But now things are different, Life has taken a different direction. Not sure If I was ready for it, but somehow things haven’t been my way.. And because of this, Blogging suffered and boy ‘o’ boy it suffered big time. No more excuses, DailyApps will survive and to date it remains my most prized possession.

So starting today, I am doing a Take Two of DailyApps. Complete with a fresh new design thanks to the awesome work by vfxdude. Along with the theme refresh I’ve added Disqus Comments which will now allow you to comment on blog posts more easily and make conversation threads more interesting.

If you haven’t clicked through already, go ahead and check out the new design over at DailyApps.

Starting today, there will be a huge influx of new posts, and you will very soon have my Reviews on Windows7, Snow Leopard, Ubuntu Karmic Koala etc. Oh yeah the very popular Hack Attack Series will also continue.

And there will be some awesome giveaways this holiday season as I well, because I missed the 2nd Birthday of DailyApps in July this year.. Looks like an exciting year of blogging ahead.. I am up for the challenge, and I am definitely gonna hope that the goals that I outlined for 2009 are achieved. I know it is impossible now, but you never say anything is impossible do you?

Wish me luck guys, DailyApps Take Two is well on its way.. Regular programming of content to follow very soon..

Till then If you have any suggestions, ideas please drop me a line using the contact form or by leaving a comment on this blog post.. Every single thing that you have to say, is going to benefit me in a large way, I am sure.

As I approach 21, Life has taken all new directions, and I am up for the challenge Many thanks to Vinay Sir, Ashok Sir, Pratiba, Kenneth, Dayanand, Narendra and a host of other people I have not mentioned here for all the help and motivation. I owe you guys one! Cheers!

Photo Credit : Flowery *L*u*z*a*

photo credit: aloshbennett

As the year 2008 comes to a close, I’ve learnt a lot and keeping all that in mind, here’s what I wish to achieve with DailyApps in 2009.. I did write something similar outlining my goals for 2008, but to be honest I’ve failed myself..

Here’s what I had wished last year and didn’t quite achieve it this year.. I hope to achieve it this year atleast..

• Reach 7500 RSS subscribers (currently at 1300+)
  Didn’t manage to achieve that.. Currently at nearly 3000 subscribers

• Average 30,000 daily page views (currently at 10,000)
  Around 20,000 at the moment, so didn’t achieve this as well.
• Generate $2,000 in monthly revenues (currently at $0).
  Achieved it earlier in the year, but didn’t quite manage to keep it consistent
• Increase the posting frequency to 3-4 posts a day (currently at 1-2 posts a day)
  The mother of all problems, I simply haven’t been able to post much on DailyApps this year
• Enter the Alexa Top 20,000 (currently at 45,000+)
  Alexa changed their methods half way through the year, so this doesn’t count.
• Increase the average comments per post to 15 (currently at 5)
  Something that I’ve managed to achieve this year.. I am happy
• Enter the Technorati Top 1000 (Currently in Top 5K)
  Never made it, fell backwards instead
• To be a widely cited tech blog in the blogosphere
  Yes I did manage to achieve that, when I was blogging regularly..
• Get a professional blog design from Chris Pearson
  Chris doesn’t do blog designs anymore, so I might use his premium theme
  sometime..
• To develop a strong and vibrant community around dailyApps.
  I’m proud of the community around DailyApps.. You guys have been amazing..

DailyApps is over an year old now, and its been a journey of a lifetime for me.. As I have outlined in the last post I wrote, life has taken dramatic turns this year, and I simply haven’t been able keep up with all the pressure and work..

2008 will be the year, when things began on a high for me both professionally and personally.. Somehow midway through the year, life got worse.. Don’t ask me why? Things are falling back into place now, and I am sure 2009 will be the year when I turn things back around for the better.

So for the coming year 2009 there are no goals as such.. I just want to achieve all that I haven’t been able to in 2008.. There’s no point in writing a new set of goals when I haven’t much of previous goals.

So 2009 will be the year when I’ll achieve what I planned for 2008.. Wish me luck guys.. I promise regular posting will resume on Jan 1st 2009 and the blog will get new and useful content on a daily basis..

Thanks to all you guys for sticking around, and trusting me.. I’ve been through the worst this year, now its time to turn things over and make way for the best things to happen.. DailyApps becomes DailyApps in 2009, and I hope it stays that way forever..

If you guys have any ideas, or suggestions as to what you want me to write about in 2009, please let me know. Many thanks to Daniel Scocco for inspiring me to list out my goals for 2009.

Till then, Happy holidays to everyone, and a Happy New Year 2009 in advance

I have become a lot more busier at college, after becoming the Vice President of the department which has added a whole new range of activities I am supposed to be doing.. Added to that, I have also been selected by Microsoft to become a Microsoft Student Partner on campus, wherein am expected to conduct technical sessions and other seminars on a regular basis.

Combine these two responsibilities with the bigger and more important responsibility that is of a student, things are kind of messed up for me at the moment.. The past month has gone completely in preparations for a major event in college, and am tired and exhausted while I leave for Goa today to attend a training program of sorts to be organized by Microsoft.

Once I come back, its a hectic week after that.. I am not making excuses here.. I just want to keep you guys in the loop on what’s happening over at dailyApps. Also to an extent I have hit the writers block, and whenever I sit down to write something the words simply don’t come out..

I cannot say when exactly dailyApps will come alive again, because College has got a lot busier than it ever was.. For me and my family my education and studies remains the primary concern, so its only natural I feel that blogging will suffer.. But trust me, I don’t like all this either.. I miss blogging daily on dailyApps, I miss reading your friendly and useful comments and I can’t wait to get back on the ship.

Hopefully in the coming weeks everything should be sorted out, and things should be back to normal.. Till then if you have any suggestions for me on how to manage time effectively I am all ears..

After all I’m just 19 and I have never before carried so much of responsibilities.. I am determined to make things work, which means you will see new posts on a regular basis pretty soon, and dailyApps will be the same active blog it was before.

Please stay tuned, the best of dailyApps is yet to come.. Cheers!!

Thank you all of you, for sticking around…

Photo Credit: S L A T K I ( busy mood )

  photo credit: richie_rich2000

Alright its finally over. Yeah the birthday celebrations of Dailyapps come to an end with this post. I swear no more birthday related posts after this, and I mean serious business. Thanks to all you guys for making the birthday celebrations a huge success.

I couldn’t have been more happier to giveaway some cool goodies and ahem some surprises along the way. Dailyapps is something close to my heart and its birthday was always a very special moment for me.

Now let me just cut through the crap and reveal the names of the people who have won the goodies in the giveaway.. Alright then here we go…

5 Licenses of xplorer² go out to :

• Mike Ryan
• Gustavo Leig
• Kyle Judkins
• Brian Lam
• Randy

And the 10 Licenses of Mediamonkey go out to :

• Shuve
• Colin
• Shankar Ganesh
• Jan
• Mike
• Jay Caldwell
• Chris King
• Plague 616
• Daniel
• IanG

And the third giveaway that 25 Pingdom accounts got snatched off pretty fast. So there is not much to say about it..

And many thanks to the sponsors of the giveaways namely xplorer², Mediamonkey, and Pingdom.

I’ve sent out emails to all the winners to let them know that they have won something in the giveaway. And now coming back to the most important thing, I had already said that there was a surprise in store..

Before I reveal the winners, let me reveal the prizes. I’m sure many of you might already be kicking yourselves as you see this, because not many took active part in this particular surprise giveaway :

Ok no more crap talk, the prizes are a brand new iPod Nano which goes to Raj and and iPod Shuffle which goes to Stevie for guessing the prize right.

Congratulations Raj and Stevie, I will be contacting you soon for you to claim your prizes. With that last bit, its the end of Birthday celebrations of Dailyapps.

I hope you had a good time and you enjoyed the giveaways. My apologies to those who didn’t win. I’m sorry for that, and those of you who won, congratulations to you..

Thanks again guys! We’ll have a blast next year as well..

photo credit: richie_rich2000

Wow, what a weekend its been!! Incase you somehow missed it, Dailyapps was celebrating its first birthday yesterday and we wanted to celebrate the birthday with you guys.. Thanks to a few sponsors we had a few goodies to giveaway to you guys. Many of you have already entered the giveaway, but for those who haven’t there still some time left.

Remember you have till 11PM EST tomorrow (28th July) to get yourself entered in the giveaway. After that the celebrations will end, and I will contact the winners. In all the prizes are valued at nearly 3500$!! Here’s a quick roundup of what we are giving away and a link back to the sponsors who have generously offered the prize

• xplorer² – Windows Explorer Replacement – Great for both power and casual users alike who want the extra features! Windows Explorer sucks in comparison to this amazing piece of software.  We have five licenses valued at $29.95 each to giveaway. ENTER GIVEAWAY HERE!
• MediaMonkey – The only media manager you will ever need! The ultimate music manager out there, defeats iTunes hands down There are ten licenses we have to give away worth $19.95 each. ENTER GIVEAWAY HERE!
• Pingdom – Those of you who have a website of your own or plan to have a site in the future will certainly need a website uptime monitor. We have 25 Pingdom basic accounts to giveaway which is valid for one year and valued at $119.40 each. FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS HERE TO GET AN ACCOUNT!

Please make sure you read the instructions carefully for each giveaway. Also if you read my first post mentioning the Birthday you must have read that I mentioned there is a surprise thrown in as well for good measure.

I won’t reveal what the surprise is at the moment, but to be eligible for the prize you need to comment on this post and answer the questions I’ve asked in the post. Not really all that difficult I guess.

For all those smart users, I am pretty sure you can work out the surprise yourself, so get yourself down to guessing the prize. The first person to guess the prize right will win something as well. You can have your guesses as comments on this post itself.

Its not all over yet.. The weekend has been really special for me, and as there is still time left for the giveaway (Ends at 11 PM EST tomorrow that’s 28th July), I’d like many more people to enter.

I hope you’ve enjoyed out giveaway extravaganza and can’t wait to make some of you winners tomorrow!

Thanks a ton for being a part of Dailyapps Birthday celebrations…

Hopefully the next year I can do something bigger and better.. Till the next birthday the only thing I need to do is of course write the special content that all you guys have come to like over the past year.

Wish me luck for the coming year

photo credit: richie_rich2000

I still can’t believe that this day has finally come. On this very day the last year I had started DailyApps after a not so successful stint with blogging earlier. I never expected DailyApps to become popular and be quite successful.. Looking back at the earlier posts, I can see how poorly they were written. I have surely come a long way since then I guess.

As most of you already know, I am currently pursuing my engineering studies in computer science and I feel that some of the stuff I’ve written in the past deserves a special mention simply because it is coming from 19 year teenager. Well all that aside, life is in full swing and expect more quality stuff in the coming future.

I had initially started out on ASmallOrange back in July 2007 and the server was more or less enough in the early days of DailyApps until this extremely popular post ( Hack Attack : Install Leopard on your PC in 3 easy steps! ) took my server down and I had to move to my own VPS. In between these outages though my hosting was graciously donated by a good friend Thilak.

This one year has been fantastic and I’d like to share a few stats with you guys.. This is from the day we started that is 26th July 2007 to this date.

• 2+ Million Unique Visitors.
• 3.2 Million Page Views.
• The most viewed posts are the Hack Attack series and then in a close second comes the homepage.
• Here are the browsers used by the readers of Dailyapps
  • Firefox 52.9%
  • Internet Explorer 31.8%
  • Safari 10.1%
  • Opera 3.9%
• Traffic Sources
  • Google 32.4%
  • Direct 15.0%
  • Stumbleupon 8%
  • Digg 7%
• Most Popular Search Phrases
  • Install Leopard on PC
  • XP SP3
  • Vista SP1
  • Dailyapps

At the moment Dailyapps is my heart and soul, and I have no plans of giving up anytime soon. At the moment I am working on optimizing the ads on the site to make them as less as obtrusive as possible to you readers.

Thanks again to all you dedicated readers..

You might already be swearing on me right now. Come on man first birthday and no party, no goodies, you got to be kidding me right??

Well No.. For all the effort you’ve put over the past year I thought I should have a giveaway of sorts for you to take away some nice goodies..

Well here we are.. read on to find out more about the giveaway

The DailyApps Birthday Bash Giveaway

All you readers have been the guiding light of DailyApps. A lot of you have given your suggestions, tips and shared interesting apps and that’s why we have a small giveaway over here…

Well here are the stuff we are giving away this time..

• xplorer² – 5 Pro Licenses
• Media Monkey – 10 Gold Licenses
• Pingdom – 25 Basic Accounts for One Year

The details as to how you can avail these cool goodies will be live in the coming few hours. Each giveaway will have its own set of rules so make sure you read them properly before you take part.

You can take part in all the three giveaways but you can win only one prize.. Wait that’s not all there is a little bit of surprise for you as well.. To find out more about it you will have to wait, but in the meantime I’d like you to leave a comment on this post answer either one (or both) of the following…

• Your favorite post on DailyApps?
• How did you find out about DailyApps?

On Monday I will reveal the surprise, and will select a winner randomly from the comments on this post.. Make sure you leave your name and email address in the comment form so that I can contact you later..

Till then lets get on with the birthday celebrations

Over the past couple of years, the BitTorrent market has been dominated by the likes of uTorrent, Azureus and BitComet, with the three of them taking up as much as 90% marketshare. With such sort of dominance these apps we’ve not seen many alternative solutions in the past few years.

Common sense says that it might be next to impossible for a new app in this field to play catch up with the major three, but the newcomer on field Halite (named after a mineral) might just stand a chance.

Halite has been in development since 2006, and over the years it has become a fast, full fledged lightweight BitTorrent client. One of the greatest strengths of Halite is that it uses minimal system resources. If you thought uTorrent was already lightweight, then correct yourself because Halite consistently uses up half the resources that uTorrent uses on my PC.

Halite supports all the basic features the average downloader would need including encryption, selective downloading, a torrent creator and more. At the moment there is no support for disk caching, seeding preferences and torrent queuing, but these and others are on the to do list, which means they will be implemented in the future.

In my tests I found Halite to be slightly faster than uTorrent in download speeds, but they don’t much of a difference.. On the other hand a few users have seen improvements in speed over uTorrent and other clients.

The real benefit obviously is the minimal system resources that Halite uses. Here are a few screenshots of Halite in action…

Overall if you are looking for a fast, lightweight BitTorrent client then I suggest you give Halite a try. I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.

Halite Homepage

photo credit: scubasteveo

Well guys, exams are over my head now, and they start from tomorrow. You might have already noticed that posting was quite sporadic over the past few days. Well sadly it is going to be the state for the next ten days as well.

With eight back to back exams coming up, starting tomorrow I feel I’m royally doomed this time around. For those who are wondering what I do, am doing my engineering studies in India.

Screw the damn education system here, exams are such a torture. I’ll try posting something useful whenever possible, but I can’t make any assurances.

If you want to contribute a guest post, you are most welcome. Send me the guest post in a Microsoft word document, or a simple text document. I’ll publish it. Mail me the guest post at karthik[at]dailyapps[dot]net.

Exams finish on the 5th of July, and I can’t wait to tell you guys some of the exciting plans I’ve for dailyApps this july. Stay tuned!

And wish me luck!!

Regards
Karthik Kastury

Hi Guys, I am moving this blog from Lunarpages to a VPS on Liquidweb. I am currently uploading the files and database onto the new server. So expect things to be quite rough for the next couple of days.

Regular posting will resume once the move is complete. Wish me luck, I’ll get back very soon.