Arun's Tech Corner

Optimize your firefox profile databases for better performance

2009-07-11T06:07:00.000-07:00

Since the release of version 3 , Firefox have been storing your bookmarks, cookies, rss feed information and such information in SQLite databases for better performance. On continuous usage, these databases can get fragmented and increase in size and may cause performance problems.

The databases can be defragmented again manually, which will optimize your firefox performance. Webupd8 explains how to perform this defragmentation in Windows, Linux and Mac OS. After trying out in a test system, ghacks author Martin, reported that it reduced the size of the firefox profile folder from 64.9MB to 53.4MB. He added that , heavy users with many bookmarks and rss feeds will most likely experience a large reduction in the size of the profile folder.

Source: ghacks

Recover your Gmail password by SMS

2009-07-10T05:11:00.000-07:00

Google recently launched a service to recover your Google account password by SMS. It is not uncommon that people forget their passwords for countless number of web applications they use. But forgetting important passwords like those of your email accounts and bank accounts can lead to lot of troubles. So normally these applications have some features to help you recover your password like the "Security question" feature.

Google had taken a step forward and introduced a new feature to recover your password by SMS. All you have to do is to login into your Google accounts page and then select the 'Change Password Recovery Options' . Add your mobile phone number in the option provided and click 'Save'. That's all. Simple isn't it. (If you got doubts, take a look at the screenshot below)

Next time, when you forget your password , goto password-assitance page and enter your Username. You will receive a text message (SMS) with the recovery code.

To take a look at the official google announcement , visit Official Gmail Blog

Also , take a look at our guide to sending free SMS from your Instant Messenger/ Gtalk .

Send free SMS from your IM Client like Gtalk, Pidgin (Including India)

2009-07-08T07:09:00.000-07:00

There are lot of internet tools and websites available to send free SMS from your PC. But you have to visit the site, just to send a SMS and more annoyingly , some of those sites even need registration. Chikka, allows you send the SMS right from your Instant Messenger like Gtalk, Pidgin etc. All you need is a Google account and an IM client supporting its chat feature. Registration with Chikka is not necessary. Normally people use Google talk , but I suggest using Pidgin as it allow multiple logins like Gtalk, Yahoo , Icq all at the same time. Moreover, its supports secure chat with encryption.

How to send free SMS from your IM client :

Invite the <desired number with country code>@chikkatalk.com for chat. [DO NOT add a '+' before the number . Usage eg: For India , 919xxxxxxxxx]
The invite will be accepted and the contact will be online within a minute.
Now send your SMS as instant messages to that contact. It will delivered to that number as SMS.

To find the list of countries that chikka support , visit their faq page. I tested with Airtel India and the sms got delivered almost instantly . Let me know if it works for you , in the comments.

Happy Messaging :)

Ubuntu Tips #1:How to select the right repositories for faster update and software installations

2009-07-06T04:17:00.000-07:00

People who are new to Ubuntu, complain that it takes a lot of time for the update files to get downloaded despite their high speed Internet connections. The slower speed is also experienced while downloading software packages. This is because they did not select the right repository mirrors to download those updates. They are downloading from the main servers, which Ubuntu sets by default. These servers may be slow because of their huge load. If you configure your package manager to download the packages from a mirror repository that is close to your location (probably, a mirror from your country) , you can download the packages at a faster rate than that from the main server.

A step-by-step procedure to choose the right mirror repository in Ubuntu:

Open Synaptic Package Manager (System-> Administration-> Synaptic Package Manager)
Select Settings->Repositories
Now click the drop-down menu near "Download from:" in the "Ubuntu Software" tab.
Select "Other" from the list.
In the window that appears, select your country and click the "Select best server" button on the right side. (Take a look at the screenshot below)
Now click "Choose server" button and come back to the main window Synaptic Package Manager
Click "Reload" in the toolbar and wait for the package information to get updated.
After completing all the above steps you will certainly experience a difference in the download speed of updates and packages.

iFile.it - Upload and Share files upto 250 MB with Resumable download

2009-07-03T16:38:00.000-07:00

One of the worst problems with the file sharing giants like Rapidshare and Megaupload , is that they don't allow resumable downloads. Which means , if your download fails halfway due to some connection error or power cut, you cannot start the download again from the point it broke. You have to start over again. Same is the case , when you try to pause the download. This can become messy when downloading large files.

iFile.it , a replacement of the famous mihd.net, is offering free file sharing upto 250MB (as many files as you want) with resumable downloads. Once, you upload your files, you'll get a link to share with your friend. Clicking that link takes you to a page, where you/your friend can request a resumable download link. You can pause the download and resume it again , whenever you wish. If you are uploading as a guest user (no signup required), you can share upto 100Mb per file (any number of files) which is pretty decent.

Here is a quick review of their features:

Upload any number of files within the size limit 250MB (Free registration)
Upload any number of files within the size limit 100MB (Guest user - No signup required)
Resumable downloads (Pause and resume your downloads at your convenience)
Easy-to-use interface
Personally , I like cool their name "ifile.it"

Link : iFile.it

Happy sharing! :)

Windows Tips #1 : Shortcut key to access the items in system tray

2009-04-12T02:23:00.000-07:00

In Windows, we can accomplish a lot of tasks in a matter of few key strokes. But we are not even aware of many of the built-in windows shortcuts. Do you know that you can access the items in the system tray using your keyboard alone? Well, let us see how we can do that,

Press the key combination Windows+b , this gives you access to the system tray menu.

Use the arrow keys to navigate among the items.

Press Spacebar or Enter to activate (or open) a particular item

Press Menu key (the one nearer to your right ctrl) to access the right-click menu of a particular item.

Share your pictures on twitter without giving out your password - img.ly

2009-04-11T00:22:00.000-07:00

Img.ly is an image sharing site designed for twitter. Though there are many sites for posting pictures to your twitter feed, most of them require you to enter your twitter username and password. While this kind of login was the only option in the past , the scenario has changed now. Twitter recently introduced OAuth and img.ly was one of the few twitter image sharing sites that implemented this facility.

Logging in with OAuth facility means you are not giving away your username and password to img.ly, but only to twitter (More like those facebook apps). After logging in, you can start using the site for sharing your favourite pics easily.

Visit img.ly

Gmail Labs announces new feature to add images in mail

2009-04-10T05:14:00.000-07:00

Gmail Labs recently added a new option to add Images in mail. Though gmail offers a great email service , it lacks some of the primitive features like adding images to your mail.(But there were some workarounds like this one from Digital Inspiration).

Gmail labs is doing a good job by adding new innovative features and most wanted features in gmail. Recently, they announced a feature to add images directly in your mail using the rich text editor. Enable "Inserting images" in your Gmail labs tab. Now you can see a image toolbar icon like this one,

On clicking this icon, a new dialog appears using which you can add an image from computer or an image from the web. So easy , isn't it?

URL Shortening Bookmarklets

2009-03-29T04:33:00.000-07:00

No one prefers to use long URLs when there are a lot of URL shortening services available. URL shortening services like tinyurl.com, bitly etc take up a long URL and give you a short URL which you can share easily. Though you can to these sites directly and do the conversion, there is another easy alternative.

Most of these sites provide you with a bookmarklet, with which the URL shrinking can be done easily. I've listed the bookmarklets of some popular URL shrinking services.

Drag the bookmarklet of to your bookmarks toolbar or use right-click menu to save it as a bookmark. Now, to shorten the URL of the page you are viewing, click on the bookmarklet and it will automatically generate the shortened URL for you.

If you have bookmarklets for any other services , please do mention it in the comments. If you are a ubiquity user, take a look at the is.gd URL shortening script for ubiquity created by me.

Play FLAC files in Windows Media Player

2009-02-07T23:18:00.000-08:00

FLAC (Free Loseless Audio Codec) is a great a way to store music if you don't want to lose the quality of the original source. But unfortunately, Windows Media Player does not support the flac format. There are lot of players available, which can play flac music, like Winamp, VLC and the previously mentioned XMPlay. But many people still use the Windows Media Player (WMP) that comes bundled with the Microsoft Operating System. Here's what they should do, to get flac music played in their Windows Media Player.

Download madFlac
Unzip the package and run install.bat to install the codec.
Open your .flac file in Windows Media Player .
Click "Yes" on the dialog box that appears . Select the "Don't ask again for this extension" if you don't to see this dialog again.
Now your flac music can be played in Windows Media Player without any problem.

Encrypt your IM Conversations in Pidgin

2009-02-07T19:01:00.000-08:00

Pidgin is IM (chat) client that supports multiple IM protocols including Gtalk, Yahoo, AIM, ICQ and many more. It also allows you to encrypt your IM conversations with the help of a plugin - "Pidgin-Encryption".

After installing the plugin just enable it by going to Tools > Plguins. Now your Pidgin is ready to secure your IM chat sessions. The plugin is available for various operating systems.

Features:

Automatically creates a public/private key pair for you upon loading the plugin
Automatically transmits your public key to other users.
Supports 512 - 4096 bit keys.
Saves keys of known users, and warns you if their public key has changed.
Embeds all encryption and keys inside HTML, so if the other user doesn't have the plugin, they will get a little message telling them about the plugin, and won't get a screen full of garbage.
Stores keys in human readable files in your .gaim/.pidgin directory, in case you ever need to copy/edit them by hand. Which you really shouldn't have to do.
Automatically recognizes if you are chatting with someone who has the plugin- see the Preferences dialog.
Available for the Windows version of Pidgin.
Modular and extensible. If you want to define a different type of encryption, you can use this plugin as a wrapper to take care of transporting the encrypted binary over the IM pipe.

Download the plug-in from Pidgin-Encryption
Happy Chatting :)

Shorten URLs in ubiquity with is.gd

2009-02-07T01:12:00.000-08:00

Start shrinking your URLs in ubiquity with is.gd service. Ubiquity, by default, comes with a command "tinyurl" to shrink your URL's. But I feel that TinyUrl is no more 'tiny' (as the domain itself is longer). So I created my own command to shorten the URL's using is.gd (another URL shortening service but with a short domain name).

If you don't know what ubiquity is , then take a look at the note below.

Adding the command to your command list:

Goto http://arunsonnet.googlepages.com/ubiquityis.gdcommand
If Ubiquity is already installed on you browser, you will notice a information bar with "Subscribe" button at the top right corner of that page. (If ubiquity is not installed, grab it from Mozilla Labs)
Click on the "Subscribe" button
A new page with the Command's source will appear.
Click "I know what I'm doing. Subscribe to it!" ( I assure you that there is no malicious code . The source code is before you! )

Usage:

Select the URL you want to shorten (or you can give it with the command)
Now open Ubiquity and type is.gd and press 'Tab' to auto-fill the selection (You can also enter the URL here)
Press 'Enter'.
Now your original longURL will be replaced by shrinked URL from is.gd. The shortened URL is also copied to the Clipboard.

Happy Shrinking! :)

The Project is hosted on Google Code . Visit the project page to know more about this command.

Note: Ubiquity is an extension for firefox that makes your online life easier. You can perform searches, send emails and a lot using ubiquity. Know more about it here.

YouTube Testing Video Downloads

2009-01-18T00:25:00.000-08:00

YouTube is testing a new feature that allows users to download the video they are watching. This is being tested at the ChangeDotGov channel right now. You can see a small "Click to Download" link below the video. Using that, you can download the video in MP4 format.

Lawrence Lessig, Professor of Law at Stanford University says that,

"Notice an important new feature in the world of YouTube -- a "Click to download" link. YouTube is rolling this out slowly, initially with content that aspires to be consistent with principles of open government. I'm told it will be offered more generally. In any case, it is an important development. There have always been hacks for slurping down YouTube videos. But it is a valuable step that YouTube encourage and support this sharing."

This seems to be a great move by YouTube. There a lot of ways right now , with which you download YouTube videos unofficially.I have even mentioned a couple of bookmarklets to download youtube videos. But now, it is glad to witness YouTube bringing out its own way to help users download the videos.
via Google Operating System

XMPlay - The tiny music player

2008-12-21T01:58:00.000-08:00

XMPlay is a tiny, light-weight, standalone Music Player that plays all the major formats right out of the box. And yes, its Free. The main program is just 263 KB, yet it still contains all that you need to play music. A lot of plugins are also available on the site which lets you add extra features like winamp visualizations, album art display, flac playback.

The coolest thing there are plugins that enable XMplay to play files within zip,rar and 7zip archives. You can customize the looks with the skins available in the support site. It also consumes less system resources. XMplay is the right choice if you are looking for a small, powerful music player to carry along with you on your pen drive.

Orkut Chat - Fully Integrated Google Talk inside Orkut

2008-12-03T20:11:00.000-08:00

Tired of chatting in orkut with the scrapbook and those constant page refreshes, now Google is bringing you a fully integrated Google Talk inside Orkut so that you can chat with your orkut friends and other Gtalk contacts right from Orkut. You can also browse orkut at the same time you are chatting. You can also decide which friend group can chat with you. Goto Settings-->Chat to configure these chat settings. Google is slowly rolling out this feature to its users, so if don't see the orkut chat right now you may get in a couple of days. (It is not yet activated in my account.) Below is a screenshot form TechBuzz

Happy Chatting! :)

Picc Drop - Image Hosting made easy

2008-11-27T03:02:00.000-08:00

People host images online and use them for their blogs, use them as profile pictures and even as signatures in forums. Hosting Images online became easier with Web 2.0. now it becomes more easier with Picc Drop. Image hosting is done by a number of sites , some of them may require you to register/login before using them. A few more may not require login, but they will have atleast one of the following problems

Limited bandwidth
Limited file size
Limited file support
Limited time duration.

But Picc Drop is free from all of the above mentioned problems that may bug at times.Here is the full list of features offered by Picc Drop.

Free Image Hosting
Unlimited Bandwidth
No Registration/Login needed (unless you want to track your uploads)
Support to a wide variety of file types (jpeg,jpg,png,tiff,bmp,gif,ico,icn,svg,pdf,icns,hdi,psd, etc..)
No time limits for the hosted images
Can upload upto to filesize of 6MB.

If you need a quick image host with a clean interface, then Picc Drop is he best choice.
Happy Uploading :)

Shrinkomatic - URL Shortening Service with exciting featres

2008-11-26T14:53:00.000-08:00

"Makin stuff Smaller" - Tagline of Shrinkomatic

That's what they say and that's what they do .
There are a number of URL shortenening services like tinyurl.com ,is.gd ,and more. Shrinkomatic, created by Daniel Pataki (author of Hackyourda y), is such a tool but has an added advantage over them.

What makes it unique is a new feature which enables you to have a custom short url for the url's of your blog/website. For example, Arun's Tech Corner has now got a SOM custom url of the type http://somurl.com/atc/.. . So now whenever someone tries to convert a url of my blog to a short URL using shrinkomatic will get it of the type http://somurl.com/atc/..(for example it is http://somurl.com/atc/G7O for my previous post on "Orkut profile Pictures") .

The most striking feature is , if you are the owner of the blog/website then you will be given a "special account: on request where can view the statistics of the shortened URLs from your blog like the number of URLs and number of clicks . This stats would help you much to know about your blogs popularity in the micro-blogging platform (twitter, jaiku..) as these URL shortening servies are often used to save the character limits in the micro-blogs .

Shrinkomatic also provides options to track also the URLs that you are converting in your norma; account, like other services. It is just the beginning, they have a lot of features coming in the near future.

Happy Shrinking! :)

Fake Progress Bar - Nice tool to fool your boss

2008-11-24T03:52:00.000-08:00

Now there is a cool way to fool your boss that you are working on serious project.Fake Progress Bar, an interesting software, will create progress bar that can be customized to your needs. I created a sample progress bar and posted the pictures here. Click on them to enlarge.

The first picture is the progress bar. Clicking on the icon in the progress bar brings the options window where you can customize the progress bar to your needs.
Here is a list of things you can do with the options window,

Change the title
Edit the the names of the status and its delay time
Change the button text
Enable/Disable dual progress bars
Selecting the icon (you can even add your own icon..)
Disabling Screen Saver so that your boss don't doubt you.

Download it here:

Digital Volcano - Fake Progress bar

It is available in both installer and standalone version.
I prefer the standalone version because of its small size and ease of use.

I'm planning to post more freeware and prankware(like this one) reviews in the future. If you are interested, subscribe to your rss feed so that you don't miss anything.

Happy Pranking! :)

Saving Orkut profile picture the easy way with firefox:

2008-11-22T06:10:00.000-08:00

Open the desired orkut profile page.

Now goto "Tools-->Page info"

Alternatively, if you use firefox 3, you can click on the orkut favicon (the 'Orkut logo' on the address bar) and select "More Information"

If you are using Mac , you can use Cmd+I instead.

You will now have the "Page info" window.

Select "Media" tab on the "Page info" window. It will list all images on the site, browse through them and find the intended orkut profile picture and click "save as" to save it.

That's it. So easy, isn't it?

If you got any other easy way to do this, let me know it.. :)

Gmail Themes : Google launches themes for its mail service

2008-11-20T16:59:00.000-08:00

Gmail has always been my favourite web mail client. It has many amazing features like POP3, IMAP support , integrated video chat,cool smilies and lots more. But there is no way to modif its look, until yesterday, when google rolled out a bunch of themes for its webmail. The new feature can be found as "Themes" under the settings tab. Google is rolling out this feature slowly to its users, so if you don't find it in the settings tab, chill down and check after sometime. Some themes change depending on your location , some change with your weather like they had in iGoogle. There is even an 'terminal' theme. Take a look at all the themes ..

Gmail has even changed its homepage, take a look at its new homepage,

What theme are you using ? Write it in the comments..
Happy Gmailing!

Welcome to Arun's Tech Corner

2008-11-20T15:38:00.001-08:00

Hello Friends! Let me introduce myself. I'm Arun Shivaram, interested in computers a lot , a web 2.0 enthusiast etc.. I do some scripting and coding at times.

Enough about me .. In this blog I'm going to bring you lots of tips 'n tricks, latest tech news, software reviews, suggestions etc. I'm also guest blogging at Itech7, one of the interesting indian tech blogs. Pay them a visit if you are interested.