Daily Gyan

TxtB.in Helps You Twitter More Than 140 Characters [Daily WebApp]

noreply@blogger.com (Anoop Engineer) — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 15:37:00 +0000

We gyanis really love simple web applications. Applications that does one thing and does it well.

In today’s Daily WebApp, we introduce you to one such application - TxtB.in.

TxtB.in allows you to share text data with anyone in the world in two steps. You enter the text into the text field and hit the save txt button. It then gives you a shortened URL that you can share with your friends to read this text.

Advantages? Many.

No user registration required.
Simple user interface.
No limitation to the text size.
Very short URL to the entered text. Very much suitable for sites like Twitter.
Creates easy to remember URLs. You just need to remember the ending 2 alphabets to point your friend to the page you created (provided that you can remember the starting txtb.in part).

Some features that we would like to see:

Password protection of the created webpage.
Ability to delete a page.
Direct posting to Twitter, FriendFeed etc.

This might become a killer utility tool among Twitter fans. Twitter limits each post to 140 characters. So if you want to create a twitter post having greater than 140 characters, create a page in txtb.in and tweet the newly created shortened URL instead.

Can think of any other uses of this Web App? Tell us in the comments.

TxtB.in

Get Precise Text Selection In Firefox By Enabling the Caret [Firefox Gyan]

noreply@blogger.com (Anoop Engineer) — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 13:58:00 +0000

One of the most prominent Firefox annoyances often happens when you try to select a portion of text. Most of the time, some unwanted portion of adjacent text also gets selected, making you start the selection process again.

What many do not know is that you can enable Word or Notepad style mouse caret (the vertical blinking mouse cursor) in Firefox, using which more precise selection of text can be done.

Just hit F7 button while in Firefox and it'll ask you whether you want to enable caret mode. Select yes and you get a nice blinking cursor on screen. Using this cursor you can select text the traditional way - click and drag with mouse, arrow keys, Ctrl + arrow keys to highlight words etc.

Set Private/Igcognito Mode As Default In Firefox, IE8 and Chrome

noreply@blogger.com (Anoop Engineer) — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 17:38:00 +0000

All modern web browsers support what is called private browsing mode or incognito mode, where the browser leaves no trace of your browsing history behind in the computer.

Firefox have stated supporting private mode with the 3.1 beta version about which you can read in detail here.

Google Chrome likes to call this feature as Incognito mode and you can start a new incognito session by using the key combination Ctrl + Shift + N.

IE8 likes to call it InPrivate Browsing and you start a new session just like in Chrome.

Today’s post is for those paranoids who wish to always run their browsers in private mode making their web browsing untraceable at all time.

Make Firefox Always Start In Private Mode

Start Firefox 3.1.
Type in about:config and hit enter. Click I’ll be careful button.
Type in browser.privatebrowsing.autostart into the filter box.
Double click on it to change its value to true.

This sets private mode as the default mode for Firefox.

Make Google Chrome Always Start In Incognito Mode

This involves changing the shortcut that you use to launch Google Chrome. Right click the shortcut and select properties (or read about the easy way of opening the properties dialog).

Append –-incognito to the end of the target, so that it looks like this:

Always use this launcher to start the Google Chrome session.

Set InPrivate Browsing As The Default Mode in IE8

The procedure is similar to the Google Chrome method, where you edit the properties of the shortcut that you use to launch Internet Explorer 8.

Right click the shortcut and select properties. Edit the Target field and append the string –private to it.

Always use this shortcut to start IE8.

How To Sync Your Windows Live Writer Drafts Between Two Computers

noreply@blogger.com (Anoop Engineer) — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 12:18:00 +0000

WLW is ‘the tool’ of blogging.

However, if you are a blogger and if you often blog from multiple computers, you might have wished at least once that WLW provided some built-in mechanism to synchronize your drafts between different installations.

It would have been a nice feature if you could start a blog post from your office PC and finish it off from your home laptop, without the hassles of saving and sending the unfinished post to your personal mail id, saving the draft to Google Docs etc. Yes this is indeed possible. Just read along.

Windows Live Writer stores all the drafts in My Documents\My Weblog Posts\Drafts folder. If you open this folder, you can see a number of .wpost files, named after the title of your draft posts. If somehow you are able to synchronize the Drafts folder between two computers, then you are essentially syncing two installations of Windows Live Writer.

You can use your favorite desktop sync tool to achieve this. We used Syncplicity. Syncplicity has a free version with a storage limit of 2 GB and an excellent Windows client which pretty much did the job for us.

In all the computers that you blog from, install the Syncplicity client. Add the My Documents\My Weblog Posts\Drafts folder to the list of folders to be synced.

That’s it. Now each time you make a draft post, it will be available across your computers.

Install 64 bit Flash Player Plugin For Firefox In Ubuntu Linux [HowTo]

noreply@blogger.com (Anoop Engineer) — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 19:17:00 +0000

Adobe has released the much requested flash plugin that runs natively in 64 bit Linux machines.

This means that if you are having a 64 bit processor and a 64 bit Linux distribution, then you don’t have to go the roundabout way of installing a 32 bit flash player with nspluginwrapper anymore, to get things working.

Though the title says Ubuntu, the following steps are applicable for all Linux distributions:

First, remove any flash plugins that you have installed. This includes any 32 bit adobe flash plugin or other open source plugins like Gnash.
Close Firefox and run the following command from a terminal:
wget http://download.macromedia.com/pub/labs/flashplayer10/libflashplayer-10.0.d20.7.linux-x86_64.so.tar.gz && ( [ -d ~/.mozilla/plugins ] || mkdir ~/.mozilla/plugins ) && tar zxvf libflashplayer*.tar.gz -C ~/.mozilla/plugins
Open firefox. Type about:plugins into the address bar and see the details of the plugin.

Note that the plugin is currently in alpha stage and might be a bit buggy. The adobe flash player 10 FAQ page says that the plugin has been tested on Ubuntu 8 and OpenSUSE 11 with Firefox 3 browser.

Can anyone here post their 64 bit flash plugin experience in other distributions like Fedora, Slackware etc?

How To Clean Up Your Firefox Right Click Context Menu [Firefox Gyan]

noreply@blogger.com (Anoop Engineer) — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 08:23:00 +0000

The right click context menu of any average Joe Firefox user, tend to accumulate gunk as the number of extensions installed increases.

Almost every extension adds an entry into the contextual menu, due to which the number of entries in the right click menu grows alarmingly huge. Since it is tedious to find a particular menu entry for a long list of entries, many users simply ignore the right click menu and get things done mainly from the tool bar menus.

In today’s Firefox Gyan, we show you how to clean up this right click menu, compact it, make it slim and trim and above all, how to make it much more useful.

Say hello to the Firefox extension Menu Editor – a perfect solution for a messy context menu. This extension allows you to remove and rearrange the entries in the Firefox’s right click context menu. You can simply check off all those menu entries that you do not wish to be displayed and with a bit of experimentation and tweaking, you can produce a simple, clean and uncluttered context menu.

Download Menu Editor

The Highly Secretive Google Share Gadget And How You Can Use It In Your Blog

noreply@blogger.com (Anoop Engineer) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 04:32:00 +0000

If you have seen any page in Google Knol, like this one, then you would have noticed a Share widget in it. It is based on the Google Share widget, a service which Google doesn't like to talk much about. The home page of the widget doesn’t provide much information and Google doesn’t seem to be too interested in promoting it either.

We did some testing on this share gadget and found it to be highly usable and quite addictive. As a matter of fact, you don’t need to have even a Google account to use this widget which is a great advantage over the similar, competing gadget ShareThis, where you need to register to use it in your blog. Using this share widget, you can add a web page to your Google Shared stuff page, email the entire page or just its link to your friends, and bookmark the page in all social networking sites like delicious, digg, reddit, facebook etc.

The Google share gadget can be added to your blog or website quite easily. Just copy and past the following code where you want the link to appear. It adds a ‘Share this post’ link, which on clicking will display the Google Share Widget page.

<a href="#" onclick="var a=document,b=a.createElement('script'),w=window,g={};g.altWindow=w.open('','_blank','height=370px,width=720px,toolbar=no,directories=no,status=no,menubar=no,scrollbars=no,resizable=no');setTimeout(function(){g.altWindow.focus()},1000);function f(o){try{var d=new google.share.EmailWidget(g);d.display()}catch(e){if(o>20)return;setTimeout(function(){f(o+1)},o<10?1<<o:1000)}};b.src='<a href="http://www.google.com/s2/sharing/js?script=socialsharing%27;a.body.appendChild%28b%29;f%280%29%22">http://www.google.com/s2/sharing/js?script=socialsharing';a.body.appendChild(b);f(0)"</a>>Share this post</a>

To spice up the link, you can use some images like this one, which has become a de-facto symbol for a share gadget. Try it out by clicking the below share gadget.

Unlock All Protected & Hidden Features In Windows 7 With Blue Badge

noreply@blogger.com (Anoop Engineer) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 01:47:00 +0000

Windows 7 demoed in the PDC ‘08 contains some hidden features that are protected using special algorithms.

These include features like desktop slideshow from files and RSS feeds and the touch based panning and gestures feature. Windows 7 (or rather the build used for PDC ‘08 - Windows 7 PDC ‘08 build (6801))will enable this feature only if you login as a permanent Microsoft employee username using a Microsoft domain name.

Windows hacker Rafael Rivera, famous for his uxtheme patch, was quick enough to hack out a patch each time a new feature was discovered. The patch enabled one feature at a time.

Now he have gone ahead and made a small utility – Blue Badge that enables all hidden features in Windows 7, known to date. Blue Badge is currently available only for x86 machines. Be sure to backup the following files before you run this utility as it does not automatically backup the files it patches.

\Windows\Explorer.exe
\Windows\System32\wisptis.exe
\Windows\System32\ieframe.dll
\Windows\System32\shell32.dll
\Windows\System32\stobject.dll
\Windows\System32\TabletPC.cpl
\Windows\System32\themecpl.dll
\Windows\System32\themeui.dll
\Windows\System32\powercfg.cpl

Download Blue Badge

via Rivera’s Blog

Get Windows 7 Calculator In Vista

noreply@blogger.com (Anoop Engineer) — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 12:46:00 +0000

Windows 7 has introduced a completely revamped Calculator program (calc.exe) that has created enough oohs and aahs among users.

Lifehacker has done a great screenshot tour of the new calculator, that you can see here.

Two new modes got introduced in this version of calculator – statistics and programmer. There are also a number of ‘templates’ that are built-in, using which you can do your normal, everyday calculations like unit conversion, finding gas mileage, wage calculation, mortgage and lease payments more easily.

Vista users who want to try out this new calculator can download this zip file, extract it to any location and run the calc.exe file. If you wish to replace the existing calc.exe, first make a backup of C:\Windows\System32\calc.exe and replace it with the one in the archive. Similarly, backup C:Windows\System32\en-US\calc.exe.mui and replace it with the one in the archive.

Download Windows 7 Calculator For Vista

5 Uses Of Gmail Other Than Emailing

noreply@blogger.com (Anoop Engineer) — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 05:52:00 +0000

Of course you use Gmail. But for email, right? Did you know that you can use Gmail for a lot many other things too?

1. Use Gmail As A Free Online File Format Converter

If you want to convert any office document to HTML format, think of nothing other than Gmail.
You don’t have to install third-party application like PDF2HTML or Adobe Acrobat for this. You can convert doc, xls, ppt, rtf, pdf files and the new Microsoft Office 2007 formats like docx, xlsx and pptx to HTML, absolutely free by using Gmail.
Just attach the document to a mail and send it to yourself. When you receive the mail open it and click “View as HTML”.

2. Use Gmail As An MP3 Player

If you want to try out a new audio player, try Gmail!
Send an mp3 file to yourself and see that Gmail contains an option to play it. Clicking it will open a flash MP3 player using which you can play the song without downloading it.

3. Use Gmail As Your OpenID

You can use your Google account username and password to login at a number of sites like Zoho and Plaxo. But what about the sites that accepts only a URL as an OpenID field?
Welcome to openid-provider.appspot.com. This site, built on Google App Engine, allows you to create a OpenID URL from your Google Account Credentials. Login with your Gmail username and password and the site will provide you a URL like http://openid-provider.appspot.com/<username>, which you can use on regular OpenID accepting sites.

4. Use Gmail As Your Online Storage

Gmail provides a virtually unlimited online space that normal users find impossible to fill up with emails alone. So why not use the remaining space as your personal online file storage area?
GMail Drive is a shell extension for Windows that adds the Gmail storage as a disk in My Computer. All operations that you normally do with a regular hard drive – copy, paste, drag and drop, works for Gmail drive too. Just that the data is not residing in your computer but high up in Google clouds.
Linux users can try out GmailFS which provides similar functionality as GMail Drive in windows. Using this tool, you can mount your Gmail storage space as a file system and transfer files between them just like any other disks.

5. Use Gmail To Play Snakey

If all that emails are making you bored, try the game that comes packed with Gmail.
Gmail labs contains a game – Old Snakey, that you first need to enable from the settings pane in order to play. Go to Gmail settings –> Labs and set the Old Snakey radio button to enabled. Now, return back to inbox and hit the ‘&’ key to start the game.

Bonus Tip: Convert A List of URLs Into Clickable Links

Have a list of URLs in plain text (like this one) that you would like to convert into HTML clickable links?
Just email that list to your Gmail id. Open the email and you can see that Gmail has converted all the URLs to links. Copy that HTML and paste anywhere, like into an excel sheet.

Do you know of any other interesting uses for Gmail? Tell us in the comments.

Create an iPhone Version Of Your Blog In Minutes With InterSquash

noreply@blogger.com (Anoop Engineer) — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 03:44:00 +0000

InterSquash is a new web application that lets you iPhone-ize any website or blog that has an RSS feed.

Visit InterSquash, provide your feed URL, upload an optional 57 x 57 pixel homepage icon and it churns out a short JavaScript snippet that you need to place anywhere between <head> and </head> of your site. The JavaScript detects whether the browser is an iPhone or iPhone touch browser and redirect such users to an IPhone-ized version of your site hosted at InterSquash.

Watch this video made by the creator of this web app - Jon Wheatley

InterSquash | from yesthat.com

Automatically Clear Firefox Search Bar After Each Search [Firefox Privacy]

noreply@blogger.com (Anoop Engineer) — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 19:07:00 +0000

Firefox has a habit of leaving your last search query in the search bar openly visible to all onlookers and snoopers, which many considers as an intrusion into their privacy.

In today’s Firefox Gyan, we show you how you can automatically clear out a query from the Firefox’s search bar on pressing enter.

Searchbar Autosizer was intended as an extension that could resize your search bar dynamically as you type so that the search bar can be reduced to a very small size when not being used. However the feature that we are interested in this post is its ability to clear the search bar on submitting a search query.

Steps to follow:

Install Searchbar Autosizer from Mozilla addons site.
Restart Firefox.
Select Tools –> Addons. Select Searchbar Autosizer and hit Options.
Select Advanced button. Ensure that the “Empty searchbar when a query is submitted” is checked.
Click OK.

If you find that the search bar is too small after installing this addon, you can change the default size from the Advanced screen. From now on, any search query entered into the search bar will be cleared when you hit enter.

Bonus tip: If going through all the above screens and dialogs seems to much pain, use the about:config way. To enable auto clearing of search bar set browser.search.cleanOnSubmit to true. To disable this, set its value to false.

Searchbar Autosizer

Google Chrome To Get A New Bookmark Manager

noreply@blogger.com (Anoop Engineer) — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 18:22:00 +0000

Latest Chromium builds have undergone a major overhaul in the bookmark management section and these changes can be soon expected to be brought into Google Chrome.

The most notable change is the introduction of a bookmark manager (which looks very much similar to the Firefox bookmarks library).

Chromium also get the capability to Import from HTML and export to HTML formats. It can now import your bookmarks in Google Bookmarks. Currently, Chromium bookmarks are not synchronized with the Google Bookmarks after an import.

You can get the latest Chromium builds here.

[via]

Read Your Emails In Any RSS Reader With MailOnFeed

noreply@blogger.com (Anoop Engineer) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 18:58:00 +0000

MailOnFeed is a free service that converts your emails into RSS feeds that can be then be read in your favorite feed reader like Google Reader or Bloglines.

MailOnFeed currently supports only IMAP accounts, though POP3 and SSL Feed support are expected to be implemented soon.

The service is still in beta phase and users are encouraged to file a bug report if they found one.

Now let’s see how one can benefit from such a tool:

1. If Gmail is blocked in your office, then you can convert the mail to an RSS feed so that you can read the mails at work. Those who want a better way to unblock Gmail at work can visit this page.

2. If you are a frequent user of a RSS reader, then it makes sense to consolidate all your to-be-read data into a single application. This will avoid continuous switching between your email client and RSS reader.

Can think of any other scenarios where this will help you? Share it in the comments.

MailOnFeed

Why Linux Is Going To Fail

noreply@blogger.com (Anoop Engineer) — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 15:36:00 +0000

My first attempt at a cartoon. Toondoo is great. Check it out.

Click on the image to view a large picture.

Can’t Stop Yourself From Surfing The Web? Try LeechBlock.

noreply@blogger.com (Anoop Engineer) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 17:32:00 +0000

If those endless web browsing sessions are affecting your productivity, if your boss is expecting a document from you before catching a flight and if you are still at Google Reader, it is time to install LeechBlock.

LeechBlock is a Firefox extension that you can get here (direct download link). After installation, you need to add names of sites that tend to waste your time mostly to the LeechBlock options pane (Tools –> LeechBlock –> Options). You can also configure the time during which a particular site need to be blocked. If you prefer not to visit YouTube.com during your office hours from 9AM – 6PM, you can configure that here.

Now, enable LeechBlock by selecting Tools –> LeechBlock –> Lockdown. Any further attempts to access a blocked site will result in this page:

If you are an extreme web junkie with compulsive browsing syndrome, you might disable LeechBlock from the options pane, disable the extension or even uninstall it. To prevent you from doing this, LeechBlock comes with built-in remedial measures. Go to the Options pane and tick the “Prevent access to options for this block set at times when these sites are blocked.” checkbox. You can also set a password to enable access to the LeechBlock options from the General tab. General tab also contains two boxes that you can check to disable the uninstall and disable extension buttons.

LeechBlock Addons Page | Developer site

10 Online Photo Editors That You Definitely Need to Bookmark

noreply@blogger.com (Anoop Engineer) — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 16:29:00 +0000

Online image editors are in a rage these days. Everyday, you hear about the release of a new online photo editor that claims to be the next big thing.

From among the great number of online editors, we have hand picked some of the best ones that we found to be are noteworthy. With each site description, we have tried to tell you how or what feature of the editor forced us to include it in the list.

To bookmark this page in delicious, you can use this link.

1. Picnik

Picnik seems to be the most popular online image editor in this list. The interface of the site is beautiful, responsive and can put many desktop applications to shame. You don’t need to know anything about photo editing to use Picnik. Most noteworthy feature is its integration with other Web2.0 services. You can pull photos directly from most photo sharing sites such as Flickr, Picasa Web Albums, Facebook, Photobucket and pretty much provide any image URL to start editing it.

Picnik.com | Bookmark on delicious

2. Splashup

Splashup, earlier known as Fauxto, is a web based photo editor that looks just like a desktop application. Users coming from Photoshop should feel right at home with this editor.

You can open files from your computer or from all popular photo sharing sites. You can open multiple images in a tabbed environment. It supports the concept of layers, like Gimp and Photoshop. Splashup also has the ability to import images from your webcam.

Splashup.com | Bookmark on delicious

3. Pixlr

Relatively new into the arena, but have made quite a big fan fare in a short time. Pixlr described as Photoshop in a browser, continues to amaze many.

It lacks features like importing from other sites like flickr, but you can still open an image by specifying its URL.

Pixlr.com | Bookmark on delicious

4. Snipshot

Unlike the three editors mentioned above, Snipshot is not a flash based editor. It’s a highly responsive, Ajax powered image editor. So, this should be your choice if stranded in a computer having no flash plugins. You can import photos stored in your computer or from the web by mentioning its address. You can also import photos from flickr using a bookmarklet. Snipshot allows you to export and save your photos in a number of different formats - JPG, PNG, TIF, BMP and even PDF and Photoshop PSD.

Snipshot.com | Bookmark on delicious

5. Pixenate

Pixenate, formerly called PXN8 is a simple but intuitive application. With a straight forward interface, it lets you play with all its features relatively easy compared to others. You can edit photos stored in your computer or import from a web site and save also save the edited photo back to your flickr account.

Pixenate.com | Bookmark on delicious

6. Picture2Life

Picture2life is just another online image editor. But what makes it stand apart is the radical UI design for an image editor. Unlike all classical picture editors with toolboxes and a number of buttons, Picture2life has a descriptive side panel stacked into four vertical tabs – Quick Fixes, One Clicks, All and Featured. Selecting any tab replaces the sidebar with a new sidebar that contains a number of options like Brightness, Color, Contrast etc. But, instead of showing them as buttons, it takes your picture and shows you how the picture will look if the effect is applied and uses this as thumbnails for the buttons. Pretty useful for beginners who don’t know the difference between stuff like hue and saturation (and that includes us).

Picture2life.com | Bookmark on delicious

7. LunaPic

LunaPic isn’t as jazzy as the other image editors in this list. However, this one provides ability to convert your images to animated GIF files, which differentiates it from others. There are a couple of ready made fancy animation effects, that you can apply to your photo. This is an apt tool for creating your social network profile image – for Facebook, MySpace etc.

LunaPic.com | Bookmark on delicious

8. FotoFlexer

Want to have a Picasa running in your browser? Try FotoFlexer. It describes itself as the most powerful online digital photo editor in existence. If you are searching for a feature in online picture editors, then FotoFlexer has it.

FotoFlexer.com | Bookmark on delicious

9. Adobe Photoshop Express

If it’s from Adobe, it’s gonna be big. Photoshop express, apart from being an image editor, also acts as a photo organizer and online photo storage. It provides up to 2 GB of online space and ability to create and share albums which distinguishes it from other online image editors.

www.photoshop.com/express/ | Bookmark on delicious

10. Aviary

Aviary is a suite of 4 tools among which Phoenix – an online image editor is the one which we are interested right now. Phoenix is a very powerful image editor that can be said as a true competitor for Photoshop, just that this one runs from a browser. The Phoenix page contains many videos on using it to produce some stunning photo effects.

A.viary.com | Bookmark on delicious

Did we miss anyone important? What is your favorite online image editor? Tell us in the comments.

Firefox Gets Private Browsing Mode

noreply@blogger.com (Anoop Engineer) — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 18:44:00 +0000

Private browsing comes to Firefox 3.

Private browsing mode aka porn mode is a feature that almost all modern browsers like IE8 and Google Chrome supports. In private browsing mode, the browser doesn’t store any information about the user’s session in the computer. The cache, history, text entered into text boxes are all gone the instant you close the browser. Though feared to be abused for porn surfing, the private browsing has many real life, valuable uses like checking out your banking site from an internet cafe, shopping for surprise gifts for your loved ones from a family computer etc. These are the various use cases that Mozilla wiki predicts for the private browsing mode:

Many people believe that the primary use case for private browsing mode is viewing pornography. While viewing pornography may be a popular use case due to the nature of content on the Web, assuming that this is the only reason that users need private browsing trivializes the overall feature. For instance, users may wish to begin a private browsing session to research a medical condition, or plan a surprise vacation or birthday party for a loved one. Use cases will range from users cheating on their spouse, to users buying engagement rings. Given the breadth of our user base, specific use cases are likely to be extremely varied.

Private browsing took a while to come to Firefox because of the fundamental architectural limitations of the platform. This feature has been added to the latest Firefox 3.1 nightly builds (named as MineField). Visit this link to download Firefox 3.1 nightly for Windows, Linux and Mac.

Once installed, you can start private mode by selecting Tools –>Private Browsing.

A quirk with Firefox Private Browsing is that you cannot have normal sessions and private sessions happening together. You need to close all your current tabs and windows before switching to private mode. Firefox can save all your current tabs and windows and reopen then once the private session is over.

Firefox displays this dialog box when you select Private Browsing.

On clicking Start Private Browsing, the normal tabs and windows will be closed and a new window as the one below will be shown.

The only way to identify between a normal mode window and a private browsing windows is the title text. Note that the above windows title says “Private Browsing”.

Once you are done, to return to the normal mode, select Tools –> Private Browsing. This will close the private session windows and tabs and reopen the last normal mode tabs.

If you want Firefox to always start in private mode, set the value of browser.privatebrowsing.autostart to true from about:config.

If you do not want to see the warning message on selecting Private browsing, set browser.privatebrowsing.dont_prompt_on_enter to true.

Thanks Ehsan Akhgari

Turn Your Blog Into A Tabloid [Daily Web App]

noreply@blogger.com (Anoop Engineer) — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 11:32:00 +0000

Tabbloid.com takes a RSS feed and converts it into a tabloid style, two column, ready to print PDF file. You can then schedule to periodically receive updates as a PDF file or download the current PDF file immediately.
You can add mulitple RSS feeds or URLs and have Tabbloid mash them together for you. Tabbloid describes itself as a HP hatchling project (though we are unable to find out what that means. If you know, please share it in the comments). Try it out here.
What uses can you think of such a service? Well, we can think of the following:

If you have not-so-tech-savvy parents or friends, who find RSS difficult to understand, you can have Tabbloid to mail your blogs as a PDF file to them, periodically.
Great for offline reading.
Easy to give a sample of your blog at any trade shows, conferences and events, much like a broshure.
Much better to use this for taking printouts of blogs as it uses a much compact layout and hence can save paper.

Can think of any more uses? Tell us in the comments.

Google India Official Blog Launched

noreply@blogger.com (Anoop Engineer) — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 05:00:00 +0000

Google India now has an Official Blog. Some interesting stuff from there:

Google has a lot going on in India: We have offices in four cities. We're building some new, interesting products—like Google Map Maker and many others on India Labs — for Indian users. We have great aloo parathas in our cafes. And we have the largest number of Googlers outside the United States. But ... we didn't have an official blog where we could talk about the exciting things we're working on.

Fortunately, that last one is an easy problem to solve: Today, we're delighted to announce the start of our Official Google India Blog.

Google India Official Blog | Atom Feed

Turn Google Docs Into A Distraction-Free Writing Tool

noreply@blogger.com (Anoop Engineer) — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 18:39:00 +0000

Ever wished to hide all the bells and whistles in Google Docs so that you could concentrate more on the writing part? Here is how to turn Google Docs into the ultimate distraction free writing tool.

After opening any document in Google Docs, hit Ctrl-Shift-F to go full-screen. Now, change Firefox to full screen mode by hitting F11 key.

Thanks Rael

Increase or Decrease the Playback Speed of YouTube Videos [HowTo]

noreply@blogger.com (Anoop Engineer) — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 16:04:00 +0000

Often, we wish that YouTube provided a built-in and easy way for slowing down the videos, so that we could get a better look into that dance tutorial, get a good look at the funny mallu dance or how to learn to moon walk like Michael Jackson. Also, it would have been really useful if there was a mechanism to increase the speed of video playback so that videos like this one, will steal only less time from your life.

The company called Enounce made a utility just for this purpose. The Enounce MySpeed™ Plug-In for YouTube is utility for Windows XP and Vista, which after installation, runs in your system tray. Whenever you visit a YouTube video page (in fact any page that contains a flash video), it shows a little slider using which you can change the video playback speed.

1.0 is the normal playback speed. Set the slider to anything less than 1.0 and you can slow down the video. Taking the slider above 1.0, increases the speed of video playback. A very good feature is that this utility doesn’t distort the audio even at high playback speeds. It eats less memory (about 7 Mb) and will not hog your system.

Required OS

Windows XP or Vista

Browser

Internet Explorer 6 or 7 or Firefox 2 or 3 (Google Chrome, Safari and Opera works, but is experimental).

Flash Version

Flash 9 or 10.

Price

Freeware

License

Non GPL. EULA

The Enounce MySpeed™ Plug-In for YouTube | Direct Download Link