How to create custom run commands in Windows

After using Linux for almost 7 years, I had to switch to Windows due to trade reasons.
I remember using windows during my B.Tech days (both win 98 and winXP).
I used to burn the midnight oil researching about Windows, tweaking the windows registry,
installing windows .....
I got too much used to command line in Linux that even after a couple of weeks of using
windows, I tend to press at+f2 ;)
To quench the thirst of using commands, I started to create shortcuts for frequently used
programs so that we can run our own run command.
And thought of sharing this for few might find it useful. Any suggestions are also welcome.

1. Create the shortcut for the program or folder.(Say we are trying to create a command for Mozilla Firefox)
2. Open the run command and type \Windows
3. Paste the shortcut to the Windows folder
4. Rename the shortcut to the command name you want to assign the shortcut to(say firefox).
Now you can type Window+R and type the above assigned command name.

For example: The shortcut to Mozilla Firefox can be renamed to firefox.

And that's it. Typing the command in the run bar will start firefox. :)

Inserting Images in Google Spreadsheet

Inserting Images in Google Spreadsheet.

I was working on collecting icons for various hosts to for display.
Most of the icon extraction part was automated. Since, the icons
reflected directly in the UI, a manual round(minimum 1 round) of intervention had to
take place.
The format was something like this


So far so good. I looked at the spreadsheet shared with me and each time I had to
click on the icon link, go to host and then cross check if this was the correct
mapping.
Hmm! This was tiring.
I wondered if somehow the images directly relfected in the spreadsheet cells.
A quick search revealed that Googledocs already have the provision to insert images
in the cells in various ways(URLs,local machine, picasa web albums etc).

for the image url, just include the formula =Image("url")
And everytime I update a link in the first cell, I see the result in the third cell.

A simple feature saved a lot of my time.


More about it here
http://support.google.com/drive/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=87037