ReviewSaurus – Technology Rocks!

Virtual Fretboard is a Windows based application designed keeping in mind the budding Jimi Hendrixes out there. A user friendly graphical interface welcomes the user which makes sure that even the person who has not yet touched a guitar will have the yearning to learn the six string – or rather master it! A lot of guitar chord teaching software are available on the Internet for download. The difference between those software and Virtual Fretboard is that the other software are just database of various major and minor chords. But, this software is not a database; it generates chords mathematically using the science behind the western musical system.

The system is programmed to identify how a chord is built and can automatically adjust and display any type of chord in any scale or tuning for any type of fretted instrument. And since the program is based on mathematics rather than database as already mentioned, the program works good for all fretted instruments with limitless chord combinations, a boon for the beginners who want to experiment or professionals who want to tweak their way around chords.

The four modes offered in the program viz., scales, chords, scale search and chord search give the user the option a wide range of learning options by displaying graphically almost all possible chords and scales.

The other useful options that this software offers the user are free play option where the user can run the mouse over the guitar strings and hear the sound through a MIDI device, play scales both in ascending and descending, save and print chords, left and right handed fretboards, add new instruments, chords and scales etc.

And as the software startup confirms, this software does not teach you the chords; you just learn! The paid version also offers for the beginners, the favorites option which lists the basic and most often used chords for them to get started as soon as they install this software.

So, Jimi Hendrixes and Paul Gilberts in the making out there – pick, strum, pluck or tap; Virtual Fretboard is here!

Software version & info :

Version : 1.00.06
Homepage : Virtual Fretboard
OS Required : All windows version

Note : This post has been written by Sathyanarain.

I got my first real six string
Bought it at the five and dime
Played it till my fingers bled
Was the summer of 69!

Thus crooned Bryan Adams about his childhood when he first began playing the guitar at 15. You don’t have to wait till you are 15 to learn the six string. Guitar Chords Laboratory offers a wide database of guitar chords, as the title suggests, all in simple graphical interface, so easy to interpret that even kids can learn the guitar easily. It’s an all in all software which allows the user to start playing as soon as the program is installed. It doesn’t even require any previous knowledge of the guitar, though a previous knowledge is always useful to learn fast.

It offers two major options that are badly required by beginners – guitar chords database and a guitar tuner. The chords database is further divided into Full chords library, Basic chords and Advanced chords. The Full chords library offers 20 different known chord under each note, e.g. Twenty chords under the note C ranging from C Maj to C7#5. The Basic chords offers eight chords under each note and this makes this option very useful for beginner who has just unpacked his guitar. The advanced chords option is available only in the paid version.

The guitar tuner is again for the beginner who doesn’t know his way around the fret. It is helpful to tune the guitar. And the tuner offers flexibility to display the tuning for various versions of tuning like Lute tuning and Blues tuning to name a few. Also, the tuner has the option to play each string a number of times (can be varied from 1 to 15 times) and I found this feature to be very useful personally as I tended to forget the strings when I started.

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(Photo Courtesy : Move All My Crap! by ButterBits)

Recently, I’d posted that how I was able to save myself from lot of work as I made the image of hard disk partition which helped me restore the computer in just half an hour. But, if you have the habit of storing the documents and day to day use data in My documents then you’ll face a huge problem if you recover your computer or may be format your computer because you’ll be losing all that data.

Now, consider a situation where you’ve got enough work stored in my documents and suddenly you found that because of system file missing you just couldn’t boot your computer and it comes to a stage where you have no other choice but to format the hard disk.

It’s better if you store all the documents in other hard disk partitions which don’t have the Windows loaded because it helps you in various ways which we’ll discuss in future posts.

Now, lets focus on how you may store the data in My Documents but still it stores automatically in other partition :

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With heavy heart, I decided that I will be going back to attend the second day of the Search Camp. I arrived two hours late to the conference and didn’t get enough chance to see what exactly was going the morning session. However, It was the after noon session which made things look really better.

First of all, it was one of my blogger friend Mani Karthik who enlightened everyone with some SEO tips for bloggers!

Here are tips, which he mentioned :

1. Suggests to use self hosted blogs, as it gives more and more control and helps more in SEO.
2. Suggests wordpress – Customizable, allows to use widgets, wordpress is SEO friendly.
3. Duplicate content is bad for SEO & talks about supplemental index.

He did make the session interactive and it was fun and knowledgable session. At least, that’s what maximum people were expecting from the Search Camp.

After that there was a session done by a BlackHat SEO guy and believe me it was one the most fun filled session of the SearchCamp and everyone was just about bursting out of laughs. The guy decided that he won’t be coming in front of the audience and asked the Guys from Google to close the eyes and ears!

He also ensured that he didn’t answer any questions from the audience by making blunt statements like “Don’t disturb me!” &”No questions please!” And finally he did make his presence in front of the audience and told everyone that he’s actually not a Black-Hat-SEO guy rather he’s one of the White Hat SEO guy.

Then came the beautiful part of the search camp and that was question and answer section. People discussed various aspects of SEO and discussed the problems faced by each and every webmaster!

Overall, Day 2 was fun, informative and full of interactivity. I’m glad that I joined the day 2 otherwise I would have missed big time. To sum up, I’ll say big thanks to the The Knowledge Foundation for organizing the event, big cheers to you guys!

UPDATES :

1. Azhil (the blackhat seo guy) has uploaded the images of the SearchCamp day 2.
2. Chetan Patel has done live blogging on SearchCamp day 1 & Day 2 as well and he was kind enough to upload the photos too!

(Photo Courtesy : Frustrated by WiseAcre)

Recently I was working with my computer and suddenly it started acting strangely and became ultra slow (You know that how much effect software installation and un-installation makes!). I thought, that instead of fixing it up and spending some time with it it’s better that I’ll re-format the whole system (it was long due).

I made the necessary backups and started the process and here how it goes….

1. Formatted the C drive (I only keep windows and programs, no data).

2. Loaded the windows.

3. Installed all the drivers.

4. Installed all the software (around 30 software).

5. Updated the Windows.

6. Updated the software & the definitions.

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