Save photos from Orkut albums!!!

Orkut, one of the best social networking sites has become more concerned about the security issues on its website. Because of this, it brought many restrictions in viewing the albums and scrapbooks. Now, it has even restricted the users to save photos from their friend’s albums. I was really fed up with this move by orkut as I was unable to save few of my childhood snaps from my friend’s album. Orkut gave me no other choice than to follow this procedure. This trick is done using Firefox.
Go to your friend’s album and view the snap which you want to save to your computer. Then in the menu bar, click Tools and then click Page Info. In the newly opened window, select the Media tab and there you will be see a list of URL’s of the images available on the page you are viewing. In that select the URL of the photo you want to download and then click Save as to save the snap to your computer. That’s it. You have successfully saved the photo to your computer.

P.S : This trick is only for those who are desperate to get the snaps from their buddy’s album. Am not responsible if this trick was used for bad cause.

Update : Simplest trick for saving orkut photos in here

Useful shortcut keys for Windows Media Player

When we are interestingly watching a movie in windows media player, a slight movement of the mouse cursor would make the menu bar appear on the screen thereby creating disturbances. So, to avoid such disturbances and also perform some useful tasks, you can make use of the shortcut keys available in windows media player. Here is a list of useful shortcut keys in windows media player.
ALT + 1 – 50:50 Zoom.
ALT + 2 - Zoom to 100 percent.
ALT +3 – Zoom to 200 percent.
ALT + ENTER – Full Screen.
ALT + F – Go to Windows media player File Menu.
ALT + T – Go to Tools menu.
ALT + P - Go to Play menu.
CTRL + 1 – Switch to default mode from skin mode.
CTRL + 2 – Switch to Skin mode from Default mode.
CTRL + B – Play the previous file.
CTRL + F – Play the next file.
CTRL + P – Play/Pause the current file.
CTRL + SHIFT + B – Rewind a file.
CTRL + SHIFT + F – Fast forward a file.
CTRL + SHIFT + S – Slowdown the track speed.
CTRL + SHIFT + G – Speedup the track speed.
CTRL + SHIFT + N - Play the track at normal speed.
F7 – Mute.
F8 - Reduce the volume.
F9 – Increase the volume.

Top 5 computer problems

If you have a PC, then you have most likely suffered from computer problems. Most people have accepted that there PC will eventually crash due to a virus or some massive error. However this is a myth. Your PC is built to last more than a decade. However you must keep well tuned for it to make its third birthday. Nevertheless, most people would rather buy a shiny new PC rather than spend an hour trying to fix computer problems on there 2 year lap top or desktop. After another two year after their purchase lack of maintenance will cause their new PC to lose its performance speed. Whats next you guess, $3000 Windows Vista Ready PC. This is known as the consumer vicious cycle.

Why have does your computer have problems?

Well, the biggest problem that your computer has is its owner. More than 80% of computer problems stem from neglecting to perform simple maintenance task such as cleaning your registry, emptying your cache files and updating software regularly. If these task a perform diligently. You would be reading this article from a five year old machine running on Windows 98 operating system. So, lets take a look at the top five computer problems and how to avoid them.

1. Computer's performance has slowed.

This is the number one complaint from most users. There are several reason why this has occurred. However, most can attributed to lack of maintenance. Fragmented data, corrupted registry, spyware, and load of unnecessary programs and services running can all eat away at your PC speed and performance. Manage your programs and cleaning your registry would easily award you a 30% gain in performance speed. Check out The 4 ways to speed up my computer 

2. Lockup, freezes, and blue screens of death.

This is a another common computer problem. However, this particular issue is a bit more serious; therefore, it needs a few diagnostic steps. In most cases this problems are caused by spyware. To avoid this problem update your anti-spyware program daily. Having the most up to date signatures will help you avoid having a serious spyware problem. However, if you have concluded that your PC is spyware free. You should update your hardware drivers. The computer cannot communicate with various hardware components without an up to date driver. When it cannot find a driver, the CPU locks up. Also, increasing your virtual memory can also help to avoid freezes. Virtual Memory will allow to you get more use out your computer's RAM. Check the resource box for more info on the subject.

3. The computer spontaneously reboots or turn itself off.

This computer problem can be usually attributed to a hardware issue. Usually its the power supply is dying or in most cases a dirty or defective cooling fan. The computer trying to cool itself by automatically switching off. So, if you feel a bit of extra heat coming out the computer. Clean the fan and make sure it running properly. If your fan is functional, check your power supply. Also, you will be surprised how many people fail to make sure the cables are attached tightly. This be the cause of this particular computer problem

4. Strange noises and vibrations.

This is almost totally a hardware issue. You computer is made up of thousands of parts. Its not unheard of that one of them can become unhinged. Overheating can cause expansion of wires and melt some sensitive. High pitch noises such as squealing or whining sounds can be cause electronic components. Whatever the reason, you conduct a small investigation. Remove the case and run the computer to discover the origin of the computer problem. If its not a simple matter such as a loose wire or fan issue, it may be time to call a computer tech.

5. Your home page, default search engine, or web browser has changed itself.

This is also known as "high-jacking". Spyware has been installed on your computer via social networking or from email link. This action has allowed spyware to install a java script into your web browser. The spyware then sends a message to your browser to change your user settings. For example change your home page to another web page.

As you have discovered from reading the article, the most common computer problems can be handle quite easily by simple maintenance of your PC. Next time you are suffering from computer problems, take a few minutes to run some diagnostic test before rushing out to computer technical center claiming your PC is broken. What all you need to do was just make sure it was plugged in. 

Useful Google tips - 2

I have posted some useful google tips in my blog already. You can very well find it out here. Since i was bored to type, dint continue with it and now i thought of continuing it. So, here are the other useful google tips.

Get your day's schedule in Mobile
For this, you have to set up your mobile with google calendar. This can be found under Settings -> Mobile. Once you have set your mobile, just send a message "day" to the number 48368 and you will be notified with your day's schedule.

More Reading Space
If you feel the left sidebar of gmail annoying or feel like need space, just press the U key and you will see the sidebar removed. To bring back the sidebar on, just press the U key again.

Send EXE files
Google has always been concerned about protecting its users computer from viruses. Sometimes this cautionary approach of google surely annoys us especially if we want to mail a friend some .exe files, .dll files etc. Even if we zip it and send google finds it out. To avoid this, just change the extension of the filename to something like .txt, attach and send the file. And ask your email receiver to change it back to .exe or whatever after downloading the attachment.

Search your emails
With a huge mail space provided by Gmail, a lots of email gets cluttered in our inbox and if we want a specific email to look up on, then you can use the search option in gmail. You can narrow down your search by specifying "to:, from:, subject:" etc. And also using "labels:, after:, before: " if you want to search between certain dates.

Google presentations
If you work on presentations in Google docs, then you can directly publish it on webpages using the code generated to embed in the webpage. You can also save it as a pdf file to send it to others.

How much do you read?
Are you having the habit of reading news from RSS? Then find out how much you have read with the help of Google Reader which provides info on RSS subscriptions, what all you have read, shared, emailed etc.

Advanced Search
Google's advanced search spells out all operators, wildcards, restrictions and more you can use while searching.

Alright, hope this is enough for now. Just few tips remaining and i'll post them later. If you want some other Gmail Tips, check it out here.

Install FIREFOX 2 addons in FIREFOX 3 RC1

I was very bored at home and thought of trying something different in my computer. So, i installed windows xp in VMWare workstation and started to work on it. For browsing the internet, i installed Firefox 3 RC1 and wanted to install one of my favourite addon. But wat i found was " add on incompatible" notification from firefox. So, i searched for ways to install add ons in firefox 3 and this is wat i could find.

• Type about:config into Firefox's address bar and click the "I'll be careful, I promise!" button.
• Right-click anywhere. Choose New>Boolean. Make the name of your new config value extensions.checkCompatibility and set it to false.
• Make another new boolean pair called extensions.checkUpdateSecurity and set the value to false.
• Restart Firefox.

But still, the addons page dint show me the option of " add to firefox". So, i sorted out another way to install the addons. After making the above changes to your firefox,do the following

• go to the addons page in internet explorer or any other browser and then download the required firefox addon. You will download a .xpi file.
• Now open Firefox 3 and go to Tools > Add ons. And then drag and drop the downloaded .xpi file into the Addon window and your addon should now get installed.

P.S : The firefox add on window will show you a notification to enable the addon compatability checking. do not enable it else you may not be able to install the addon.

If you are in linux, try to download the addon with some other browser.

Useful Gmail Tips

Gmail is one of the most widely used email services around the globe. Though, widely used most of its features are unknown to everyone. Here are some of the tips for better gmailing. :)

If you have any pdf or word documents in your attachments it can be immediately viewed in google docs rather than downloading and opening with the specific application

If u wanna open emails in new window, just click "new window" found at the top right corner.

The mail composition box can be easily resized for gmail using this firefox addon.

Gmail has colored labels so you can better organize your email. Just click on the color swatch beside each label to assign a color. Colored labels only works with the latest version of Gmail and is currently available for Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2.

If gmail is banned at any place it can still be accessed using any of these links
http://mail.google.com, https://mail.google.com, http://www.gmail.com, https://www.gmail.com, http://gmail.com, https://gmail.com, or http://googlemail.com
or the work place email client can be easily configured to access gmail. Check this link for configuring the email client.
or you can use google desktop to access gmail

If you wish to compose new emails in new windows then hold on "shift" key while you click on "compose mail" button. Care should be taken that the popping out window is not blocked by the browser.

To delete mails quickly select the emails to be deleted and press " shift + 3" and the selected mails would be moved to trash. The same could be done while reading a particular mail.

Access upto five different email accounts using MAIL FETCHER in gmail. For more inputs about mail fetcher check out this link.

Get email alerts on your cellphone. For this your cell phone must support some basic requirements. Check here on how to set up this facility.

Google sync calendar can be used to sync gmail calendar with Microsoft outlook calendar. Know about it more in here.