Simple Tasks

GeeXboX: Turn your PC into Media Center

noreply@blogger.com (Harihara Kumar) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 11:04:00 +0000

With the increase in peer-to-peer torrent sites downloading movies has become a hobby for most individuals maintaining their own movie collection. Till now there hasn't been any smart movie player that can turn your PC into small Media Center giving you TV-like experience with remote control support, or search for media(audio, video, pictures) files in hard drives (even in external hard drives) and list them in DVD like menu, support almost all movie formats, light weight and letting you view all your videos/movies.

Aurelien Jacobs and Benjamin Zores have developed Linux supported Media Center for PC/Mac with all above said features included, called GeeXboX.

GeeXboX is a free light weight embedded Linux distribution which turns your PC/Mac into HTPC(Home Theater PC) or Media Center. Works on any Pentium-class x86 computer or PowerPC Macintosh. Supports playback of nearly any kind of audio/video and image files, so no need to install any additional software, codecs,.. Supports popular PC remote controls(supported remote controls: Remote Wonder by ATI, Pinnacle PcTV remote, Creative PC-DVD remote, RealMagic remote, StreamZap remote, Microsoft Media Center USB remote, Cinergy 1400 remote), so sit back and enjoy TV-like experience on your PC/Mac.

Download GeeXboX (18.9 MB)

Screenshots of GeeXboX v2

How to install GeeXboX on Windows

Download GeeXboX ISO based on your system configuration(32 bit or 64 bit), in my case its 32bit.
Download GeeXboX Win32 Installer, which makes it easy to install the downloaded GeeXboX ISO on your Windows system.
Run GeeXboX Win32 Installer, select Installation type: Install to Windows Boot partition and select the GeeXboX ISO, click Process button, after processing the ISO click Next to start installing all the contents of ISO to your system.
After finishing installation, restart your system and start using GeeXboX.

Replace Addons with simple bookmarklets

noreply@blogger.com (Harihara Kumar) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 21:04:00 +0000

Do you feel that your browser(Firefox) is loading slowly, one of the reasons may be due to too many installed addons. If you have so then this is the right time to replace addons with some simple browser bookmarklets. Of course these bookmarklets wont completely replace a feature rich addon, but if you use addon just for doing basic tasks like saving links to bookmark sites, etc these can come handy.

These are Javascript bookmarklets, drag and drop on the bookmarking bar of your browser. These are tested on Firefox and not sure of other browsers.

Bookmarklets:

Delicious - bookmark to delicious
Facebook - share on Facebook
Email - share it via email
Digg - Digg it
Technorati - save to Technorati
Blinklist - save to Blinklist
Furl - Save to Furl
Reddit - save to Reddit

A special bookmarklet in the above list is Email. It performs similar to other bookmarklets, it adds current page title to the email subject field and url to the email body with just a click, so that you dont have to copy small things like the page title and url. This works well only when you have configured ThunderBird or Outlook with your mail id.

Place these bookmarklets on your browser bookmarking bar. So that it is easy for you to click on the bookmarklet when they are at the top of the web pages which you wanted to bookmark and save.

Advantages of these browser bookmarklets:

Decreases the load on your browser, if you have too many addons installed.
Bookmarklets are always on the top the pages which you wanted to bookmark and save.
These bookmarklets will be handy when you want to bookmark and save web pages which dont have bookmarking buttons on it.
If you have too many tabs opened and want to save most of the links then bookmarklet will do the job of copying url and title of the pages for you.

I have got 2 year Free hosting on DreamHost

noreply@blogger.com (Harihara Kumar) — Sun, 10 May 2009 06:00:00 +0000

I have started a new blog Techkumar.com on DreamHost server, which is Free for two years including domain registration and unlimited web space. So if you like I can add email subscribers to the new site, but feed subscribers should do it on their own.

Comment below this post and i will add your email address on the new blog subscription, or you add your self to the subscription in my new blog. Thanks for all your support.

Twitter tip: How TwitterFox makes Tweeting an easier task

noreply@blogger.com (Harihara Kumar) — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 18:18:00 +0000

There are so many Twitter clients for managing tweets and most of them are coming up with nice features. But do all these clients save time while you are on Twitter? I find more and more blog post links floating across on Twitter stream making me to switch between applications.

If you are using desktop application for managing Twitter you should have felt that switching between browser and application isn't always a good idea. I too felt the same so i thought of using a Twitter client that works within browser.

And the one that I needed is TwitterFox because.

It stays right on your browser so you don't have to use ALT+TAB to switch between to see latest tweets.
You can copy text and URL of the webpage you are currently working on and tweet it easily.
Some times we forget the tweet (if you are switching between other application) we just seen, with TwitterFox there are very little chances of searching for any particular tweet because of its smaller size.
A click on the links always opens in new tab. So no need to worry of losing the current web page when you click new tweets.
When you are working on two different interfaces on a single application, focus plays an important role, but on Firefox the focus stays with them(ie., browser tab and TwitterFox) all the time, you can scroll webpage and tweets in TwitterFox by just hovering mouse over it and using mouse scroll wheel without having to click for focus on any other.

There are couple of down sides as well it doesn't provide shortening of URLs, shows itself over the webpage, if you close it new tweets are marked as read(this happens even if you switch between Recent, Replies, Messages tabs), cannot be moved or resized, retrieves small number of tweets(in this case i switch back to desktop app TweetDeck if i don't check Twitter for some couple of days).

For URL shortening is.dg Creator add-on suits best as it has an added advantage of coping shortened URL to clipboard so it can be pasted where ever you want and most of all this is done only with a click.

If you are following large number of users, then it becomes difficult for you to use TwitterFox, as it didn't had any option to group users (you mostly liked to follow). But if the number is very less (some 30 to 40) and still you get lot of tweets it becomes difficult to track down all of them so my advice to you is login to Twitter as frequently as possible, so you will always see the latest tweets.

If you are a Firefox user try TwitterFox and let me know your opinion.

Twitter tip: Make use of @hashwordpress to reach more people

noreply@blogger.com (Harihara Kumar) — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 15:49:00 +0000

Recently i stumbled upon a Twitter account which make use of hashtags to track down all tweets on WordPress. The tweets are not made by human, but TwitterFeed. These tweets are tracked down by some websites based on hashtags and are posted using TwitterFeed periodically.

Creating such an account isn't fail at all, it has got some 170 followers, not bad. To make use of this account and when ever you write message(tweet) on WordPress topics don't forget to add hashtag (#wordpress), it will reach additional 170 people on Twitter who are following hashwordpress.

I don't know how many accounts like hashwordpress are there on Twitter but let me know if you have found any such Twitter account.

Twitter tip: Get preview of ShortURL metrics in TweetDeck

noreply@blogger.com (Harihara Kumar) — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 08:56:00 +0000

Popular Adobe Air application TweetDeck has some nice features in its beta release. One of them is Preview of ShortURLs.

Actual tweet:

Preview of ShortURL with metrics:

This intelligent preview of ShortURL shows the story title, long url, metrics. There are many services on the web to track down metrics of twitter tweets. But I think a normal user doesn't need so much of info about metrics, just for knowing number of clicks, unless you want to do some research or to gather statistics on clicks.

Preview only works on ShortURLs and if you click on actual link it directs you to browser.

How to activate it:

By default, this feature is turned off, to activate it go to Settings and make sure Show preview information for ShortURLs is checked.

Access and Manage Yahoo Mail inbox using any Touch Tone Phone

noreply@blogger.com (Harihara Kumar) — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 11:04:00 +0000

y!Vmail is a hack that allows people to connect to their Yahoo Mail accounts using any touch tone phone(general landline telephone). y!Vmail figures out which emails are important, and reads them first. For details on how it works check the video below.

y!Vmail
by Arnab Nandi, Daniel Peek, and Pradeep Padala
“Not everyone has a computer, but everyone has a phone.”
This hack allows people to access their Yahoo! mail through a 1-800 number, using ANY touch-tone phone.
Press 0 to open, * and # to navigate, 7 to delete. We figure out which emails are important, and read them first. We summarize long emails so that you dont have to listen to all of it. If you want to talk to the person, just press 5 — we’ll connect you.
APIs used: BBAuth, OpenMail, Contacts API, Term Extraction API

This was submitted at Yahoo! Hack U - Yahoo University Hack Day Competition, won second place at UMich Hack U.

Reverse image of outside world

noreply@blogger.com (Harihara Kumar) — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 11:04:00 +0000

Do you know when light enters a dark room through a small hole, it projects the reverse image of the scene outside the room. Creating a Camera Obscura.

(via Flickr)

Make your Yahoo account recovery process easy just by updating account info

noreply@blogger.com (Harihara Kumar) — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 21:00:00 +0000

Yahoo says it is serious about its users privacy and asking its Yahoo Mail users to update their account info to make it easier to recover account when they forget or lose password to sniffers.

Here is the link to update your account info https://edit.yahoo.com/commchannel/manage.

The information to be updated are simple, you have to fill same old fields like alternate email address(This email address will be used as the primary way Yahoo! communicates with you) and new secret questions are to be filled. Alternate email address will come to your rescue in account recovery process, where you will receive email asking you to follow needed steps. US users have additional option to include mobile phone number in their account information.

Preview Yahoo Mail inbox directly inside IE8

noreply@blogger.com (Harihara Kumar) — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 18:57:00 +0000

Yahoo designed Yahoo-optimized version of IE8 specifically for its mail users which comes with cool feature called the Mail Web slice. This gives signed-in users a quick preview of their inbox within the browser. It stays always on the top on matter what website you are on.

To use this feature download Yahoo! optimized IE8, make sure you are signed-in to Yahoo then click on Yahoo Mail button on the Favorites bar to preview your inbox.

Photobucket tip: Upload images on the fly while browsing

noreply@blogger.com (Harihara Kumar) — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 11:53:00 +0000

Photobucket does not include FTP feature for free user. With no other utility for uploading images, other then uploading images from the Photobucket sites, these days its hard for users to login to site for just uploading a single image.

Instead of being a popular photo sharing site some of the elements(Flash uploader,..) on the Photobucket album page aren't browser friendly. Java uploader, works fine but if you don't have java runtimes installed on your system, again its a bit hard to think that you have to download a 30MB file for uploading a small sized image in KBs.

Photobucket provides FTP access only to pro-account users, which costs some bucks. There are no other ways to upload images except the traditional way, for free user, until i came across a Firefox addon - Photobucket uploader.

This is smart alternative for free Photobucket users to upload images to Photobucket without much hassle. The main advantage of this addon is user can upload any images they come across on websites with just a click. This saves lot of time instead of using badly coded elements that aren't browser friendly.

ImageBot one more Firefox addon for uploading images to Photobucket and ImageShack.

Disposable/Temporary email services

noreply@blogger.com (Harihara Kumar) — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 12:50:00 +0000

With no standard methods to stop spam it has become compulsory for every internet user to go for alternative services like disposable email. Choosing the right service gives mails to stay for longer time periods from getting expired.

How do i make use of disposable emails effectively?

Some sites allow users to download file only if they provide valid email address, here you can use disposable email id to get the download link.
Some sites ask email id to view the site content, use disposable email id.

I have categorized all the disposable email services based on their starting expiry period. So one can easily choose the service they want.

10 Minutes :

10MinuteMail: Name says it all, temporary inbox lifespan is 10 minutes. Although it can be increased for 10 more minutes. The 10MinuteMail web page has dynamic minutes counter which changes after every minute, so you can see number of minutes left for your email id to expire. For user convenience site automatically generates random email ids on page load.

15 Minutes :

GuerrillaMail: Provides user with disposable email address that expires in 15 minutes after it is created.

30 Minutes :

Spambox: Spambox temporary email address will forward all incoming mail to your usual e-mail address. Life span from 30 min to 1 year. 12 different languages are supported.

1 Hour :

Jetable: Redirects all mails to your actual mail address. Has Firefox addon to start right from your browser. Life span from 1hr to 1 month.

4 Hours :

Tempomail: Gives users two options to create temporary email id for up to one month and to have new tempomail id each day for one year. You can recover your forgotten tempomail address easily. Get Tempomail ids from right inside your Firefox browser with addon . Lifespan 4 hrs to 1 month.

12 Hours :

MailExpire: Gives user an option to set temporary inbox lifespan from 12 hrs to 3 months. Any email sent to alias(disposable email) is sent to your original address.

1 Day:

Halttospam: It’s a temporary email redirecting service, lifespan of alias 1day to 1 week. Mail alias is automatically generated.

No-Time limit :

Mailinator: Creates disposable email ids on the fly. No time limit. The main drawback is inbox mails are available for public. Any one can access your disposable mail inbox at Mailinator if they know your Mailinator email id.

Lets be practical, i know the Mailinator address of some guy foobat@mailinator.com, i will just enter his mailinator id in the Check your inbox field to see what he had in inbox.

MyTrashMail: Gives you secure temporary mailbox if you signup. Works like any other disposable email service but free(no signup) disposable email inbox is available for public.

See the inbox of testing123456@mt2009.com mail id.

Situation where your temporary email inbox can be exploited.

When you share Mailinator email id (or any other similar service) in forums, comments etc.

Q: Why should i go for temporary email id that forwards all mails to my original mail, as it forwards even spam to my original inbox?

This kind of temporary email id will be effective if they have small lifespan, why because it gets expired long before spam bots find your temporary email id and try to reach your inbox.

Impress Twitter Followers with Twitter DMer

noreply@blogger.com (Harihara Kumar) — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 16:07:00 +0000

In the recent months many blogs and websites have conducted giveaway contests for reader and twitter followers. Its a nice trick to increase blog readership as well as Twitter followers, as some ad serving companies are considering the popularity of the blog with number of subscribers and the person with the number of Twitter followers, that can help to increase blog revenue. I joined in some of those contests and followed some people on Twitter. But one day, i was amazed when i received direct message (DM) from a person whom i followed had thousands of followers. The DM contained greeting and asked me to subscribe his blog, i didn't figure out how he noticed that i am following him from his thousands of followers, until i came across Twitter DMer.

Twitter DMer allows you to do that, once activated it sends DMs to the new followers with custom messages. Messages can be customized any way you want with some ready to use variables. When ever a person follows you on Twitter he receives a DM form your username. You can activate and deactivate by logging into Twitter DMer.

Negative aspect:

This trick seems to be work on newbie's who didn't come across Twitter DMer service, but this can be misunderstood easily if your followers find out that you are using service to make them believe that you have personally sent them DM.

To avoid this misunderstanding you can simply add “This is a automated message:” with some useful info about your skills, some thing useful to your follower which you didn't add to your profile and again some people don't like automated messages, they think you are spammer. The simple way to make your follower happy with some greetings, I feel that's a good way to use it.

[Image via: Flickr]

Archive, search CDs and DVDs with Visual CD

noreply@blogger.com (Harihara Kumar) — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:53:00 +0000

I have GBs of data so i maintain a collection of backup CDs and DVDs which contains mostly downloaded stuff from internet that includes applications, software, movies, video clips…so on. With all the data on the CDs and DVDs i find it difficult to remember if a application or a movie clip is in a particular CD/DVD. So i used to go on with a tedious task, inserting each and every CD and DVD or simply guessing to find, that wasted a lot of my time. If this is same with you too then i suggest you to use Visual CD to avoid such tedious tasks and to save time.

Visual CD is a disk cataloging tool that indexes all the contents of CDs, DVDs, Blue Ray Discs, USB sticks, hard disks, folders and stores to a database where you can search any file or folder at later date. The program makes it easier to find files by capturing thumbnails of images, videos, executable files, and icons so you don't have to worry looking at only filenames. Visual CD comes bundled with some extras like advance rename, duplicate files finder, file splitter, NFO reader, photo rename and thumbnail maker.

Also see: Recover data from scratched CDs and DVDs.

The program maintains separate databases for each CD/DVD to store the indexed structure of folders. So if you want to search particular file or folder you must first select the catalogs or databases in which you want to search.

Portable version:

I think there is no specific portable version for Visual CD, as the application itself creates portable Visual CD in specified folder for portable devices, that can also include extras bundled in the application.

Features:

Auto indexes upon insertion of disk.
Size of database files is small (in KBs).
Password Protection for catalogs (optional).
Ejects disc after indexing.
Import and export feature.

FeedDemon Hack: Add 20+ bookmarking site links to SendTo menu

noreply@blogger.com (Harihara Kumar) — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 05:39:00 +0000

Note: This hack works well in both latest beta version 3 as well as in FeedDemon old version 2.7.

We all know that FeedDemon is the best desktop feed reader. A new beta version 3 came out with lot of new features. I haven't tried it but i saw screenshot where it clearly showed Share button, i think it lets you to bookmark and share, i am not sure about it. Any way if you have tried the new version let me know in the comments. You can add more bookmarking sites to old version of FeedDemon with a simple hack.

How to add Bookmarking links to FeedDemon:

Lets include other bookmarking services to FeedDemon’s Send To menu. Adding bookmarks is quite simple, first close the FeedDemon(if it is already opened), download the FeedDemon bookmarks RAR files from Sky Drive(link below), extract and place them in the FeedDemon’s SendTo folder.

Here C:\Program Files\FeedDemon\Data\SendTo

Some files might already exist in SendTo folder like Delicious.xml and Digg.xml, so if you like you can replace them with files that are downloaded from this blog. Now start the FeedDemon you will find new items are added to SendTo folder. From now onwards you can save to your favorite bookmarking sites from FeedDemon.

How to share links in Twitter from older version of FeedDemon:

You have to do some work around if you want to use Twitter in older version, that is because the older version does not support ShortURL service, whereas the latest beta version has got some cool URL shortening features(i haven't used this version), so if you want to share link in Twitter from older version, the URL of the post is not shortened to fit in 140 character limit. So go for toolbar bookmarklet services for browser like 140it and TinyURL.

Contents of two RAR Files:

I have differentiated bookmarking sites from multi-bookmarking services. So you have two RAR files. Don't get confused from these two files, bookmarking sites.rar contains 19 bookmarking sites like Digg, Delicious, Ask.com, Bloglines, Windows Live, etc while the multi bookmarking services.rar contain two multi bookmarking service files AddtoAny and Socializer, Which lets you to save bookmark at different sites. This is helpful if your favorite bookmarking service is not listed in the bookmarking sites.rar file.

Display series of posts with In Series WordPress plugin

noreply@blogger.com (Harihara Kumar) — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 07:06:00 +0000

I have seen many blogger who write series of posts and some times they forget to display links to other posts in that series. Even if they want to display links they have to search for each post in that series and place them in order and edit the older posts in that series to include a new post link, i think doing this manually if you have lot of posts in that series is a waste of time why because there is a WordPress plugin that does this for you with a breeze.

If you are a blogger who cant wait to write series of post on your blog then In Series plugin will certainly help you to display the table of contents of that series(all posts in that series) in each series post(post that is listed in that series) without any difficulty. You can give name to each series, suppose if you are writing a series posts on topics like blogging and making money, simply name the series as “Make money from blogging series”.

With In Series plugin you can add any number of posts to a series (new or existing), re-order the posts within a series that’s already in, or remove the post from a series entirely. Automatically places the table of contents in each blog post in that series. No need to edit theme files to configure this plugin. See this screenshot, you will get an idea how the In Series plugin displays the table of contents in blog post.

How to disable/stop Mcproxy.exe in Windows

noreply@blogger.com (Harihara Kumar) — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 05:03:00 +0000

If you are using McAfee anti virus on your system you already know that your system resources are being eaten up by Mcproxy.exe background process, especially when you are browsing. Mcproxy.exe is a process associated with McAfee Proxy, but why it takes up 99% of CPU usage?

I have McAfee installed on my system, so i am also victim of mcproxy.exe service. It wont let user to open site it is blocking, https://addons.mozilla.org/ was blocked on my system, so i have to visit author’s site to download addons. It starts up at any time when your system is On, some times it appears even when you close it from Task Manager.

I googled and found that many people have got the same issue. On McAfee community forum page, Software Developer Shawn J. Wallace said the upcoming patch will fix this issue but there is no link to download patch.

After a long time of searching i found the solution, a software developer in McAfee said this issue can be fixed by disabling “McAfee Privacy Service” through Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services (this is only temporary fix, try to download the latest updates or patches).

How to disable Mcproxy.exe:

Go to Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Services.
In Services window you will see list of local services that run on your system. These services are in alphabetical order, so finding a particular service is easy. Scroll to the services that are starting with letter ‘M’, there you will see service named McAfee Proxy Service, right click on the item and select Properties.
Click General tab in the Properties window and select disable from the Startup Type dropdown menu. By default the process’ startup type is set to Automatic.
Click on the Log On tab next to General tab, here you can enable or disable this services for the hardware profiles, select the profile and click Disable button. By default Profile1 is the hardware profile, if you have added new profiles select that profile and disable.
Now click Apply and then OK.

You can access all sites that are blocked by this service. In my system https://addons.mozilla.org/ site was blocked, after doing these steps that site loaded up instantly.

Note: I am not responsible if anything goes wrong on your system after doing what i said here. If you think this creates problems for your system ignore this. If you try it let me know if this worked for you or not in comments.

Read Top Magazines for Free in your Favorite Browser

noreply@blogger.com (Harihara Kumar) — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 05:02:00 +0000

You can read latest issue of popular magazines like PC Magazine, MIT Technology Review, Mac World, Reader’s Digest, Popular Photography, etc up to 23 magazines for free.

Zinio offers free access to the digital prints of popular magazines only to the iPhone users, however you can read and download these high resolution magazines for free from your browser.

What you actually have to do is trick the website that you are using iPhone browser. If you are Firefox user you can do this by using User Agent addon. Lets see how it is done in Firefox.

Step1: Download User Agent addon from Firefox addon site.

Step2: After installing restart your brower, goto Tools > User Agent Switcher > Options.

Step3: In the Options window, select User Agents in the sidebar, now click on Add button to add iPhone user agent.

Step4: You will see seven different text fields, in the Description: field add “iPhone user agent (Win XP)” without quotations.

Step5: Add the following text In the User Agent: field

Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/1A543 Safari/419.3

and click OK to close the User Agent Switcher Options window.

Step6: Now switch user agent from default to iPhone via Tools > User Agent Switcher > iPhone user agent (Win XP).

Step7: Browse this link http://imgs.zinio.com/iphone/ to read 23 popular magazines. Enjoy.

When you click on any magazine you will be asked to enter email address to get latest iPhone updates from Zinio, if you don't want to give email id, just type any letters that are in email address format like asd@asd.asd to bypass. You have to confirm your age if you want to access PlayBoy and PentHouse magazines.

Other Browsers:

Apple Safari has built in User Agent switcher in the Develop menu, for more info see How to read popular magazines on your desktop for free - by Amit agarwal.

Chrome users has to do some work around see this article Change Google Chrome User-Agent String, Read popular Magazines for free - by Andrew.

How to check PageRank in Chrome browser

noreply@blogger.com (Harihara Kumar) — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 11:54:00 +0000

Usually we check Google PageRank of any webpage with the help of Google toolbar. There are addons for some browsers to do this. Now, how to determine the PR of any web page in Google Chrome?

Chromefans developed simple javascript bookmarklet that shows the Google PageRank and Alexa Rank with just a click. This works on almost all browsers. To use it, just drag and drop javascript bookmarklet to the bookmarks bar and click it whenever you want to check the PR and Alexa Rank.

If your Chrome browser does not show bookmarks bar use keyboard shortcut [Ctrl + B] or navigate to Tools > Always show bookmarks bar.

How to find the expiry date of LPG gas cylinders

noreply@blogger.com (Harihara Kumar) — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 18:16:00 +0000

Most of us don't know that LPG gas cylinders expire and we accept whatever cylinder we are given. These expired gas cylinders are known for gas leaks and accidents. So please be cautious at the time of accepting any LPG gas cylinder.

Here is how we can check the expiry of LPG cylinders. On one of the three stems of the cylinder, the expiry date is coded alpha numerically as follows A or B or C or D and some two digit number following this. Example, D06..

The alphabets stand for quarters -

A for March (First Qtr),
B for June (Second Qtr),
C for Sept (Third Qtr), &
D for December (Fourth Qtr).

The two digit number stands for the year till it is valid. Hence D06 would mean December qtr of 2006. Return back the cylinders that you get with a expiry date, they are prone to leak and other hazardous accidents.

The second example with D13 allows the cylinder to be used until Dec 2013.

Hope this helps you to detect the expired LPG gas cylinders. Please bookmark this and pass it on to your friends. (via)

Shorten long Twitter messages/tweets to fit in 140 characters limit

noreply@blogger.com (Harihara Kumar) — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 18:16:00 +0000

If you are Twitter user you already know how hard it is to send long messages. Even re-tweeting a message received from somebody else who has long username makes you think twice. Every single character has to be taken into account. Whether you want to re-tweet or simple copy –paste -send or write you own shortened long message.

There are free services that can help you in this case. If you post tweets from your browser go for 140it to shorten long messages to fit with in 140 character limit.

Tweeting from browser:

140it is a smart service that can shorten any long text. Its very simple to use, one can use this service on any web page, all you have to do is just add 140it button to your browser toolbar and you can shrink any message in Twitter with a click.

Twitter Client:

There are many Twitter clients you can choose depending on our likings, but the top Twitter client is TweetDeck. TweetDeck has built-in message shortening feature which is similar to that of 140it. There are many other features you can find in this Adobe Air application.

Get back those lost unread/offline messages in Yahoo messenger

noreply@blogger.com (Harihara Kumar) — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 13:38:00 +0000

Some times chat messengers may crash when you login, or simple freezes and log out when you are on slow internet connection. The immediate result is you may lose offline messages.

Here is a small trick to get those lost messages. I think you already know this trick. Open IM chat window of any contact. You will see Show Recent Messages (F3) on the top of chat area. This option can only be seen if you have set Save all of my messages in Preference > Archive category. If it is already set then press F3 to see history of your instant message conversations, archive also includes offline messages too.

If you want to check all of your contacts, especially if you have many friends, you can view full archive at Preference > Archive > View Archive.

By default, Messenger archives your instant messages, and then clears the archive when you sign out.

Q. I don't have system at home, i visit internet cafe regularly, can i set Save all of my messages option in Yahoo messenger on the system i am currently working on?

A. If you set Save all of my messages option in Yahoo messenger, all your conversations are stored in .Dat files at \Program Files\Yahoo!\Messenger\Profiles\YOUR-ID\Archive\Messages\CONTACT-NAME. Here USER-ID is your Yahoo id and CONTACT-NAME is the person to whom you had conversation with. Each archive is stored in each separate folder, named along your contacts name.

These messages can be viewed by any person who uses that system. So it is recommended that you do not set this option on public systems. Instead you can go for Yahoo messenger web or Meebo (aggregate of popular chat networks) if you need privacy

Q. I have set Save all of my messages to my user id, does this reflects to other users when they login to Yahoo messenger on my system?

A. No, each user has his own settings. If you want to change other user settings you have to login using that user’s id and password.

Q. I have placed Yahoo Pingbox on my blog, does Yahoo messenger archive all my conversations with site visitor?

A. No, Messenger doesn’t archive instant messages between you and Pingbox™ visitors.

How to detect if it is two-way mirror or not in trail rooms

noreply@blogger.com (Harihara Kumar) — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 13:29:00 +0000

You may have seen two-way mirrors in movies and ads. Where police use this mirror for interrogating criminals. Two-way mirrors are also used in daycare, so parents can observe their children at play with out disturbing them.

Another interesting usage as teleprompter or autocue, mostly used in TV studios, where news readers look at the electronic visual text or script on the two-way mirror and read it. So that camera can record the new reader and the news reader can read the text on the mirror with out moving his eyes away from the camera. This seems like news reader has memorized all the news, but its not the case. Check out the pictures below.

[Images via Wikipedia]

How to detect a two-way mirror:

You may have seen some cases where these mirrors are used for wrong purposes. It is very difficult to identify if the mirror is two-way by just looking at it. But there are some differences between one-way and two-way mirrors which helps us to identify the type of mirror.

Simple Fingernail Test:

Place the tip of your fingernail against the reflective surface and if there is a gap between your fingernail and the image of the nail, then it is a genuine mirror.

If your finger directly touches the image of your nail, then beware that it is a two-way mirror. So remember, every time you see a mirror at wrong places do the “fingernail test”.

The reason is there is a gap on a real mirror, because the silver is on the back of the mirror under the glass. Whereas with a two-way mirror, the silver is on the surface.

These mirrors are used in some private places like trail rooms, hotel rooms, bath rooms,..etc. So try this simple test to identify them.

Yahoo adds IM & SMS feature to its mail

noreply@blogger.com (Harihara Kumar) — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 15:44:00 +0000

Yahoo! is adding IM & SMS feature to both new and classic versions of mail. But we have seen this feature in Gmail from years back and recently webcam feature rolling out for Gmail users.

[Click on the image for larger view]

IM & SMS is already available in new Yahoo! mail, but this release is for Yahoo! mail classic users. But users have to wait few more months to see in their inboxes, if you want one can try this feature in new Yahoo! mail.

The conversation window pops up at the right corner as soon as you start conversation, it’s more a basic window with tabs making it easier for multiple conversations. Conversation window can be moved, resized and minimized, now you don't have webcam feature which is already in Gmail. May be we can expect it in future.

Microsoft will now fix it for you

noreply@blogger.com (Harihara Kumar) — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 18:17:00 +0000

Did you ask anyone or simply thought “why can't Microsoft just fix this for me?”. Everybody who uses Windows would have thought that.

There are some simple things in Windows that we did like to avoid. You don't want to be notified of things that you already know, like notification balloon of low disk space, or Windows Media Player updates when you are playing videos or hardware failure notification in taskbar.

Microsoft Help and Support is now giving automatic fix (small installer packages) to users which will fix issue for you faster and easier. These are tiny installer packages which can be carried on memory stick to another computer to fix the issue. You can even make backup and fix issues when you format and install fresh copy of Windows. Now you don't have to mess with the registry values on your system.

There are very few fixes created till now but will be soon, so if you want to track latest updates subscribe to Fix it for me blog. [Via: Steve Clayton ]

Also see protecting USB storage devices from viruses.