How to Enable the Run Command in Windows 7

You just bought a new laptop and started using Windows 7, you are an advanced XP user, who uses the run command to do many tasks, like for example starting the command prompt, bringing the system configuration dialog,  starting notepad or opening the temp folder, or maybe even to run ping commands directly.

Now you open the start menu and you find the search box instead. Don’t worry, you can do whatever you used to do from the run box. Because it searches files, programs, and executable. Yes it takes bit longer now, because it runs a search while inputting your command.

The good news is that the run command is still there, but it is not displayed on the start menu by default. To bring it back follow these simple steps:

1. Right click on the Start Menu

2. Click on Properties

3. Select Start Menu tab

4. Click on the Customize… button

start menu properties

5. Now tick the Run Command

6.  Press OK to save the new settings, now you should see the Run… in your start menu

Run command in the start menu of Windows 7

The good thing about the run command, is that it remembers your commands history, so it auto-completes them from you, or it let you select from the drop list.

PS: This applies to Windows Vista too.

The Q and A Webspace Part 4

Back to my post “The Q and A Webspace Part 2″, talking about Google Answers. The researchers who were making a living from answering questions, decided to create a similar website after the shutdown of Google Answers. So Uclue started in 2007, and was very similar to Google Answers as a fee based Q and A service. Currently, only former Google Answers Researchers may apply to become Uclue Researchers. It is the place for you if you need to ask complicated questions that demand research and expertise. For example a question like this one:

What are the effects of Social Networking on Real Estate Regulation?

Do you expect to get a satisfactory answer on a free Q&A website? Most probably not, but you will probably get an answer with lots of details and information if not a full essay if you ask it on Uclue with a good offer.

No much work is done on Uclue feautres and design. So it still feels like a website from the late nineties.

Another good Q and A website is BlurtIt, it has a good simple interface, has less categories to keep it simple, users can even ask and answer as guests without creating an account. Like AnswerBag  it is available as a facebook application, and also available as a service on Twitter.

End of last year Mahalo.com started a QandA free service still in its beta. It is unsurprisingly called Mahalo Answers, similar to Yahoo Answers, but it allows tipping of answerer, which will definitely encourage more members, and encourage more participation, but still has way smaller user base than answers.yahoo.com

From all the mentioned QandA services, I have used Yahoo Answers the most, if you have a Yahoo acount and you need a service that integrates with other Yahoo services, and you need answers within minutes of your question then Yahoo Answers is for you. If you are a facebook user and you like to use facebook applications then go for Answerbag. If you like the Wiki concept and you want to contribute a better quality answer question database then Wiki Answers is the one for you. If you need to ask questions that need extra work and research to answer and you are ready to pay a small sum of money then Uclue is there for you.

PS: Sorry no comparison table of features and traffic..etc.

The Q and A Webspace Part 3

Answer Bag (www.answerbag.com) is another example of popular free Q and A service. It started in 2003 and then acquired by Demand Media, the same company that has also www.ehow.com, a website that, at the time of writing this post, has more than 1 million instructional articles and 170,000 instructional videos. Answerbag still have smaller community than that of yahoo answers. But has more features like being able to post videos and pictures along with the questions, and better control of the quality of questions and users, for example by flagging questions as “non sense”, “duplicate”, “wrong category”..etc. Also what puts Answerbag apart is its API that enables developers to read and write from its Q&A database.

For better quality questions and answers, there is www.wiki.answers.com which is based on the wiki concept, where anyone can edit and improve answers. I think a system with one answer by question, that keeps getting improved is the best way to maintain a quality Q AND A database. Also Wiki answers has the best control over duplicate questions. And as it leverages Wiki concept, you can ask questions without singing up for an account. The number of categories is definitely the biggest, but the drawback of this site is its big number of ads, specially Google ads all around, and unlike in Yahoo Answers the layout does not help a lot to tell ads from non ads.

In the next post I will talk about other maybe less popular Q and A services.

The Q and A Web Space Part 2

You will probably think, if Yahoo has Q and A service, then probably Google and Microsoft has. In fact,  both used to have but not anymore.

Microsoft service was called: MSN QandA (actually it started as Live Search QandA then Windows Live QandA).  Another example showing how much Microsoft is confused about naming and packaging its products families…

MSN QandA was bit similar to Yahoo Answers. Users could ask questions, tag them according to topic, and gain points and reputation for answering other users’ questions.

The first of the three was Google Answers,  it was different as it used to  involve fees for asking questions. When a question is asked a price is offered, and any researcher who is interested in answering the question will lock the question and answer it.  Researchers were not Google employees, but contractors that were required to complete an application process to be approved to answer for the site. The website was closed in December 2006.

More about other today’s major players in online Q and A in the next post.

The Q and A Web Space Part 1

About 10 years ago, I remembered looking for a website where I can ask questions and receive answers. A friend referred me to a website called www.allexperts.com, it was the first questions and answers service on the web. The site had volunteers in different categories, and every volunteer had a profile where he used to tell about his experience and knowledge areas. The website is still active and  belongs  to about.com. , but I doubt it has good traffic, because today much more modern and more (web2.0) collaborative type  QandA wesbites have been created.

Yahoo! Answers is today’s  most popular one with 179 millions users and over 1 billions questions and answers! While Yahoo is losing popularity as a search engine to its counterpart Google. This was definitely its best product. When searching Google, for questions,  pages results from Yahoo Answers often takes highest ranks.

For example: Google for “What’s the best book to read about the 2012 conspiracy?” And here you are, it is an already asked question on Yahoo Answers and it is the first result of Google search. It is not that easy to come up with a question that is not already asked on Yahoo Answers! Actually when you ask a question on Yahoo Answers, it will automatically shows you on the side bar (while writing your question) similar already asked questions. And you are most probably likely to find your question already asked by another user.

In the next post I will talk about other QandA websites.