Archive for July, 2006

StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon.com, Smarter way to discover sites

6
5 years ago
by Benedict Herold in

Don’t Search… Just Stumble!!! A new promising way to discover

Thanks to StumbleUpon.com for bringing in lot of visitors to my blog site in the recent past; which made me write this post :-)

StumbleUponIn recent weeks, I have been watching a steady increase in the number of referrers being sent from the site StumbleUpon. Moreover I got similar referral hits on my other site ExpertsHeaven.com. Initially I was under the assumption that StumbleUpon is some kind of SPAM site and sucking my bandwidth (Even I was thinking to ban the site IP :( ). Lucky I didn’t do so since I really learned what StumbleUpon is…!! Hence I though to write about StumbleUpon, so that webmasters and other can be kept informed about the traffic :-) and usage as well!!

According to WikiPedia,

StumbleUpon is a commercial web discovery service which integrates peer and social networking principles with one-click blogging. StumbleUpon is a social book marking site that adhere Web 2.0 StumbleUpon helps you discover and share great websites

StumbleUpon uses the ratings from the users to form collaborative opinions on website quality. When you stumble, you will only see pages which friends and like-minded stumblers have liked. Unlike search engines or static directories, this allows for a true “democracy of the web” – all members have a say (or) as to whether a page should be passed on. These ratings connect you to more like-minded members who then show you better pages (a kind of social networking)

StumbleUpon is a Canadian start-up that recently re-located to San Francisco. It was started by Garrett Camp, Geoff Smith, and Justin LaFrance, who bootstrapped the company for much of its early life. You must the read the Interview with Justin LaFrance of StumbleUpon.

Just don’t wait try out the StumbleUpon tool bar which is compatible with both IE and Firefox. Membership is free, and the database is accessed through a no-spyware tool-bar you add to your Firefox or IE browser. You take 2 minutes to join the free network, and then you tell it what your personal interests and start Stumbling!!!

Happy Stumbling!!!

FireFox Logo

Reducing memory usage in FireFox

24
5 years ago
by Benedict Herold in

Learn how you can tweak your Firefox application to consume less memory and work little faster.

FireFox LogoI’m crazy about this browser right from the day of release. Firefox bought me in a change of browsing style. I really love this tool. But only concern I’ve about Firefox is its memory usage. Hope this would be the concern for other users as well as the Firefox developers. It sucks most of the memory space. I’d say Firefox is memory ravenous compared with IE.

Firefox has lot of memory leaks and that has been fixed the most in the latest release. Anyway that’s not our part Mozilla developers will take of that  If you think you can contribute better then join their team. Visit Mozilla today to find out more ways to contribute.

Now let’s optimize Firefox to use less memory and to work faster. This is the smarter way too.

Type about:config in the address bar.

  • Create a new Boolean entry config.trim_on_minimize and set it to true (This one works gr8 when ever you reduce the FireFox window. It almost saves 20 MB – 30 MB+)
  • Set browser.cache.memory.capacity to a fixed size (the default values are: for 256 MB RAM – 14336, 512 MB RAM – 22528, 1 GB RAM – 32768). This is free 22MB max.
  • Set browser.sessionhistory.max_total_viewers to 0. It can reduce around 20 MB of usage
  • Change image.animation_mode to none. It has little impact on performance.

Now go to Tools/Options.

  • Set the disk cache memory to a low value (less than 50 MB).
  • Turn off Java (If you really don’t use it).
  • Try to avoid memory hungry extension. If you decide to use some; don’t use more that 5.
  • Clear the download history now and then. Don’t let the list to accumulate. This will have impact on the performance.

Using these tips, I was able to reduce around 40 – 50 MB of memory usage. So why to wait try it today. Happy Browsing.

Try Firefox today if you didn’t had a chance yet.
Get Firefox!

Finding free/used temporary table space in Oracle

2
5 years ago
by Benedict Herold in


If you’re a freak who work around with Oracle as backend, you would face the sitution where the oracle temporary space would be exhausted.

The usage temporary tablespace can’t be found out exactly using DBA_FREE_SPACE. To find out the true value of temporary table space we may need to use V$TEMP_SPACE_HEADER data dictonary.

SELECT   tablespace_name, SUM (bytes_used), SUM (bytes_free)
    FROM v$temp_space_header
GROUP BY tablespace_name;

If you’re looking out to find out the usage of other table space we need to use the following script.

CLEAR
SET HEAD ON
SET VERIFY OFF
SPOOL file
COL tspace form a25 Heading "Tablespace"
COL tot_ts_size form 99999999999999 Heading "Size (Mb)"
COL free_ts_size form 99999999999999 Heading "Free (Mb)"
COL ts_pct form 9999 Heading "% Free"
COL ts_pct1 form 9999 Heading "% Used"
BREAK on report
COMPUTE sum of free_ts_size on report
COMPUTE sum of tot_ts_size on report
SELECT                                                            /* + RULE */
         df.tablespace_name tspace, df.BYTES / (1024 * 1024) tot_ts_size,
         SUM (fs.BYTES) / (1024 * 1024) free_ts_size,
         NVL (ROUND (SUM (fs.BYTES) * 100 / df.BYTES), 1) ts_pct,
         ROUND ((df.BYTES - SUM (fs.BYTES)) * 100 / df.BYTES) ts_pct1
    FROM dba_free_space fs,
         (SELECT   tablespace_name, SUM (BYTES) BYTES
              FROM dba_data_files
          GROUP BY tablespace_name) df
   WHERE fs.tablespace_name(+) = df.tablespace_name
GROUP BY df.tablespace_name, df.BYTES
UNION ALL
SELECT                                                            /* + RULE */
         df.tablespace_name tspace, fs.BYTES / (1024 * 1024) tot_ts_size,
         SUM (df.bytes_free) / (1024 * 1024) free_ts_size,
         NVL (ROUND ((SUM (fs.BYTES) - df.bytes_used) * 100 / fs.BYTES),
              1
             ) ts_pct,
         ROUND ((SUM (fs.BYTES) - df.bytes_free) * 100 / fs.BYTES) ts_pct1
    FROM dba_temp_files fs,
         (SELECT   tablespace_name, bytes_free, bytes_used
              FROM v$temp_space_header
          GROUP BY tablespace_name, bytes_free, bytes_used) df
   WHERE fs.tablespace_name(+) = df.tablespace_name
GROUP BY df.tablespace_name, fs.BYTES, df.bytes_free, df.bytes_used
ORDER BY 4 DESC
/
SPOOL off

To find the size of table different technique has to be used.

YouOS ScreenShot

YouOS, a new kind of computing platform

5
5 years ago
by Benedict Herold in

YouOS is a kind of web-based operating system. Web-based OS is still at the idea level and YouOs is still in its Alpha stage.

I came across this site recently. YouOS is an experiment in a new kind of computing platform. YouOS allows you to run a virtual computer through a web browser. YouOS keeps your data saved and when you log back in again the ‘computer’ is the same as you left it. It’s a platform for web application development that’s hosted online with an online IDE and online execution. All the apps in there run in JavaScript with AJAX. Developing YouOS apps are quite simple. With YouOS you can run small applications like sticky notes or clocks; Large applications like word processing, mp3 players, and instant messaging. Even better, it’s very easy to tweak an existing application or write your own. Read their manifesto here.

YouOS ScreenShot

Why use YouOS?

  • Persist: Do some work. Log out. Log in later from another computer. It’s like you never left.
  • Centralize: Manage all your web services, files, and accounts in one secure place.
  • Collaborate: Share files and apps through a simple, intuitive buddy list.
  • Customize: Install apps written by friends or write your own.

The above snippets were provided in their manifesto.

Don’t miss to Try a demo

Tips to increase blog traffic

4
5 years ago
by Benedict Herold in

“Write what your readers would like to read”.

– a mantra all bloggers should follow

Hmm.. it’s very very true. If you like to write something don’t write just for your shake make that readers like to read it too!! But how do you know what a reader likes to read? Besides different people have different tastes. What I have to say is that- whatever content you write, pay attention to your writing style.

 

Here are some more tips on increasing your blog traffic by improving your style on writing contents:

  1. Use Attractive Titles

    Using attractive titles is one way of getting readers to visit your blog from Search Engines and Feeds. Also, use keywords in your title that relate to the post. Use attractive title and description while you submit to blog directories.

     

    Use numbers / buzzwords in your title. Using titles like ‘‘10 best pratices’, ’100 ways to’’, ‘Top 5′, etc can help you to grab readers attention and visit your blog.

  2. Be Unique

    Readers come to your blog to read something different. They will not come just to read what they have read on other blogs. Making your blog stand out from other blogs both in content and design is important if you want to have repeat visitors.

     

  3. Link to the source

    If you post about some interesting news that you just read on your favorite News site, link to it (the source). Chances are there for readers from that news blog will visit your blog from the pingback on the site. Also, it helps make your content look informative.

  4. Write your content using lists

    I’ve seen blogs that make up to the top place will use lists for this contents. Use appropriate list, ordered (numbered) or unordered (bullet) list dependingp upon the content structure. Using lists can make your post both visually appealing and interesting to read. It helps readers who are just scanning your text to see if your posts fits what they are looking for. The content must not bescattered; it should be in well organized and managed manner.

  5. Write Tutorials

    Write handy tutorials that will make your readers walk through a process that teaches them how to achieve a goal. Tutorials have more chance of getting bookmarked in Bookmarking sites or other blogs which will get you plenty of readers and links. Write down unique tutorial which are more specific which will get you top position in the search engine results.

  6. Don’’t change your blogs topic

    Once you choose what you blog about on your blog, don’’t change it. Your readers come to read posts on that topic. Writing posts on a different topic will not look good for your blog. And if done thfrustratedusturate the reader.

  7. Write on Technological stuff

    Write more about latest technological happening. Most of the readers are tech savy. Also chance of hits from search engine is high.

  8. Link to your older posts

    Don’’t expect your readers to have been reading your posts from the time you started your blog. So next time, when you write about things you have written previously, link to them.

Now your blog will start getting as much decent traffic :)

Finding locked objects in Oracle

3
5 years ago
by Benedict Herold in


If you’re wondering why particular query or procedure is talking a long such a long time to run; then make sure you check out whether the object you’re accessing is locked or not. There are quite a few dba views available to make our task less complicated. You can use the below query which will return you the list of locked objects.

SELECT c.owner, c.object_name, c.object_type, b.SID, b.serial#, b.status,
       b.osuser, b.machine
  FROM v$locked_object a, v$session b, dba_objects c
 WHERE b.SID = a.session_id AND a.object_id = c.object_id;

You can now decide whether to kill the job/ process or someother roundabout to remove the lock obtained on the particular object.

Partition Table Doctor Screenshot

Partition Table Doctor, manage your partition

2
5 years ago
by Benedict Herold in

Partition Table Doctor is a tool for managing Partition tables. Partition Table Doctor is effective when it comes to Partition recovery and hard disk data recovery. This tool was great help for me when I was struggling with Partition errors.

It was a wretched night for me; I was under assumption that entire thing got ruined for a minute. Yes, all the logical hard drivers I’d in my system had gone away after an illegal system shutdown. This was not new to me it has happened in past several times but mostly on the secondary hard disk which I don’t use anymore. I was totally astonished when the error occurred in my primary hard disk. It was horrible experience since I didn’t have a backup on the data, which I had in my primary drive :)

I tried few basic troubleshooting steps; but nothing seemed to work. So I started searching for a good solution for recover my logical partition. Finally this tool Partition Table Doctor stopped me. Partition Table Doctor sounded promising to me and I decided to give a try.

Partition Table Doctor ScreenshotThanks to Partition Table Doctor, it saved lot of my efforts that I had to spend on the recovery process. They had automatic recovery option that was a great feature. I was able to fix up most of the partitions using automatic recovery expect one. I had to fix it using manual recovery process, which was lot easier too. The tool was so handy and came in right time for me. If you’re one stuck up in similar problem don’t get panic just rebuild the partition table. It would work is most of the cases.

But I would recommend you to backup you partition tables, master boot records (MBR) into other media. Partition Table Doctor also has option for backing up this information or you can use any other tool.

Quick Feature List:

  • Recover deleted or lost partition
  • Fix boot sectors errors
  • Backup / Restore MBR, partition table and boot sectors
  • Easy to manage Partitions
  • Surface Test
  • and other advanced features…

Partition Table Doctor is really a great product when it comes to managing partitions.
Bottom line, Prevention is better than cure so backup your sensitive data in regular interval.

Update: I have reposted this on 06/22/07 with more information on PTD

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