Gtricks.com

Doodle for Remembrance Day 2009 at Google UK

abhishek — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:09:01 +0000

Google UK celebrating Remembrance Day 2009 or as popular know Poppy Day in remembrance of sacrifices by civilians at the time of war.

Remembrance Day – also known as Poppy Day, Armistice Day (the event it commemorates) or Veteran’s day – is a day to commemorate the sacrifices of members of the armed forces and of civilians in times of war, specifically since the First World War. It is observed on 11 November to recall the end of World War I on that date in 1918 (major hostilities of World War I were formally ended at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918 with the German signing of the Armistice). The day was specifically dedicated by King George V, on 7 November 1919, to the observance of members of the armed forces who were killed during war; this was possibly done upon the suggestion of Edward George Honey to Wellesley Tudor Pole, who established two ceremonial periods of remembrance based on events in 1917. [Wiki]

Doodle for Polish Independence Day 2009

abhishek — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 19:01:46 +0000

Google PL celebrating Independence Day of Poland with a beautiful logo made up with colors of Polish flag.

National Independence Day (Polish: Narodowe Święto Niepodległości) is a public holiday in Poland celebrated every year on 11 November to commemorate the anniversary of Poland’s assumption of independent statehood in 1918 after 123 years of partitions by Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Russia.
[Wiki]

Make Your Own Journal by Turning Notepad into a Diary!

abhishek — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:34:12 +0000

Here is a real cool tip for people who use notepad to write down any info on a day-to-day basis. It simply serves as a virtual diary! For whatever it may be – memos, to-do notes, lists, anything, use windows notepad as diary.

With this trick, the notepad automatically adds the current time and date to next line on opening it. This means, a direct journal or diary to keep reminders of the day. Follow these simple steps to convert your notepad into magic diary.

1. Open a notepad and type .LOG (case sensitive) as the first line.

2. Save with any name and close the file.

3. Now, Double-click the file to open it and notice that Notepad appends the current date
and time and places the cursor on the next line.

4. Type your notes and then save and close the file.

Each time you open the file, Notepad repeats the process, Appending the time and date and placing the cursor below it.

Google Site to Teach Online Data Backup: Data Liberation Front

abhishek — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 10:23:11 +0000

It is very easy to backup your online data from Google services. However, most of the people don’t know this and thus Google has created special site to teach people how to move their data in and out from Google services and products.

Google services like Gmail, Blogger, Google Reader, Picasa has already implemented export and import function in their settings page. Nevertheless, there are few like Adwords or GMaps for which users aren’t aware of. Keeping this in mind and for escalating user experience, Google engineers at Chicago have come up with DataLiberation.org, which guides to back up data or in simpler words, move data in and out of Google products.

As per Data Liberation Front,

Users should be able to control the data they store in any of Google’s products.
Our team’s goal is to make it easier to move data in and out.

You can get all your data out of Google and that too free. In addition, this process doesn’t require any time or additional effort from your side. You can even suggest features and vote for existing ones at Google Moderator Page. Google has also created a dedicated blog to inform you about Data Liberation here.

Following are the few important Google products with which you can backup your data:
• Blogger
• Bookmarks
• Calendar
• Contacts
• Docs
• Orkut
• Gmail
• And more here.

So, whenever you want backup your online data or want to take something out of Google, just use these Data Liberation guides to find out the perfect way.

Synchronize Bookmarks with Latest Google Chrome 4 Beta

abhishek — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 19:18:32 +0000

Synchronizing Bookmarks can be of great help for people with multiple computers. It could prove very useful in cases where person access nearly same sites at office and at home. The Chrome blog has announced a new feature for Google chrome, which lets users to automatically synchronise their bookmarks. So now, you don’t need to export bookmarks in Chrome and then importing them in another system.

To sync you Chrome bookmarks, first you need to update your chrome to the latest version, that is Beta 4. You can check your installed version by clicking on “Wrench” icon and then selecting “About Google chrome”. Else, you can download latest beta 4 version of Google Chrome from here.

Now, to synchronize your bookmarks, follow these steps:
1. Click on “Wrench Menu” .
2. Select “Synchronize my bookmarks”.
3. Sign-in with your Google account with which you want to keep these bookmarks.
4. Go to other computer and follow the same process. Chrome will ask to merge sync bookmarks with the previous original bookmarks.
5. Click on “Merge and Sync” and you are done.

Watch below the same tutorial in video format by Google :

You can synchronize bookmarks with as many as computers you like.

The best feature of synchronising the bookmarks is that it works in real time. It means, as soon as you bookmark website in one computer, the other computer/laptop saves it at same time. This syncing feature was made possible by XMPP-based server technology, which is also used in Google talk.

Google Doodle for Melbourne Cup 2009

abhishek — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 19:11:28 +0000

Google Australia displayed Beautiful logo for Melbourne cup in whic the letters are wearing colourful hats.

The Melbourne Cup is Australia’s major Thoroughbred horse race. Billed as The race that stops a nation, it is a race for three-year-olds and over, over a distance of 3,200 metres. It is the richest and most prestigious “two-mile” handicap in the world, and one of the richest turf races in the world. [wiki]

Music, Social and Images Search Redefined by Google

abhishek — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 19:28:35 +0000

Last week, Google has added new functionalities to make music, social and image search easier for users. They have added these changes to their core search functionality, so that it would be available to all the users by default.

Search for a Band, Singer, Song Name Directly
[image by Google blog]
With the new Music Search feature, you can directly search for band, singer, song name or album title in the search box and Google will recognize it automatically and return relevant searches. One of the best feature of musical search is that, you can play your searched song within Google search and that too without spending a penny. Google has also made a special page to discover music faster and easier here.

Know What Your Friends are Looking For on Web

Social Search is an experimental feature from Google which lets you view relevant and suggested results for your queries. The results include blogs, photo albums, web pages and reviews that Google find related to you and your social life. Google will try to compute your social life based on your Gmail contacts, twitter and freindfeed profiles. To activate this feature, you need to go to “Google Experimental” and select “Social Search Experiment”.

Image Search Revolutionised by Searching for Similar Pics

The most useful feature that Google added last week was Similar Images on Images Search. With this feature, you can directly click on similar images link below image to find relevant and analogous image. The idea is to reduce the dependence of keywords on image search.

For example, for a peacock search, you would find various peacock pics but if a white peacock interests you then clicking on “Find similar images” below white-collared peacock will show you various pics of the same. Try out here.

Google Celebrating Halloween – 2009

abhishek — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:39:34 +0000

This time Google is celebrating Halloween in a special way. The Home page is decorated with a special Doodle made of candies. But when you click on it, the Google home page changes its logo into more candies-filled-doodle.

Halloween (also spelled Hallowe’en) is an annual holiday celebrated on October 31. It has roots in the Celtic festival of Samhain and the Christian holy day of All Saints, but is today largely a secular celebration.

Halloween activities include trick-or-treating, wearing costumes and attending costume parties, carving jack-o’-lanterns, ghost tours, bonfires, visiting haunted attractions, pranks, telling scary stories, and watching horror films. [Wiki]

Google Halloween Logos:

Blogoscoped forum reports that Google has new Easter egg for Halloween. They have added following notorious code in their robots.txt file:

User-agent: Kids
Disallow: /tricks
Allow: /treats

Halloween Logos from other search engines and websites:
(from SEO Round Table)
Yahoo:

AOL:

YouTube:

Bing:

Google Thailand Celebrating Loy Krathong – 2009

abhishek — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 15:12:47 +0000

Our user Bob reports that Google Thailand is celebrating Loy Krathong festival with a beautiful doodle showing candles and rafts floating in full moon.

Loy Krathong is held on the full moon of the 12th month in the traditional Thai lunar calendar. In the western calendar this usually falls in November. “Loi” means “to float”. “Krathong” is a raft about a handspan in diameter traditionally made from a section of banana tree trunk (although modern-day versions use specially made bread ‘flowers’ and may use styrofoam), decorated with elaborately-folded banana leaves, flowers, candles, incense sticks etc.

The festival probably originated in India as a Hindu festival similar to Deepavali as thanksgiving to the deity of the Ganges with floating lanterns for giving life throughout the year. [wiki]

Top 10 Gtalk Tricks that Everybody Must Know

abhishek — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 16:59:55 +0000

Amongst the various Google talk tips and Tricks available, there are certain that everybody must know. Compiling here, top 10 tricks that lets you make most of Gtalk:

1. Use Gtalk in Your Mobile

Do you know, you can even use Google talk in your mobile phone and stay connected with your friends on the go? The official Google software for chatting with your friends works with only iPhone and Android. There is another way to use Gtalk by use of SIS or JAR software for generic phones. You can download this J2ME client here.

2. Exploit Keyboard Shortcuts to Save Time

Using keyboard shortcuts is the great way to maximize your productivity. You save your time by doing variety of functions without even touching mouse just by pressing few buttons.

The following keyboard shortcuts are must for any Gtalk addict:

• Ctrl + E – It centralizes the selected text, or the current line.
• Ctrl + R – It justifies to the right the selected text, or the current line.
• Ctrl + L – It justifies to the left the selected text, or the current line.
• Ctrl + I – The same thing does that Tab.
• Tab – It is giving the area to each of the windows opened by Google Talk.
• Ctrl + Tab – The same thing does that Shift + Tab .
• Shift + Tab – The same thing does that Tab but in reverse.
• Ctrl + Shift + L -Switch between points, numbers, letters, capital letters, roman numbers and capital roman numbers
• Ctrl + 1 (KeyPad) – It does a simple space between the lines.
• Ctrl + 2 (KeyPad) – It does a double space between the lines.
• Ctrl + 5 (KeyPad) – A space does 1.5 between the lines.
• Ctrl + 1 (NumPad) – It goes at the end of the last line.
• Ctrl + 7 (NumPad) – It goes at the begin of the last line.
• Ctrl + F4 – It closes the current window.
• Alt + F4 – It closes the current window.
• Alt + Esc – It Minimize all the windows.
• Windows + ESC – Open Google Talk (if it’s minimized, or in the tray)
• F9 – Open Gmail to send an email to the current contact.
• F11 – It initiates a telephonic call with your friend.
• F12 – It cancels a telephonic call.
• Esc – It closes the current window.

3. Hide your Gtalk Status – Make it Always Idle

Gtalk doesn’t provide facility of remaining invisible like Gchat (Gmail embedded chat) gives. However, you can trick your online status by showing it as idle always. This way, your friends will assume that you are not on your desk. Tweak your Gtalk status by downloading gAlwaysIdle software. More…

4. Dress Your Gtalk Application with Additional Themes

Are you bored using the same white Gtalk every day? Now, you can dress your Gtalk application with custom and downloadable themes to add a little spice to boring Gtalk. You can download Gtalk themes from various sources such as http://gtalk.anthonysottile.com/ , http://gtheme.sravi.com/ and more.

And even make your own Google talk themes from this tutorial.

5. Make Your Chatting More Interesting by Text Decorations

Tired of same plain text messages? Use the following tags to convert your messages into Bold, Text Underline and Italics:

Enclose text in asterisk(*) to make bold effect.
Enclose text in underscore( _ ) to make it italicized.
More….

6. Have Two or More Gtalk Running at Same Time.

If you have two or more Google accounts, and want to use both at same time for chatting with friends, then this is the perfect trick for you. With this trick, you can run multiple copies of Google Talk application in you Windows.

All you need to do is to right click on Google talk shortcut and select Properties. In the target field append the parameter /nomutex so that it becomes like C:/Program Files/Google/Google Talk.exe /nomutex. It’s done. Now whenever you double click on Google Talk Desktop icon, it opens a new instance for a new Google account.

Similarly, you can run multiple copies of Yahoo messenger with this tutorial.

7. Use Gtalk Bots to Make Your Life Easier

Google bots are automated robots that respond to your queries. For example, or the news bot will fetch you latest news on your preferred subject inside Gtalk window and the translation bot automatically converts the text to the specified language you have send. Following are few Gtalk bots to make life easier :

1) Transliteration Bots.
2) IBN News bot.
3) GK Answering bot.
4) Listen Online Radio with this bot.
5) More.

8. Amaze Your Friends with Hidden and Secret Set of Emoticons/Smileys

Google has always something special hidden for its fans like Google reader Easter Eggs. There are certain emoticons that you won’t find anywhere documented. Find these secret and hidden emoticons to amaze your friends here.

9. Direct Shortcut to Chat

If you frequently chat with particular friends in Gtalk, then you can create direct shortcuts to chat window to start conversation. This is the quickest and direct way to start a chat with friend.
For this, right click on your desktop and select New > Shortcut. Now add the following line in the location of the item :

gtalk:chat?jid=username@gmail.com

Where username@gmail should be replaced by your friends gmail address.

10. Use Google Talk without Downloading and Installing

You can use and enjoy all the features of Google talk without even downloading and installing it on your computer. For this bookmark http://talkgadget.google.com/talkgadget/popout in your internet browser. Using this bookmark, you can directly launch Google talk in gadget mode.