Technology blog, Science and Mystery

some websites blocking back button navigation in browser

2012-01-22T23:27:00.000-08:00

recently i am finding many websites are tricking visitors not to navigate away from the website or webpage by disabling or overriding back button recently i landed up in website which offers mp3 downloads but when i did not find needed in that page when i clicked back button in the browser it was weirdly disallowing me to navigate back though i experienced this type many times but clicking back button twice or continuously for a while i was able to navigate away but this website called clip.dj was appending # at end of URL and overriding back key of browser.

below pic shows that website is automatically overriding back button by appending "#" to the same webpage URL thus making us stay on same webpage

Though sometimes it would be a legitimate redirect issue such as when you was redirected by login or some kind of transaction based navigation but if it was just a normal "search engine to website" or "webiste to website hop" and you cannot still hop back then the present website is intentionally holding you back.

So if you are stuck and you want the search engine result of the previous page then don't worry just click on the history menu from the browser and click on the previous link you came from if you know any other tip or trick to overcome this do share it here

Though i am sure its not a browser issue since i have checked this website(ex clip.dj) on IE, Chrome and firefox which is exhibiting same behavior of disabling browser back button i guess the admin/owner of the website is intentionally doing this.

Frontech gem 2225 driver for windows 7

2012-01-13T08:40:00.000-08:00

Recently i wanted to use my frontech 2225 gem ecam on windows 7 pc but unfortunately after installing the software/drivers from the CD given while purchasing the cam did not worked it was incompatible with windows 7 and was throwing error "The software for this device has been blocked from starting because it is known to have problems with windows. Contact the hardware vendor for a new driver.(code 48) see the below pic

After a lot of search i was finally able to find a compatible device driver software for frontech jil e-cam and this is the first time i felt never to go for desi brands electronic items because they never care to update their driver stack for their products all i found was 40kb driver file in their website and the drivers for frontech ecams come from sonix inc.

Finally i found driver for frontech gem jil 2225 you can download it from 4shared link here just follow below steps to install i tested it on both 32 and 64bit windows 7 OS

download the driver from above link:

1. Right click on the downloaded driver file --> select "properties"

2. select check box "run this program in compatibility mode from drop down menu select "Windows xp(service pack2 or service pack3)

3. after installing restart the system if it asks.

Now your frontech gem e-cam should be working fine and windows 7 ready if you are having any problem at any steps do say here.

how to download Facebook videos ? working solution

2012-01-10T01:45:00.000-08:00

I recently wanted to download a video posted on Facebook when i googled i stumbled across many links on how to download youtube videos but most of the technique or tips such as scripts, extensions and tools i found was either obsolete or not working for some reason and was very complicated which requires accessing third party websites etc and after a a lot of tries and using addons i found few methods/tools which indeed helped me in downloading the Facebook video clips directly instead of redirects and complicated methods, so thought of sharing these tips i found with you guys

Video Download Helper
If you are using Mozilla firefox then Downloader Helper is a must have tool this extension is developed by third party you can find it in the Mozilla official website deck and can be installed depending on your mozilla firefox version.

Download helper not only rips facebook videos but can download videos from various social networking and web portals such as youtube, vimeo, personal sites, and other organizational websites.

Once the addon is installed and firefox is restarted if the webpage contains any video played the download helper icon near address bar automatically start animating and when you click on the drop down list you can see the list of downloadable video's as shown in below pic.

Firefox and Google Chrome Cache viewer

This is being my favourite type of video rip off trick, from last few years now this trick allows to download almost 90% of videos and audios found on the net, the trick is browsers always download a copy of videos into its cache because if user replays video it does not want to download again from the net this comes very handy because browsers save this downloaded video in form of cache until a specified amount of time say few hours to a day, there are lot of cache viewer plugins and tools that can view and download this content from cache such as audio, video, image, documents etc from browsers such as Firefox, chrome, Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera etc, below is the pic of cache viewer of mozilla firefox

you can install this cache viewer as an addon or download it Here seperately for a specific browser.

Though there are many other tricks to download video from Facebook and other website's such as giving link in some portals and running grease monkey scripts from Firefox i found above two techniques to be easy and non complicated if you know any other easy way of doing do let me know.

has youtube video views count stopped ?

2011-12-28T11:05:00.000-08:00

Lately i started noticing most of the youtube videos count's/counter are getting frozen regularly one morning last month i watched a video on youtube for some reason i was able to remember the view count but when i opened the same video on youtube again that afternoon it was clear that the view count was not ticking the count was same which i saw in the morning. So what might be the reason? below are few things i came to know after searching on forums and net

Since many people started embedding youtube videos and tweaking youtube embed code to automatically play the video youtube has started fighting back to protect its integrity of services to stop view spamming and its relationship with partners and advertisers.

It is also said that youtube has taken action against the view count to consider only legitimate views say if total view count is 430 and i have viewed same video 200 times youtube automatically considers it as 229.

Some say there is a bug in youtube video view counter mechanism.

What ever it is see the above pic which shows youtube video count remained same even after 6 hours even after i watched the video the comment marked prove the statement, btw do you have more information on it?

Automatically repeat option on youtube

2011-12-23T06:13:00.000-08:00

how to replay or loop videos on youtube? this was the question came to my mind when i stumbled across nice music video which i was not able to resist to hear again and again on youtube today though i never searched for repeat option before today when i searched for it i found youtube video's does not have repeat we have to manually click on replay link.

Searching for the hack on how to repeat youtube videos i found a grease monkey script that exactly does what i need, Loopy for youtube is a Greasemonkey script which all to repeat youtube videos over and over again automatically.

after installing greasemonkey and script you get a extra option/link loop in youtube player window as shown in below pic clicking on it loops video infinitely

Though youtube gives the ability for publishers to embed videos on their own site with inbuilt repeat functionality where user can use the value pair loop =1 in embed script don't know why youtube guys has missed such a important feature in their website.

nostalgic classic magnetic gyro wheel toy of lost decade

2011-12-09T23:23:00.000-08:00

growing up in 80's was very fun atleast for us we used to play whole lot of games on streets than home unlike today's kids who are addicted to computer and indoor games and have become couch potatoes and yes toys and comics was our one stop gap of enjoyment and we were annoying our parents for it alteast every now and then.

I was born and bought up in Bangalore and jayanagar 4th block and gandhibazar was my week end Disney land these places where so much happening it was a great place to shop and streets and shops were filled with all sorts of toys from mini working steam boat, water guns, classic car toys to gyro magnetic wheels etc and cotton candies for time pass it was all in 80's and early 90's.

And today when i walk in same streets all i can find is pirated CD's for Sony psp and Xbox,PC game Cd's and some cheap Chinese toys, and really tons of toy's really was out of chart! whats more i was not able to find even cotton candies on the street, to hell with the internet generation, Internet has really snatched all the fun we had from our present generation kids.

The reason to write this post is while browsing for something i came across below pic

Which triggered my retro memories of this nostalgic piece of toy which i used to have and played all times, really when i tried to find this classic toy in Bangalore i was not able to find one if any of you guys reading this know where we can find it in Bangalore do comment here.

feedburner shows 0 subscribers count bug or penalty?

2011-12-02T21:26:00.000-08:00

Today morning i woke up to see that my website / blog feed subscribers had gone from 600+ to mere 0 in just a night i was very much concerned that 2 years (though my blog is 4 years old i added feed burner 2 years back) of building user base just banished in one night. i logged into my feedburner account but i can see all the subscribers active but unfortunately the count on the widget on my site still shows zero even after cleaning the browser cache and loading on to different browser and system see below pic

but if i try to add new email id / subscriber it was still taking in and feeds are still updating with latest content at this point i came to know that its some temporary glitch in the system and when googled it was no surprise that many people had faced same situation in the past.

Still there is no any information in their official blog what concerns me is i have quite a good number of regular feed readers around 300+ according to stats hoping to send a email to them and lets see what happens, just temporarily removed the display of feed count from the widget will be putting it back when the feed count starts showing correctly.if you are a blogger and have faced the same situation do share with us here.

update 04/12/2011: Finally issue got fixed now i can see the subscriber count as usual.

free google apps email for families or other email hosting

2011-11-27T01:01:00.000-08:00

Is there any free alternative similar to google App's email service for families and friends group? answer is "NO", since google app's reduced free accounts initially from unlimited to 200, 200 to 100, 100 to 50 and finally now from 50 to 10, i started googling for alternate players though i expected there would be someone far better such as Microsoft or Yahoo i was surprised to know no one offered free email service like google did which has the complete cloud such as docs, contacts, calendar, chats etc not just email.

I have been using Google app's for my family domain from past 4 years and i have around 200 users limit and i have filled up around 24, recently one of my friend wanted to setup a similar kind of custom domain for his family and all of them have Android and other smart phones but unfortunately he wanted 18 accounts for his entire family but with the new limitation posed he was unable to do so since buying a premier edition for family is not worth it because most of his family members are non geeks and they just want EMAIL and Rarely Calendar nothing else and he was cribbing to have purchased a domain earlier and set it up...

I think google should increase the limit atleast to 25 for standard users it will be very useful for people with midsized family.

When google allows people to create unlimited email accounts for free on gmail then why they have reduced the limit to such a low number on its google apps? when it is similar and no different from regular gmail except people will have their own domain extension and can choose to create email accounts with their first name and also don't mind ad's in their inbox webpage lately i realized google is purely moving into commercializing everything and is not sticking to their original slogan "Don't be evil" its more or less evil now a days with their rigid policies.

what ever it is i suggested my friend other cheap and best alternatives though not best and par with Google they do offer a decent service such as from Bigrock email hosting service where they charge just 4$/per-month for 50 accounts with 2GB space with pop/imap and even contact sync which is more than enough for a family email solution.

Incorrect domain renewal date on my Google order receipt email

2011-11-19T23:06:00.000-08:00

I just renewed my domain from Google through my credit card but i was amazed to see that in order receipt Google says my domain is registered until DEC 19 2010 this means my domain cease to exist, see the below pic

i think its a bug in the system but my who.is record shows its correctly renewed until 2012 DEC 19 what ever it is when i searched on the Google this issue is faced by Google custom domain owners from several months still Google is no updated this issue.

Is Engineering Degree worthless if not applied in profession ?

2011-11-17T09:59:00.000-08:00

I have seen many people who do engineering or any other college degree just for sake of graduation only 50 t0 60% of them apply what they have studied during their degree in real life atleast in INDIA.

Most of the people in india join engineering just to get into IT field and earn easy bucks whether they have choose major in Mechanical, Electrical, Biotechnology, Electronics or Printing majority of then finally take a crash course on Java or Dotnet Technologies and jump into IT field.

Whats more i know tons of them who completed the engineering course just for the sake of degree and doing other profession many of my friends who have completed Engineering in Computer Science is doing business and into Professions such as Construction, Politics, Film Career etc.

So one question started spinning in my mind, is the degree worth that we studied for and never applied in our life? when i asked this questions to many of my friends, i got a standard answer for almost all of them they say "U know what, This education would help us in growing our children" though weird all of them says the same above answer then why shud we send kids to school can't we teach our self? i think pre-university course is more than enough to bring up a child.

In My Opinion a obtained degree is worthless if we do not apply at least once in our life time, i say even if we work for 1 or 2 years in the profession which we have done major our degree's are really worth else its just another cardboard paper decorating our wall, so what do you guys think do you agree with me or you have any other version to say.

how to clean greasy chimney grill or baffle filters

2011-11-02T04:34:00.000-07:00

most of the modern kitchens around the world is equipped with electric chimney to expel out kitchens fume and cooking smoke during the course of time the oil gets accumulated within the chimney filters though it would be easy for guys who use replaceable filters, but most of the people use a chimney with baffle filters which can be reused again and again by degreasing it, but de-greasing baffle filters is not a common man's task, to completely pristine remove the grease from chimney its easy but require to use of chemical.

We use generous amount of Oil and ghee for cooking this was making our chimney to get fully greased almost every month but paying for degreasing baffle filters was costing too much since the service guy was taking 500rs for 30mins job.

When i watched the cleaning work it was fairly simple the service guy would put baffle filters in a plastic tray and put a handful of white crystalline powder on the filter and just pour boiling hot water thats it a crackling sound, smoke and strange reaction occur for about a minute bingo when he remove filters from tray it looks as if new leaving all the dirt, oil/ grease in the tray.

So what is the chemical/powder used to degrease the chimneys?
I asked service guy what is the name of the powder he refused to say and told me that its is highly dangerous and proprietary and is given to them by the chimney company and he was our regular chimney service guy but this time this guy was not able to come and sent his colleague when i asked the same question he was very quick in revealing the name of that "Secret powder"! at-last i came to know the magic behind the cleaning :)

The magic powder is called "Caustic Soda" also known as Sodium hydroxide or Lye which we can get in local grocery stores, remove the mesh from the chimney put it in a plastic tray or container and put handful of caustic soda on chimney and pour hot water and just keep it only for 2-3 minutes and remove it. Please be careful and do not touch with hand at all. Put gloves and use then remove filters it should be grease free.

Warning: You should be careful while using Caustic soda aka lye it is highly corrosive if used it in wrong way or pouring hot water directly on it or inhaling the fumes and not using gloves and goggles is highly dangerous so if you are not sure on how to use it use at your OWN RISK, better leave it professionals if you are not sure what you are doing.

Is time passing more quickly than before?

2011-10-31T06:07:00.000-07:00

There is a saying that time seems to pass faster than usual as we grow or get older, back when i was in school more than a decade ago the days seems to be of reasonable length but everything seems to be changing now time is flying like anything it starts with Monday and i am amazed to see how quickly i land up on Friday 2008 was longer than 2009 and 2009 longer than 2010 year by year time seems to get phenomenal acceleration... Is earth really rotating that fast? or there is some unknown phenomena behind this? this was few of the question churning in my mind lately.

Is it all how we perceive time or is there any physical reason behind it? this topic is vastly discussed in many forums and blogs each of them give their own reasoning some attribute it to physical saying there is a change in universe and higher consciousness, space and time, some weird theories etc.

It is proved that more we enjoy time seems to fly's away at faster rate say watching a good movie of 2hrs seems to fly like 10 or 20mins and a 2hrs of college lecture seems to be boring and never ending, We are living in interesting times where electronic gadgets, computers, internet and other modern things and social culture keeps us so busy and entertained that time seems to pass faster and faster.

Whatever it is i believe that the latter idea of modern era is behind the fast pacing time factor so what do you guys thin you agree with me or do you have your own theory?

Contacts backup in android Mobile sync / restore instantly Wirelessly

2011-10-08T00:09:00.000-07:00

For Long time one thing missing in android market is a powerful address book or phone book backup application good enough to sync your contacts to the cloud and restore in case of theft or changing phone to such as iPhone, Blackberry or Brew and other J2me devices.

I recently came across a Contacts Backup sync application in android market called "Desktop Sync" though the name sounds weird it backup's contacts to the Remoba servers which is highly secure and sync's quite often whenever a new contact is added, modified or deleted such that keeping exact same copy of contacts in both Phone and Web whats more this application even gives you a "desktop Sync application" for all versions of windows OS that lets you sync all your contacts from Outlook, Outlook express, Palmdesktop or Lotusnotes to the webserver which then you can sync them back to your mobile, i think thats the reason they named it "Desktop Sync" its complete "Contact Sync solution" at your finger tips.
What's more? you can even add, edit, modify, search the contacts through the Web Access/portal, this comes handy if your handset is @home and you urgently needed your friends or family phone number see the below pic contact list in web access.

This is not yet over you get a complete list of awesome cutting edge features with this app that you only dream't of such as:

Backup of Phonebook Contacts
PC Sync Software that enables your desktop PIM contacts(Outlook,Outlook express, Lotus Notes and Palmdesktop) to your mobile phone
Restore Contacts from Server to the Phone
AutoSync – Daily, Weekly, or Monthly
Data Wipe when the phone is lost or stolen
SSL Security
Web Access for online viewing or editing contacts
Find your Mobile, it shows the location of your mobile device on the map.
Still lots of other features yet to come cooking in developers garage.

QR Code to download this application
Whats more Remoba boasts of bringing Google, Yahoo and Hotmail sync via this android application in near future so watch out, i already started using this contact / addressbook backup application and i am really satisfied if you are looking for a pure/working 2way sync android contacts backup app then this is your best bet and you will never loose your numbers again

Google Plus Stickers with adsense check (Stick 'em up! )

2011-10-05T00:27:00.000-07:00

First of all "Wish you a happy dussehra and vijayadashami" for all of you guys, well today i got google adsense check in the morning a good sign this festive season, secondly while i was digging for check inside the envelope i found something extra this time, though at first i thought it could be some kind of coupons or gift voucher :) i was surprised to find four Cool "Google Plus" Stickers inside it see the below pic.

E'mm what to do with stickers, well the stickers are really cool so i though of sticking it on to my room door see below pic ain't it looks great :) and planning to stick another one to rear windshield of my car and other to My AC unit outside :P ..

I heard google send lot of other goodies such as USB memory cards, digital photo frames, Mobiles, Wireless Mouse, lava lamps etc to top publishers i think it still takes a long time for me to reach that mark.

It would be a good idea if Google distributes Orkut, gmail, blogger and other stickers too, for bloggers T-shirt would be better :P

Thanks you google for sending such a cool google plus sticker and helping us monetizing on the hobby that we love to do and hope you keep sending such goodies to adsense publishers.

Do you remember family phone numbers lately ?

2011-09-12T10:14:00.001-07:00

I bet 90% of people in world do not remember mobile / phone numbers of their home, family or friends, recently i forgot my cell phone and i was too far away from home and urgently required a mobile number of my friend but unfortunately i was not able to remember numbers of my mother and sister nor anyone @home, and one thought that came to my mind is who should i call in an emergency? because i haven't memorized any number? though i remember landlines number it is in my room and only used for internet/broadband and this shows how much we are dependent on stored numbers in our mobile phones and handheld electronic devices.

So how to remember phone number in case of emergencies? below are few methods that may save you in case of emergencies:

1. First of all try to memorize two phone numbers one is your family member and other is your best friend.

2. It would be a better practice to maintain a "phonebook /telephone index" for important contacts and emergency numbers, i guess this was the common mode of storing phone numbers before cell/mobile phone became widely used.

3. Sync contacts to web via mobile or store contacts into web such as yahoo, google or hotmail so that you can access contacts via net in case of stolen mobile or if device is not handy we can just browse online contacts to get numbers anywhere anytime provided we have access to internet.

If you know any other ways or tips to remember or access phone numbers to do share with us.

Names of Nursery Rhymes poets/Authors we need to know

2011-09-03T06:27:00.000-07:00

Every one of them in their childhood must have come across nursery rhymes such as "Twinkle Twinkle Little star", "Ring a Ring o Rosies" etc most of these rhymes are like defacto in schools around the world in most of the countries, and many of you would have even taught to your kids or other children but have you ever tried to know the names of the real persons who actually wrote it? i bet no one would have, recently i was showing some rhymes to my nephew in youtube and i was like "wait a minute" who is the person who wrote this rhyme that 90% of the children around the world are learning next moment i started googling wiki-page and i learn't who author was below are the list of rhymes and the poet/author behind it

Name of Rhyme	Author / Origin	Published Year
Twinkle Twinkle Little Star	Ann Taylor (1782-1866) and Jane (Taylor(1783-1824)	1806
Baa Baa Black Sheep	The slave trade; medieval wool tax	1744
Ring Around the Rosy	Black Death (1348) or The Great Plague (1665)	1881
London Bridge Is Falling Down	Not Known	1744
Ding Dong Bell	Not Known	1580
Hickory Dickory Dock	Reports claim that the rhyme was written by Oliver Goldsmith	1765
Hot Cross Buns Rhyme	Not Known	1798
Humpty Dumpty	Richard III of England; Cardinal Wolseyand a cannon from the English Civil War	1810
Itsy Bitsy Spider Rhyme	Not Known	Not Known
Jack and Jill	Cullen Boltey	1765
Mary had a little lamb	Sarah Josepha Hale (American Origin)	1830
London Bridge is broken down / Falling Down	Lady Lee (Not sure)	Not Known
Star light, star bright,	Not Known (American Origin)	Late 19thC
Pussy cat, pussy cat	Not Known (England)	1805
Rain rain go away	Not Known (England)	17th C or earlier
Row, row, row your boat,	Not Known (American Origin)	1852
This little piggy	Not Known (England)	1760
Three Blind Mice	Mary I of England	1744
Old MacDonald had a farm	F. T. Nettleingham (Original Version)	1917
One, Two, Buckle My Shoe	Not Known (Origin London)	1805
johnny johnny yes papa	Not Known	Not Known

Above is the list of some famous nursery rhymes i came across, i was amazed to see i was not able to find most of the poet behind the rhymes if you think you have a rhyme to add with author and date leave it in comment section i will add it to the table asap.

How to get sitelinks for website & what is authoritative blog ?

2011-08-25T12:31:00.000-07:00

Site-links is one of the important factor for any webmaster or blogger because having site links implies his/her blog or website is considered authoritative by google today when i typed my blog name in google i was surprised to see that my website had a sitelinks on google search i was surprised and at the same time was very happy because not all website and blogs have sitelinks only authoritative websites get the sitelinks automatically enabled by google see below pic

according to google sitelinks help users to navigate our website and they are basically created automatically by google algorithm and these cannot be purchased or requested to google, if google thinks if you have quality information and links it will automatically get generated.

Though there are lots of debate whether having sitelinks for a website is considered to be authoritative but one thing for sure its very hard to get the sitelinks for any website and i am glad atleast i got after 3 years of blogging

Some of the important tips to get sitelink soon:

1. Try to get more organic traffic
2. More the back links more google think your site is important
3. Quality content, content should always be useful and original
4. Search engine Optimization is very important
5. Internal linking will help in bringing more page-views.
6. The website should be very old with good back links.

Now that i got sitelinks for my website i have to see how to modify it to categories instead of links if you guys have any tips do share with us.

Innosetup delete files during uninstall procedure

2011-08-22T03:08:00.000-07:00

how to delete files created during runtime while uninstalling the application this is the question came to my mind when one of the app was using old configuration data which was not deleted during un-installation after a brief search on Google i came across the sample procedure on stack overflow forums that worked like a charm so thought of putting it here for my future reference and for people who are searching for this piece of code.

to achieve this and prompt user whether to delete the application generated files during run time we have to create a routine "CurUninstallStepChanged" and write the action during this event see the below code

procedure CurUninstallStepChanged (CurUninstallStep: TUninstallStep);

var

mres : integer;

begin

case CurUninstallStep of

  usPostUninstall:

    begin

      mres := MsgBox('Do you want to delete saved files?', mbConfirmation, MB_YESNO or MB_DEFBUTTON2)

      if mres = IDYES then

     

        // use below code to  Delete files from App data in documents and settings

        DelTree(ExpandConstant('{userappdata}\yourappfoldername'), True, True, True);

      

         // use below code to  Delete files from installation folder

        DelTree(ExpandConstant('{app}'), True, True, True);



    end;

end;

end;

for a complete path structure API's / Codes visit this LINK which i posted long back.

above example shows on how to delete files in installation and application data folder the above method delete all the files and entire application folder, you can even make your own function call and write custom actions to be performed

Will Blank mobiles phones without operating system is solution for patent war?

2011-08-17T03:14:00.000-07:00

how about mobile manufacturers selling blank devices and users load the operating system they want themselves? weird idea isn't it? i got this idea when one of my friend bought a PC preloaded with Linux formatted it and installed Windows 7.

When PC manufacturer doing this for a long time why not that applies to cell phones when pc users have a luxury of installing their choice of OS on same computer say Windows, Linux, Ubuntu, Unix etc why only one flavor in our mobile devices when their exist hell lot more OS out there like Symbian, windows mobile, android, palm, bada etc etc for mobile phones?

I think mobile manufacturers and OS developers should agree on some standards and bringing out some cool devices and OS Software, and i think this will bring a healthy competition between hardware manufactures and also software developers thus ending monopoly in the space.

Because i like Motorola hardware but not their software similarly, similarly Nokia has good hardware but their software makes the device to look like crap basically what i need is Android on Nokia devices and sure i know this never gonna happen.

What ever it is with advent and rapid growth of Google Android OS companies like Microsoft, Apple, RIM are fearing whether they loose their hold in mobile market and started sueing each other by fighting a Patent war. So what do you guys think should we need a standard in Mobile hardware so that we can install the OS of our choice or the present monopoly of Software and Hardware fusion will be better?

How to program transponder key of car (immobilizer ) ourselves ? my experience

2011-08-11T04:19:00.000-07:00

This was the question i asked my self Last week when i misplaced / lost my car keys somewhere in my home but was not able to find it, then i was left with one key as a factor of safety i thought of making another spare key but one thing i came to know that my car(MANZA) comes with a factory fitted immobilizer that does not allow to start the engine with some ordinary cut key done at the locksmith but needs to buy a original key which contains blank transponder and chip from the tata motors and get it programmed to start engine

After searching on the net i found that the transponder keys cost about 20$ in avg and dealer charges 50 - 100$ to program the key, i thought i was very much screwed up and have to shell out 100+ dollars.

I went to Concorde motors and explained about misplaced key they said i have to buy a transponder key from them and program it if i wanted a spare, so i went to the Concorde spare department and purchased it, the Blank transponder key was around 8$, when i asked the dealer about programming the key, dealer said i have to bring the car and get the key cut myself at local locksmith.

I went to home i got transponder key cut at local locksmith i inserted the key and when i turned on i could see all the system getting powered on but a danger sign still blinking on console when i tried to start the car the car cranked but i was not able to start the engine, though i saw lot of videos on net on how to program the key ourselves none of them worked since most of time it requires

1. Two original key to program a spare key
2. A key cloner kit to make duplicate
3. Most importantly each cars have its own Immobilizer EMC learning sequence.

Since i did not had the luxury about any of the above i took my car to the dealer praying he will not charge more as discussed in the internet forums.

I went to Concorde motors they booked my car under quick service request and the representative told me that manza is equipped with latest immobilizer kit and the key can be programmed only by the authorized dealer with some special kit given by TATA MOTORS and he said they will charge for it, he took my car to the garage i could see everything from visitor lobby as garage was open to view, they bought a small computer kit connected it to my car and did something after 20mins they bought my car out.

To my relief the rep said the old misplaced key is removed from CAR EMC and deactivated it will no longer work and i need not pay anything for programming it is free :) Thanks to Concorde motors for free service i was really surprised atlast i got my new key programmed while deactivating my lost key under 8$ So guys if your car has immobilizer be careful because getting a spare key can cost you 50+ dollars.

below is the video on how to program transponder key yourself some car manufacturers allow it to do yourself if you have two sets of original keys

And also never get your transponder key get cloned at local locksmith because there's a high chances of old key still active and can be used by unauthorized person or theif only authorized dealer can reprogram keys and EMC of your and deactivate your old key third party locksmith can just clone a key for you but cannot deactivate old key or change EMC program in your car to new code.

Can we connect android phone directly to printer to print files?

2011-08-08T05:47:00.000-07:00

One of the common questions android tablet users ask is whether they are any printer drivers for android so that they can directly connect to printer via USB and print files, but unfortunately there is no official or decently supported hardware drivers or hardware gadget for android that can directly connect to printer and print files.

But you can print files easily if your printer support wireless printing via Bluetooth or WiFi, there are loads of free apps out there in android market most of them released by Printer manufacturer itself such as HP, Samsung, Kodak see below pic, a simple search on android market will list a whole lot of apps install one which suits your needs based on printer you have.

And if you are too geeky you could try a hack authored by Mike Kershaw from Kismet and Mike Baker of OpenWRT which allows you to connect your droid device with any USB-enabled device though its not a straight forward method and requires coupling of different cables to achieve it

you can find the detailed instruction in chris paget's blog, though at present above hack needs to restart your android device every time you connect to different devices such as printer, camera etc due to lack of usb support in android kernel for peripherals, but you could expect lots of new things in near future by independent developers or hacker group may be Google might come out with a standard driver stack for usb support until then finger crossed.

So bottom line there is no way to directly connect to printer and android via USB the best option at present is to buy a printer that supports either Bluetooth or wifi printing.

CMOS battery of my computer motherboard dead! what happens ?

2011-07-24T07:14:00.000-07:00

From past one week i had hard time configuring my system time and bios settings every time i switched On or reboot the system why? my computer motherboard battery was dead and i had no time to replace it with new one and i never changed it since i bought my computer from past 6 years.

I bet you folks didn't even know your PC had a battery, ever though what keeps your computer time and date up-to-date even if your computer is not turned on or unplugged even for weeks together? below is the video on how to replace your CMOS battery of your computer.

below are few things that kept annoying this week whenever i turned on my system:

1. Bios Setting screen and slow bootup: First of all the computer was going to bios settings whenever i switched on the system, every time i used to select default settings a three keystrokes of annoying process.

2. Change Date and Time: My thunderbird / Outlook and other applications and even some websites was showing security exception and was not loggin in due to expired or invalid certificate error because of date mismatch so every time i used configure date and time

3. Application Freeze: Weridly my firefox was getting freezed for few minutes before it was working again normally and also sometimes internet was not working for a while until i changed the date and time.

But all the above symptoms vanished instantly after replacing the CMOS battery and rebooting the system did you faced any other weird issue due to Dead cmos battery then do share with us

Problem installing frontech gem webcam drivers ?

2011-07-23T00:46:00.000-07:00

Are you getting error "8007045a" cannot create a video capture file or getting a error incorrect frame rate then here is the solution.

most of the time you get this error because you might have connected your webcam and directly installed the webcam driver from CD by clicking on autoplay option, some times installing from CD some of the dll files may not have copied into system directory to over come this you have to uninstall previous installed and do a fresh install by following below steps

--> Go to the control panel
--> Click on the System Icon
--> Click on the Hardware Tab
--> Click on the Device Manager button and
--> Select the Unknown Device or you can see the yellow Question Marks on the webcam icon.
--> Uninstall it by righ clicking on the icon.
--> Go to the top of the device manager and click on scan for hardware changes/Refresh.
--> Now the Driver installation Wizard start Automatically.
--> Browse Your location of your webcam driver say CD drive or harddisk and install the driver software.

Now you should see some of the files copying to System32 folders. now after the installation goto Programs--> Frontech E-Cam -->AmCap

in the Window click on Devices--> select "Frontech E-cam" as shown in below pic

That's it now your webcam can record the video as usual or you can chat with your friends using your webcam

adobe products annoying updates please fix

2011-07-18T23:02:00.000-07:00

let it be their acrobat pdf reader, Adobe photoshop, adobe flash or any other product under adobe radar one thing all have in common is annoying frequent updates at-least more than four times a month, i use most of their products and they are really amazing but at same time its irritating because of updates the reason to write this post was my adobe acrobat reader, adobe flash and photoshop all popped up at the same time requesting updates whats more the acrobat reader was silently updating in background consuming cpu and bandwidth without notice though for home users its not a issue if its a large corporation with 100's of computers than bandwidth hog will be a real issue.

yes updates are good but its should not be frequent and should be done silently without user notice and without annoying him with agree button and other 2 - 3 steps of input process most of people really hate it here are few tips to disable auto-updates in Adobe products.

Acrobat reader

http://www.ceveni.com/2008/03/disable-automatic-updates-in-acrobat.html

Adbobe photoshop also has almost same update disable procedure like acrobat reader in above link, goto help updates once check is finished click on preference and disable it.

I did not found a way to disable flash updates share tips here if you have any idea on it between are u annoyed as same way i do then leave a comment.

chinese ayyo ayyo song is it indian slang ?

2011-07-16T00:50:00.000-07:00

few weeks back one of my friend shared a "ayyayo song chinese"on FB and i think this video would have been shared on most of the FB users wall the interesting thing about this video is, it contained Indian slang's exaggerated through out the song with chinese touch. though the song was ridiculously annoying but was fun to hear at the same time with "ayyayo, thai thaika thom" used throughout, when i searched on youtube i was amazed to see loads of chinese guys singing indian songs i think ayyao song also is influenced by India :D see the below video and sing Ayyo Aaaiyyo :P

If any Chinese guy reading this and you think you can understand or know more about the words used in the song do enlighten us here.

gmail login Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request

2011-06-27T23:53:00.000-07:00

Redirect Loop: Firefox has detected that the server is redirecting the request for this address in a way that will never complete. above was the error i was getting when i tried to login to my custom domain email ie gmail account and even i had same problem when i tried to log into my gmail account (mail.google.com).

So what might be the problem? though this issue comes for variety of reason first time when i got this issue a simple procedure of clearing the browser cache and cookies solved the problem

but recently i ran into same problem again i cleared the browser cache and cookies still problem remained i tried other browsers but in vain, i also flushed the DNS of system still i was not able to login to my gmail account i also tried in more than two other browsers on my system IE and Google chrome i got same behavior but issue got resolved only after restarting the system.

bottom line i really don't know why i got this issue but one of the below technique solved my problem each time.

1. First Clear browser cache and cookies and try in other browsers in your system
2. Flush the DNS cache of your system.
3. Restart your system.

If problem still persists and you were able to resolve it then do leave a comment so that others can benefit and know other causing issues for this problem

Google voice and video in Android mobile phone ?

2011-06-16T04:49:00.000-07:00

recently i was browsing android app market to find a gtalk / voip voice and video chat for my android device but was amazed to see that there is no such client anywhere in the market by google, but was surprised to see that rival company yahoo already developed messenger with voice and video capability for android platform which had nearly 5million downloads when rival company is giving such a capability for free i don't know why google does not released and made available such a important feature on their smartphone platform though new version of OS android 2.3 comes with built in video and voice chat i am talking about prior to 2.3.

What ever it is below are some of the free alternative you could give a try

Yahoo messenger for android:
Yahoo messenger supports free voice/video calls allows you to share photos and videos etc, yahoo messenger on android is supported from android version 2.0.1 and upwards

Vtok google video chat:
vtok allows you to make free video and voice calls to all google contacts who use google video and voice chat it can be said that its a unofficial gtalk client which interoperable with gtalk chat client on desktop etc and also with other vtok client users on other devices some of the features of vtok are:

1. video and voice calls to google video and chat and other vtok mobile users
2. can be used with exisiting google account over wifi or 3g
3. cross platform support
4. Ability to choose btw front and back camera etc

QIK:
Qik is a free powerful cross platform client and supports almost all the features vtok offers but only drawback is it does not support or interoperable with Google voice and video chat and requires registration with QIK to use their service

My android device LG P500 is 2.2 and recently will be getting 2.3 update from LG, have to see whether the voice chat is supported on my device

how to use Indian toilets : video tutorial

2011-06-09T23:25:00.000-07:00

Any westerners who visits india this is the question first pops in their mind when they enter Indian toilets though most of the toilets in India are westernized or contains both styles side to side but still in remote areas you can still find only Indian style, and toilets without a toilet paper is something alien to them, recently one of my friend shared below youtube clip on the facebook though its funny it is a great tutorial on how to use indian toilet also called squat toilets

after seeing the above video when i saw his related videos i was surprised to see how talented he was see the below interview of him given to one of the Canada TV Channel

I saw most of his videos and found very interesting and it is said that this 32 year Indian Wilbur sargunaraj is "India's First youtube star" after his video "Love Marriage" had a viral success on youtube and it is said that he had given performance in many countries just google to know more about him.

best Microsoft exchange sync email client for android ?

2011-06-02T23:12:00.000-07:00

Do you want to setup Microsoft exchange active sync email account, zimbra or lotus notes account on your android mobile phone then here is few top applications that you need to know in the android market which serves your purpose, though there are dozens of free and paid exchange email clients out there below are few apps i found and tested and found to be good after using it for a while, though latest version of android comes with inbuilt exchange sync client but it is immature and does not serves the professional purpose, below are few apps that is a must have if your corporate email account is from exchange.

RemoSync Exchange Activesync:
The latest version of RemoSync is developed to support devices that are running from android 1.5 and above, Remo sync is one of the best active sync client so far and syncs Email, Contacts,Calendar, Tasks and supports not only all versions of microsoft exchange(2003, 2007, 2010) but other similar servers such as Zimbra, IBM Lotus notes, hotmail, Google servers utilizing ActiveSync Protocols whats more it supports Enterprise-level Security. IT administrator can control alpha-numeric security PIN, data wipe your contacts, email and calendar when is phone is lost or theft without compromising for personal details at wrong hands, SSL encryption all application data files are encrypted.

Users have multiple synchronization options – Real-time direct push, Scheduled Sync, or Manual Sync.

Using Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) protocols, RemoSync connects Android phones directly to Microsoft Exchange (2003, 2007, and 2010), IBM Lotus Notes(8.5.1, and later versions), Hotmail, and Zimbra servers giving users real-time access to email, contacts, global address list (GAL), calendar, and tasks. No proxy servers are needed.

Maximum of 2000 contacts from the default contact folder (at server) can be synchronized to the phone’s contact database, option to save the contacts to native phonebook, add and modify the contacts, search and access contacts from global address list (GAL) by entering minimum of 3 characters (Lotus Notes requires 4 characters), make voice calls or send text or MMS messages from the contact’s phone number, send email messages from the contact’s email address. and much more below are screen shots of remo sync and QRCODE to download it.

Scan on the QR code to download RemoSync exchange client or click here
Touch down:
This is same as RemoSync but lacks many of the features that remo sync has to offer such as i dont know whether they support zimbra and lotusnotes because i did not find a way or option to add those accounts, rest it is more or less similar to remo sync.

Road Sync:
Similar to touch down and Remo sync they offer secure push and other features but not sure whether it supports other servers such as IBM lotusnotes, Zimbra, Hotmail and Google servers with exchange protocols support.

after using dozens of apps for a while i found above three apps to be worth wile giving it a try according to your needs, if you tried any other microsoft exchange client on android and found it to be better do leave a comment.

Pressure in life and Triangle of health

2011-05-23T03:54:00.000-07:00

stress, Mounting tension, depression, strain are something which every human come across in modern life from children, middle aged to retired persons thanks to our modern society which make most of the people to live on the edge. though stress is welcomed to certain extent because it keeps us always alert, focused and helps to do whatever require for survival but to much unnecessary stress cooks the brain, causing a major damage by triggering a chain of mechanism that only needed at few instincts which causes a irreversible damage.

I recently came across this interesting video i think this is a must to see video for ever professional out there who consistently working under pressure, though this video is a bit old it really addresses almost all the possible reason and root causes to our modern day illness and also tells about how to keep three sides of triangle so called "Mental", "Physical", "Health" sides in balance see the below video

So what do you say does it says your own story, are you destroying yourself in materialistic, self generated imaginary fears? if so please do come out life is short keep it simple and uncomplicated between do comment if your really like this clip and any other thing you like to say.

color codes for rainbow vibgyor colours

2011-05-17T23:03:00.000-07:00

recently i was searching for color / table codes for some android project and was not able to find the color codes for vibgyor colors that is violet, indigo ,blue, green, yellow, orange, red at one place at last went to wiki opened each color which is a separate page and noted down the values and after that i thought why not put it in my blog the color codes so that i can refer in future if at all needed... below is the the table of rainbow color codes

Color	RGB Value	Hex Code
Violet	148, 0, 211	#9400D3
Indigo	75, 0, 130	#4B0082
Blue	0, 0, 255	#0000FF
Green	0, 255, 0	#00FF00
Yellow	255, 255, 0	#FFFF00
Orange	255, 127, 0	#FF7F00
Red	255, 0 , 0	#FF0000

Though above is the color codes which i taken and cross checked from various sources if you find any mistake in any of the color codes do inform us the above codes are purely for my reference please cross check once before using it

Accessing windows phone 7 (WP7) contacts through c# programming

2011-05-14T10:32:00.000-07:00

Does anyone know how to access contacts list in WP7 ? this is the questions i came across in many forums and websites and recently i myself came across this situation shortly and came to know that microsoft has restricted access to the Contact API's, calendar, Camera etc to the third party application developers though i really don't know why microsoft had hidden such an important APIs from the developer since most of the mobile development works revolve around accessing phone contact for many purpose.

Do microsoft open the API's to public? really don't know but Microsoft is planning to release "Mango update" SDK this month 26th and it is said that more than 1500 API's are exposed in this SDK release to acces contacts, calendar etc etc but no one really knows to what degree.

is there any way to access contacts now? the answer is no but we can get partial information of contacts using "SavePhoneNumberTask" which has a property "PhoneNumber" with which you can access few information of contact below is the sample code

First of all include name space Tasks

using Microsoft.Phone.Tasks;

and below is the function to retieve contact list

private void PhoneApplicationPage_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e)
{
SavePhoneNumberTask savePhoneNumber = new SavePhoneNumberTask();
savePhoneNumber.Completed += new EventHandler(savePhoneNumber_Completed);
savePhoneNumber.PhoneNumber = "1987654320";
savePhoneNumber.Show()

void savePhoneNumber_Completed(object sender, TaskEventArgs e)

{
view sourceprint?

MessageBox.Show("Phone Number Saved");

}
Though this method calls the phone contact screen and then add the contact one by one, but this is not straight forward way to it since API doesn't allow to save contacts without opening contact list screen any way above method is crude and its better to wait until Microsoft releases "Mango SDK" for windows phone development.

Never be late on purchasing domain name! my amazing co-incidence

2011-05-09T02:45:00.000-07:00

Lately i wanted a website for my hobby projects which i planned to do it in my spare time and release it to android market and windows mobile market place two months back i rounded to a name called "Appfactory" with extension .in since its a hobby project i did not scratched my head much to check out for .com tld.

though i was deferring to register this domain i don't know what made me not to purchase this domain long back but finally this Wednesday i though of purchasing the domain i filled the cart and canceled at the last step before making the payment the reason was simple i was so superstitious on the day i always believed thursday to be good day for all my new transactions or purchases.

Now it was Thursday i planned to register the domain at 11.00 but i forgot credit card in my home so thought of registering at 2.00 i went home had lunch and when i tried to register the domain i was very shocked to see that the domain was registered just 20 minutes ago damn! i was shocked and at the same time i was amazed see the below screen shot of "Who.is" registration timings of appfactory.in domain name

Now after the planned domain was snapped by someone after querying for some names i found that appworks.in was still unregistered and found it is as good as appfactory.in so registered without a second thought hope i use this domain as a home for my hobby projects it was a time when people was first thinking a name for company and then registering a domain but now people first check for the domain name availability and then decide on the business name.

Unlock Windows Phone 7 (WP7) Emulator experience maps, contacts, Facebook etc

2011-05-05T22:38:00.000-07:00

For those who installed Microsoft visual studio 2010 and expect to check the functionality of windows phone 7 on emulator, there's both good news and bad news, First the bad news is , the Emulator shipped in VS2010 is a locked version that is you can only use Internet explorer and Settings or Run the developed application on it, other things such as Email, calendar, Facebook, Xboxlive etc are locked see below PIC how emulator looked before patching, i don't know why MS intentionally locked WP7 features in emulator or is it that they do not want to reveal features at the early stage? since vS2010 was released way back before actually WP7 was released in the market.
What ever it is the good new is after search on world wide web i came across many patches and cracked version of Windows Phone 7 images which emulates more or less full functionality of WP7 below is the instruction on how to download the patched/cracked wp7 emulator and use it follow below steps

1. Download the WP7 unlocked image from http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=11148176#post11148176 thanks to people at XDA developer forum

2. After Downloading go to the WP7 emulator image path in your computer the path may change depending on where you have installed however the default path is

C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v7.0\Emulation\Images

3. Now you can find the Original emulator image 'WM70C1.en-US' it is recommended to rename it to other name say 'WM70C1Orginal.en-US' so that you can always revertback if something goes wrong.

4. Now extract the downloaded unlocked emulator "wm70_copypaste" and rename it to "WM70C1.en-US" to the original image name and put it in the above mentioned images folder path, thats it now you can enjoy most of the features that needs to be there in whats the real emulator should rightly have.

Now once you open the emulator from VS2010 it boots for the first time and below is the video how the unlocked emulator experince looks like

Note that not all the features work right such as xbox, configuring email have few issues but it gives overall experince and feel on how Windows Phone 7 works.

Google algorithm change and Visitors traffic drop low

2011-05-01T05:24:00.000-07:00

when i was new to blogging in 2007 i used to hear top bloggers cribbing about traffic drops and how google algorithm change affected their organic traffic for their websites though some say there was a huge boost in visitors many topnotch bloggers were cribbing about substantial loss of hits, though at that time i was thinking it was just a crazy talk among bloggers now i am feeling the heat what they used to at that time.

yes recently google updated/changed its search algorithm for improving high quality and relevant sites in their search result, it is said that its a pretty big algorithm and has a pretty decent impact on search result and google is targeting "content farms", "scraper sites", "feed parasites" and people who are copying/duplicating content from other sites and designed to reduce rankings of such low quality sites and boost up rankings of sites with unique and original content.

End impact, most of the niche blogs and websites have like wisegeek, mahalo, ezine, associated content etc have reported loss of traffic and has been labelled has content farm and only a few handful of sites have reported slight improvement in the traffic i feel its a good move by google for penalizing sites which are "Content farms" since i have a seen many top blogs recently are hiring people just to write some content on their sites just to get google juice.

What about my site? unfortunately ceveni.com also lost 30% of traffic after recent algorithm change by Google but its very minimal compared to many of top blogs sites and few of my friends who nearly lost around 65% of organic traffic

how many email ids we get on google apps standard edition custom domain ?

2011-04-29T05:08:00.001-07:00

All my domains are using google apps services for email, calendar and other services, email services is one which i mostly use on all of my domains google apps has served me more than i expected in this case and i am very much relying googles reliable email service which has almost 99% uptime. today morning i got a google apps newsletter in my inbox stating that they are reducing free user limit from 50 to mere 10 i think the company which has a slogan "Don't be evil" is becoming evil and less generous towards the common users.

Well the good news is that limit is not enforced on existing users google has committed to give the promised services which agreed to give during the signup for google apps, i know many of my friends who run small business with 20 -30 employees are heavily relied on google custom email and apps but for new users who want same number of users will have to shell out 2500$ more for a year, google says this limit will be applied for the users who signup for google apps after may 10 so if you have a domain its better to signup for google apps now before its too late.

When i first signed for google apps in late 2008 there was 200 users limit and extra users could be add on special request see the below pic, request for extra users is still enabled as per commitment

below is the screenshot of the dashboard of domain for google apps which is signed in 2010 with 50 users limit google restricted 50 users limit from jan 14 2009 and they also removed request for extra users who signed up after jan14

I think the limit posed by the google for standard edition is too less at-least it should have limited for 25 users it is a real loss for bloggers, very small business who cannot afford business plan and other causal domain users, i am very much surprised how google bought down the number from 200 to just 10 in 2 years.

Computer does not boot and no beep but fans run start and stop continuously

2011-04-27T05:24:00.000-07:00

Today evening i turned on my system just to see that System was not booting but i could see cpu fans was running / rotating normally and dvd /cd drive was flickering it was ejecting and closing normally, though i switched off the main powersupply and try to power on many times the result was same only fans was running which stopped and rotated with 3 -4 seconds of interval but i was not able to hear beep and not entering bios, Beep indicates that all hardware components are ok, but i remember last time i used the computer i heard a strange long beep twice but the shutdown happened successfully my system is 6 years old intel pentium 2.4gHz , 1GB RAM, 80GB hdd, ASRock P4i45 Motherboard 845GV pretty legacy system :) but very much fine for browsing, playing games and other entertainment and daily use stuff.

And after lot of surfing i came to know few possibilities why it happens below are some:

1. This happens if your PSU is failed, without proper powersupply to motherboard system does not power up and enters boot sequence

2. Graphic card driver or one of your sister card driver might be corrupted or not properly fitted.

3. Try to remove all the power and pcb cords and reconnect so that its not the case of loose connection

4. Do the CMOS clear/reset and Switch of the powersupply and remove CMOS battery for a while and put it back, though CMOS battery is just to keep ticking of clock when system is shutdown and powersupply is removed.

5. It could be the case of faulty Memory Stick or dust between the RAM terminals, just blow any dust from Memory slots and clean the terminal contacts gently removing any dust and refit, if it does't help try Swapping RAM from your friends.

In my case the problem got fixed by removing memory sticks / ram cleaning its terminal blowing compressed air in the slots to remove dust and putting back the RAM, now system is booting properly though i did all the above mentioned things before, it got booted properly when i cleaned the RAM but i am not damn sure because of which above points the system started workin properly if any hardware guy reading this please penn in your comments.

mosquito repellent software on mobile phone does it really work: review

2011-04-20T04:54:00.000-07:00

This post is a sequel to my last post, i downloaded and installed mosquito repellent application on my android cell phone more than four of them see the below pic and planned to give it a try yesterday night and opened all the windows in the evening virtually inviting the mosquitoes in and closed all the windows by 9pm and i was happy to see there were more number of them than regular and was happy to perform the test.

All the repellent applications i downloaded on my mobile phone has an option the change the HZ / frequencies to generate sound, it is said that dragon flies are natural predators that eat mosquitoes in the flight they generate frequencies between 20 and 67hz keeping that in mind i set the frequency in between the flight range of dragonfly i kept in near my pillow turned of lights and waited for results.

Ultra sonic sound really drives mosquito away? the results were mixed i was not able to come to the conclusion i tried for three days with three different apps and finally rounded that it really does not work because few of the time at the night i was hearing the buzz of mosquito near my ears.

I thought it would be very healthy if it really works because we can get rid of chemical based insecticides to kill the mosquito and other insects pests, there is no scientific evidence that ultra sonic sound really get rid of pest and EPA and many universities proved ultrasonic sound really does not have effect, but still companies are marketing there products, though i tested it for only three days and came to this conclusion if you think it really worked for you guys then share you experience and tell us the frequency or application software used to achieve this.

what are the uses of mosquitoes is there any benefits ?

2011-04-18T12:04:00.000-07:00

Though weird this is the question flashed in my mind lately today because yesterday night a single mosquito ruined whole night of sleep unfortunately mosquito repellent was out of liquid... When humans are endangering many of the species on planet earth, why not mosquitoes? what would be the world without mosquitoes? would eradicating them causes bad consequences? is there really any benefits for ecosystem from this 5th largest species on the planet? these are all the thoughts that revolved in my mind.

Though at the beginning i thought its just another parasite with no real benefit to the eco system then i came to know nothing created by nature is usless each has its own purpose, did you know mosquitoes have been on earth for more than 100 million years there are 3500+ species of mosquitoes in which only few hundreds bit humans, Mosquitoes co-exisited with many species such as dinosaur to humans and scientists are trying to extract usable Disnosaur DNA from fossilized Mosquitoes preserved in amber.

Did you know Mosquitoes are attracted towards humans because of body heat, uric acid and cholesterol levels the process is called chemo taxis or chemical attracting thats why most mosquitoes repellers are designed to mask human scent.

So what are the benefits of Mosquitoes? Did you know mosquitoes play a important role in maintaining a balance in eco system:

1. Mosquitoes lay their eggs in stagnat water As larvae most of the time these are food source for baby trouts, frogs,bats and other few species as they make up substantial biomass in acquatic eco system and its food chain.

2. It is said that Mosquitoes pollinates thousands of plants species such as Cattleya orchids, Epophytes etc though most of the mosquitoes species depends on nectar only few depends on blood of humans or other life forms.

3. It controls human population by spreading the disease thus balancing in nature it is said that 3 Largest deaths in the world are caused by disease spread through mosquitoes it is said that over 70million die every year due to mosquitoes spread disease.

4. They also fund repellant industry thus decent amount of jobs all around the world

So bottom line mosquitoes are important for eco-system, and if you come across any more benefits do share with us.

How to search shared videos on facebook ?

2011-04-17T22:03:00.000-07:00

everyone knows orkut has direct link for the list of videos we posted, uploaded or shared, i recently wanted to see a video which i shared almost more than a year ago though i went through the painful and annoying task of searching it by clicking the olderpost over and over again where i finally found out the video after 10 annoying minutes, was searching whether is there any direct way of searching shared videos and links on facebook.

after doing R&D for a while on the FB portal i came to know on how to search it, though facebook has not given a direct way of doing it, clicking on videos in home page just brings record a video or upload a video and does not have any options to search videos or get the list of videos we shared.

so how to get list or search the videos we shared on FB ?
though there is no direct way to search for the required video, but you can get the list of links you shared on your facebook wall

Click on "Home" and on the left hand side panel you can find (groups, game request, app requests etc) now click on more link below it as shown in below pic

Now click on "Links" at the bottom of the page and again in the new page opened click on "My links" on left panel as shown in below pic now this brings list of all the links and videos you shared this is more easy to search since this filters out all others like text, pics shared etc so that it is easy to search for the shared videos

If you know any other shortest way or method if FB already introduced search feature for shared videos let us know.

How to remove ICQ address bar default search from Firefox and Internet Explorer ?

2011-04-17T00:04:00.000-07:00

Its really annoying its long ago that i accidentally installed ICQ tool bar while installing some free software which was integrated as the part of the program, though i uninstalled the application ICQ toolbar and deleted left over stuff from program files and other places, but whenever i tried to search from address bar browser was actually invoking ICQ search which was really pain..

Quick search on net i was able to get rid of that annoying bastard below are the steps on how to fix it in firefox

First of all remove the ICQ Toolbar addon from the Firefox
1. Tools-->Addons--"ICQ Toolbar" Uninstall it
2. Go to programfiles in your computer locate ICQ installation folder and delete it

To remove entries from Firefox
1. Start firefox and open a new tab
2. in address bar type "about:config" and hit enter
3. Now in the open window in filter box type "ICQ"
4. Now Right click on all the entries that has "ICQ" click on reset as shown in below pic

Now restart the Firefox browser and that should fix the problem..

To get rid of the icq toolbar in internet explorer follow below steps:
Removing ICQ toolbar in internet explorer is easy compared to firefox but its a bit tricky we can either uninstall it by using a uninstall tool and other method is to manually editing the system registries

1. First method: To remove it using the tool download this exe and simply run it.
2. Second method: is registry editing be careful and do this at your own risk!

hit startbutton-->click "run"-->type "Regedit" without quotes now registry editor get launched

Now navigate to below key
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\AboutURLs

Right click on "tabs" and in the menu select "Modify" and "Edit string" and replace the "Value data" box with below string "res://ieframe.dll/tabswelcome.htm"

though i used the uninstall tool to remove the ICQ if it aint works you can use second method.

how to QR barcode contact info vcard or business card ?

2011-04-14T23:52:00.000-07:00

QR code aka Quick response a two dimensional matrix barcode which is readable by QR barcode readers or any device with camera and QR reader, recently when i bought my android phone LG optumus one i downloaded the barcode scanner which had the ability to scan QR codes, and today morning i saw QR code in newspaper and found interesting when i scanned it with my mobile phone it was the address of TATA automobile dealer with phone number, address, website etc etc, it was actually a vcard/Business card.

Now one thing came to my mind why can't i QR code my Vcard/Business card and use it in my blogs and visiting cards ain't that will be cool? so when i searched for QR generators i found there are tons of webportals offering it has the free service, whats more you can create QR code for various purpose below are few of them

--> Text
--> Website URL
--> Telephone Number
--> SMS Message
--> Email Address
--> Email Message
--> Contact Details (VCARD)
--> Event (VCALENDAR)
--> Google Maps Location
--> Wifi Login (Android Only)
--> Paypal Buy Now Link
--> Social Media
--> iTunes Link
--> YouTube Video

though above are few of of its uses but it can be used for infinite purposes, though QR code was introduced in 1994 but it started gaining enormous popularity in last few months, who knows one day QR code might be the defacto for many purpose such as party tag in clubs, Waiting number, and even your restaurant bill might be in QR code just scan it through your mobile and pay bill through your cell phone, below is my QR code scan me

I generated above QR code from this site http://www.qrstuff.com/ make sure to select " Embed VCARD data in QR code as-is" at the bottom of the page and might be i will use it on my car, Tshirt or even on my coffee mug one day and between don't foreget to QR code yourself and let me know

Income tax how much do we really pay to our government?

2011-04-14T06:39:00.000-07:00

Is our government looting us? are we taxed to death? this was the question came to my mind when i was checking out my car documents and saw the road tax being paid accounts to nearly one lac rupees? government is already collecting 10-30% from our pay checks as tax depending on the amount we earn, now the point is why government is collecting road tax when we are already paying tax from our income? overall how much we pay to the government per 100RS we earned?

Government of India screws us by collecting tax dividing it into several categories:
--> Income Tax: For Central Government
--> Sales Tax: For the state Government
--> Service Tax: For the service we choose for Such as import and export And few other little taxes government collect from us central Excise: For the goods produced in India or locally
--> Stamp duty
--> Business tax
--> National insurance contributions
--> Airport tax
--> Capital gains tax
--> Inheritance tax
--> Educational cess
--> Entertainment tax
--> Savings tax and the list goes on and on...........
Now i paid road tax,life tax of my car to the government i need to pay sales tax to diesel/petrol i put in every time, whats more i go to the restaurant in need to pay 12.5% vat on the food i ordered, now apart from income tax I pay i can see Professional tax and Edu cess in my payslip

And still our government is not satisfied
1. City corporation levies us property tax
2. Water department charge us for water tax
3. Electricity board screws us with Service tax and so on....

Bottom line government is trying to collect tax in how many ever possible ways it can, i think we are paying more than 60RS for every 100RS we earn though there are still huge list of other taxes which i am not able to recall now, What do you think are we taxed to death, and our tax money are enjoyed by corrupt politicians, black projects by government, bank bailouts, unnecessary military funding etc etc do we have to reform the taxation? do comment here.

living with parents after 18 years good or bad

2011-04-13T23:17:00.000-07:00

People who bought up in western culture unlike eastern culture thinks its embarrassing to live with parents after age 30(adulthood), graduation or after getting married, recently while browsing yahoo answers i came across below question which made me think how different is our culture from west, here in india people most of the time lives with their parents till the end and the statement in the below pic really does not sums for us

keeping apart the cultural differences i started questioning myself is it right to stay after the age 18 or is it right to stay with parents and support them till end? but both has its pros and cons, though living independently gives more freedom, and power to learn how to live on their own foot but it comes many cons..

Long ago came across a article in one of the international magazine about a survey stating "When did you last called or talked with your mother" which was done by a private company dont remember the name though, but the result was shocking 14% said that they called their parents everday, 22% said they call once in a week, 11% said once a month, shockingly 53% of them said they don't remember when they last called or had talked with their parents this shows there is a certain amount of social stigma associated to live with their parents after certian age in western culture.

Yes western culture is very right by leaving their children to stand on their own after 18 so that they can learn how hard is to earn each dollar and come to know the value of hard earned money and at the same time i respect eastern culture where younger generation stay with their elders and take care of then till the end.

So i think it should be a mix of western and eastern culture, parents should let them go and earn on their own after the age 22 and children should return back to their home after several years when they learn how to live on their own and face outside world and take care of their old parents.

I came across a beautiful video on how one generation learns seeing older generation its a must see clip

believe me this video really made my eyes wet, it shows how our parents show us unconditional love when we are young but present generation are neglecting their parents, this shows why their are increasing old age homes in India, what ever it is bottom line parents are precious look after them well

Are we bombarded with radio waves? causing wireless pollution

2011-04-07T23:33:00.000-07:00

It was time when people talked about air pollution, water, even food and now new entries to the list are radio and electromagnetic waves emitting from the cellular mobile service, wifi service, FM radio, Television Signals, Taxi radio, power lines, Microwave at home etc etc, OMG!!! the list goes on and on, when recently i was sitting on terrace of my home all i can see was more mobile phone telecom towers than trees i think Bangalore should be renamed from garden city to antenna city :P

What ever it is recently i am feeling like we are royally bombarded with high frequency radio radiations, are we getting slowly cooked and loosing our health and yet government is doing nothing?

Have you noticed few species of animals and birds are actually missing in the cities? when i was kid i used to see lots of birds, insects now i know why sparrows are missing completely in my city.

Though there are strict regulation followed in some countries like russia but some countries are totally ignoring radiation threats caused by radio waves in russia the government has posed a limit of ten microwatts per square centimeter but in many other countries like india there is no such restriction, research on animals has shown half hour to 10,000 microvolts can cause significant impairment to the mental ability

do you know even lamps used to illuminate streets produces a very strong source of low frequency radio waves, this shows we surround ourselves with increasing levels of electromagnetic radiation.

here are some of the symptoms of radio wave sickness headaches, dizziness, nausea, low concentration, memory loss, high blood pressure, sinusitis, bronchitis, pneumonia, asthma,skin rash, itching, burning, facial flushing, deteriorating vision, floaters, cataracts, digestion problem, thyroid etc etc the list goes on and on, so if your are victim of one or more symptoms and you feel it is caused due to near by transmitter then its time to shut it down or change your location.

So whats the resolution? just try to adopt the retro life style... that is life led during 70's or 80's or try to make a home far out of city or island near to nature btw don't forget to leave your cellphones, laptops and other electronic gadgets behind

Are we programmed by TV and made dumb or stupid ?

2011-04-07T08:22:00.000-07:00

This is one of the most debated topic from conspiracy theorists to even normal people, Does television influence our consciousness and controlled by the secret people who is controlling the media and sending subminial messages which is said to be only interpreted by some part of the brain? it is said that subliminal messages are hidden in most of the media ranging from TV shows, movies, newspaper, ads, logos etc etc.

Not only TV's are used as the tool to program us with information to influence the masses on current affairs, but also it is said that TV's makes us dumb and stupid i can present generation kids are so much involved and absorbed in TV shows i can see them sitting in front of Television for longer hours with jaw opened and eyes without a blink for hours as if they are into some kind of a shock.

Now a days TV is so much part of a life people are blindly following and believing what is said through this very medium, people are believing it more than what reality is, recently i came across a young lady Aussie in chat room when i introduced myself that i am from INDIA she asked so many questions "Does elephants walk freely in your streets? "Do Indians wear jeans", "Will all Indians were turbans" etc etc when i asked why she got all the doubt she said she has seen India many times on the TV, isn't that weird? i think rest of the world are thinking middle east and rest of the Arab countries as "War Zones" that's how media portrays false information.

Recently there was a scarcity for onions though onions was selling for the all time high 90 RS per kg when one of the TV announced in the news that onions are selling for more than 120RS vendors actually started it sell for more than 120Rs when asked they said ain't you see TV? media some times is not responsible in dealing matters at all, all they want is just some news.

below are some of the reason why TV makes us dumb and some videos on how subliminal messages are hidden.

Jay z hidden subliminal Message

Subliminal messages from assorted songs

Subliminal Messages in Advertisements

And here are few points why TV makes us dumber and unhealthy:
-->research has showed that while watching TV puts brain in mild trance state where brains shutdown and left unchallenged

-->TV impoverishes the sensory environment and recent studies has shown watching television induces severe sensory deprivation

-->TV gives us pleasure for doing nothing it can be considered as drug and drugs are not good for us

-->Sleeping burns more fat than watching TV, so watching TV more can put you on weight and more lazy

-->Shows that have blood and gore psychologically alter the behavior of young children making them aggressive and violent

-->TV causes erroneous mindset because people blindly believes what is show on tv rather than reality and the list goes on...

Though TV is not a bad invention in itself its the natural human tendency to always use good thinks in bad ways whether it is Television or Nuclear energy, so next time you watch TV think about it.

how to search or find people on internet ?

2011-04-06T02:06:00.000-07:00

I did not thought finding someone or anyone with very details is as easy as finding address of a person in telephone directory until i found one of my friend who i last met 19 long years ago thanks to the world wide web for making our planet such a small place to socialize.... i recently found most of my friends who i lost contact after school days or college days, with the help of all the online tools available out there on the internet, below are few online web tools that comes handy, but before going on a mission to find your lost friend or relatives try to note down all the available details before hand as much as you remember, such as their first name, last name, common friends, phone number, workplace or any other available useful details.

1. Search engine:

This is the first and best place to start since google and yahoo has tons of page indexed, there is a better chance you might find background information, phone numbers, addresses or any other relevant information of people you are searching so that you can easily trace them.

2. Social networking:

Facebook, orkut, myspace, linkedin etc are places buzzing with millions of people and any one who uses net alteast to browse will surely might have profile in one of these sites and chances are you might endup finding your friends or missing people you searching easily in these portals, i have found tons of people in social networking just by searching with their first and last name, whats more these sites now a days have automated tools that reads your contacts from your gmail or any other webmail and find or lists peoples that might be your friends or persons you know by performing various lookup that matches your school, college, workplace, neighborhood etc etc.

3. Search directories:

There are many free and paid directory assistance out there which collects information about persons according to country, state, city even work location etc etc most of the times they do it by hooking your friends and requesting by them and many other methods... though the database are not as large as social networking sites, there are good chances you might find a person here.

4. People search engines:

There are lots of people search engines such as google people search, zabasearch, yahoo people search, vitalrec, yellowpages, pipl etc etc these search tools implement various proprietary searching technics to search the web and bring out list people with the matching search criteria though many of them are free few offer premium and paid service.

5. Find people with help of relatives and friends:

This would always be the first choice, if you have a mutual friend or know a relative of a missing person you are searching contact them and try to find more details, recently i found a friend after contacting one of my relatives-->friend-->friend isn't that weird.

bottom line its hard to find a any person on earth/internet unless and until he does not have a valid email address or profile on social networking site, if you know any other way to search a friend or missing person do comment

How to upload mp3 file on facebook wall

2011-04-01T04:52:00.000-07:00

Embedding audio files on facebook wall is tricky since there is no direct way to upload a mp3 file on to the facebook atleast for now, recently i wanted to share a mp3 audio file on my wall but unfortunately facebook allows only videos and pictures but if we try to upload we get a format exception and it will be automatically discarded by FB so is there any way to upload the mp3 or audio file on to the FB? yes we can do it easily but it takes a small detour below are the steps on how to do it.

Since there is no way to upload a mp3 files on facebook we have to host it or upload it else where, i am using cloudapp as my ftp and uploading it there, just signup there for a free account

Now login into the cloudapp and click on "Select a file on your computer" bar as shown in below pic, now a file browse dialogue will open browse and attach the file

Now you can see the list of uploaded file now click on the music icon as show in below pic
Clicking on music icon will take you to download page now right click on the download button and copy the download URL as shown in below pic

Now login to your facebook click on link on your wall and paste the URL as shown in below pic

Thats it, you are done now you can see the facebook automatically linking in to their player see below pic
As of now this is the only way to do it, hosting the mp3 in one of the file storeage or ftp website and pasting the hotlink on our wall if you know any other shortest method do comment

how to repair TV remote control ?

2011-03-31T10:04:00.000-07:00

Did you dropped tv remote control or some of the buttons stopped working properly? recently i came across both of these problems, lately my sister dropped the remote control on the ground accidentally the next minute remote stopped working, though i thought it was some connection rip of due to drop then i came to know the reason why remote stopped working below are things you need to know.

To Determine whether remote is working or not:

1. First of all change to new battery to make sure its problem with remote
2. Point your remote towards any camera either digital or your mobile phone camera and press few buttons, you can easily see the light flashing if the remote is working on your camera or mobile screen

If remote failed working due to dropping:

Most common failure in remote due to dropping is the ceramic crystal and the IR LED, though IR LED fails rarely its crystal that fails 90% of time when it is dropped very strongly, so replacing the crystal would solve the problem and it would cost some where between 1 - 5$.

If one or more buttons stops working:

1. It means your remote needs servicing because constant handling in the hands of the sweat, dust and moist forms a glue like residue on the button connector and circuit board which does not close the contact thus remote ain't works.

2. Some of the button lead would have worn out, its better to replace the connector lead.

To know more about how to remove remote and service it on your own see the above video, it is always recommended this type of work should be carried out by professionals.

live cricket score card widgets for mobile phones ?

2011-03-30T00:12:00.000-07:00

Not able to watch live cricket on tv? are you using Android, Windows mobile, Blackberry, symbian based or any other smart phones? then don't worry there are tons of free plugins that integrate with your mobile home screen and flashes live cricket score ball by ball just go to the market place of your smart phone such as android market place or iPhone app store there you can find tons of plugins but below are some of the trusted plugins to choose for

Cricbuzz and Cricinfo: These famous cricket portal's has plugins for most of the mobile phones such as Android, symbian etc which shows most of the information ranging from current match, upcoming matches, player comments, past matches, point table etc in a beautifully organized way see the screen shot of cricbuzz plugin below which i installed on my android mobile phone

Google Search: If you dont want to install the plugin? then just open your browser and search for cricket score now you can see the current cricket score with most of the details such as wickets remaining, overs left, current over etc

Yahoo Mobile: Yahoo offers a SMS based cricket score service for mobile phones just
SMS CRI to 58243* or visit http://in.promos.yahoo.com/mobilecricket/sms.html for more details

Twitter: If you have a twitter client on your mobile and then you can get instant cricket news update by following @cricketnext

Google talk bot: if you have a gtalk client on your cell phone add cricket@ibnalerts.com or instacricket@askme.im to recieve latest ongoing cricket score to your mobile phone

Though these are some of the ways to get live updates on your mobile phone beware these all needs either active internet connection or network connection, if you know any other method please do update us below.

how to change or remove default gmail account on android ?

2011-03-29T05:13:00.000-07:00

For some reason do you want to delete or change primary gmail account in your android mobile phone? Android Phones are strongly binded with Gmail to enable services like google android market place, email, calendar, contacts, chat and other services but many don't know that we cannot change the primary gmail account once set the only way to remove is factory reset.

recently i wanted to remove a default gmail account in our office android device since we do not want to hard reset and remove all the installed apps and after a lot of R&D we came across a method in one of the forums which says going to Settings-->Applications-->Manage Applications and clear data in below apps will remove the default account

1. Gmail
2. Gmail Storage
3. Google Apps
4. Google Talk
5. Google Talk Services
6. IM

But we cleared all the data as said in above applications, but unfortunately it did not worked out for us... still we were not able to clear the primary gmail account in android device.

Finally bottom line we came to know the factory reset is the only option for now, if any of your guys have done this without factory reset do let us know and the procedure on how to do it

Useful android text keyboard shortcuts during typing browsing or messaging ?

2011-03-29T01:42:00.000-07:00

I am using Android mobile phone from past couple of months and best part of it is ability to use shortcuts for complex common operations with a few keystrokes below are few key combination for frequently performed tasks i am now almost addicted to most of the below shortcuts

Shortcuts for typing:
Press ALT + Spacebar to insert a special character
Press Shift and roll Trackball to highlight text
Press Shift Twice to turn all text to caps
Press ALT + Delete to delete entire line
Press Alt while scrolling Trackball to move cursor to end or beginning of text
Press Alt + Q to insert a tab space
press Menu + x to cut text
press Menu + C to copy text
press Menu + v to paste text from clipboard

Shortcuts for browsing
Press Menu + I to zoom in
Press Menu + S to Zoom out
Press Menu + J to Go back page
Press Menu + K to go to next page
Press Menu + R toFind text on page
Press Menu + B to Bookmark the site/webpage
Press Menu + H to view browsing history
Press Menu + S to open settings

Shortcuts in gmail
Press Menu + U to refresh Inbox email header list
Press Menu + C to compose a new mail
Press R to reply Email
Press A to reply All Email
Press F to forward Email
Press Y to archive the message

Shortcuts in Google Maps:
Press Menu + D for directions
Press Menu + M for Map mode
Press Menu + H for maps history
Press Menu + 0(zero) for your location
Press Menu + P for map settings
Press Menu + I to Zoom in
Press Menu + O to Zoom out

Shortcuts to scroll faster
Press Spacebar for page down
Press Spacebar + Shift for pageup
Roll Down ALT + Trackball to jump end of list
Roll UP ALT + Trackball to jump top of list

but beware many of these shortcuts will not work on virtual keyboard such as shift, alt above shortcuts holds good for android devices with physical keypads

How to make cork balls ? childhood, cricket, summer fun

2011-03-27T03:03:00.000-07:00

I think our childhood days were really golden age with less traffic in the city lots of time to play on the streets and all the fun filled blues of summer, but i really feel sad that our younger generation can never have such a fun filled activities that we used to have all they do now is watch tv, play video games, browse internet everything in front of a dumb display console.

i think this post really mean for the people who enjoyed their childhood in 70's and 80's
i bet at-least majority of the people during these days in India would have made their own cork balls or seen friends making it in their life time.

recently while walking through the streets in my neighborhood i saw a pod falling in front of me from the Rain Tree(ACACIA) this really made me nostalgic and made me write this post on how we were making cork balls ourselves using those pods.

So how we made the cork balls when we were kids?

We used to collect the pods from Rain Tree(ACACIA), we were finding a nice place to crush the pods usually in front of our home on rock slab and we used to smuggle cooking oil or coconut oil from the kitchen, now after collecting all the resource, we used to crush the pods of Rain Tree(ACACIA) and after that grid it until it becomes paste now once we get a consistent texture so that we can make a ball we used to pour oil on our hands and proceed to make the ball out of that dough by rolling on our hands in a circular motion once the ball is ready we used to dry them in sun for 3 to 4 days see below pic.

part of image taken from : http://being-sahan.blogspot.com

I still remember the odd but nice smell of the Rain Tree(ACACIA) pods which used to stay for several hours even after washing hands with strong soap, if any of you guys have made cork balls like me during their childhood do comment

Http webrequest stream error in .NETCF?

2011-03-24T23:50:00.000-07:00

Recently i was getting this below error in windows mobile compactframework using c#, while sending data via a request stream "Either ContentLength must be set to a non-negative number, or SendChunked set to true in order to perform the write operation when AllowWriteStreamBuffering is disabled."

then after googling i cam to know that the writing to stream is disabled in .netcf by default and we have to allow it by setting AllowWriteStreamBuffering to true below is the sample code snippet on how to do it

  private static getHTTPResp(String lnk, string data, string primid)
    {
HttpWebRequest req = (HttpWebRequest)WebRequest.Create(lnk);
if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(content))
         {
             req.Method = "POST";

   //Add this line to fix the issue
             req.AllowWriteStreamBuffering = true;
             UTF8Encoding utf8 = new UTF8Encoding();

       // some code
        ......
        ......
          }

    }

if you still facing the above same issue after allowing stream buffering and fixed it share the tip here so that others can get benefited

Is Android killing iphone and windows mobile ?

2011-03-24T04:37:00.000-07:00

Will Android take over Windows phone 7 and apple iPhone? you heard it right,recently i started feeling what happened in PC world three decades ago the same is happening in mobile world at present, 80's was the decade when Microsoft snatched majority of the desktop OS share from the other players in the market, now the google is following in the footsteps of MS but in a good and open source way... will Android Platform will be a Defacto for future of mobile phone operating systems ? yes says many mobile gurus and it is also reflected in the increased sales of android mobile phones in past few quarters.

What weird is i know quite a good number of people who use both android and iPhone in parallel and each and every one says that android is becoming more user friendly and better compared to iPhone with every new release of android os versions, it was a time when iPhone users and media was boasting that it is not possible for android market place to surpass iPhone app store, because app store was a major plus point for iPhone but the current trends proved it wrong android market place is flooding with apps, now the difference between apple iPhone and google's android is bleak.

Now coming to windows mobile though microsoft had spent a considerable amount of hardwork and efforts to bring it out its already too late and people are addicted to the Android OS and whats more due to higher joining fees and other catches there are very few people to write apps for windows 7 mobile phones, you cannot even see more than few hundreds or few thousand HQ apps and windows phone 7 is a sinking titanic.

So what are the reasons making android dominant OS in mobile world?

1. Open Source: Openness is the key this is allowing more and more hardware device manufacturers to incorporate android in their upcoming mobile phones and software companies and individual enthusiasts developing awesome mobile applications, you know that apple controls app store and will not allow you to enter app store to submit apps unless and until they accept you, in contrast to android market any tom dick can write apps and submit it for free or certain price.

2. Cost: This is important factor when people buy a smartphone why people go for iPhone which cost 400$+ and Windows mobile 300$+ when you get mobile phone with same features and quality with less price tag? now a days device manufacturers are coming with android phones which costs less than 200$ that too without any strings attached.

3. Innovation: Since the Android is not a proprietary software and same piece of OS is used on multi manufacturer devices most of great minds are working on it and are coming up with a innovative things to enrich it with more and more features which were once unheard of in mid range mobile phones making it a truly open platform.

4. Google: Other reason why Android Wins is google, google have lots of money and great minds under its hood, with great minds comes great ideas to innovate, this will keep android always super charged continuously evolving you can see how google android has evolved from ancient cup cake to modern honey comb, for any platform to survive it needs consistent R&D backed with a great company like google.

5. Stubbornness: Though it was a time when stubbornness won, it does not apply to mobile platform, Microsoft was stubborn enough to win the desktop OS space by charging heavy price for the OS which was equivalent to hardware but times has changed and if it was google in 80's i think android would have ruled even Desktop platform. Even apple is loosing its market share because of its stubborn strategies such as tight monopoly over app stores, Carrier tie-up, features control etc. Similarly Microsoft too loosing its share because of hefty Licensing prices of the OS, closed source policy(API) and etc.

After saying all this one questions that remain in my mind is will android will become defacto for mobile OS? love to hear your thoughts

babies falling on their head and hit hard to ground or floor

2011-03-22T03:59:00.000-07:00

Recently my nephew one year old kid lost balance while walking and fell back hitting head to the floor real hard he started crying real loud it showed he was badly heart and it scared crap out of me since he is just a year old kid and i heard that babies head are smooth, Delicate and fragile just like a egg yolk i was very much worried about him, does it hurts his brain? should i take him to the doctor many question this made me to search on the net hoping to find some answer on precautions or necessary steps.

Though some times i feel it is normal since i have seen many kids falling and bumping their heads like this while learning how to walk but when it comes to our dear and beloved ones we will naturally be very much concerned, below are the few tips i learn't on net

What to do when Child falls or bumps head:
1. First of all don't panic, be calm and try to calm your kid by diverting his mind.
2. If got a bump on the head hold a ice pack or some thing which is cold like milk pack,veggie pack etc on the bump, apply cold pack atleast for 20mins with a 5 minute break
3.If baby is bleeding apply gentle pressure on the cut until blood stops to bleed. and perform few other layman aiding to your baby

When to worry ?
1. Loss of Consciousness: If child blackout for more than few seconds this mean bump is strong enough to cause hematoma be careful and take him to hospital.

2. EyeSigns: Eyes can tell how well is your child if there is any below symptoms after certain period after the fall then he needs medical attention
a. crossed or rolling eyes
b. One pupil larger than the other
c. Older children may report double vision smaller kids may walk weirdly as if drunk indicates blurred or double vision

3. Vomiting: Child may vomit once or twice because of gagging, couching and crying but if it is more than thrice better to consult a physician

4. Loss of balance while walking: Though this is normal after the fall due to dizziness, if your child looks as if he lost balance even after long period of fall then he needs medical attention

5. Prolonged crying or severe headache: if child crys more than normal time after the fall then there is something wrong consult your doctor immediately

above tips are extracted from this Web Resource visit it for more information, if you have any more things to say your comments are welcome

Schedule Auto SMS in android to send at later time

2011-03-18T03:37:00.000-07:00

one of the important feature i was looking from the day i started using cell phone is Message / SMS Scheduler, i always wanted to deffer sms or send sms at specified time for many reasons most of the time i wanted to wish my friends, family or relatives on their birthday or anniversaries at midnight without loosing the sleep or many time i wanted to send SMS at specified time when i am not in the city.

many times i forget to wish during the birthdays of friends even though i would have remembered one or two days before,recently i even forgot to wish my sister on her birthday first :(

Now with hell lot of developers in android market you can find tons of SMS scheduler apps see below pic which more or less performs the same operation of deferring the SMS and sending at specified date and time, whats more some applications allow to add multiple contacts, or send multiple sms scheduled to specified user at specified time

Recently i downloaded a free app called "SMS Wishes" which satisfies all my timed SMS needs see the below pic for screen shot

Now be the first to wish your family and friends on the special occasions by sending them wishes at a minute past midnight without loosing sleep

how to clear Android mobile browsing history ?

2011-03-17T23:35:00.000-07:00

Ask anyone who uses android mobile the answer would be same to stay connected and browse the internet, android is so well designed people started spending more time on the mobile phone to chat, surf net, and read emails than on their computers.

With more and more time spent on the mobile to surf net comes the privacy concerns to clear up browsing history every now and then because people ain't want their personal browsing and other information to share with others, All the web browsers like chrome, firefox, safari, opera have a built in menu option to clear the browsing history but it always takes annoying 5 - 6 steps of navigation to go inside the menus and clear the browsing data.

HistoryEraser is a cool free app in android market place which does the job with just a single click, whats more it has an options to even clear your other mobile history such as

1. Clearing Android market search suggestions
2. Clear Call logs
3. Clear Frequently called Contact status
4. Clear Standard Browsing histories from browser etc and many more options see the below pic

The app has simple and straight forward interface easy to use buttons large buttons and also single "Bomb" Button to wipe all the user mobile privacy usage history in a single shot, to install this app visit android market place and search for HistoryEraser without space, you can also find few other similar apps out there with same name but this one is said to be original so be careful before downloading and look for user reviews

Facebook groups: people adding you without permission or approval solution ?

2011-03-17T05:21:00.001-07:00

how to unjoin or quit facebook groups added me without my knowledge this is the common question buzzing around, recently from past few days i was in several group without even knowing what it does? how annoying isn't it? i can say it is one of the blunder feature in facebook, i don't know how facebook let people to add their friends or acquaintances without their permission into the group ain't facebook allow its users to decide whether to join certain group or not? and whats more i get a notification every time whenever some tomdick messages in the room, i got almost 22 unwanted emails filling in my mailbox.

Though i searched to disable facebook automatic group subscription i found out there isn't anyway to over come this and it seems kinda lame :( so only way to get rid of spammy groups is by manually unjoining it below are the steps on how to do it

You can find all the groups you have been added in left side of your main facebook page as shown in below pic

Now hover the cursor over the group which you want to unjoin you can see a "x" mark showup automatically as shown in pic click on it, this will not unjoin you from the group rather just hide you

if you want to unjoin from the group you should actually visit the group page and click on edit settings as shown in below pic

Now in edit settings you can find how to disable the email notifications for chats and group emails if you really like the group but only annoyed by the emails you can uncheck the options, but this steps still won't let you to unjoin you from the group

Now to "Finally" Leave the group... just go into the home page of the facebook groups and click on the "Leave group" on right corner of the page as show in below pic

Now you are out accept the confirmation

Now you are done you are no longer associated with the group and you wont get any annoying notification or chat messages from the group anymore

What is the Best fonts for emails both business and corporate ?

2011-03-17T00:24:00.000-07:00

shortly i changed my email client in office from outlook to Thunderbird since thunderbird has lots of features and plugins that makes life easy such as email alerts, inbuilt contact sync zindus and much more and while configuring the account the first doubt i came across is, is there any standard fonts size or font color to be used for emails in composing corporate or business emails though weird i am getting this doubt after 5 years in my professional life :)

Though i did not find anything so called standard to be followed in writing a business email wrt to fonts or anything but i found a whole lot of suggestions on which fonts to use and what not and other etiquette to follow while composing a corporate emails below are what to do and what not to do list i found.

1. Many suggest to use Verdana, Georgia, Times new roman, arial between 9-11pts depending on the font looks it should neither be too small or too large, i mostly prefer Verdana with 10pts for all my emails.

2. I have seen some of my friends in other company actually using fancy fonts when i accidentally got the mail in forwards it really looks odd and childish.

3. For god sake don't use red both for highlighting or as font color unless and until really needed, i really hate testing team guys in my office who use this color extensively and it is really not a good practice always use only Black or Blue, make it bold to highlight

4. Last but not least do not use downloaded fonts in email no matter how nice it looks since system automatically translates it into default font if the font is not available in his or her system and your email may look really odd, always use fonts which are in the computer by default.

whether you use aerial, times new roman or verdana there is no standard set but use some intuitive logic to look email good, decent and professional

GPS search and navigation within a city or certain location

2011-03-16T04:39:00.000-07:00

how to Locally search destinations in city using GPS? this was the question that was annoying me from few days since i purchased a GPS enabled android phone, the phone had a inbuilt nDrive GPS navigation application but there was no guide book along the phone nor there was any instructions on the software features and usage in the phone manual, though i was knowing it had a street to street navigation i was not knowing how to use it all these days what i was using it for city to city navigation purpose.

Recently i saw a video in youtube which explained me the most of the concepts and features of nDrive which cleared most of my doubts such as how to use POI(point of interests) then with this hint in the video i was able to know myself rest of the feature based upon it features such as:

1. POI name's and Nearby POI search.
2. Search options: city centre, street center, street number, street crossings and postal code search
3. Routing options such as Faster, shorter, pedestrian and adventure.
4. Calculate alternative routes when road blocks or other scenarios etc etc

see the sample video on how to use POI which is important for first time GPS users

I think its better to read this online manual (http://www.ndriveweb.com/manual/my-ndrive.html) before using GPS if you are a new to GPS. though most of time the User interface is intuitive it is always better to read the manuals to get the better understanding of the features and how to use the options, now i feel i better understood the features of GPS which would have not possible without the GPS manual

Netflix for android will it work on older mobile devices ?

2011-03-15T23:23:00.000-07:00

Netflix is one of the popular video content streaming apps available almost on many platforms and this is one of the most expected and awaited app among many android owners since there is no sign of release lately but there are many websites giving the leaked version of netflix apk which ain't work on older and most of the new devices recently i downloaded the netflix leaked apk of LG revolution on internet but i was not able to install on emulator and even on my LG Optimus one, though iPhone has it, iPad has it and even Windows phone 7 but why not Android?

Though Netflix hit each and every possible devices it is taking to launch on android because of Digital Rights Management System (DRM) on android which is a blocker since each manufacturer has to add this content protection mechanism on ther devices due to this it is getting slower for netflix to get into android.

Though qualcomm and Texas instrument are giving support for netflix content management security at chip level still its a bit long way for people to see netflix on android atleast until next few months see the below video of netflix beta running on android

and bottom line its sad though netflix is a dream on older android devices atleast now, if any of you guys were able to install the leaked netflix apk let us know

Will Nuclear Radiation from Japan reach India and other Asian or rest of world ?

2011-03-15T05:28:00.000-07:00

every one know recent massive tsunami and earthquake that shook japan and also one or more nuclear reactor in japan is on the verge of the meltdown though japan is trying to prevent it what happens if it is not possible and radiation leaks into atmosphere and reach other nations?

today morning i got a forward email from the friend which says japan govt already confirmed the radiation leak which bbc reported see the email content below

"BBC flash news: Japan government confirms radiation leak at fukushima nuclear plants. Asian countries should take necessary precautions. If rain comes, remain indoors first 24hours, close doors n windows, swab neck skin with beta-dine where thyroid area is, radiation hits thyroid first. Take extra precautions, radiation may hit Philippines starting 4pm (Pinas time) today!"

already scientists had alerted that if a meltdown occurs the radiation can spread across pacific ocean and and some parts of asia what ever it is government should stop relying on nuclear energy and start adopting natural and renewable energy

how to get timezone change event in android

2011-03-15T03:12:00.000-07:00

recently i was trying to implement a time zone changed event in broadcast receivers since i needed to restart some threads and process and reset timers to reflect with new timezone and after a brief search on the net and sDK documents i was able to do it so thought of share it here and as a future reference for myself below is the sample code to register broadcast recievers and also the function to catch the event

Add the values (register) in manifest file as shown below

<receiver android:name="Boottzchangereciver" android:enabled="true">
<intent-filter>
<action android:name="android.intent.action.TIMEZONE_CHANGED" />
</intent-filter>

extend the class with broadcast receiver to trigger event whenever timezone changes see the below code

public class Boottzchangereciver extends BroadcastReceiver {
@Override
public void onReceive(Context c, Intent i) {
// TODO Auto-generated method stub
try{
if (Intent.ACTION_TIMEZONE_CHANGED.equals(i.getAction())) {
Intent intent = new Intent();
c.startService(intent);
}}}

the above code worked for me, if you think something needs to be added or can be done other way around give your valuable feedback here

best engine oil for Honda activa ?

2011-03-14T04:27:00.000-07:00

its usual service time for my vehicle and new question buzzing me is which Engine Oil to use this time, though you can get loads of engine oils specifically designed for motorbikes but i did not came across even a single brand which is targeted for gearless motor cycle, puzzled whats the difference between gearless bikes and motorcycle with gear?

Most engine oils for two wheeler in market contains additives that are designed to protect Engine, Clutch and Gear.. the engine oils are designed such that it is smooth enough to protect engine and have friction modifiers good enough to grip clutch from slipping and hard enough not to break early to protect gears(transmission) and only engine oil itself should address protection of all the three components.

Since Activa and other gearless vehicles has seperate lubircation area for gearbox and activa has dry clutch that is the clutch is not immersed in oil like motor bikes with gear so only thing that needs to be protected in gearless vehicles like activa is engine itself? so is it right to use regular motor bike oil with unnecessary additives? can't we use Car engine oil designed for cars which protects just engine ?

What ever it is i really don't know nor i am a mechanical engineer but i feel its better to use a car engine oil since in the gearless vehicle only thing needs to be protected is ENGINE, i am buying a premium oil "CASTROL EDGE" or "SHELL RIMULA" which confirms to Activa Recommended Viscosity. IF any of you guys know which engine oil is best suited for honda activa do tell us

Update: I am using Shell 20-40 used for cars (maruti 800), now my vehicle is very smooth and did not find any problems

how to lock Thunderbird and password protect at startup ?

2011-03-10T03:38:00.000-08:00

Thunderbird is one of the powerful email client with loads of addons and open source support i am using this addon from the beginning of 2006 and it is one of my favorite though at the beginning i was configuring gmail account with it now i am using it has official email client in office and with my website feedback email account at home.

since both at office and home i will be getting few confidential mails and i have configured email as imap any one who can access or login to my computer can easily read my private mails recently when i wanted to password protect my thundebird and googled in hope to find some addon i was suprised to see there was no such addon in mozilla addons portal that has the ability to lock email account or folders and prevent or restrict unauthorized access

though i was using a addon called DiddlyDo in thunderbird which was supported upto ver 1.5 prior to version 2* the author of the addon DiddlyDo stopped workin on the development and i could now find any replacement for DiddlyDo addon which was actually protecting my emails locally before.

if any TB addon developer or Thunderbird developers reading this please try to implement this security feature i think it would be a great feature and very helpful for people whose daily jobs involve handling confidential mails and private emails

LG mobile android software update freeze or stuck at 4% solution ?

2011-03-09T22:25:00.000-08:00

recently i bought android phone though it had the android version 2.2 i came to know that it has 2.2.1 software upgrade available , i tried to update to the latest android version from LG connected my phone with USB with the LG phone suite everything was going fine it downloaded almost 150+ MB of data and automatically started flashing the device the phone went into maintainence or emergency mode the progress bar started rolling 1%... 2% until 4% it got hanged or freezed, i waited for almost 20mins no sign of progress i disconnected phone from USB removed the battery again reconnected it followed the procedure again same thing happened the phone started freezing at 4% mark.

Now i thought its the issue with the LG phone suite i updated the phone suite to latest version and started all over again. once again same thing it was freezing at 4% and the phone was not updated so i restarted the system and tried once again and followed the same steps now Bingo it came to 4%, 12% Bingo phone was successfully patched with new updates see the below pic.

What was the problem?
Simple! i did not restarted the system after installing the device drivers for the new phone so guys if you bought new LG mobile phone please do restart computer after installing the PC suite and connecting the device for first time

Isro Bhuvan vs Google earth comparison has mapping wars started ?

2011-03-09T03:28:00.000-08:00

is bhuvan better than and have high resolution satellite maps and extra tools compared to google earth?? Many knows ISRO launched bhuvan more than a year back though i was knowing about it for a long time i never gave it a try, recently i read an article in times of india saying that google earth might have a tough competition with bhuvan this made me try our desi service and to write about it in my blog.

first of all i am happy that ISRO has at least tried and came up with something like this, in many websites and forums i heard reviews that bhuvan has 20 times higher zooming level than google earth and frequency of updation of maps are much faster that is 1 year compared to google earth which is four years, below are the sample images of same location from google earth and bhuvan

Bhuvan Map

Google earth Map

Now after the first use itself i sensed that Bhuvan is no where near to google earth and Bhuvan has long way to catch google earth in the race below are few reasons why bhuvan still looses big time for google earth these are just my observation and personal opinion:

1. Bhuvan is incompatible with few browsers and works best in IE where as google earth works on all the known browsers

2. Bhuvan claims the resolution upto 10 meters compared to google earth which is 200mts but when compared google earth images looks far more better than Bhuvan

3. Finding, Searching and navigating to a certain place on Bhuvan is very difficult task it requires you to enter co-ordinates where as Google maps has excellent search feature it can even recognize smallest neighborhood in the city and navigation is a piece of cake.

4. Google earth has hell lot of features and have excellent listings of business and landmarks such as Hotels, Malls, Restaurants, etc where as Bhuvan is not targeted for Commercial purpose but give other details such as geographies, soil, water table and other environmental related information.

5. User experience on bhuvan is damn pathetic it is very very slow it takes a lot of time to show the desired location where as google earth / maps are like swift the user selected location opens in matter of seconds compared to bhuvan which takes several minutes.

And yes Google earth is based on the technology which has been since almost a decade where as Bhuvan is just less than 2 years old and have a long way to catch up and fine tune its technology, but presently there is no threat to google earth and it is the best Mapping application out there

how to disable Gmail message "threading"

2011-03-08T04:49:00.000-08:00

Change Gmail threaded conversations to normal view like outlook, many people know how gmail groups follow up and reply mails in a thread view though its a good practice and ease to maintain and organize our email ids in threaded fashion, there are many people who do not like it as a group, even i felt really annoying at the beginning and in long run i am so used to it now i feel its really best way to organize mails though before there was no other options for gmail user now gmail has given a option to choose between threaded and unthreaded way of organizing mails

Click on the images to enlarge

to change the views follow the below steps

1. Click on settings on right corner of your gmail web page

2. Now select "General" window and navigate below to find ‘Conversation View’, now select the radio button whether you want to see the mails in groups or ungroup as shown in below pic and click "Save Changes"

Now you are done you can see the follow up email or conversation ungrouped or grouped based on your selection see the first pic you can see my LG support emails are grouped nicely 2 mails are grouped as it was with customer rep and 5 conversation was with technical team and again 5 grouped mail was with bangalore team, but i always prefer my follow up mails / messages to be in same threads so that it is easy to track the conversations

android phone contacts not syncing with gmail

2011-03-07T22:53:00.000-08:00

is google contact sync in android is one way that is single direction web to phone ? because new contacts or existing contacts from phone was not syncing back to gmail web account but existing contacts update on phone was reflecting flawlessly on web and one question came to my mind is the issue is with my phone? but when i searched on the web i came to know that there were tons of other people reporting the same problem that they can pull the contacts from gmail web but not upload existing or new one contacts from phone to the web is that a known issue? i really don't know because i really did not find any official pointers any where.

I also recently updated to latest updates but not of much help this issues exist in almost all the release and google has not yet patched it up though weird it is true and this make me think why google has not fixed yet such a simple issue?

what ever it is, the only work around as of now is:

1. Use third party free or paid sync applications such as Remo Backup, Syncml client from funambol etc
2. Use a PC suite and sync contacts with outlook or outlook express
3. Else manually update new or existing contacts on the gmail/ Web dont worry existing contact updates will get synced issue is only with new contacts from the phone

And last but not least update this issue to google or android website support portals and if you think there is any quick fix for this do let us know

can my gtalk chat read or monitored at work by employer ?

2011-03-07T02:57:00.000-08:00

how secure is gtalk, can i use gtalk at office, can my boss track and read my chat messages and logs? these are the questions came to my mind when one of my friend working in other company said me that he had a doubt whether his gtalk chat has been sniffed and monitored in his office by system administrator.

Now my main question was can anyone apart from google can read or hack my chat messages?
Though i am not a terrorist or doing fraud of some kind what i am looking for is a basic privacy while chatting with my friends and colleagues, though i know that Gtalk uses XMPP(JABBER) Protocol with ssl layer encryption and very much secure, what i am concerned is that if we are directed by a proxy, SSL can be easily defeated :( so what does it mean? since many office firewalls and antivirus run a proxy service to filter and block access to certain website it is easy for a network admin to sniff.

Whats more? I found a tons of apps available in market such as IMBoss Google Talk Sniffer Monitor and Inside Chat Spy etc which is said to sniff gtalk messages on the LAN network.

Whether it is sniffer, keylogger or your antivirus if management wants to sniff packets and your chat messages there is no one stopping them so be careful while chatting with friends and colleagues on office network if anyone knows more about the gtalk client and security do share your views with us

yahoo messenger webcam reconnect and network error ?

2011-03-06T22:44:00.000-08:00

recently i wanted to video chat with my friend but the yahoo messenger was not able to stream chat video to other side first it shows"Connecting" then after few seconds "Waiting to reconnect" then finally it shows message box saying "A network error occured while connecting to the server" for every 4 to 5 tries i was able to connect once though i was able videochat with yahoo im before i am frequently getting this issue from past 5 days, but when i searched for the solution i was suprised to see there were tons of people asking the same question without any conclusive answers.

below i am posting few collections of solutions on webcam connectivity issue of yahoo IM i got on the net:

1. Windows Firewall or Your Antivirus.
below is the yahoo help which you can configure your firewall and proxy settings
1. No proxies
2. Firewall with no proxies
3. No network detection.

if above thing does not solve the issue and you are using antivirus then try to add Yahoo IM in the trusted list of the antivirus or try disabling antivirus and firewall completely and try to reconnect.

2. If you are using old version of yahoo try to update to latest version and check for yahoo webcam compatibility test to know whether your webcam is compatible with yahoo chats.

3. Click on yahoo "Messenger"--> "Preferences"-->"Connections" select option -->"Connect directly to internet"--"Click ok" and restart yahoo msngr

4. Some say its a DNS issue just change it to OPEN DNS or anyother DNS available.

Though nothing above worked for me i guess either yahoo servers are too busy/down now a days or they are updating or fixing some software, let me wait for few more days if this continues i will ask my friend to switch to google chat which has smooth video streaming, if any of you reading this know possible solution whether it is problem with webcam or any other thing do share with us.

android background and auto start apps reducing battery life ?

2011-03-04T06:29:00.000-08:00

how to prevent or stop auto-start services consuming CPU and why background running application in my mobile automatically restarts even after killing with the task killer? this is the common questions many android users ask! but many times these applications are started by some other applications and sometimes these running process may be vital so it is better to leave it as it is unless and until you are not technically challenged.

but if you really thinks those running services or background apps is causing serious battery drain or eating too much memory then
goto--> settings-->running services

now check which application has started the service as shown in above picture, if you think the services as started by some unwanted application try to remove those applications if the services is started by system then just leave as it is because many times killing those services do more harm than leaving because android is built on linux and it has good memory and CPU resource management system.

To conserve battery and memory you can disable sync service and enable it only when you want it, to disable go to -->settings --> Accounts and Sync--> Disable "Background Data" as shown in below pic.

bottom line no matter how many ever apps running in background they do not actually use batter power until they are actively doing something such as syncing contacts, receiving mails etc so stop killing these rooting apps because it takes battery power to kill these apps since they are services it again takes more batter power by the system to restart them again.

Still you are not convinced and you know better way to deal with them or handle these background process and save cpu and memory then do share with us

google apps sign out redirecting gmail login page for some domains

2011-03-03T03:28:00.000-08:00

Many of google apps users by now have noticed that if we are signing out from our domain email of google apps it is automatically taking to gmail login/ signout page not our domain login page. i have 6 domains in my radar in that 3 domains are returning to domain login page and other 3 to google mail login page is that an issue? no.

This happens if your domain administratior has signup for google apps full accounts where your domain will be able to access most of the other google.com products with your domain login and password itself which was not the case before such as orkut.com, picasa, youtube etc in other words your domain.com is virtually like a gmail.com which tightly intergrates with google line of products.

and other annoying thing is that if you have logged in with your gmail account and if you try to login to your domain email with google apps you will be automatically logged out of gmail, since your domain.com is virtually like a gmail having complete access over google products.

Is there any way we can undo this effect or return to our domain login page?
as of now there is no way that you can return to your domain login page its the default behaviour for both standard and professional google apps users, what ever it is many google apps users are complaning about it and google should come up with something in their cPanel to override this behaviour, if you are new google app user? for god sake don't upgrade to full google apps account until google address this issue.

youtube search stories what is yours?

2011-03-01T02:21:00.000-08:00

recently i came across youtube search stories a video creation tool from youtube the idea behind it is "Every search tells a specific story" the online tool is very simple to use a step by step process will walk you through the process we can create a 35 seconds video of search results depictin our online presence and have options to input upto 7 search term each search term can be anything from webpages, images to google maps or any other products and have 24 different music tracks to choose for background.

Though it has been since a long while i came to know about it today via facebook though google has done to promote their search but its very fun to use below is my searchstories video

between do not forget to create yours and leave a link here so that others can enjoy.

Does changing mobile mother board changes IMEI no ?

2011-02-28T23:09:00.000-08:00

Where is the IMEI stored in cell phone? this was the question asked by one of my friend who just got replaced his handset with a new motherboard! his phone was water logged and his phone stopped working repair guys at the service center said that mother board has to been damaged and need to be replaced, but he had a doubt whether they really replaced the mother board or just repaired the phone and gave him back with same mother board.

Though i suggested him to check with his old IMEI number by dialing * # 06 # he said asked me that whether it is not possible to change IMEI no with any software and change it to new one ? though after search i came to know that there are few special softwares that does the work like Ziphone utility i really don't know whether it is true and indeed we can really generate and change the phones IMEI if that was the case i guess many people who have chinese handsets would have done for themselves.

if any of you guys reading this know more about this do enlighten us with your feedback

On Screen Back button in Android?

2011-02-24T01:01:00.000-08:00

Droid OS is great but after using my mobile phone for almost a week one thing i started feeling is why doodes at android did not think of giving a virtual on screen back buttons, every time if i want to go back from one screen to another i have to use my physical soft keys on the device often this is annoying, its same for almost all the apps from settings to game the only way to go to back screen is using physical back soft key.

though few phones comes with capacitive touch buttons but majority of android mobile phones in the market are with physical buttons i am very much annoyed of pressing back button every time and i am worried about wearing of buttons very soon.

some times i feel the android ui design is ok, but i think device manufacturers should stop integrating physical buttons ont he droids, i bet if a person is a heavy mobile user i am sure the back button will wearout within a year and also another concern is there is no insurance or warranty claim for woren out parts due to heavy usage :P.

Guys what do you say should android OS must incorporate soft backbutton to navigate between screens or should device manufacturers should comeup with capacitive touch screens on the mobiles?

Mobile screen LCD yellow color tint and whiteness hue confusion ?

2011-02-23T04:23:00.000-08:00

Does your cell phone LCD screen looks yellowish in colour instead of milk white compared to the same model and make of your friends mobile phone? and are you worried what could be wrong whether it is fault with the device itself? this was the question that was running in my mind when my new(3 days old) LG droid phone screen had more of a yellowish hue where as my friends phone which was whitish blue and his device was 12 days old.

when i googled for answers i came to know that there are tons of people who was searching for the same answers and this was common to most of the devices such as LG, iPhone, Motorola, Blackberry etc, but most common explanation and reason given by many of them are listed below.

Some say that its a hardware problem with LCD which i dont believe.
It may be due to adhesive glue to the LCD to adhere the glass together which takes some time to get dry and return to normal color.
Sometimes the screen protector may be of yellow tint try removing screen protector and replacing with new one
Some say it is normal, and not a defect, colour tint varies by LCD manufacture, and can even fluctuate on a batch-by-batch basis this was the reply given to me while talking with LG live chat customer support.

please do not confuse with yellow tint with part of the screen, i am talking about the whole screen being uniformly yellow, firstly i will wait for a week and see whether if it is the problem with adhesive dryup else i will try replacing with new transperent screen protector if everthing fails i will take it to the service center until then gotta keep my fingers crossed, if any of you guys reading this has any idea about this lcd screen thingy do share with us, let me hope for the best

mobile phone insurance is it worth it? atleast in india ?

2011-02-22T04:30:00.000-08:00

common people always think before buying an expensive cell phone because of few reasons such as theft, loosing it or accidentally getting it damaged by water log due to rain etc, now latest trends in mobile industry is many insurance companies both govt and private are giving insurance for almost all the handsets from cheapest nokia 1100 to expensive iPhone it is said that few thousand handsets are stolen or get lost every minute around the world and now a days people are in trend of insuring their mobile phones, so is it really worth of insuring the mobile phones paying few hundred rupees or more?

Mobile insurance cover saves us against several aspects such as theft, riots, strike, fire etc but many don't know claiming mobile insurance is not as easy as it says! because there are loads of blockers which minimizes the chances of getting back the insured amount, and whats funny is there are more exclusions than inclusions.

Its easy to get the insurance cover if somebody snatch/steal mobile forcefully from your hand than consider if you loose it in the park while you are eating ice-cream in the park and left it unattended because the policy clearly states that there is not cover for the "Unattended cases"

below is a insurance policy claim information of Oriental insurance company

The policy for mobile phones provides cover against

Fire.
Riot, strike, malicious damage and terrorist activities.
Theft.
Accident.
Fortuitous circumstances.

Exclusions under the mobile phone insurance policy are

Mysterious disappearance.
Theft from unattended vehicles, except from fully enclosed car that is securely locked.
Theft, loss or damage during the hire or loan to a third party.
Mechanical and electronic breakdown or derangement.
Overloading and experimentation involving imposition of any abnormal conditions.
Damage by wear and tear, vermin, atmospheric or climatic condition or gradual deterioration, inherent defect or from any process of cleaning, repairing or maintenance.
Loss or damage due to war or nuclear perils, loss by water or from any water borne craft.
Intentional or willful act of the insured party.

Documents to be produced at the time of claim In case of Theft :( compulsory)

Intimation in writing to the service provider about the loss.
Duly completed claim form.
F.I.R copy issued by police authorities.
Non traceable certificate issued by police authorities
Copy of the letter duly acknowledged by the service provider for deactivation of the mobile no.
Original Invoice.

In case of damage:

Intimation in writing to the service provider about the loss.
Duly completed claim form.
F.I.R in the case of road accident and or any other documentary evidence to establish the cause of loss.
Estimate of repairs
Original bills and invoices
Damaged instrument at the time of total loss.

acknowledgment
recently one of my colleague lost his cell phone in a city bus, he produced each and every document specified in the claim form from FIR, Original bill, SIM Deactivation to explanation letter etc but still his claim was rejected for silly reason that his SIM card was in his brothers name, my SIM is attached to my fathers SIM in a BSNL postpaid jodi scheme do i get insurance if my phone is lost? Insurance company only should answer.I bet 40% of mobile users in india will not be having numbers registered in their names and why the heck these insurance companies need SIM card to be registered in the policy holder name? are they giving insurance even to the SIM also?

And when i googled the net i came to know that there were tons of people who was rejected insurance for silly reasons, i think these insurance companies are more willing to reject than helping the people who have genuinely lost their mobile.

Recently i bough my LGP500 droid phone with insurance and now i think i should have done some R&D before opting for insurance and loosing few extra bucks what ever it is if any of you guys reading this post had successfully claimed the insurance amount do penn down your experience here.

Bottom line its waste to take a mobile insurance unless and until your mobile is too costly

how long to charge battery for first time completely ?

2011-02-21T03:13:00.000-08:00

Have you purchased new mobile phone, ipad, ipod, iPhone or any other gadget that has lithium ion batteries? then first questions flashes in every ones mind is "How many hours do i have to charge it for first time" and is there any maintenance method so that we can prolong battery life. is it a myth or do we really have to charge that many hours? recently i purchased LG OPTIMUS 500 and this was the question that buzzed in my mind.

what weird is when i bought the phone even the dealer suggested me to keep it on charge for 8 hours but when i uboxed and checked the mobile specification and maintainence book it was no where written to charge it for that many hours, however i kept it charge for 5 hour continuously but i noticed that it stopped charging after 2 hours but charging bar was not running i think phone itself automatically cutoff from charging mode! then whats the use of keeping it on charge for that many hours?

Is the "First time charging of battery for long hours" is just a myth or another urban legend floating around from mouth to mouth? i really dont know :) as i am unfamiliar with the battery hardware technology and how it works, but one thing i know for sure LI batteries degrades with temperature more the temperature at faster phase it degrades, so keep your phone as cool as possible and do not leave it in your car under soaring temperatures or near the window or near any other heat source such as our pant pockets :P

If any of you guys know more about how battery works and whether the "first time long recharge" is just a myth or true share with us.

detect timezone change in .NETcf C#?

2011-02-16T03:25:00.000-08:00

recently while developing a windows mobile application i came across a major blocker that is once the application is started if in between user changes the device / system time zone the application was returning the old timezone itself that is the timezone of the device at the application startup, since i was running my app as the background service it was a major blocker for me.

then i came to know that compact framework actually caches timezone at startup and timezone changes in between is not detected and notified by framework to the application unless and until we restart the application.

Is there any hack so that we can get the latest timezone notifications?
yes, it can be done using P/Invoke CeRunAppAtEvent and catch the notification events fired by the system when timezone changes below is the sample code found in one of the forum i tried it this worked for me

[DllImport("coredll.dll", EntryPoint = "CreateEvent", SetLastError = true)]
private static extern IntPtr CreateEvent(IntPtr lpEventAttributes,
bool bManualReset,
bool bInitialState, string spName);

[DllImport("coredll.dll", EntryPoint = "WaitForSingleObject",
SetLastError = true)]
private static extern int WaitForSingleObject(IntPtr hHandle, UInt32
dwMilliseconds);

[DllImport("coredll.dll", EntryPoint = "CloseHandle", SetLastError =
true)]
private static extern bool CloseHandle(IntPtr hHandle);

[DllImport("coredll.dll", EntryPoint = "CeRunAppAtEvent",
SetLastError = true)]
private static extern bool CeRunAppAtEvent(string pszAppName, long
lwichEvent);

private const int NOTIFICATION_EVENT_TIME_CHANGE = 1;
private const UInt32 INFINITE = 0xFFFFFFFF;

public Form1()
{
InitializeComponent();


CeRunAppAtEvent("\\\\.\\Notifications\\NamedEvents \\MyTimeNamedEvent",
NOTIFICATION_EVENT_TIME_CHANGE);

Thread thread = new Thread(new ThreadStart(ThreadProc));
thread.Start();
}

private void ThreadProc()
{
IntPtr hEvent = CreateEvent(IntPtr.Zero, false, false,
"MyTimeNamedEvent");

WaitForSingleObject(hEvent, INFINITE);

MessageBox.Show("Time Event Occured");

CloseHandle(hEvent);
}

though i did not get any direct api to detect the change in timezone apart from these win32 hack, if you know any other simple way to do it please let us know, once you get the timezone change event just restart your application or write appropriate code which suits your needs to cope with timezone change in my application i wrote separate small app to detect tZ change and i was sending a notification via inter process communication and restarting the service to adapt to new timezone.

WARNING: Application does not specify an API level requirement in android

2011-02-16T02:28:00.000-08:00

is your android application is crashing saying "The application has stopped unexpectedly" or getting above warning during compile time? this might come for variety of reason, its better to analyze the logcat to know the real reason for the issue

But most common reason why this warning or crash occurs is we should specify the API level for the application in manifest file this is because for some reason eclipse might not be able to generate that piece of line but we can add it manually

just add the below line in the manifest file before the end of manifest tag

<uses-sdk android:minSdkVersion=”3″ />

So what is API level?
it is a value that uniquely identifies the framework API revision offered by the android platform below is the table which specifies api level and platform versions

Platform Version	API Level
Android 2.3.3	10
Android 2.3	9
Android 2.2	8
Android 2.1	7
Android 2.0.1	6
Android 2.0	5
Android 1.6	4
Android 1.5	3
Android 1.1	2
Android 1.0	1

i think adding the above line of code in manifest file should eliminate the warning if for some reason warning continues to come may be your problem is something different and not related to API versioning.

is .co domain worth buying? does it create confusion with com ?

2011-02-15T22:29:00.001-08:00

recently our family was deciding for registering a domain name for a construction company, but when we searched all the .com's were gone but with the announcement of new .co new country level domain where each and every name we thought off was available one thing started buzzing in mind "is it worth of registering a .co domain for business"?

Though .co is a generic country level domain for colombia the registrars like godaddy and others are creating a major hype and portraying it as a best alternative for .com does it real replacement for .com domain? i don't think so, even registrars are slashing price to half to make it popular but people dont know they have to pay double the price for next subsequent renewal's.

what ever it is, i bet .co domain never becomes a tld and cannot replace .com, .net or .org, these registrars are simply pushing and creating a hype to sell the .co's and relieve pressure on .com domain, i rather happily purchase .in my country domain instead of .co which is nice and have a good business potential in india or i will alter a few letters and go for .com itself for my business.

Now with the liberal regulation in ICANN any one with good infrastructure can maintain and sell their own extension you might expect .hotel, .sex etc in the future and as a consequence people may get confused with the extension and might only remember the tld's very well than others and also say if your business name is www.mycompany.co its natural human tendency that most people may type www.mycompany.com so i believe .com is always good for business purpose and has lots of commercial value.

but at the end of the day its your call, and above represents purely my opinion though, so do you think .co is a real alternative and has potential equal to .com's? do share your opinions

windows media player 12 now playing and missing playing list pane ?

2011-02-15T02:32:00.000-08:00

All the people who have upgraded to windows 7 and wm12 know that they are missing as home screen in wm12 similar to wm11 now playing pane but to show that list we have to manually

Open Windows Media Player go to Library view and go to Organize as shown in below pic and click on option menu.

now you get a option screen as shown in below pic now click on the Player tab and under Player settings checkout the checkbox "Keep Now Playing on top of other windows" click ok

Right click on menu-bar choose view--> now playing and again right click on the wm visualization screen and choose "showlist".

once you change the option as said above you can see the now playing similar to wm11 as shown in below pic

is the above change permanent? yes! you close the wm12 and reopen it again you dont have to back through all the steps again.

is Nokia jumping into a burning vessel called Microsoft ?

2011-02-14T00:39:00.000-08:00

is nokia in the path of self destruction ? this was the question came to my mind when i heard the nokia is going to tie knot with microsoft and hit the iceberg before sinking itself, i don't know whether nokia is being egoistic or hatred towards the android, one thing for sure their market share is declining like a collapsing world trade center day by day, if this continues you can see "Defunct company" in wikipedia about Nokia corporation, I also suspect whether it is the plan of Microsoft to take over Nokia Strategically?.

So who will benefit from this partnering?
It would definitely workout well for microsoft because its getting a partner who is pioneer in quality hardware than any other players in the market but for nokia for sure its a risk that costs its own survival for future, since the partnering makes nokia a handset builder rather than having any control over its software platform. and yes windows mobile developers like me who was planning to switch to other mobile development platforms like android will surely benefit from this.

Is nokia ignorant or headstrong in its decision?
I think nokia is very overconfident in repeating history since it revived a legacy dying platform called psion epoc and built a new platform called symbian over it, though there is every chance of windows phones os to again take over the control of market share since nokia has the capacity to manufacture wide variety of handsets from touch to qwerty with its strong hardware platform combined with windows 7 awesome form factor and user experince i think google has to be cautious and step a head now.

Though nokia would have been seen a double success rate if it has tied up with googles android since most of the people even non techies know the fact that nokias powerful hardware coupled with android would be a killer device, i know many of uncles and aunts who are technically challenged are seeking for "Nokia ANdroid Phones" but this common perception of people is some how masked by the people at Nokia by their strong hatred and egoism.

What ever it is bottom line "nokia is jumping from one sinking platform(symbian) to another (windows phone 7)"

Microsoft office professional plus encountered an error during setup

2011-02-12T22:32:00.000-08:00

Are you getting Error "25004. the product key you entered cannot be used on this machine. this is most likely due to previous office trails being installed or Microsoft office professional plus encountered an error during setup"?

this is the most common problem many faces during installation of office 2010 or higher version recently i upgraded from xp to windows 7 but when i tried to install the trial version of office using different setup including pro and home version i was getting above errors though i deleted all the registries and used several 3rd party office trace and signature removing tools nothing happened the office 2010 setup was very stubborn and never let me install the office even though i never before installed trial version of office 2010 software before

I think there is a major glitch in their piracy protection system since i can see many first time installers also getting this problem and was not able to install the office.

Since i was not able to install genuine copy downloaded from Microsoft i downloaded a cracked copy from torrents and belive me it installed without even a single glitch withing minutes office was up and running.

Though i know its unethical to use cracked version i will be removing it after 30 days :P between i was not still able to find out what went wrong during installation of official setup even though my OS was fresh installation if anyone has any idea about this MS-office error do enlighten us.

how to get touchscreen co-ordinates in android ?

2011-02-11T23:22:00.000-08:00

recently one of my reader sunilkumar tk wanted to share sample code to get the touch co-ordinates in android using java programming what does this code do? it simply grabs and returns the co-ordinates or location of the screen where the user has touched below is the sample code for the same.

package com.TouchScreen;

import android.app.Activity;
import android.os.Bundle;
import android.view.MotionEvent;
import android.view.View;
import android.widget.TextView;

public class TouchScreen extends Activity {
   /** Called when the activity is first created. */
   @Override
   public void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState)
   {
   super.onCreate(savedInstanceState);
   setContentView(R.layout.main);
   final TextView textView = (TextView)findViewById(R.id.textView);
   // this is the view on which you will listen for touch events 
   final View touchView = findViewById(R.id.touchView);
   touchView.setOnTouchListener(new View.OnTouchListener() {
   @Override
   public boolean onTouch(View v, MotionEvent event) {
   textView.setText("Touch coordinates : " +
   String.valueOf(event.getX()) + "x" + String.valueOf(event.getY()));
   return true;
   }
   });
   }
}

if you want the complete working code you can download it from Here , btw please penn in your suggestion and improvements about the program in comment section hope sunil will be a regular contributor for android programming sample snippets here and share his idea with rest of the world.

RGB color for gold how to get real gold colour?

2011-02-09T02:21:00.000-08:00

i was recently searching RGB table for gold to set a color for an text/label in the mspaint for some project but i was very much surprised to know that it is not possible to print fonts with a gold color because single ink color cannot represent all the shine, gloss and brightness of the gold, so is it not possible to emulate the gold color somehow? yes we can emulate gold color easily by faking it using textures, shades, reflections and glossiness and so on.

though it is not possible to simulate gold here are few different colors in table which represent the gold color

Gold color chart

Color Name	Hex Code #RRGGBB	Decimal Code R,G,B
Gold	#FFD700	rgb(255,215,0)
Golden yellow	#FFDF00	rgb(255,223,0)
Pale gold	#E6BE8A	rgb(230,190,138)
Metallic gold	#D4AF37	rgb(212,175,55)
Golden brown	#996515	rgb(153,101,21)

table courtesy "rapidtables.com"

and between bottom line is with single color it is impossible to create a gold and yellow represents official color of the gold.

how to Install fonts in windows 7 ?

2011-02-07T21:59:00.000-08:00

how to add fonts in windows 7? this was the question came to ma mind when i wanted to install a interesting font found on the net though at first it would be tricky and hidden some where among the settings but when i google i was suprised to see it was really simple than its predecessor such as windows xp or 2000.

windows 7 automatically recognizes .ttf (true type font) and you get a install option directly on the font file, you can just click on the font to get it installed.

you can also install font by right clicking on the font file and click on the install option in the menu as shown in below pic

Other way of installing font
if for some reason you are not able to install the way as above said you can do it in trival way by going into control panel

Just click on windows startmenu-->type"Font" in search box and press enter

Now you can drag and drop file in windows style in system font folder as shown in below pic

now you are done you can start using the font in any of the application such as MSWORD, Paint etc

how to blur part of images or photos without photoshop

2011-02-03T09:04:00.000-08:00

is there any free offline tool or application to blur the pictures? this is the most common questions many people ask though there are professional tools like photoshop it is very expensive and does not fit the pockets for casual bloggers and content developers and skills of armatures.

though Mspaint offers few alternatives such as brushes to paint part of the image but it not only looks unprofessional it looks very shabby and ugly, though there are many free online portals that offer it as free service but sometimes it may be a bad idea when it comes to privacy because it is not good to upload the images if it contains sensitive or very personal information.

So is the only option is to buy expensive image editing software like photoshop?

Nopes! many don't know there is a free image editing and painting software alternative to photoshop called GIMP which does the job see below pic, the image really looks professionally blurred, whats more there are tons of filters in gimp which allow you to modify the images professionally.

how to blur the part of the image using gimp?
Open the image you want to modify in gimp, select the part of the image using select tool such as rectangular crop, elliptical crop or free hand crop and select the part of the image and right click on the image select "Filters"-->"Blur" and select appropriate type of blurring option to blur the image.

In the above pic i used Gaussian blur with 75% of horizontal and vertical radius you can reduce the intensity of blur by changing those radius values

Vidyarthi Bhavan Bangalore aka Masala Dosa Paradise

2011-01-30T07:39:00.000-08:00

who don't know VB? every person who is born and bought up in Bangalore know this epic hotel, when ever i hear the name of this restaurant it really makes me nostalgic i am visiting this restaurant since i was a small kid (since 80's), but recently there was a long gap the last thing i remember visiting it was before its renovation, today when i visited vb i was very sad to see that it lost its antique charm and vintage look but the good thing is it has retained its old table and chairs, pics of famous poets and freedom fighters on side walls and the way the waiter bring the dosas in a stack.

This hotel is one of the oldest hotel in bangalore it is said that it is more than 70 years old and this place was favorite food joint for my Father in his school days during early 60's.

Dosas here is noted for its crispiness because it is fried in ghee(clarified butter) with the combination of special chutney(Made with lots of Fried gram dal and less coconut) you never forget its taste and the dosas here retains its crispiness even after few hours.

whats famous on menu in VB?
VB is famous for its epic dosas apart from dosas rava vada,poori sagu and karabath have a distinct and good taste unlike other hotels in bangalore, and note rava vada is only available during evenings, though idly vada has a average taste avoid ordering it with sambar it is better with chutney.

Has the taste of dosas has changed?
Yes dosas i ate in 1980's was not the same as in 90's and until present, like all hotels in bangalore the taste here too is deteriorating with time but unlike other hotels its in a slow pace, it was a time the smell of the ghee on the hands stayed till the afternoon meal now you cant even get that smell even with the unwashed hands after eating the dosas and yes definitely i sensed 50% reduction of taste in VB dosas, but what ever it is still VB dosas are best compared to any other hotels in Bangalore.

Is vidyarthi bahavan is the only oldest hotel in gandhibazar?
Nopes there were many hotels in gandhibazar and surrounding areas but many closed with time because of many reasons but i am lucky my father used to take me to almost all the hotels and tasted awesome food which newer generation never gets to taste, but now me and my father visits few hand full of hotels every week ends and few of our favorite spots are:

Lakshmi Nivas in Gandhibazar(Nice Calidosas)
Brahmin Cafe in Rangarao road gandhibazar(Famous for Idly vada, karabath and chutney)
Dwarka in gandhibazar(once famous for calidosa lost its charm after changing to its new location)
NMH new modern hotel near mavalli (every dish from idly vada to dosas is good)

and few other places, i will shortly right reviews on each and every restaurant shortly do watch this space.

restaurant order process going high tech in India

2011-01-28T22:37:00.000-08:00

when every thing in the world is going hi tech why not hotels? recently few hotels in south india chennai, and bangalore are making their order process a bit hifi, that is waiter don't have to write order in the paper and make a round trip to kitchen, with the new technology waiter takes orders from the hand held pda like device which is wifi enabled which automatically passes the ordered dishes to the chef in the kitchen and billing counter whats more the waiter even have a wifi enabled small printer placed near his waste which can print bills on fly instead of he going to the bill counter wow.

What all this means, cut on the wastage of time, order reaches kitchen in lightning speed dishes will be served very fast and customers will be happy.

below is the clip of the installation in one of the famous restaurant in chennai called sharvana bhavana which is testing this technology in one of its branches.

who knows one hotels might be waiter less all the tables will be equipped with touch enabled ordering tablets with a printer to print bills or swiping machine or device to pay bill using credit or debit cards and robots to server the dishes straight from the kitchen :) possibilities are endless.

Windows Xp like start menu in windows 7 ?

2011-01-28T01:09:00.000-08:00

I bet you might have landed here searching for an settings/options to revert back to xp style classic menu, though windows always came with options like new style and classic style startmenu this was however discontinued with windows vista and upper versions of OS, people who migrate from windows xp to windows 7 always find the new windows 7 startmenu crappy, inconvenient and mess because its very difficult to locate programs in thanks to the genius geeks in microsoft for designing this kind off startmenu.

Is there a option to switch back to classic menu in windows 7?
a simple one word answer is "NO", but there is some third party applications which can come to your rescue which modifies your existing Start menu to look like windows xp like menu see below pics

though there are many third party menus below are two of them one is paid and other is demo version
Startmenu 7 Free
Windows 7 Classic Start Menu Demo

I think Microsoft should include default classic menu in Windows 7 in the next service pack atleast since the new Windows 7 start menu really sucks

Run command prompt as administrator mode in windows 7 ?

2011-01-27T02:42:00.000-08:00

starting from vista user accounts control has been extended even to the command prompt some times you may get errors saying you do not have permission to run its because you need administrative permission to run the command below is the two ways of running command prompt in admin mode.

first method:
just click on start type command or click on "Accessories" now you can see the command prompt options below it now right click on command prompt option and click "run as administrator" as shown in below pic now you will be prompted for an admin confirmation click on yes you are done.

second method:
open the startmenu and in search bar as show in below pic type "CMD"

now press CTRL + SHIFT + ENTER now you get a elevated command prompt with full admininstartive rights.

Always run command prompt in Admin mode:
Do you want to use command prompt most of the times in admin mode? then here is the simple trick to start command prompt in admin mode always

goto accessories-->rightclick on command prompt icon--> click on "properties" you get a properties window now click on Advanced and select "Run as administartor" as shown in below pic

thats it now you are done the command prompt will now always run in admin mode when you click on icon from accessories.

how did italics fonts type got its name?

2011-01-24T21:28:00.000-08:00

Have you ever tried to check how slant alphabets 'type' got its name as "italics" ? i bet no one would have scratched their head or even tried to learn about that and i am not exception too...

though many of them have used the font types "Bold, underline, italics, strike through" etc in their life extensively no one would have noticed that all the font type has the names which directly represent what it is such as "Bold" to bolden the font underline to underline it, but why not "Slant" instead of "Italics"?

recently while browsing i came across this below interesting pic as old saying "a picture speaks 1000 words" was true i got to know why the name italics all by seeing the PIC.

btw have you ever tried to know it or you know before why it is called so do leave a comment though i really dont know whether the motive behind the naming was leaning tower of pisa if you have anything more information share with us.

Blogging a powerful business tool in recent times?

2011-01-19T02:42:00.000-08:00

Blog ging has seen a exponential growth from being a toddler to a highly matured entity during this decade it was a time when blogging was just a daily rants or venting ideas of normal souls as the years passed by it has become one of the powerful tool in the corporate world, yes you heard it right 'Blogs' has become so popular that there are more blogs than regular website and businesses are finding it has a powerful tool to communicate effectively with their clients and customers thus the evolution of "Corporate Blogs" in the recent years because blogs offer a interactive communication between business and its clients.

Corporates are finding blogs as a powerful communication medium now almost all the corporates incorporate to kinds of blogging internal and external blogs...

Internal Blogs:
it was a time when corporation was circulating a emails or memos to convey important announcements now with the latest trends of blogging corporate are doing these things via blog and also taking feedback from its employees and even employees are presenting their business ideas and models via blogs where management and fellow peers can comment on it and blogs has become a powerful communication medium inside the organization.

External Blogs:
External blogs of a corporation are similar to the internal blogs but it is used as a communication channel between organization and with the entities who are indirectly related to the company such as stake holders, consumers, business clients etc. corporates already started to announce products before hand on blog and collecting the feedback from the clients and making products accordingly to match the taste of the end-users and much more.

So is blog just a interactive tool for a business to reach its clients and associate?
Its not just a interactive tool! its a simple magic composition which all business needs a single magic word called "TRAFFIC" more traffic means more people and more business opportunity, its a holy grail or mantra for any business to grow and flourish without it no matter how good your business and product is its worth nothing.

When i started blogging i did not had anything in mind, it saw it just a platform where i can vent my ideas, preserve some sample code and share with people and do away with my daily rants but as the traffic to my webblog started to increase slowly i am really seeing a business potential in it, its not just a way of monetizing through advertisements but using it has a powerful tool to improve my future business or product.

recently i have seen many techies like me who is using their good traffic blogs to market their hobby projects and whats more even getting feedback and improving it and thus converting it into a suite slowly.

are you thinking same way i am thinking than do leave a comment and share your ideas with me on how powerful the blogging is.

free Mashable style wordpress premium theme freshlife!

2011-01-18T11:09:00.000-08:00

today i unexpectedly got a ping on facebook from Vishal Gaba asking my email id and saying that i won a contest in his blog which i participated long back i was really surprised and this was first thing something i won online.

give away was the 30$ worth wordpress mashable theme you an see the demo Here , the theme is really good and matches my taste and i will be using it in one of my two new upcoming websites thanks to vishal for the theme

I am also planning to organize few interesting give aways so watch out for this space guys

John Travolta walking style would u walk like that?

2011-01-17T08:00:00.000-08:00

Last night i felt nostalgic while watching john travolta retro walk in Saturday night fever movie i can say this was a retro week end for me because most of the movies i watched was of late 70's and 80's even the music i heard was from Kraftwerk, Beejees, the rolling stones, Pink Floyd etc, though i have seen saturday night fever few times before i did not find it boring unlike present day movies which is unimaginable to watch more than once.

I wonder how much influence and craziness this movie would have caused on those generation youngster at that time and if some one has to walk like that in today's street people would think them crazy, between i never expected john travolta to be such a good dancer until i saw this movie, watch below video for travoltas intro walk and few dance clips.

and coming to music no matter how many times i listen to kraftwerks i never get bored and those music never ages even after more than three decades and looks as if it was done by some new band what ever it is it was a nice festive week end with a retro touch

Configure rediff domain with blogger and Google apps email and blogspot ?

2011-01-15T06:15:00.000-08:00

I recently purchased a ".in" extension domain mobdev.in from rediff.com domain services, since google does not have this extension in their custom domain list to purchase, ~~i found rediff was offering a good deal for the .in domains~~ (Go for bigrock) than godaddy or names.com so i purchased from them, though i know this offer does not applies for subsequent years of renewal and the cost of renewal be regular 640rs+ tax.

After purchasing the domain i found that rediff domain dashboard is clumsy and quite tricky than enom or godaddy, and it was very hard to configure blogspot and google apps with it since no one posted on the net on how to do it, after lot of trial and errors i was able to configure .in domain with Blogger and Google Apps for email service.

I followed instruction bits and pieces found on internet and some details in my enom dashboard which was auto configured by google with my main blog and after lots of tweaks it is working well below are the instructions on how to do it with snap shots.

First of all update your (A records)
rediff allows you to add only two records just configure with ip 216.239.32.21 and 216.239.34.21 as shown in below pic
Click on image to enlarge
Configure MX records for your domain
if you want to host email on google for free then you have to add google email server"aspmx.l.google.com." address as shown in below pic.

Click on image to enlarge
Configure Domain Forwarding or CName Records

this is rather tricky and confusing part in rediff dashboard... since rediff does not provide add option to add new entry, click on edit on existing entry add new one save it this acts as "ADD" and don't worry previous entry will be intact edited(new) entry comes in new line... now add calendar, email,docs etc entries and point it to "ghs.google.com."

before creating these entries don't forget to create a google apps account, to sign-up visit this link https://www.google.com/a/cpanel/domain/new after filling the details you will be given a googlecode as shown in below pic(boxed with red) add it to cname you are done.

Click on image to enlarge
and now there is no need to configure remaining entries just leave it as default.

After configuring this exactly as show in above pics go to your blogger dashboard give the website url in dashboard--> Settings-->click on "Publishing" and configure it as shown in below picture(This step applies if you want to use your domain with blogspot else ignore this step)
Click on image to enlarge

between don't panic wait for about 24hrs to everything propagated in mean while if you try to open the website you may get bad request, website does not exist all sorts of things... mine took 7hours to get activated but if you directly purchase from Google custom domain it gets activated within 5mins :) but Google does not provide option to purchase .in domains from them.

Though this configuration are purely based on my R&D it is working very much fine without a glitch if you think i have made a mistake or there needs something to be changed please feel free to comment so that i can correct myself and this post entry.

Fake bookmarking sites stealing your traffic (Google juice)

2011-01-13T22:42:00.000-08:00

social bookmarking sites are a great way of getting traffic but did you know now a days they are many new fake bookmarking sites mushrooming everywhere though many of these dissolve in due course there are some sites which are determined and backed by bunch of spammers who steal content from other site in the name of bookmarking and steal the google juice(Traffic) from the original website at the end blogger's and website owners loose a fair slice of traffic.

From the beginning of my blogging days from almost 3+ years i was always concerned about the plagiarism and i always check who steals the content from my website using tools such as copy-scape, duecop etc, and most of the times i was able to track them and get my content removed, but its hard to fight with the people who are doing it in the name of bookmarking.

Recently i noticed that each and every post from my blog was getting bookmarked by a site named IND**.COM and most of the posts previously from READY2****.com(rather i dont want to name them and make still famous) when i search for popular terms on google during SEO research i found that these websites with my content was poping up on the top and the original link of mine was in 3 or 4th place, and when i searched their site i was shocked to see that each and every post of mine was somehow bookmarked within hours of posting in my blog.

And i am really surprised how these guys track the updates and snatch the content when i rarely see any of my links bookmarked in popular top 25 bookmarking sites, how come each and every post of mine get into these new sites?

Think about it, not only mine! i can see most of the blogs of my friends and colleagues are victims of these sites one word i can say is these are not bookmarking sites rather "Para Sites" breeding on others content and making huge profit out of it, if you are a blogger or website owner than beware of these kind of sites.