Undocumented GMail Shortcut To Delete Mails

GMail has a very useful undocumented shortcut which allows you to delete mails. Select the required mails in the list and press # key (shift+3) and all the selected message will move to Deleted Items. I tried this shortcut on Microsoft Internet Explorer & Firefox browsers and it worked.

GMail shortcuts work only if Keyboard Shortcuts option is switched on. Follow these steps to enable shortcuts in GMail

• Click on Settings link
• Identify Keyboard shortcuts option available in the General Setting tab
• Choose Keyboard shortcuts on

Also read the article GMail - The Best Mail Service With Least Storage Space to know storage capacity comparison of major e-mail services.

Watch Deleted Youtube Videos With Delutube

It disappoints a lot whenever we see the message “This video is no longer available” while trying to play a Youtube video. Youtube deletes videos which are linked to copyright issues, adult content and offensive content. But there is a way to watch deleted videos with the help of Delutube.

It is possible to watch deleted Youtube videos with Delutube as long as Youtube maintains a copy of the video on their cache servers. To view the deleted video, just supply the Youtube video id and Delutube will fetch and play it.

How to find Youtube video id?

A set of characters which we see after http://youtube.com/watch?v= in the Youtube URL is the video id. For example lSHCxNmOwfY is the id of youtube video URL http://youtube.com/watch?v=lSHCxNmOwfY.

Delutube may not be able to play videos that have been permanently deleted from the Youtube servers.

» Delutube Website

Stop Microsoft Windows Update Bothering You To Restart

Microsoft Windows Update application helps us to automatically install latest updates of operating system and other products. Microsoft Update is a nice application as long as it does not bother us with restart dialog.

When a certain Windows update requires to reboot the operating system, it nags with a dialog box requesting us to restart.

Luckily one simple command can disable this dialog box

1. Open command prompt window(Start-->Run...-->cmd-->enter)
2. Execute the command sc stop wuauserv

This command stops the service which popup the restart dialog. Now we can restart the operating system when are done with our work. The auto update service will restart next time when we boot and automatically downloads available updates.

iPhone Hacked - A 17 Year Teenager Successfully Unlocked And Connected It To T-Mobile Network

George Hotz, a 17 year old teenager from New Jersey has unlocked the iPhone and connected it to T-Mobile network. George Hotz is the first person who successfully hacked Apple's iPhone and connected it to non-AT & T network without any special equipment.

George spent around 500 hours on the project and posted his experiences and unlocking process in Finding JTAG on the iPhone blog. His 10 steps to unlock the iPhone are very complicated and also requires skills with both soldering and software. Any missteps in the process of unlocking may result in the iPhone becoming useless.

^{George Interview on CNN (Source:Youtube)}

The amount of time and hard work spent on this project has paid him lot. George became popular across the world as almost all the major news channels aired his interview and also he traded the unlocked mobile for a trendy sports car Nissan 350Z (worth of $38,070) and 3 8GB iPhones.

GMail - The Best Mail Service With Least Storage Space

When Google announced GMail service on April 1st 2004 with 1 GB of free storage space, everyone laughed and said "it's a big joke". Because the storage space announced by Google is 250 times more than Yahoo Mail and 500 times more than Hotmail. Later it became a reality and everyone enjoyed the huge amount of storage space.

Just after 3 years of time, today GMail is one of the major e-mail service providers with least amount of storage space. Here is a comparison between the top 4 global and 1 Indian e-mail services

	GMail	Hotmail	Yahoo	AOL	Rediff
Storage	2.8 GB+	5 GB	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Maximum attachment size	20 MB	10 MB	10 MB	16 MB	10 MB

 

Even tough GMail offers least storage space still it is the most preferred mail service for it's unique features like grouping conversations, labels, better spam protection, non disturbing text ads, advanced search, advanced attachment management and easy forwarding and replying.

Block YouTube Ads with TubeStop.

YouTube this week began placing ads on its video clips.It is like a little banner ad that covers 15% of the window that a lot of YouTube fans aren't happy.

A Firefox extension called TubeStop was created to keep YouTube videos from automatically playing on the video-sharing site. A great side effect of TubeStop has been the removal of the new ads on YouTube clips. How does this work? TubeStop replaces YouTube native player on the site with the embeddable version, which has not been ad-ified yet.

Anyway, it turns out that TubeStop has magical properties that also prevent the new overlay ads from popping up. It's sort of like AdBlock for YouTube that way.

Google Sky – Brings Heavens to Earth

 

The heavens are only a few mouse clicks away with latest Google Earth application.Till now Google has turned millions of Internet users into virtual explorers of the world with Google Earth, this time the web giant is targeting at the rest of the universe as well.

Like Google Earth, Sky will let users fly around and zoom in, exposing increasingly detailed imagery of some 100 million stars and 200 million galaxies.

This Sky imagery was stitched together form more than one million photographs from scientific sources like Solan Digital Sky Survey and NASA.

The new feature also promises users the ability to see planets in motion and witness a supernova explosion.
 

Google Sky was developed at the company's Pittsburgh engineering office.To get Sky, we have to download the latest version of Google Earth.

 

Easily Embed Your Favorite Google Map In Any Webpage

Embedding Google Map in your website with the help of WikiMapia is very easy.

^{Google Map view of Taj Mahal}

Four simple steps to embed a Google Map in your page are

1. Browse WikiMapia.org site and locate your favorite location in Google Maps
2. Click on WikiMapia menu available on the right side top corner and select map on your page link
3. Resize the frame you see on the screen to desired view and copy the html code
4. Paste the html code on your webpage.

Try embedding your favorite Google Map location on your blog post/webpage and share your URL with us.

Embed AdSense Ads Between Blogger Posts

Very happy to hear the announcement from Google AdSense team about in-built support for Blogger templates to embed Ads between posts. Blogger widgets now supports showing ads between the post with out any template coding or hacks. This is supported through new AdSense configuration in Blog Posts widget. Follow these steps to configure your Blogger Template to show ads between posts

1. Login in to your Blogger account
2. Click Template link of your blog and select Page Elements link
3. Click Edit link available in the Blog Posts widget
4. Select Show Ads Between Posts option
5. Configure how often you want to ads to displayed( ex: An ad after every post or an ad after every two posts, etc)
6. Customize the ad look and feel by selecting required format and colors
   
7. Click on Save Changes link when you're done

As the embed ads between the post blend well with the content and increases click through rate, this support is welcomed by Bloggers.

Powerful way to Cleanup Your Duplicate Data with the Easy Duplicate Finder

Easy Duplicate File Finder, brings the easiest way to you to find and remove duplicate files on your hard disk. If your hard disk space is shrinking due to unwanted identical files and folders, then this is the exact tool you are looking for. This capable and easy to use tool will save your precious disk space by finding all such duplicate files and cleaning them safely.Check out the full screen shot of the tool.

The tool is supported with amazing features such as; supports powerful search engines that will scan and search for true identical files, supports flexible scan settings that allow mask search and options to search files with size conditions, can find duplicates from multiple folders or drives, provides safety measures to protect system files and folders, select options to accommodate manual deletion of files, and supports a simple and convenient interface.

One more useful feature is contextual menu, it allows us to access the file properties or to open folder containing file. By holding shift key we can select multiple files very easily.

Easy Way To Download YouTube Videos In Various Formats Like MP3, 3GP, MPEG, WMV, etc.

We all know that there are so many sites available for downloading our favorite YouTube/Google Videos. But the problem lies in the format of the video; we have to convert the .flv format video to some other format like wmv,3gp,mp4 using a converter tool.

vConvert.net has actually solved this problem, the site takes in a video URL from the user and asks to select the format in which the output file is desired. The site then automatically downloads it to a server, convert it to your chosen format and then provide a link to download the finished product.

With this robust vConvert service we can easily  grab videos from YouTube and convert them into compatible formats for iPod/iPhone, mobile phone, PSP, and more. Even if we only want the audio from a video, vConvert can convert just the audio to an MP3.The best part is it takes only  a minute or two for processing.So get ready to leech away all your favorite music videos on YouTube!

Google Talk Gadget - Chatting and Beyond

We always wondered why google does not have a text or voice conference feature in their google talk as compared to MSN or Yahoo. Luckily there's a simple web application for all these missing features like group chatting, media preview and lot more features inside the same GTalk window. 

The Google Talk Gadget is a simple flash-based rich interface on web pages.Unlike the GTalk PC application,the gadget supports group chatting, Inline media for YouTube and Google Video URLs and Picasa Web Album and Flickr slideshows too.

By just pasting a link to video from YouTube or Google Video and you'll see the title of the video and a thumbnail. You can also add links to videos and albums in your status. If your contacts use the gadget, they'll be able to see the content without opening a new page.

Each conversation has its own tab, so the gadget doesn't occupy too much space. It's also easier to search your contacts and to invite other people. And you can also use tons of interesting smileys (emoticons) in your group chats which are otherwise missing in the desktop Google Talk software.

Happy Birthday Compact Disc. You are 25 Years Old!

Officially the first compact disc was produced on August 17, 1982 at Philips factory in Germany. It is exactly 25 years since the revolutionary storage medium first rolled out of the factory loaded with music of The Visitors by Abba.

A team of engineers from Philips and Sony jointly developed CD after an year of experiments and discussions. The CD was originally thought of as an evolution of the gramophone record. Sony and Phillips had never imagined that the computing and entertainment industries would also opt for the CD as a storage system for content.

Even though CD is a 25 years old technology and many new technologies has evolved in the past 25 years, still CDs dominate the music distribution industry. They are the preferred medium for music and small software distributions.

Anyway, happy birthday CD. Wish you many more to come.

Windows Tip - Quickly Tiling Windows

We often need to open windows side by side on our screen by tiling them horizontally or vertically. The simple way to tile windows is

1. Hold Ctrl key and select the required opened window on task bar
2. Right click on the selected windows
3. Choose the menu "Tile Vertically" or "Tile Horizontally" (In Windows Vista choose either "Show Windows Cascade" or "Show Windows Side by Side" option)

This is a good old windows tip to quickly arrange Windows. Read Managing windows for more information.

Sumatra PDF Viewer: Ultra Fast and Simple PDF Reader

We’ve been using the Adobe Acrobat reader since the mid 1990’s.  It has always been a reliable reader and we never had any complaints about it until the past few years. It’s no secret that Adobe Reader is a bloated program that runs slowly on most computers. One key feature which for some reason Adobe has continually overlooked is the ability to bookmark a page. 

An ever-growing group of people is rising up against this system-slowing Adobe monopoly. A new contender in that arena is the Sumatra PDF Viewer, an app that goes easy on the system but is powerful enough to speedily handle even large PDF documents.

Sumatra is a single 802KB executable file for Windows. No installation required. That means you can run Sumatra off of a flash drive. You can also set it as your default PDF viewer.

One interesting feature of Sumatra PDF is that it remembers exactly the last opened page for each pdf file. When you’re finished reading a document, the program will create a file called sumatrapdfprefs.txt in the same folder as the Sumatra program. In this file, it stores the last page you were reading when you exited, and other settings such as zoom level. This helps it be a very useful pdf e-book reader.

Download Sumatra PDF Viewer

 

Google, Yahoo, Rediff and Other Websites Celebrate 60 Years of India's Independence

As India celebrates 60 years of Independence and democracy, major web sites accessed by Indians have modified their logos to reflect the celebrations. The logos of global players like Google, Yahoo, Orkut along with Indian websites Rediff, NDTV, CNN IBN are decorated with tri-colors of Indian flag. Have a look at the beautiful logos

Related Links

• Google Public Policy Blog: Celebrating India and the Internet
• orkut Blog: Happy Independence Day, India!
• Official Google Blog: Namaste India!

Firefox Tip - Restoring Accidentally Closed Sessions

Many times I loose my heart when I accidentally close Firefox browser while typing a lengthy e-mail, blog posts or comments on my favorite post. With Firefox 2.0 I don't need to worry about this anymore. Firefox allows restoring a closed session intact with all the form entries. Follow these steps to configure Firefox to restore closed sessions intact

1. Go to Tools menu and select Options...
2. Click on Main tab
3. Select "Show my windows and tabs from last time" from the "When Firefox starts" drop down
4. Click on Ok button to save the changes
5. That's it. done.

To see this trick in action, perform a simple test. Open Google.com website and type a sample search query say "Testing Firefox ability to a restore session". Now close and re-open the Firefox browser.

Windows Live Hotmail Mail Service Upgraded With 5 GB Space and Outlook Integration

Microsoft announced a series of updates to Windows Live Hotmail services to stop the customers migrating to Gmail and Yahoo mail services. These new features will begin to roll to all the customers over the next few weeks.

The two major upgrades which are prominent in the list of features are increase in storage space to 5 GB and integration with Microsoft Outlook. The free service of Hotmail now provides storage space of 5 GB and paid service gives 10 GB. Also the meeting requests sent by Microsoft Outlook can be either accepted or declined through new interface of Hotmail.

Here is the full list of new features which will be available soon to all Hotmail users 

1. Storage space is increased to 5 GB for free customers and 10 GB for paid customers
2. Meeting requests sent through Microsoft Outlook can be accepted or declined. The accepted meeting request will be added to the calendar automatically
3. Improved contact management that lets merging duplicate contacts
4. Enhancements to the speed of entire mail service
5. Mails in Junk and Deleted Folders will be retained for long time
6. Images and links from unknown senders will be blocked automatically and an option will be provided to show them if required
7. The view area of e-mail will be increased by reducing size of headers and advertisement banners
8. Mails can be forwarded to other Hotmail accounts. This will be useful to consolidate mails from different Hotmail accounts to a single account
9. Vacation replies can be configured to send auto replies when you are out of mail access
10. Turn off Today Page and directly go to inbox after login. This save lot of time by avoiding to see boring news and flashing ads

Accelerate your file copying with TeraCopy

TeraCopy is a free application for Windows that optimizes and enhances the process of copying, pasting and moving files between computers or even folders on a local system.

When installed, TeraCopy integrates into Windows Explorer and by default handles all file copies and moves. This seamless integration allows you to keep working with files as usual.

TeraCopy uses dynamically adjusted buffers to reduce seek times. By using asynchronous copy, it accelerates the file transfer between two physical hard drives.

In case of any copy errors, TeraCopy will try several times and in the worse case just skips the file, not terminating the entire transfer.

TeraCopy also allows pausing copy process at any time to free up system resources and continue with a single click.

 Download TeraCopy

Firefox Tip - Stop Firefox from Pre-Fetching Web Pages And Reduce Your Bandwidth Usage

Firefox browser has a little bandwidth hungry feature which downloads the pages which it thinks you may view. When a webpage hints Firefox that certain pages are likely to be visited, it automatically downloads them so that they can be displayed immediately when the user requests.

For example when you search Google for iMac, Google Search results webpage hints browsers to pre-fetch http://www.apple.com/imac/ webpage.

If you are highly concerned about the bandwidth usage and resources (like CPU and Memory) you can stop Firefox from pre-fetching the pages.Follow these steps to stop Firefox pre-fetching the pages

1. Type about:config in the address bar
2. Locate the configuration key network.prefetch-next (you can use filter to easily locate keys)
3. Right click on the configuration key network.prefetch-next and select Toggle to change the value to false
4. That's it done. From now onwards your Firefox browser will not download any pages unnecessarily

Other Popular Firefox Posts

• Uninstall Firefox Completely and Remove All Traces
• How to Open Accidentally Closed Browser Tabs
• Single Plug in to Upload/Download Flickr, Picasa Albums, Youtube, Box.net and Facebook Content

Apple's New iMac - Slim and Sexy Desktop

Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple Computers today unveiled new series of iMacs which are amazingly slim and sexy. The new iMacs are redefining the standards of desktop computers with their elegance and power.

Apple's iMac web site has released pictures comparing iMac and DELL PC. The difference in the size and simplicity between the desktops is mind blowing. iMac has only three wires (power, keyboard and mouse connectors) and very thin, where as a DELL PC is quite big and having cluttered wires all around it.

If you are wondering where is the CPU in iMac, it is fitted just behind the display screen. Yes, what you read is correct. The thin iMac display screen's back side holds a mother board, CPU, hard disk drive and other peripherals  required for communication and networking. It's quite amazing right!!

Apart from stylish looks, the new iMacs are more environment friendly compared to old Macs. White plastic material used in old Macs is replaced with anodized aluminum and glass which are very eco friendly and easy to recycle.

There is no doubt that Apple is in top gear these days with the next generation products like iPhone, iPod and iMac. All these products are setting new standards in their respective category and providing best user experience.

  ^{Side view  of iMac: Images courtesy Apple.}

^{20 inch and 24 inch iMacs front view : Images courtesy Apple}

^{Back view of iMac: Images courtesy Apple.}

^{All new stylish aluminum casing keyboard: Images courtesy Apple}

^{Sockets of iMac to plug-in speakers, USB devices, etc.: Images courtesy Apple}

Firefox Tip - How to Open Accidentally Closed Browser Tabs

The biggest problem with tabbed user interface of Firefox browser is accidentally closing the tabs.  Most of users close the tabs accidentally when they switch between them.  

Luckily Firefox has a nice feature which provides solution to this problem. You can re-open the recently closed tabs by navigating through the menu History-->Recently Closed Tabs.

Share your Firefox tips through comments

Amazing High Resolution Free Wallpaper for Your Computers, iPODs, iPhones, HDTVs and PSPs

InterfaceLift has an attractive collection of wallpapers for the devices ranging from iPODs to Computers.

Around 1,314 wallpapers available to freely download and every day new wallpapers are being added to the list. The wallpapers can be download in different sizes which include virtually all the possible resolutions supported by Windows, Mac OS X, Linux Operating Systems and other devices like iPODs, iPhones, HDTVs, and PSPs.

This is one of the best collection of free wallpapers which I ever seen. Browse the site and dress up your desktop beautifully.

InterfaceLift - High Resolution Wide Screen Wall Papers Thanks Geek

Recover Lost Instant Messenger Passwords - GTalk, MSN,Yahoo! or Windows Live.

MessenPass is a password recovery utility that allows you to recover password(s) of all the popular instant messengers: MSN,GTalk, AOL,Yahoo!Messenger,Windows Live Messenger.

The moment you run MessenPass, it automatically decrypts the available passwords, and displays all user name/password pairs that it found in the main window of the application.It will work even without running the messenger at that time.

Only condition is you have chosen the remember your password option in one of the above programs. And also you cannot use this utility for grabbing the passwords of other users, it works only for current logged-on user on your local computer.

This application also supports saving the usernames/passwords to a file instead of displaying on screen. If you want to save to a file directly then use the following switch while launching

/stext <Filename> 

»Download MessenPass

Hacking Gmail Account by Capturing User Cookies

Browsing Gmail on your laptop using a Wi-Fi hotspot is proved to be insecure. Robert Graham, CEO of Errata security, demonstrated how easily this can be done.

During the Black Hat 2007 security convention held at Las Vegas, Graham did a live demonstration on a journalist in the audience. This was done by capturing cookies, then cloning them into his browser. The victim was using a typical unprotected Wi-Fi Hotspot and his Gmail account popped on the large projection screen for 500 audience members to see.

With the help of Ferret application first he grabs cookies and session IDs of the target system. Then he clones the captured cookies and session IDs on his system with the help of Hamster application. Once the identity is cloned, Graham is able to jump on to online services like Gmail with full access to read and send email on behalf of the victim.

Robert would likely to make the attack tools publicly available via the company's website for anyone to download.

This type of attacks can hijack sessions in almost any cookie-based web application like Microsoft's Hotmail,Yahoo Mail and other social networking sites running on HTTP mode. 

In order to prevent such attacks when you use email clients in a public wi-fi hotspot use https:// instead of http://. To access secured Gmail point to the URL https://mail.google.com/mail/ and for Yahoo Mail and Microsoft's Hotmail clicked secured login links displayed in the login page.

Read more about this from Robert blog Errata Security: SideJacking with Hamster

How To Uninstall Firefox Completely And Remove All Traces Of The Application

Couple of days ago Firefox released security updates (version 2.0.0.6) and my browser upgraded to to the latest version through auto updates. When the Firefox browser upgraded to the latest version my favorite Firefox add-ons firebug, fireuploader and AdSense Tracker stopped working.

As most of my web development and blogging activities are depending on these add-ons, I struggled a lot to work without the add-ons. To get my add-ons working I tried uninstalling and installing all the add-ons, but it does not help me. Then I decided to uninstall the Firefox browser through Add or Remove program and install latest version. Even this activity does not help me to get my add-ons working.

After Googling for couple of minutes I got information on how to remove Firefox application completely by removing settings associated with my profile. After that complete uninstall I was able to install a fresh copy of Firefox with all the required add-ons and all the add-ons are working properly.

Here are the steps to be followed to remove Firefox completely

1. Uninstall Firefox browser through Add/Remove Programs(Windows XP) or Programs & Features(Windows Vista)
2. Remove bookmarks and other settings of Firefox by deleting the folder \Firefox from the folders Documents and Settings\[username]\Application Data\Mozilla in Windows XP, or the \Users\[username]\AppData\Local\Mozilla and \Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\ in Windows Vista.
3. Delete the folder \Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\ (This is the place where Firefox is installed, and on most of the PC's it is installed in the path C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\)
4. The final step is to remove all registry entries of Firefox with the help of Regedit application. Launch Regedit(Start-->Run-->Regedit) and search for all the entries containing the text Firefox or Mozilla and delete them. The entries which I was able to locate and delete in my registry are

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\FirefoxHTML]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Mozilla]

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\MozillaPlugins]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Mozilla]

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\MozillaPlugins]

If you are using any other Mozilla applications make sure to  uninstall only Firefox related entries from Windows registry and installation folders.

Easily Swap Your Online Photos Between Flickr and Picasa With Migratr

Migratr is a cool little freeware Windows application that lets you bulk move your photos between different online photo services.

We all are pretty into Flickr, but Flickr's free account only serves up 100MB of storage space. So if we want to move to the 1GB pastures of an integrated Google service like Picasa Web Albums, Migratr comes very handy.

Migratr supports importing and exporting to and from Flickr, 23HQ, Zoomr, SmugMug, and Picasa. The best feature of this application is to preserve meta data associated with the pictures while swapping from one service to another. It preserves each photo's title, description, tags, and albums.

The cool thing about Migratr is that you don't have to use it to just "migrate" photos. It also works splendidly as a simple downloading and uploading tool for any of the supported photo-sharing services. To use it as a local uploading tool, simply skip to step 4, select your photo service, then pick the local directory full of images you want to upload, and you're good to go.

»Download Migratr  »Migratr Forums

Are You Bored With Window's Disk Defragmenter Application? Then Try Rich JkDefrag GUI Application

JkDefrag GUI is an advanced hard drive defragmentation application that provides provides graphical user interface for the open source command line application JkDefrag. JkDefrag is a solid and powerful program which out performed all the free defragmentation applications with loads of rich functionality. JkDefrag comes with many features which are very innovative like screen saver user interface and space hogging files. The list of features of the application are

1. You can schedule defragmentation on various events like on idle time, on startup, once-only, daily, weekly or monthly .
2. You can easily launch defrag operations or combinations of operations such as analysis, defragmentation, fast optimization, forcing files together, moving to the end of the disk, sorting files by name, size and other parameters
3. You can defrag system files by scheduling the operation on reboot
4. The Screen saver interface launches the defrag operation in the background during the system idle times when normally screen saver would run
5. Application is highly configurable with various options like defragmentation speed, disks to defrag, and percent of free hard disk  space to free at the beginning of the disk, folders or types of files that you want to defrag
6. At any moment application can be safely stopped without causing any problem to the file system. Even though this is not a rich feature of the application, but it is worth to know  that JkDefrag uses Microsoft's standard defragmentation API library and it is extremely safe.

For non-techies

Defragmentation is a process that reduces the amount of fragmentation in file system of your computer. Generally files get scattered around a disk in pieces rather than existing in one contiguous because of file movements, deletions and other reasons. Defragmentation process physically reorganizing the contents of the disk to store the pieces of each file together and contiguously. When a file content is arranged contiguously speed of data access and retrieval increases.

Beautiful User Interface Pictures of Next Version of Windows Operating System - Vienna

If you are curious to know how next version of windows operating system is going to look like then read this article. Windows Vienna is the code name of next Microsoft Windows operating system which is expected to be available by the end of 2009. Here are the few screen shots released by osbeta.org.