Add Your Link Here

[ This is not a post. This is the Guide to add your link to my blog ]

This is a mutual arrangement between you and me. To be eligible to add you link here you must have a website or blog of your own ( or has control over the same ). As I said this is a mutual arrangement. When I place your link here you must be ready to place a link to my blog on your website. But if you are hosting a website for some kind of charity purpose that reaches to the needy people of the world your link will be added here without any kind of mutual arrangement.

To place your link here you have to agree to the following conditions.
* Your website does not have any adult content ( of pornographic nature )
* Your website must be a legal website
* Your website must be atleast 30 days old and should contain atleast 30 good quality entries that reflect the nature of your website or Blog
* You agree to place a link to my blog on your homepage which reads ' Million Clues ' and points to my blog ( http://www.millionclues.blogspot.com/ ). You can also use ' milliOn cluEs ' or ' MilliOn CluEs ' instead of ' Million Clues '. ( A prefered code is given below )

It is to be noted that the final decision regarding the plcement of the link will be mine and I reserve the right to modify your link ( change in position with any change of layout of my website or change of color or likewise changes ) or even remove your link without any prior notice or reason.
Also please note that your link will be removed if I find the link to my website missing on your homepage or is unsatisfactorily placed ( In either case you will be informed via email )

Please note that when I name your link it will have the first letter capitals and will be shortened so as to contain itself in a single line on my homepage. It will be placed at a suitable location on the list so that the list looks great.
No issues regarding the link will be entertained. Complaints, if any will be seriously dealt at the earliest and necessay action will be taken at the earliest. Please note that the action can be either a modification of your link as requested or removal of the same and cannot go any further.

/*--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Html Code]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*/
<a href=" http://millionclues.blogspot.com/" target="_blank" title="Blog By Balal -> Read about Technology, Computers, Gadgets, Cool Websites, Hacks, Tutorials and much more...">MilliOn CluEs</a>
/*--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------*/

I welcome your link to my website. Please send me your link. Include the name to be displayed, The website where my link is ( or will be ) displayed and your email address. You will be contacted via email at the earliest. My email address is arunbasillal@gmail.com. Feel free to write to me.
Thanking you in advance.

b.

Note : This Document is subject to change without prior notice.
First Compiled : 30 December 2006
Updated On : 06 January 2007

Terminology :
Me, Publisher - Arun Basil Lal
e-mail - arunbasillal@gmail.com
Blog - http://www.millionclues.blogspot.com/
b - Balal [ My Nickname ]
You - Anyone who reads the blog

Use Gmail with Keyboard Shortcuts

Gmail has got shortcuts in it like we have in yahoo. This feature often goes unnoticed because it is not enabled by default. ( I found it only last week ! So is my father ).

To enable shortcuts go to settings. In the general settings ( the very first page ) turn keyboard shortcuts on. Now save the settings. Back in the inbox you will find a ' > ' waiting before the last mail you read. This is the indication of which mail you are pointing to.

Here are the basic shortcuts :
While in the inbox or while reading a mail these will work. Remember while you are entering text shortcuts will be counted as text inputs.

c   - Compose
Shift + c   - Compose in a new window
j   - Older mail ( the arrow > moves down while you are in the inbox )
k   - Newer mail
enter or o   - Open mail
/   - To place the curser in the search box
u   - Back ( Like Back to Inbox or Back To Contacts )
r   - Reply
f   - Forward

gi ( g followed by i pressed in sequence )
   - Go to inbox
gd   - Go to drafts
gs   - Go to sent mail
gc   - Go to contacts

For the complete list of shortcuts see the learn more button just near the ' turn keyboard shortcut on ' option in gmail settings.

b

10 Tips for Conserving Battery of your Mobile Phone

The more smart your mobile device is, the faster your battery gets exaused. Here are some tips to conserve battery so that you can keep connecting longer.

1. Use the device only when it is needed. Browsing through the phone without a purpose can be a waste of power.
2. Do not keep the bluetooth switched on always. Bluetooth drains the battery. Use it only when needed.
3. Try to use the phone in areas with good network coverage. When the network coverage is poor the phone maintains the connection by increasing the frequency of the waves which costs more battery.For eg. You can go the the attic of your home while making calls from home. Usually at considerable heights the coverage will be more.
4. Do not let kids play games on your mobile phones. Gaming keeps the backlight lit for long duration and drains battery
5. Ni-cad batteries perform better when discharged completely ( only once in a while ) before recharge. Refer to the manuel of your device.
6. Use the specified battery and the specified charger.
7. Do not discharge the battery by any means other than the mobile device
8. Use cables to connect the mobile devices to a computer, if you have one. Using bluetooth instead can be comfortable, but bluetooth drains battery.
9. Write the messages on a PC and upload it to a mobile. This functionality is available with most of the smart phones. Doing so can be really comfortable as you dont have to keep pressing keys to type the message. This saves battery.
10. Switch off the mobile phones in restricted areas ( like inside aircrafts ).

But remember that, conservation does not mean denial of use. Still these tips can come handy when you are running out of power and does not have the scope for a reacharge.

Feedblitz For Webmasters - Let Your readers read Your own newsletter

All people connected to the internet do these things. 1. Send emails 2. Search the internet. Its only after these things pople go to read websites for informative contents in general.Most of the people first check their inbox, once they connect to the internet.

Webmasters or publishers will expect people to visit their websites. But only very few people will be really intrested in doing that daily. If one has a dial-up connection or some other narrow band connections, it will be a hard task for the readers to check your website daily for updates. Instead readers will be intrested in recieving the updated content directly delivred to them in their inbox. If you are a webpublisher or a blogger, feedblitz comes for your help.

Feedblitz ( at feedblitz.com ) is basically a free service that enables a user to subsribe to a website with a rss feed functionality or a atom feed functionality. Usually every blog or website has one or both of these. Webmasters can sign up for a free account and syndicate their website or blog. Feedblitz will give you the html code for a subscribtion applet ( like one found here ! ) which you can place on your website. Now your readers can subscribe to your website and recieve the updates to their inbox..

Feedblitz scans your rss or atom feed ( which is automatically updated as you update your website ) once a day ( for free sign-ups ) and tracks changes. The new content is sent to the readers automatically without any effort from the publisher so that the publisher can keep working on more content !
With feedblitz you can decide how much content must be delivered. I have set it to full feed so that my readers will get the full content in their inbox. You can reduce this to any number of characters if you expect your readers to come to your webite to read.

Feedblitz also offers premium services which requires you to pay a fee. With that you can customize the e-mails sent to your readers. Thanks to such quality service
b.

Note : Feedblitz is a trademark owned by it rightful owner.

Guidelines For the Safe Use of Mobile Phones

It is said that the extensive use of mobile phones can cause health realted problems. Even if it has no experimental proof or evidence, its always safe to prevent than to cure. Studies have shown negative effects on rats but it will take time to know what will be the effect on human beings. This is because it takes atleast 10 years to show some effect. Mobile phones have become so popular only in the recent days and only a few people have been using it over 5 years.

Here are some tips which when followed keeps all the negative effects to the minimum ( if it has any !)

1. Use Headsets like bluetooth headsets or handsfree headsets. Bluetooth headsets are expensive but handsfree is cheap. If you have one you can keep your mobile phone away from your body and stay protected.
2. Do not speak continuously for more than a hour even while you use headset. While you are speaking over the phone the voice is heard directly to the ears. This is not good for the ears. Take breaks between conversations. You can use the loudspeaker for long talks.
3. Its assumed that the readiation depends on the mobile phone you are using. If your phone is creating a burning sensation on your ears, try using a different mobile.
4. People with pacemakers are strictly adviced to stay away from mobile phones. Life is much important than a mobile. You can always find a landline wherever you go. If you have one do not place it in near your heart.
5. Kids Below 5 years of age must not be allowed to use mobile phones. Its believed that the readiation from mobile phones destroy the cells of the brain. For kids those cells are in the undeveloped state. So the effect will be more for kids than a grown up.
6. Do not talk with the phone when the phone is plugged in for a recharge.
7. Do not press the phone closely to your ears.
8. Do not use your mobile phone if the network coverage is too low. When the network coverage is low the phone maintains the connection by increasing the frequency of the waves.
9. Do not place the mobile phone close to your head while you sleep. Keep it at a safe distance ( in case you have an alarm ) or at a distance.
10. If you feel irritated or feel like vomitting out of use of mobile phones, seek medical advice.
11. Experts advice to use your left ear while using a mobile phone. Its said that the cells in the right part of the brain are more prone to damage than those on the left part.

If you use your mobile for less than 2 hours a day and do not carry it in your pockets or close to your body for too long, you are believed to be in the safe-zone.

Wish You a Merry Christmas

Its christmas eve.. Wish you and your family a merry Christmas. Have a nice day.

b


[ Dear email readers, I have a e-card for you. If it is not visible in your inbox go to www.millionclues.blogspot.com to see it. Thank you. ]

Minimise all your active programs in One go

Usage tip for Nokia Smartphones:

Here is another hack for your nokia smartphones. To minimise all your active programs and go to the telephone mode in one click you can use this tip. Just press the 'end call' button, the same button which you use to end active calls and you will find yourself in the telephone mode ( standby mode ).

Bonus tips :
1. You can do this by double clicking the menu button.
To read more see :
http://millionclues.blogspot.com/2006/11/nokia-shortcut-switching-to-telephone.html

2. For windows users you can minimise all programs and go to desktop by pressing ctrl+D

b.

Refresh Internet Explorer Windows In a Flash

To refresh a page of displayed on the Internet Explorer quickly, this tip can come handy. Move to the top left corner of the screen. This can be done quite easily if the window is in the maximised position. Just push the mouse in that direction and the pointer will be above it automatically. This is because the mouse pointer cannot go out of the window. Now drag the icon into the window ( the space where web pages are displayed ).
You will get the page refreshed.

As this might be a new method for you, it may prove to be less useful in the beginning. But with due practice ( as I do ! ) it can prove to be more faster than the conventional method of clicking the refresh button.

Good luck !
b

Close Windows In a Flash

Here is a quite useful hack on using Windows. To close an open window quickly you can use the following methods.

Approach 1:
Move the mouse to the top right corner of the window so that the mouse is over the 'X' button. You need not click at the centre of the button. You can just push your mouse in that direction. As the mouse pointer cannot move out of the window it will automatically come over the 'X' button. Then just click and the window will close.
Using this method you can close the window without even looking to the 'X' button.

Approch 2:
Move the mouse to the lop left corner, over the image of the Folder or the application. You can do this by just pushing the mouse in that direction. As the mouse pointer cannot go out of the window it will reside over this icon automatically. Then double click and the window will close.

Both these methods work with maximised windows only. If windows are in the restored position you cannot do this without moving over to the button. Then use Alt+F4 to close the window !

b

Get Good quality mobile software from www.getjar.com

Visit www.getjar.com if you need some good quality mobile goodies. From themes to games this site has got a lot of sofwares for all kind of mobiles. Most of the softwares are freewarez. You can also find some shareware programs.

It has organised the softwares by catogory like productivity tools, security tools, entertainment, games, browsers and so on.

Try visiting www.getjar.com

b

Convert to Windows Media Audio ( wma ) Format From any format using Windows Movie Maker

Here ia a hack. Use this to convert you .rm or.mp3 files to wma format in case you are making a wma disc . This can come handy if you dont have a wma convertor.
All you need is the Windows Mavie Maker ( coming with Windows XP ), and a player capable of playing the source file. i.e if you got a audio file in .rm format you will need real player or any player that supports .rm formats. In other words your computer must have all the resources( or software ) to play your source file.

Open the source file in the associated player ( like .rm in real player )
Open windows movie maker. Goto Tools >> Narrate Timeline...
In the Narrate Timeline region click show more options ( if you have all the options displayed then it wills how as ' Show fewer Options '.
Select audio input source as Sterio Mix.
Now Play the source file and set the input level such a way that you can see the graph moving. The graph must not be full always.
Now stop the source file. Set it to the starting position.
In movie maker press ' Start Narration '. Just after that without losing any time start playing the source file. Now Movie Maker is recording from the output of your computer and not via the microhpone.
Once the source audio ends press ' Stop Narration '
A save window comes so that you can save in any desired location as wma format.

Disclaimer : Do no use this with copyrighted work or to record something that is illegal. No liabilities lie on me. Use this at your own risk.

b

Inbuilt KeyGuard For Nokia 7610

Usage Tip

Nokia 7610 is fully loaded. But they have forgotton to include a very simple accesory. It is the automatic keyguard function.

But it has got a automatic lock function. To turn on the automatic lock go to Setings >> Security >> Phone and Sim >> Autolock Period. Set the time in minutes and you are done. But the difference from auto keygaurd and autolock is that in autolock you have to enter the lock code every time you unlock the phone. Its like a vault.

This must work fine for related models like Nokia 6600.

Good luck!
b

Set Multiple home pages in FireFox with Tabbed Browsing

Award winning Mozilla FireFox give you the tabbed browsing functionality so that you need not switch windows to visit more that one site. All you have to do is place a new tab ( ctrl + T ).

But the coolest part of FireFox is that you can set a different homepage for each tab. To do this...Open FireFox >> Enter the address of first homepage in the address bar ( Location Bar ) >> Press Ctrl+T to open a new tab ( or File -> New Tab ) >> Enter the second homepage in the address bar of the second tab. Repeat this for each of you homepages. i.e. Google.com and Gmail.com should go in two different tabs, if you wish to set them as your home pages Now Goto Tools >> Options >> Press the general tab in the dialog window >> In the Homepage section wou will see a button which reads ' Use Current Pages' Press that and Press 'ok'.

Note that this button shows ' Use current Pages ' only when more than one tab is open. Otherwise it shows ' Use current Page '.


b

Browse using Mouse gestures in Opera

Opera enables us to browse the web only using the mouse. You dont need to go the the tool bar and fine the back button. All you have to do is to have a little knowledge of using the mouse with opera.

To get started perform a mouse gesture. An example of a mouse gesture.. Move the mouse in right angle with the right click key pressed. A window will pop-up telling that ' you have used mouse gestures for the first time. Do you wish to enable mouse gestures ? ' Press help and you will get the list of all mouse operations.

You can also use Tools >> Preferences >> Mouse and Keyboard to enable this.
In the Mouse and keyboard option you have the option to enble mouse gestures

Good luck!.
b

Create Shortcuts to WebPages Directly from your Browser

If you did like to place a shortcut to a WebPage on your desktop here are some quick and easy methods.

Approach 1:
RightClick some where on the page and choose "Create Shortcut" in Internet Explorer. FireFox and Opera do not have a similar option.

Approach 2:
In the address bar of your browser you can see a small icon of a webpage. In Internet Explorer this is a page with the 'e' on it. Drag and drop this to your desktop of to the required folder. This works for Firefox as well as for Opera.
This can be done for normal folders in the Wndows Explorer too.
( Look for the small icon just before the address begins in the address bar. For eg. If you are in http://millionclues.blogspot.com/ you will find this small icon just behind http... )

Good Luck
b

Firefox Has Got a Cool Buit-in Html Editor

Firefox has got a pretty cool tool for the webmasters who design their on pages for the web. Firefox has got a really cool html editor.

To access this editor all you need to do is press Ctrl+U
Instead you can right click a page and select "View Page Source"

What is really good about this editor is the various colours used so that a designer can easily identify a comment from a link .
Comments appear in green, Values or texts within quotes come in blue color , Html keywords come in pink and mere texts appear in black.

If you are a lot confused using Notepad to edit your codes, you must give it a try.

b

Use Google™ search as your dictionary

Google™ search can work as a dictionary as well. To make it work so you need to add " define: " before the word.

For eg: Typing in define:culture give you some definitions for culture found on the web. You can also fine some Related phrases that include your keyword.
Google also offers to give you the definitions in a lot more languages.

To try it out go to : www.google.com

b

I'm Feeling Lucky™ search service From Google™ search

Google's homepage , one of the smallest pages on the internet , gives you a text field to input your query and adjacent to that you will see 2 buttons. One button is to search for the query. The second button is named "I'm Feeling Lucky" This is a special service from Google.

Clicking on the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button takes you directly to the webpage that comes first in the search results. The page that comes first on the list will be that page with the maximun PageRank™ in the search results.

This button might prove useful when you need the results in fewer clicks. To try using it go to : www.google.com

b

Note : All the TradeMarks used here are the property of respective owners.

Make sure that you have loged out of your google account while using multiple google services

Google offers its users a lot of facilities like a fantastic search engine, an even better Gmail, Google Talk, Online community - Orkut and lot more. To have a synchronisation with all these services Google uses a single user account for all Google services for a user. i.e with the gmail account infromation you can sing up with orkut, or talk in Google Talk or log in to the personalised home page of Google search.
In other words signing in to one account means all the other open automaitcally. For example after logging on the Google Talk you can read mails directly without logging in again by clicking the new mail indicator to the bottom of the window. This also means that signing out of Gmail does to essentially close your Google account. You have to sign out completely.

This is very important when you are accesing the interntet from a public place like an internet cafe. An open account can be operated by anyone and can cause anything. So you have to make sure that before you leave, you have logged out of all the individual services.
To ensure this just go to the homepage of the services you have used. For eg. If you used Gmail, then try going to Gmail.com. If the page asks you the username and password, then you have logged out. If you havent logged out you will be direcly taken to your inbox.

Take care.b

The Google Toolbar

An integral part of the Google pack and a must have for interntet users. The google toolbar has got a whole lot of Google services budled on to a small horizontal strip. As google always is, this too is aimed to DO NO EVIL, the award winning policy of Google.

The google tool bar has got..
* The google search box to serach for online content. You can also do ' I am feeling Lucky ' search, so that you can go directly to the first site that appears in the google search.
It also offers search site, Search froggle , Image search, news search and Google groups search.
* The google toolbar displays the page rank of the current page. So you can always see how the google search pods rank the current page.
* It has got pop-up blocker which plays a sound when a pop-up is blocked and also displays the number of blocked pop-ups.
* It can translate the current page using its transalator.
* It can check for spelling and grammar errors on the page using its spell and Grammar check.
* You can blog pages directly using the ' blog this ' button on the toolbar. You will need to sign up with blogger to do that.
* The toolbar has got the normal naviagation buttons of a browser and offers to remember search history. There is a whole lot of options waiting for the user.
* And most importantly The Google toolbar has got a auto fill feature which can fill forms on the web page. You have to once give the details and when relevent forms are found on the webpage the autofill highlights the fields in yellow and on clicking autofill the feilds gets filled up, automatically.
* You have got a word transalator .
* You have a autolink function that links to the postal addresses on the web page to google maps directly.

This tool bar can be freely downloaded from the google website.
Go to google.com > click 'more>>' > choose google pack > and choose the google toolbar.
Google also offers this tool bar along with its serach results.

( Instead go dirctly to the google pack from the productivity center on the right sidebar )

b

Enable chat history so as to receive offline messages in Gmail

Gmail is getting better day by day. So is Google talk. Google talk has introduced a facility which was previously available with yahoo and some othere instant messengers. Its called offline messages.

Offline messages are like emails. Messages sent to the reciever when the receiver is offline. He can access them once he is online. But when done with a instant messenger program they are called offline messages and not the regular e-mail.

Google talk, still in beta now offers offline message functionality which means that you can chat with your ofline contacts. But the end receiver must enable chat history in their settings ( Settings > chat ). Many users have not done that. Do enable your chat history and let your friends talk to you even when you are ofline. These ofline messages can be either seen as email in your inbox or as a pop up when you next login to your Google talk.Either of this will happen only if your chat history is enabled.
b

Image Searches might give you the results you expected and can prove to be more useful than the normal search at times

Most of the famous search engines like Google or Yahoo! offers an image search option. This is a useful feature that can bring the pictures in the world wide web to your fingertips.
Image searches can prove useful not only while searching for images but also while mining data on the net. Here is the ' How ?' answered.

Websites post images of the most relevant topic of the content. If somone is writing an article on a 'benz' automobile the author will post a picture of the featured car and not the picture of some beach. So the pictures most often come with the most relevant matter. But the search based on the page rank system of Google or Yahoo! might prove to be useless at times. At those times doing an image search and navigating to the website with the help of the image might give you the required result.

Why dont you give it a try..?
Good luck!

b

Archive Your mails in Gmail and make your Inbox look clean

Have you been ever troubled with a whole lot of mails in your inbox..? If you do not wish to delete those lovely mails but still wish to have a clean inbox Gmail has got solutions. Gmail offers archiving facility for its users.

Archives are collections of previous records into a less frequently used media. Like we create backups in CD's and DVD's of those data which we do not use often in our computer.

All you have to do is select all those mails that you wish to archive and click 'archive' button which is above all the mails in the inbox. Those mails will me moved to the archive and removed from your inbox.
You can later access these mails in the 'all mails' folder of Gmail. This way you can have a neat inbox without having to delete a single mail. Thanks to Gmail.

b

Hold down shift key while clicking on links and get them opened in a new window

The internet is a collection of links placed in a logical order. Every webpage links to some other page. There is no standalone existance for a webpage and it has to either link to another page or has to have a link poiniting to that page.
We navigate through the internet using these links. But while moving forward you must be wishing to have the first page intact. If you wish to open the resulting page in a new window here are some methods of doing that.

1. Right click the link and choose 'open in new window'
2. Right click the link and choose 'copy link address'. Paste it in a new window and press enter.
3. Holdon shift key while clicking the link and you can get the link opened in a new window.

If you are a website owner or a blogger, you wouldnt want to distract away readers from your blog or website. If you wish to open you links in a new window do this.

Here is how the code for a link will look like.
<a href="http://millionclues.blogspot.com/" >milliOn cluEs</a>
This will open the page in the same window.

Add - target="_blank" along with this so that the code looks like
<a href="http://millionclues.blogspot.com/" target="_blank" >milliOn cluEs</a>
This will make this link open in a new window.

The same can be applied to the form buttons that appear on your page.
For eg :
Adding target="_blank" along with
<FORM action=http://www.blogger.com/login-comment.do method=post >
can make the form action to happen in a new page so that it would look like
<FORM action=http://www.blogger.com/login-comment.do method=post target="_blank">

Doing similar modifications to the code will help your readers from the trouble of going back to the previous page to continue reading your blog.
Good luck!

b

How to picture Youself great on Photographs

Photographs are frames extracted from the millions of frames of our day to day life so that we can see those frames often. But eveyone is not blessed with a photo face or everyone is not photogenic by "default".

Here is how you can play that fine.

• If you are using a foundation cream, use those with a matt finish.
• Make sure that your hair is clean and that you hairstyle is perfect.
• Dont wear dresses with large and bold prints or bold patterns.
• Do not wear all white as wearing all white can make your body look big and your face becomes small.
• Do wear earrings and a necklace. Ornaments can make you look better in the picture
• Make sure that you have got a normal hairstyle. Making your hair look bigger that you head can make the apperence of you in your picture horrible.
  
• Have the normal style of smile on your face. Dont make up one.
• Stand errect and still. This can make yourself look smart in your picture.

Why do the World Consider Google as the Best..?

Google is the worlds best company that provides quality services to Internet users. Started in 1996 as the part of a college paper for their Ph.D , google was basically aimed to aid people searching data on the net.
But before google came too we had search engines like AltaVista, yahoo and a lot, but these are used very rearely these days. For them search was not in the forefront. For them search was a part of the many services they gave . So the people searching for data couldnt find what they needed as the searches were not focussed and specific as their creaters gave serch engine lower pirority.

But google came up with a search engine. Thats the main job of google.com even to this day. Because Page and Brin knew that data mining was a very important part and was unavoidable in the internet.

But what makes google the best? Its googles policy to "DO NO EVIL", that always kept them on top. They were not two kids who wanted to become billionares all of a sudden. They aimed at solving the problems of the people. To this day, they are doing the same. Making money to help more people without disturbing the uses and there by giving quality service.
For instance visit google.com. You will find a neat and clean page, whcih must be the neatest and the cleanest page online. A page that loads fast with just the google logo coming up in bright colors and a search box. Google could have placed some adds there as they are having more than a billion visitors daily. This could have brought them millions of dollars a month. But they are sacrificing these dollars to give its users more comfort. If it had lots of adds its visitors would be surely disturbed and distracted.

This mentality of google to solve problems of the people by providing fast and quality service keeps them on top. This policy applies to gmail, orkut, blogger and lots of services that they give us, all for free. Can you find a better e-mail service better than gmail on the net?

Long live Google. Lets wish them all the best.

b

Google Search Can be your Calculator too..

Google, the word relates to the fastest search engine online. Go to google.com and you can see a textfield patiently waiting for your query. The neatest and the cleanest and may be the smallest webpage on the internet, google.com can serve as an arithmetic calulator too!

Try typing in 100+2 and within a click you will get the result ( and that is 102! ).
Instead you can try typing "hundred plus two" and see the same results coming up. You can also try a combination of words and symbols like "hundred + two". At google everything is admitted.

Go to www.google.com and make sure this is right, right now!

 

To see the Google calculator help vist this link:

http://www.google.co.in/help/calculator.html

b

 

What does Google Really Mean..?

Ask any internet user 'what is google' and he will say that it is a search engine. Ask him' what do you know more about google', and he might say it is the fastest search engine and google offers a lot of services like gmail, orkut and so on...

That is the popularity google has got today. With over a billion visitors daily, google.com is one of the websites visited by almost all the internet users.

But the word google means something else. Actually it is not supposed to be spelled g-o-o-g-l-e. Instead the right spelling is g-o-o-g-o-l. But when Brin and Page, the makers of Google, were renaming BackRub ( the initial name of google ) they misspelled googol as google.
Googol means a very large number. To be precise it is 1 followed by a 100 zeros.
They chose this name as google was basically to deal with a large amount of information online.

b

Add your Photo In Gmail - Let the world see you.

Gmail lets you to add your photo to your profile in Gmail. Doing this will send your picture to your friends and they can see you often.
But for your friend to see your picture he has to choose to display the picture of your chioce in the contacts. This is on by default. But he can choose to display a picture of his pick, and if he is doing that he will not see you.

Gmail will show your picture when he hovers over your mail giving your friend a quick glance of you smiling. But on account of 'internet borne diseases' like fake pictures through morphing and related issues, its not always very safe to give your picture to everyone. But you can always have some picture in that place of your picture. Why dont you try giving a picture of a small scenery as your photo..? But you cannot post a very big picture. Only a thumpnail size of 96x96 is allowed. Still it is really good to ahve some picture instead of a blank ghost picture which gmail automatically adds.

To add your picture go to the settings. On the very first page there is a picture link. Clicking that opens a window with an optional browser. Open the browser and open a picture. Gmail will then give you an option to crop your image. Do that if needed and save then save your picture. You are done.

Remember not to use pictures that is copyrighted, or that contain adult content or even those of celebrities ( unless you are on of them ! ).

b

Inviting all your Gmail Contacts To Orkut

Eventhough Orkut and Gmail are from the same 'server' of Google, they didnot provide any provision to invite the gmail contacts to orkut as the provision in the Google talk to invite gmail contacts. But orkut do provide an option to invite multiple friends. Here is a simple way by which you can add your gmail contacts.

Method 1:
If you wish to invite all your gmail contacts, open gmail and go to your contacts. There you have an option to export the contacts. Export the contacts and you will get a file with all your contact information. Save that file to local disc and open it with notepad. In the friends section or orkut there is an area where you can invite friends ( on the left hand side of orkut window ). Below the box to enter the friend's email address, there is a link to 'invite multiple friends'. Click that and you will get a text area to enter all the e-mail addresses. Copy and paste the contents from the previously exported contacts file there. You will also have to do the random word verification so as to make sure that you are a human being. That's it.

Method 2:
If you do not wish to invite all your friends but only a selected few, open gmail and go to your contacts. Select those contacts whom you wish to invite and click compose button ( on top row ). This will open the mail composer with the selected contacts in the 'to' section. Copy those address from the 'to' section and paste it in the same text area as mentioned in method one.

b

Windows Shorthands

General keyboard shortcuts
CTRL+C Copy.
CTRL+X Cut.
CTRL+V Paste.
CTRL+Z Undo.
DELETE Delete.
SHIFT+DELETE Delete selected item permanently without placing the item in the Recycle Bin.
CTRL while dragging an item Copy selected item.
CTRL+SHIFT while dragging an item Create shortcut to selected item.
F2 Rename selected item.
CTRL+RIGHT ARROW Move the insertion point to the beginning of the next word.
CTRL+LEFT ARROW Move the insertion point to the beginning of the previous word.
CTRL+DOWN ARROW Move the insertion point to the beginning of the next paragraph.
CTRL+UP ARROW Move the insertion point to the beginning of the previous paragraph.
CTRL+SHIFT with any of the arrow keys Highlight a block of text.
SHIFT with any of the arrow keys Select more than one item in a window or on the desktop, or select text within a document.
CTRL+A Select all.
F3 Search for a file or folder.
ALT+ENTER View properties for the selected item.
ALT+F4 Close the active item, or quit the active program.
ALT+Enter Displays the properties of the selected object.
ALT+SPACEBAR Opens the shortcut menu for the active window.
CTRL+F4 Close the active document in programs that allow you to have multiple documents open simultaneously.
ALT+TAB Switch between open items.
ALT+ESC Cycle through items in the order they were opened.
F6 Cycle through screen elements in a window or on the desktop.
F4 Display the Address bar list in My Computer or Windows Explorer.
SHIFT+F10 Display the shortcut menu for the selected item.
ALT+SPACEBAR Display the System menu for the active window.
CTRL+ESC Display the Start menu.
ALT+Underlined letter in a menu name Display the corresponding menu.
Underlined letter in a command name on an open menu Carry out the corresponding command.
F10 Activate the menu bar in the active program.
RIGHT ARROW Open the next menu to the right, or open a submenu.
LEFT ARROW Open the next menu to the left, or close a submenu.
F5 Refresh the active window.
BACKSPACE View the folder one level up in My Computer or Windows Explorer.
ESC Cancel the current task.
SHIFT when you insert a CD into the CD-ROM drive Prevent the CD from automatically playing.

Dialog box keyboard shortcuts
CTRL+TAB Move forward through tabs.
CTRL+SHIFT+TAB Move backward through tabs.
TAB Move forward through options.
SHIFT+TAB Move backward through options.
ALT+Underlined letter Carry out the corresponding command or select the corresponding option.
ENTER Carry out the command for the active option or button.
SPACEBAR Select or clear the check box if the active option is a check box.
Arrow keys Select a button if the active option is a group of option buttons.
F1 Display Help.
F4 Display the items in the active list.
BACKSPACE Open a folder one level up if a folder is selected in the Save As or Open dialog box.

Natural keyboard shortcuts
Windows logo  Display or hide the Start menu.
Windows logo +BREAK Display the System Properties dialog box.
Windows logo +D Show the desktop.
Windows logo +M Minimize all windows.
Windows logo +Shift+M Restores minimized windows.
Windows logo +E Open My Computer.
Windows logo +F Search for a file or folder.
CTRL+ Windows logo +F Search for computers.
Windows logo +F1 Display Windows Help.
 Windows logo+ L Lock your computer if you are connected to a network domain, or switch users if you are not connected to a network domain.
Windows logo +R Open the Run dialog box.
Windows logo +U Open Utility Manager

Accessibility keyboard shortcuts
Right SHIFT for eight seconds Switch FilterKeys on and off.
Left ALT +left SHIFT +PRINT SCREEN Switch High Contrast on and off.
Left ALT +left SHIFT +NUM LOCK Switch MouseKeys on and off.
SHIFT five times Switch StickyKeys on and off.
NUM LOCK for five seconds Switch ToggleKeys on and off.
Windows logo +U Open Utility Manager.

Windows Explorer keyboard shortcuts
END Display the bottom of the active window.
HOME Display the top of the active window.
NUM LOCK+ASTERISK on numeric keypad (*) Display all subfolders under the selected folder.
NUM LOCK+PLUS SIGN on numeric keypad (+) Display the contents of the selected folder.
NUM LOCK+MINUS SIGN on numeric keypad (-) Collapse the selected folder.
LEFT ARROW Collapse current selection if it's expanded, or select parent folder.
RIGHT ARROW Display current selection if it's collapsed, or select first subfolder.

These keyboard shortcuts are taken from the Windows XP help. These are included here as these shortcuts often go unnoticed. Use of these can save valuable time and will help to get the jobs done faster

b

Understanding Bluetooth

Bluetooth technology is a low power consuming , short range communication technique which was initially built to remove the cables that are used to connect periferals to a central system and provide users with a very cost effective, secure and convinient method of data transfer. The application of bluetooth is in the Personal Area Networks ( PANs ). Bluetooth technology removes the mess in connecting a whole lot of components and provides a wireless, omni-directional connectivity with the host system.

The name ' bluetooth ' has got a history. There was a king in Denmark named Harald Blatand. Upon eating a lot of blue berries his teeth turned blue. So people called him king bluetooth. He was known for his ability to get people to talk to each other. It was in his time Denmark and Norway united. Hence the developers of bluetooth gave this technology this name as it is a medium to communicate with neighbouring devices.

Know Bluetooth in detal.

It is a wirefree short-range communication medium which gives the devices mobility and convinience of use.

It has become a worldwide standard.

It has got a wide range of adaptability. These days every gadget that is available is bluetooth enabled.

It does not require any kind of software installation.

It is secure and user friendly.

It operates in the unlicenced ISM ( Industrial, Scientific, Medical ) radio band of 2.4 GHz.

There is no operational cost .

It is so secure with 128 bit encryption, hoping and PIN code authentication

It does not require line of sight contact and is hence omni directional.

It is used for communication with in 100 metres of distance in the industry level and 10 metres of distance for personal use.

It can cross obstacles on its path like a wall...

A bluetooth enabled device can make simultaneous connections with upto 7 devices.

b

F1 Records Of Michael Schumacher

The legendary Michael Schumacher often called ' Shumi ' has got the following records on the circuits in F1 racing.

Highest number of F1 championships : 7 ( 1994, 1995, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 )
Highest number of consecutive championships : 5 (2000-2004)
He stayed as a champion for 4 years 11 months and 17 days, the longest in history.
The gap between his first and last victory is 14 years 1 month and 2 days, the lengthiest in F1 history.
Highest number of victories : 91
Highest number of second places : 43
Highest number if poll positions : 68
Fastest laps : 76
Lap leads : 5096
Highest number of points : 1369
Highest number of consecutive victories : 7
Highest number of races completed with a point : 190
He has stood at the first place of the grid for 108 races.
Highest number of races in which the racer did not discontinue the race due to technical errors : 24
Highest number of victories in a season : 13
Highest number of points in a season : 148
Highest number of lap records in a single season : 10
Highest number of victories in the same grand pri : 8
Number of seasons where he stood as the winner : 15
Highest lead in a championship : 67 points
Highest number of races with a single team : 73 with ferrari
Fastest victory of a championship : 2002
Highest number of consecutive apppearence at the victory stand : 19

b

Fast Check the Proper working of Casio Scientific Calculators

Here is a simple way to make sure that a Casio Scientific calculator works porperly before you take it home from the shop. Scientific calulators have got a whole lot of functions built on to it and all those functions cannot be checked in one go. The manufacturer has added a built in check for the calculator. Here is how to do it.

Turn on the calulator
Press the key combination : 'shift' + '7' + 'on'. The display will be fully dark showing every pixel of the calculator.
Press 'shift' again and the display goes blank. keep pressing 'shift' and you will see numbers displayed. This will end after displaying ' 1 '. Then press the key right to shift and you will get 2. Likewise pressing the adjacent switches displays numbers in ascending order. Do not forget to include the wheel in this procedure. The wheel is a group of 4 buttons.
Atlast when you press ' = ' button the display will show 'ok'. This means that your calculator is tested and is working fine.
If the series of numbers gets stuck somewhere then the calculator has got a problem. Remember to do this check while you purchase the calculator so that you will have all the functions available in it.

This procedure has been tested by myself on various calculators in the casio - 'fx' series and in the casio '991es' calculator. But this must work on other models. Try them for yourself.

b

Nokia Shortcut : Switching to Telephone mode faster

Here is a simple shortcut with which you can switch to the telephone mode really fast while you are in between something. This thing apples to those Nokia phones which are in the medium ranges like Nokia 6600, Nokia 7610 Nokia N series etc.

Suppose that you are seeing a picture in the gallery. You wish to make a phone call. What do you do..? You close the gallery and return to standby and make the call, or you minimise the gallery by pressing and holding menu button and selecting 'telephone' from the shortcut menu that appears.

Here is the tip. " Double click the menu button. " You will see that all the applications are minimised and you are in the standby mode. This thing minimises all the applications and takes you directly to standby mode.
Remember that a double click can happen only after a single click. So all those things which should happen with a single click will happen.

Try it for yourself.

b

Samsung's new Music-Player Cell Phone with 8 GB Inbuilt flash Memory

8 GB Flash memory..! That huge ..right..? 16 movies.. or 1600 Mp3 songs. That's twice the capacity of the i-nano.. Unbelievable..right..?

Samsung Electronics is coming up with a revolutionary smart phone. A phone that is going to rule the markets of the land.
The phone ( SCH-B570 ) is a real smart phone. Built on the Windows Mobile 5.0 for SmartPhone platform, the phone features a fully featured MP3 player that can play from AAC, AAC+ , WMA , WAV and Ogg file formats. It has got a powerful 2- Megapixel digital camera , Bluetooth, Bluetooth printing, is compatible with GSM , GPRS and EDGE. Power packed yet light, It weighs just 120 grams.

The phone will be first availabe in South Korea and is sure to be a market hit. With this in your hand you cannot complain that 'the flight was boring' , again !

b

cyborgname.com - Get your technical name...

 www.cyborgname.com

Have you ever tried to speak as Arnold in terminator...? If you have tried , then you must have ended up in lots of 'eh' and 'aaa'.Terminator always speaks as a machine would do in technical names like 'Artificial Synthesised Digital Transmission System' or even more complicated way. Such technical names are collectively called cyborg names.

Here is a really cool website that gives the cyborgname for any word which is not more that 10 letters. Visit www.cyborgname.com.

The homepage of the website has the core of the site. A text field will ask your name. The as step two you can select your character. And just submit it to get your cyborg name.
For eg. If you give ARUN, thats my name, you will get Artificial Robotic Utility NeoHuman. Cool.. right..?

The website will give you a picture ( .gif ) with your name and the character you selected. If you cannot copy that picture from the page , you can find it in the cache of your browser ( Look in Temporary Internet Files for Internet Explorer. This folder is in your windows main directory. For opera users look in the 'cache' inside your 'profile' which is in the installed directory of Opera like C:\Program Files\opera8\. )

If you wish to place a similar applet on your website, you will find the code for that too on the homepage.

The website also offers to send you a t-shirt with your cyborgname and the character you selected. But this is not free, you have to pay for it. Visit www.cyborgname.com for more.

b

 

Disabling the update pop-up for McAfee

McAfee provides a good anti-virus protection for your computer. They do provide frequent updates. But on systems without an internet connection the auto-update popup window that pops up every time you turn on your PC may make you feel uncomfortable.
Here is a very simple way to tackle the problem.
This is intended to be done on systems without an internet connection. If you have an internet connection and if you do this, you will be updated in the background. i.e it will not ask your opinion before updating, but updates without your notice.

Open the security center of your McAfee Antivirus.
Click on configure security center. Its on the right side on the 10th edition. It must be somewhere on the very first page. Or you have the updates button on the top row.
Clicking that opens the Security center updates dialog box.
Click on configure. You will get the Automatic Update Options dialog box.
Choose the option to download the updates automatically or install the updates automatically radio button.
That's it. This must solve the problem. As you do not have a connection the popup does not comeup untill you connect to the internet.

b

Is your inbox infected.. ? Have it verified.

Spammers and hackers create lots of viruses the spreads through e-mails. Some viruses do not affect the computer but sends mails with un-expected content to our contacts. Contents can be of any nature, from harmless adds to those with sexual content. Such mails are send from our inbox in the normal way as we send other mails. So when recieved such mails look as if sent by us. This can bring unexpected results and may hamper the senders reputation. So its very important to put a check on such mails.

In the normal way as we scan our harddisc, we cannot scan our inbox. Here are some ways in whch you can know whether you are sending such mails.

In to your contacts add a new contact with name as ' aaaaa ' or so and e-mail address as ' aaa@aaa.com ' so that it comes first in your contact list. When a virus sends a mail to this e-mail id the postmaster of your mail service will send you a delivery failure message. If you get one then its time to check your inbox.

There are many ways in which you can remove such viruses.
One easy way is to empty your inbox. But doing that is not as easy as it is said because we will be having some mails whcih we do not like to delete.
If you do not wish to empty your inbox check your inbox for mails from unidentified senders. If your mail service has got an anti-spam policy report the sender. Deleting all such mails must solve the problem.
If you are using a paid email account, you can request your service provider to scan your inbox. This will surely fix the problem.

b

3 Snake Facts

The Longest, the Fastest and the Shortest...

The Longest Snake : Anaconda
The average length of the south american anaconda is 5.5 meters.

The Shortest snake : Thread Snake
The thread snake of the West Indies is the smallest at just 11cm

The Fastest Snake : Black Mamba
This in an African Snake and can attain a maximum speed of 19 kmph.

b

/

More Nokia ShortCuts

Imaging ShortCuts :

Here are some shortcuts that can come handy when we work with images in a Nokia phone. I have tested these only on Nokia 7610 and Nokia 6600. It must also work with other models including those from the N-series. Here are they...

With an image open...

Press * to switch to fullscreen view. Also to switch back from full screen view.

Press 5 to zoom the picture. This can be done in both the full screen and normal screen mode.
Press 0 to zoom out.

Press 1 to flip image in the anti-clock wise direction.
Press 3 to flip image in the clock wise direction.

Pressing 7 zooms 25% and pressing it again switches to the full screen mode.


Switches 4, 6, 2, 8 are navigation switches. Once in the zoom view press...
4 to move to the left of the picture
6 to move to the right of the picture
2 to move to the top of the picture
8 to move to the bottom of the picture.

That's it. If you got more with you, post them here as comments. If you prefer to get them posted as a new posting it will be done on request and full credit will be yours.

b

Saddam Hussain Sentenced To Death

Breaking News :
Saddam Hussain's fate is wrtten at last. He has been sentenced to death at last. After 3 and a half year long trials the only Saddam Hussain, the legendary hero of the Iraq has been sentenced to death by the Iraqi court charging against him for his work against humanity.He is to be hanged with in 30 dyas. Lets see how this matter will turn out.
Have your say :What do u say about this court order..? Have your say. Post your view as comment.


b

Fundemental Rights & Duties Of an Indian

Fundemental Rights :
1. Right to Equality
2. Right to Freedom
3. Right against Exploitation
4. Right to freedom of Religion
5. Cultural and Educational Rights
6. Right to constitutional remedies
7. Right to Education

Fundemental Duties :
1. Respect the Constitution, National Flag and the National Anthem
2. Cherish the noble ideas of the freedom struggle.
3. Uphold and protect the sovereignty, unity and integrity of India.
4. Defend the country and render national service when called for.
5. Promote common brotherhood of all the people of India and renounce any practice derogatory to the dignity of women.
6. Preserve the rich heritage of the nations's composite culture.
Protect the natural enviornment and have compassion for living creatures.
8. Develop scientific temper, humanism and spirit of enquiry and reform.
9. Safeguard public property and abjure violence.
10. Strive for excellence in all individual and collective activity.

As you can see above, the rights and duties of an Indian citizen urges each Inidan to look for excellence and to have noble values in life. All Inidan traditions and cultural values are given top prirority here. Every requried value in a human being, like Love for his own country, common brotherhood , love for fellow beings , and regular and constant effort to excel is given utmost prirority here.

b

Keeping Your Emotions Under Control

Having control over his emotions and the ability to think deeper makes man-kind distinct from other beings on this beautiful earth. Having control over ones emotions reflect the personality of the person in general and to the strength of his mind to be specific. People with strong control over their emotions are always liked by all.

Emotions are those ways in which the body expresses what is in the mind of the person. When we are not satisfied the way something is, the mind says the brain to get angry. Then we get angry. Rather than conrol over emotions one needs huge amount of emotional maturity to go on in this highly competitive world, where everyone is trying to get better and better to be the best one day.

To control anger when it comes to you, you just have to distract your mind from the thing. Stop doing what you were doing and relax. If you got an i-pod play your favorite track. Entertainment can really help to come out. But what we usually do is, we explode. Dont let yourslf do that. A liitle care and practice can help you to get over your anger.

Fear is another common emotion exibited. When you run out of time, or when you are about to face something hard, you feel afraid. The easiest way to get over it is to find a secure shelter. For eveyone of us the most secure place is the company of our friends of the same age-group. Call your friend or meet him and talk with him. You will find a lot relaxed. If you think that you are running out of time, stop working and relax for a moment. If you got lots of things to do, create a to-do list with more prirority to more urgent tasks.

Depression and hoplessness can make you a loser in life. When you feel miserable or feel like crying, move to a more remote place where you can be alone. If you have a bible or your holy book, try reading the very pleasing part of it which you have read before. Talk with your best friend. Or go online and chat with someone. You will definitely find your problems running away.

Having control over emotions is having control over oneself and your life. Life is a game and we are the mighty players. Always remember that our life is to enjoy and not to just live. Enjoy the gaming of life.

b

 

Caring For Ur Floppy Drives

As is the case with optical drives, floppy drives are delicate too. They can be made to work for long durations of over 10 years ( My friend has one ! ). But owing to its low cost of under 10$ most of us do not take proper care of it. These days floppies are used rearely but no system can exclude this small drive. Windows and other third party programs like virus scanners and backup tools still use floppies to recover the system, if in any case the booting fails. So we cannot avoid it from the configuration of our PC.

Here are some ways to preserve your Floppy drive.

The most important thing is to use good quality media. IBM's DOS formatted floppies are really good.

Use the drive regularly. If the drive is kept unused for long periods, it becomes dirty inside and hence it turns useless. To keep using it regularly there is a easy method. Keep a floppy disc inside it always. When you start your computer it searches for floppy in the drive and checks for boot data in it. That way the floppy drive is regularly used, automatically! But before you do that, remember to change the primary boot device to your harddisc or so , else you will be asked to remove the floppy from the drive, for the system to start.

Also remeber to have a floppy drive cleaner of good quality and clean the drive atleast once in two weeks.

Do not insert a floppy in to its drive if you know that the disc is not good or has got fungus inside. Always prevention is better than cure. When you try reading a floppy if the drive do not respond, do not try inserting the floppy again if it can be avoided.

Also take care not to remove a floppy disc when the light of the drive is lit. When the light is lit, the floppy is being read and hence musn't be interrupted. Floppy discs are read not with laser but by a reading head. So removing it while it is being read can damage the head.

Keep your floppies away from dust and moisture.

b

 

Protecting Optical Drives

Optical drives are very delicate organs or your computer. Just like eyes to your body you have to take extra care to preserve them for a long time. But our body has got a in-bulit system to recover from minor faults and hence a little carelessness can be reconstructed out. But that's not the case with Optical drives they are machines with nothing human, but loaded with in-human powers and potentials.

To protect them you have to take care of them. Here is how you can do that.

Optical drives include your CD drives and DVD drives. The best you can do to make them work longer is to use good media in them. Do not use poor quality cheap discs. If you are looking for back-up always buy good quality CD's like that of Moser Baer or so, that is guaranteed to last long. Also avoid using scratched CD's in your drives. Use the scratch covering solutions which are comercially available if the discs have to be used in any case.

Do not think that a little ketchup on your disc is ok for your drive. The optical head is a real delicate organ. Even a little dust can make its perfomance go down. If the  lens gets covered with dust or dirt the speed of the drive will be affected. For example read speeds can go down from 40X to even 2X or 1X. In due course of time the drive will turn useless.
Use a blower to remove dirt from the discs before inserting it in to a drive. If you have got a drive which does not work, do not throw it away. Provided that the drive do not affect the disc physically, you can use the drive to clean your discs. All you have to do is to keep the drive connected to the PC, and insert the disc in to that drive first. Let the disc undergo some spins. Then take it out and insert it in to the working drive.

Optical drives must be cleaned regularly. Use the drive cleaner discs comercially available to clean your drives. Here too, remember to choose from quality brands. A sticth in time can really save nine. So clean your drives regularly.

Once you start experiencing problems with your drives, try cleaning it. If that doesnt works take it immediately to your local service station. If you do that in time , you might be saving a major service with a minor detailed clean.

Above all handle the drives affectionately. Do not use it in a weired manner. Be patient while working with your drives.

b

Sending an Executable File in Gmail

As a matter of security from malicious code or so, G-mail beta does not allow users to send Executable files in Gmail. This helps to keep Gmail virus free. But this can be irritating at-times, like when you are trying to send something which is definitely virus free. Like if you did like to send a program that you made for evaluation to your friend or so. Here are 2 ways to send such files. Thanks to my friend Sam.

Method 1 :
Add the executable file to a zip archive. Its not over yet. Add this zip archive to another zip archive. So that your executable file will be inside two zip archives simultaneously. Then attach it and then you can send it comfortably.
eg:. If your file name is asd.exe , first add it to a zip archive named abc.zip or so. Then add this abc.zip to another zip named xyz.zip or so. Then attach it.

Method 2 :
Rename your executable file to something which is not an executable. That is change the extension .exe to somthing like .jkl or so. then attach it and inform the reciver at the other end to rename it to .exe before he can use it. That's it.
You can rename the file using command prompt.
For eg: if you wish to rename asd.exe to asd.jkl take command prompt and then go to the directory where your file is. then type ' rename asd.exe asd.jkl' without the quotes.

Good Luck!

What U Do Not See in Formula 1

What we see on the circuit is the end-product of hardwork of countlss number of enginers, technicians and researchers. There are some intresting things which we do no usually think of when we see Shumi or Alonso zooming ahead. Here are some intresting facts.

A Formula One car is an aeroplane in a modified form, built to run on land alone. A formula one car can go from 0 to 160 kmph in 4 seconds. The most amazing thing is that it can do the reverse too in 4 seconds, i.e 160kmph to 0kmph in 4 seconds!!!

Formula one cars use special tyres built to last only 90 to 120 kilometres while a normal tyre can last up to 100000 kilometres. So if your car uses a formula one tyre you will be spending money which would cost 2 times your whole car per year.

At a pitstop a well trained team can replace tyres in just 3 seconds! That's just the time which a normal technician takes to start loosening a nut of your normal tyre.

At top speeds a formula one tyres rotate at 50 rotations per second. An average ordinary car revs up to 6000 rpm at a maximum. An F1 car revs up to 18000rpm which means the pistons are moving up and down at 300 times per second.

Formula one car tyres are filled with nitrogen instead of air, because nitrogen has more consistant pressure. The pressure musn't vary a lot with temperature..right..?

In a race each tyre will loose around 500 grams and a race driver will loose 4 kilograms due to exposure to high G forces ( the same forces as u feel while standing in a bus taking a curve ), stress, adrenaline rush and the extreme temperature.

Formula one cars are refuelled at 12 litres per second. So you can get your car refuelled in just 4 seconds if you take your normal car to a pitstop. The refuelling gun which they insert consists of 2 passages. First the hot gases inside the fuel tank is sucked out and then only the fuel is pumped. There is a lot of risk in that procedure and a simple error can cause an explosion.

Formula 1 engines do not have a very long life. They need part replacements in every few hours. An engine is something which a car usually change when it comes to Formula 1 and something which  is never changed when it comes to a normal car.

The cogs of the gearbox of a F1 car is replaced after every race as it wears out due to shifting gears often and subjeaction to stress.

In aeroplanes the buoyant force created lifts it up. A F1 car is so aerodynamically designed so as to keep it fixed on to the ground. The speeds of a F1 car is so high that an aircraft can take off at slower speeds than a F1 car travels on the track. Remember Shumi once raced with an aircraft and won it !!
The aeordynamic downforce created by an F1 car is so high that in theory it can go upside down at 160kmph, holding itself to the ceiling of a tunnel or so.

Brake disks are made of Carbon Fibre in F1 cars and not of steel for the reason that while braking the disk reaches temperatures of 1000 degree celcious, high enough to melt steel.
When a F1 driver hits the brakes he experiences moments of deceleration comparable to a regular car driving through a solid wall at 300kmph.!!

F1 cars have around 100 sensors and the car has got over a kilometre of cable connecting them, to monitor the activities of various parts.

The 'cockpit' for a F1 car is so fit that a F1 driver has to first remove the steering by removing a latch before he can enter the car. The padddles for changing the gears are at the back of this wheel.

A F1 car has to go to race with 100% perfection. A 99.9% perfection means that the car has got 80 components wrong as an average F1 car has got 80000 components.!!

That's it. Send me more and get them all posted here. You will get all your credits.

b

 

Don 2 - SRK moves higher

Don two is on the cinema halls. It is to be a block buster hit. This is something which SRK can proudly add in to his career and his caliber. I heard that the tickets for this mega film is reserved for over a month.

With only the title track- ' Mein hoo don' being an origional number the film features remixes of the songs the songs from the origional Don, of the one and only uncomparable Big B. Music done by Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy.

We all hope it do do fine in the halls. All the best 'Don'

b

 

BSNL LandLine vs Fixed Wireless

BSNL - bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited has done a fine job in providing every indian with a b-fone by which he can avail a lot of servies including dial up internet connection. Being the first service and that too from the public sector, it is a cheap way the Indians can connect. BSNL Landlines were the only means of communication for the common man about 5 years back.

But now the scenario has changed dramatically. When the mobiles came in to exiatance or when fixed wireless landlines were introduced in India by reliance every one who had a mobile or a wireless landline would also have a BSNL landline for sure. But now its not so. People have started trusting Reliance and Tata indicom completely. Let me tell you what the reasons are, most of them are my observations alone.

We will get a wireless landline connection instatly. No waiting and no waiting lists. But that's not the thing with BSNL. You have to wait long. Your name will be added at the end of a long waiting list and you would be given a date which will be after 3 months for sure.
What we get with a BSNL connection is a b-fone which is only good enough to make calls. But with Tata or Reliance you get a much advanced phone in which you can send and recive SMS, and has got speakerphone, modem, polyphonice tunes and lot more features as in a mobile phone.
Fixed Wireless service providers give its users a dial up connection with speeds at alomost 3 times the speed of BSNL's dial-up and the modem is included in the phone itself. The access rates are competitive too. Also BSNL dial-up is getting so messed up with lots of users. Logging on at busy hours and during the day is increasingly becoming a nightmare.
Wireless Landline means you dont have to mess up with all those long wires and remain mobile in your home and even in your city. You can take your phone along with you when you go shopping.
No wires means no broken wires and no damaged connections. Also there is no risk of damage to phone from lightning or other power realted errors provided you do not keep the phone connected to the power ( to charge the batteries or so) when something wrong might happen. And no such errors means there is no extra payment of repair fees or so to the local service persons.
Also most of the fixed Wireless providers have got a prepaid plan. So you can have total control over your billings.
Fixed Wireless providers also have got lots of flexible plans suitable for people at every spheres. If we consider any of these factors the only good thing that a BSNL Landline can have with them is comparitively cheaper ratings and also the reliability of being a public sector industry.

But with rates getting better day-by-day I am  prety sure the Fixed Wireless prividers are gonna make the whole thing look much better. It would be good to choose a Fixed Wireless connection if you are looking for a telephone connection and you dont have one yet. I dont think you would like to wait 6 months or so before you can make your first call from your own telephone.

b

When Your Mobile Gets Wet

A mobile is a gadget which is often put to rough use. Owing to its cheap prices and wide range of functions, the users never care about its existance unless an emergencey occurs i.e when the time come to take your phone to the service station. But a little care at the right time can save a lot of bucks of your pocket.
Getting a mobile wet, be either when you go out in the rain or most commmonly dropping it to water, is something which we come across daily. Most of the mobile phones do not have any problem even if it get wet, provided there is no short circuiting. So here is what to do when your mobile get wet.

Immediately remove it from water.
Then switch it off.
Open the case and remove the battery. Also remove your sim.
Dis-assemble the removeable parts like the case and let it open seomwhere under the fan, so that it can dry.
Do not switch it on. First take it to a service station. If you can take it there with in an hour or two, its really good. Then nothing is gonna be wrong. The earlist the more better.

Dont's :
Do not keep the phone in a microwave or near a heater thinking that it would get dry soon.
Do not make a phone call or try to work with a wet mobile.
Do not try to open the internal parts of the phone, unless you are trained to do so.
Do not immerse the mobile in water, purposefully.

And take care not to drop your mobile phone in to water. Always prevention is better than cure.

b

Legendary 'Shumi' Bids GoodBye

The all time grand prix legend Michael Schumacher says good bye to the official Formula 1 races but only after adding 7 world championships into his dashboard. His 30 year long career ended yesterday when he completed 4th in the 2006 Formula 1 championship in which Fernando Alonso was the champion ( second one in his career. First championship last year.) . His retire was taken to the hearts of millions of his fans with tears in their eyes yet with a sweet smile in their faces.

In his 30 year long career 'Shumi', as he is called by his fans, have added 7 world chamionships with 91 race wins and innumerable and unbeatable world records. His career brought Team Ferari back as the world leader. Ferari had fallen deep down and its only with the arrival of Schumacher in 1996 they started winning titles, that too after long 21 years.

The legend never dies. He still lives as the best racer of his time in the hearts of millions and millions of his fans. Never will such a legend come again in Formula 1. Shumi is simply the best.

b.

Browse Faster.. Do More...

'The page cannot be displayed'. Is this a very 'funny' message that frustrates you?. Every time you see this you feel deishearted..right..? Most of the people who depend on dial-up internet connections have to suffer a lot of problems ranging from a problem as simple as a page not found and which extends up to a timed out connection. Me too experienced a lot of problems as this about an year ago. Here is how I got along with that problem. I did not switch to a broadband connection but I did a little changes on the way I browsed. A little self-adjustment.

First to enjoy a good browsing you need a good PC. Clean up your PC. If needed format the hard-disk and remove all unnecessary programs. This will give you the basics for good browsing.

Second one is to plan your browsing. Remember that, as a dial-up user you are paying for every second you are online. So the faster you finish the jobs, the more money you have in your pocket. Write down on a piece of paper all the things that you have to do in that log-in session. If needed number the tasks in order. That is, plan the sequence in logical order so that you wont have to visit some pages again and agian or log-in to your e-mail id twice.

McAfee Says that every computer connected to the internet has at-least a single malicious code a virus. Do monitor your PC with a good anti-virus which is capable of finding and removing spy-ware and add-ware. Norton is fine. McAfee is good too. If spy-ware is present it will be acitve when you are online and sends unwanted data. So you will have sacrifice a lot of your connection speed. Also disable all automatic updates of various programs that you might have.

In my opinion Internet Explorer is a really good browser. Its simple and looks good. But we have got a lots of other bowsers which are much faster than the Internet Explorer. for Instance ' Opera' which is the fastest web-browser, is available free of cost and takes you to the page lightning fast. It caches all the pages you visit ( check out its preferences if you have one ) and brings it to you right from your hard-disk next time you access the pages. Let me giive you an example. If you get a forward of some pictures in Internet Explorer you have to right-click and select 'Save picture as..' for every picture. Opera caches all the images it display in to its cache ( which is in the profile folder of the installed folder of opera ). so you need not save each one of them separately. You can get it from its cache.
Also in opera you need not wait for the page to load when you choose the 'back' button. It will come instantly. But in IE the page loads from the server every time. Using opera an definitely save your time. Firefox is also a really good one.
Opera has got a feature which lets you block images in a page. So you can let only the text load in a purticular page. This is somethig which can make browsing more enjoyable as text takes only seconds to load and you will get every page really fast.

Most of the internet users depend on the download applet of Internet Explorer to download files. Why dont you try using something like 'Free Download Manager' or ' Download Acceleraor'..? They can make many simultaneaous connections to a server and can bring the files to your PC faster than the IE does. Also you can pause your downloads and continue with them the next time you are connected to the internet. So you can always save time. Free Download Manager is a free software.  Click this for the latst version : http://www.freedownloadmanager.org/download.htm

Some people think that they can browse faster if they use only one window for browsing. i.e they use only one Internet Explorer window and does the second task only after completing the first one. In my opinion this is wrong. Having two or three ( More that that can make it really slow.. ) internet Exlorer or Opera windows is good. For example if you have to visit your friend's web-site as well as check mail you can check mail in one window while the other page loads in the other. Or you can do a download while you read your mails. Thus you can save a lot of time.

Then something  you need to do is to find the best time in which you get the maximum connection speed. For example in my region ( or probably in India ) the best connection time is from 1.00 am to 8.00 am. At that hours I used to get the best connection speeds.  By logging on to net at different times you can find the best time. At some times like the times when the server is busy, you get more ' cannot find page' messages and more 'connection timed out' error messages. So choosing the best time will help.

Also look to the modem properties and make sure that the maximum connection speed is set to the value above the maximum the modem supports. ( I dont know why such an option is set by microsoft when every one is looking for more speeds. Can someone tell me why..? ).

I think with these things you can get more out of your dial-up connection. These days broadband internet is getting more and more cheaper. It would be good if every one switch to broadband internet to find the endless oppertunities over the internet. Wish you all a happy browsing. Move on.

b

Chat Right Inside G-mail

I have already mentioned that G-mail is the best web-based free e-mail service. As you might know we can chat right inside G-mail. The chat applet loads while the inbox is loading and connects itself to the chat server so that you can know when your contacts are online. When they come online you can chat with them right from there.

In Gmail the chat applet is present at the left bar below the labels ( or just above it if you have configured to do so in the settings ). That applet shows some of the contacts of you. ( In the settings you can choose the number of contacts to display ). Those ones whom you have chosen to display always will always be there. The remaining gaps will be filled by your frequent contacts.

To always display a purticular contact in the applet hover over the contact and you will get a popup. In that at about the right bottom corner you have display options where you can choose form : Auto , Always and Never. If the required contact is not there in the chat applet go to the contacts and just after their name there is an option to change the settings of display. Choose 'always' to see that contact always.

When a contact comes online ( and If he/she has signed in to chat ) his status will be displayed as online by a green bulb near his name. He can choose to diplay it as red if he chooses his status as busy. When the green bulb is lit you can chat with him by just moving your mouse to that contact and clicking 'chat' on the popup which then appears. It does not take time to load a chat applet. Its already there. A small window insantly appears where you can start chatting.

This chat facility is available only if you have choosen the G-mail view as 'Standard with chat'. This can be seen at the bottom of the inbox and just above the program policies link.

Choosing the 'Standard with chat' loads the chat applet every time you log in to your inbox. So this takes more time. Also the connection to server might get lost frequently if you are using a dial up connection. So dial up users will have to sacrifice the speed and it takes long to lead even a mail.

So if you are not intrested in chatting and is a dialup user its better to use the 'Standard without chat' or 'basic html' view. This will make checking mails more enjoyable.

G-mail have also provided users with a facility to record the chat's This is something which is not available with all chat programs. To record your chats you have to say it to do so in the settings. If you have choosen to record the chats the chats will be stored in the chat link which is found below the inbox link in the left part of the page. Every chat is recorded step wise along with time.

Its good to check your settings atleast once in 3 months. Remember that G-mail is still in the beta state. So they are adding more and more features to it. If you keep checking your settings you wont miss any of their new features.

Actually this was intended for non G-mail users. If you are not using G-mail yet, let me welcome you to G-mail. I had already put an article on G-mail. Read that too.
But to sign up to g-mail you need and invitation. If you are intrested and is looking for an invitaion send me a mail at : arunbasillal@gmail.com. I will send you one ( Remeber, I got limited invitations remaining.. about 94 only ).

Again welcome to G-mail, the best web-based free email service.

b

 

Choosing a Camera

Just like choosing a CamCorder finding the right still picture recording camera from the vast market is also a devil's job. In photography unlike videography you need more talent, more hard work and more experience to make your photos look good. You have to choose from the millions of frames around you. If the choose of frames is not exact you will loose the valuable moments. But making videos is easy. You can be really sure of not missing the moment. Ofcource to make good videos you need talent, but atleast you can be sure of capturing the valuable moments.

Like wise to make good pics choosing the right cam is important. As in the case of CamCorder, first choose from digital and film based cams. If you go for film based cams you will get professional cams for around $200. But as a beginner you will have to take lots of pictures. So while you are learning you will have to spent a lot in films and other procedures. Also you cannot see the picture at the time when its caught. So I think its better to look for a digital camera. You need a computer, ofcource. You must be having one..right..?

Once you have made the choice to be digital a big world of digital cameras comes before you. Remember we are looking for a amateur-to-professional camera.

Let me tell you what you must have in minimum in such a camera.

First you need atleast 4.0 Mega Pixels. But something at 5.0 Mega Pixels or 8.0 Mega Pixels is prefered. But never let it go below 4.0.

Then something important is the Zoom. Minimum 3X optical Zoom. Digital zoom is not at all useful in still picture recording. If you use it you will get pixelized picture. 3x optical zoom must be fine.

After that you need a 2.0" LCD display. Below that you will need a microscope to see what's taken. 2.5" is prefered. But remember LCD screens take a major part of the battery. So more battery will be used if the screen gets very big. There are cams with 3.5" LCD display.

Then you will need to have a pretty good battery. Do not prefer cameras which have a standard size battery ( like a AAA size battery ). Instead look for cams which have a specific battery made only for that camera. Like the casio exilim camera which have a 12V battery made only for the camera. Such batteries last longer than the standard sized batteries. Some might say that if you have a standard sized battery you can always purchase it from a near-by store when you are out of power. But wouldn't it be better to have a battery which can take upto 360 pictures rather than replacing the battery after every 50 pictures..? ( According to CIPA standards Casio Exilim's battery last for 360 picures and from my experience it lasts for 270 to 300 pictures in real life!!! ). You can always purchase an additional battery from the manufacturer in case.

These days most cameras have slots for expanding memmory like SD card slots or Multi Media Card slot. So you wont have to ask for that at the manufacturer. Its a standard. Also do not bother if the internal memmory is as less as zero. You can always expand it.

Something which you will have to look for is the view finder. This is not always available. If you use the viewfinder you can conserve the battery power and take more pictures. Also the use of viewfinder gives the photographer more control over hand shakes.

Make sure that the one you choose has a pan-focus facility so that you can shoot the exact frame you thought of, without waiting for the auto-focus to complete. This is very important.

Then something which you can ask for is continuous movie recording and sound recording capabilites. These days cams come with in built Mp3 players and can even work as webcams. For a still picture camera the image stabilization feature is not something mandatiory but can came handy if available. Also an all-weather cam must be a good choice as with such cams you can even shoot your friends skating in the snow.

Your cam must have some basic functions like : auto focus, night mode, trimming, cropping, some basic filters ( like majenta filter to shoot the sunset )... Along with auto focus you will need a manual focus function to give the pictures your personal touch. This can come handy once you have started turning a pro.

As a beginner you will have to look for a cam which is small in size and hence must be able to be carried every where you go. Also you need to spent a lot of time trying with different camera angles and different frames. So look for the right cam with these options in mind. Always make a "must-have" list and a " nice-to-have" list. Wish you a nice time finding one.

Suggested Model : I have a Casio Exilim Z30 with me. Its great ! Its has only 3.2 MegaPixels but everything else is fine. Its was a bit expensive but its really cute. Now newer models are available with more features at half the price. A $300 to $ 500 budget must be fine. Remember you are making a choice only once..right..? And its better to chill out more bucks in the beginning than to spent it in instalments at the repair stations frequently. Sony and Canon have got really nice models too. You got a lot of them. Try it for yourself before purchasing. First find a cam and then find some of its existing users and get their feedback. That will make your choice perfect.

Good Luck.

b.

Choosing a Video CamCorder

My dad used to say that when he was a kid shopping was much more easier. The only thing you had to look when you go to shop was to make sure that you had the money with you. But world has canged drastically over the past 10 years. People have more money in their hands, they have more needs, more producers and more choices to make. Even if you go to purchase a pinapple candy you will have to choose from rich pinapple candy, pineappple with honey and lots more... If choosing something that simple has become this tough I dont think that I should mention how hard its to purchase a CamCorder when you have tons of them availabe in the market. ( Canon itself have over 30 models in the consumer range ).

But to shop these days you have to be really stong minded. You have to have a " must have " list and a " nice to have" list. This will make shopping easier.

Having a CamCorder at had is a really good thing. Its nice to live life again and again. 'Cuz life is only once. But choosing one is not a kids job. Let me tell you something.

When you approach the market as a consumer fix your budget. And let me tell you its better to buy something realy good than purchasing something which is cheap and having to repair it over and over. You are doing it only once ..right..?
You can get good CamCorder's at around $700. A $600 to $1000 would be a good budget. But cheaper ones are available even from world leaders like Sony at $300. Those ones will work for sure but will not have good TV quality or DVD quality for their videos. So keep the following as a minimum for your CamCorder.

Analog Cams are costlier so you have to choose for a Digital one.

You must have atleast a 1/3 inch CCD.

Cams with 3 CCD instead of Single CCD have separate units to convert the light falling on the lens to electronic image. The have separate converters for Red Blue and Green. Which means more the clarity of the video and ofcource more the cost.

The cam should preferably have atleast 2 Megapixel Still picture recording quality and atleast 1.2 Megapixels of video recording quality.

You must have an image stabiliser function. Prefer Optical Image Stabilisation ( O.I.S) to correct all your hand shakes.

You must have atleast 10X optical zoom. This is a must as digital Zooms do get you mush closer but they destroy the image quality.

Along with auto focus you must have manual focus ( with focus ring prefered ). As someday when you will become a pro, you will miss this feature badly.

Prefer models in which you can change the lens and add some other. Like remove a wide angle lens and add a telephoto lens or so. You will need that all once you are a pro.

A LCD screen of 2.5" or a mximum 3" is prefered. More the window size more battery is used so a bigger LCD is not always good. But 2.5" is essential.

Along with the LCD the viewfinder is a must. When at times to conserve battery you will have to depend on this viewfinder.

Regarding battery life ... a minimum of 1 hour backup is needed..right..?

HardDisk based drives are available these days. These comes in capacities of 30 GB and above. HardDisks keep you away from those DV tapes and DVD's. They are convinient as you wont have to carry any tapes or you wont have to convert the captured video before editing but its said that they make a rumming sound ( of rotating disks ) while in operation. Recording on DVD's is not a good option. A DVD can include only about 30 mins of high quality video. Even though many CamCorder's support re-writable DVD's I dont thnik its a good choice. Also DVD's are not cost effective. But with DVD's you can play your videos direcly on a DVD-player right after you captured the video without anymore editing.You need no more conversion to edit your videos. The quality of DV-Tapes is unmatched. Its a better option only you will have to do a conversion before you can edit. Also its cost effective. Flash based CamCorder's are available but owing to smaller flash memmories of a maximim of 2 GB inbuilt, they can record only minutes of video.
So I think you can choose from a Hard-Disk based or a DV-Tape based CamCorder at your convinience.

When you are going to record a long DVD quality video of about 20GB or 30 GB in size you need a fast method to transfer it to your PC. So you cam must have a firewire port ( its the fastest ) or at least a USB port. Some good cams from Canon have a mic input, a TV out and a Video-in ( To convert tapes to digital video's right from your cam ! ) along with both Firewire and USB port.

These days CamCorder's come with much more features like in-built Mp3 playes, webcams and much more. Look for a good one keeping these tips in mind. First write down what all features do u need and make the right choice. Also remember to choose from Sony , Canon , Panasonic , JVC or Samsung. Above all your satisfaction is important. Have a nice time finding one.

Good Luck!

b

Stop Mobile Theft !!!

If every one of us reads this input I am sure there wont be any more stolen mobiles. Here is how to do that.

In the standby mode key-in    * # 0 6 #    and you will get a 15 digit serial number which is given to the phone by the phone manufacturer and is unique to the phone. Key-in the code and write it down in a very safe place where you are sure you wont loose it ( Do it at the earlist..please. ). Once you loose the phone and there happen to be no possible way to get it back call your service provider and give them this code. They can make your mobile useless using that code. This will work even if the thief changes the SIM. So he will have no more use of the mobile.

If evey one knew this then everyone would report stolen mobiles with this code. So every stolen mobile will be useless. So the theives will stop stealing phones as there is no point in doing so. We can really make a differnce if we work hand-in-hand.

b