
3.	In the My Computer window, right-click the hard disk you want to search for bad sectors, and then click Properties.
4.	In the Properties dialog box, click the Tools tab.
5.	Click the Check Now button.
6.	In the Check Disk dialog box, select the Scan for and attempt recovery of bad sectors check box, and then click Start.
7.	If bad sectors are found, choose to fix them.

Tip: Only select the “Automatically fix file system errors” check box if you think that your disk contains bad sectors.

Protect your computer against virus and spyware

A computer virus is a computer program that can copy itself and infect a computer without the permission or knowledge of the owner. The term “virus” is also commonly but erroneously used to refer to other types of malware, adware and spyware programs that do not have the reproductive ability. A true virus can only spread from one computer to another (in some form of executable code) when its host is taken to the target computer.

Spyware collects personal information without letting you know and without asking for permission. From the Web sites you visit to usernames and passwords, spyware can put you and your confidential information at risk. In addition to privacy concerns, spyware can hamper your computer’s performance.

To combat spyware, you might want to consider my personal recommendation ESET NOD32 Internet Security.  Alternatively, there are other free antivirus and anti-spyware software programs available.

Learn all about Tweaking

Download TuneUP Utilities to do all the above all in one place with a lot of other tweaking like Registry cleaning, registry defragmenting and alot more. You can also use CCleaner or TweakUI as a free alternative.

Software Development’s Classic Mistakes

Below are the common mistakes observed during software development with there frequencies.
Overly optimistic schedules 77%
Unrealistic expectations 73%
Excessive multi-tasking 71%
Shortchanged quality assurance 70%
Noisy, crowded offices 69%
Feature creep 69%
Wishful thinking 68%
Insufficient risk management 68%
Confusing estimates with targets 65%
Omitting necessary tasks from estimates 61%
Abandoning planning under pressure 59%
Shortchanged upstream activities 58%
Heroics 58%
Lack of user involvement 57%
Inadequate design 54%
Insufficient planning 54%
Wasted time in the fuzzy front end 52%
Planning to catch up later 51%
Weak personnel 49%
Undermined motivation 45%
Unclear project vision 44%
Requirements gold-plating 44%
Code-like-hell programming 44%
Lack of project sponsorship 42%
Politics placed over substance 37%
Adding people to a late project 36%
Friction between dev & customers 36%
Developer gold-plating 35%
Lack of stakeholder buy-in 33%
Trusting the map more than the terrain 32%
Assuming global development has little impact 30%
Outsourcing to reduce cost 29%
Uncontrolled problem employees 29%
Letting a team go dark 28%
Subcontractor failure 27%
Silver-bullet syndrome 26%
Push me, pull me negotiation 26%
Overestimating savings from tools/methods 24%
Premature or too frequent convergence 24%
Research-oriented development 19%
Lack of automated source control 14%
Switching tools in mid-project 3%