Make GMail the Default EMail Client in Firefox

Download the free Google Talk chat application and open the options dialog. You'll see a general setting that says "Open GMail When I click on Email Links" - select that and exit.

This will set Gmail as your default mailto: handler. This means that when you click on any hyperlinked email address, a Gmail compose window will open in your default web browser. The To: address field will be prepopulated with email address.

This trick works if you are in IE - the GMail compose window would open inside Firefox.

To make this work inside Firfox, implement this small change:

1. Type about:config in the address bar.

2. Type mailto: and hit enter.

3. You'll see a setting called network.protocol-handler.external.mailto that is set to false. Double click it to toggle the value to true.

Your system will work just the way you want.

Windows Installer Issue: When Programs Refuse to Uninstall

Sometimes when you try to uninstall some software using the Add/Remove programs module in the control panel, the Windows Installer will ask you to specify the folder that contains the original installation files.

This problem will also surface when you are trying to install a new version of the software when a previous version already exists on the machine for which the installer files are no longer available. [the issue is specific to InstallShield Express]

In that case, you are likely to see the following error - "Another Version of this Product Is Already Installed. Installation of This Version Cannot Continue."

I faced this Windows Installer related problem very recently while trying to install Adobe Captivate 3 over an older version. I could not install Captivate 3 as I had deleted the previous installation files from my desktop.

Tried deleting the entries from registry editor and also the program files folder but nothing worked.

Then tried pointing the old installer to the new setup but that threw another error - "the installed product does not match the installation source(s). Until a matching source is provided or until the installed product and source are synchronized, this action can not be performed."

Finally, the following trick worked - extracted the files to a new folder and ran command at the DOS command prompt for force installation:

MsiExec.exe /I installer.msi REINSTALLMODE=voums REINSTALL=ALL you may have to replace the installer.msi filename] Works like a charm. To be on the safe side, run the setup.exe again to repair/reinstall the installation.

Remove Unwanted Clutter from Firefox Right-Click Menu

When you do a fresh installation of Firefox, the contextual menu (which appears when you right click) is tiny and pretty containing only the most essential menu items such Save Image, Copy Email Address, View Page Source, Copy Link Location, Search Google for, etc.

But things change as you add new Firefox extensions.

For instance, I have six Firefox extensions (FireBug, DownloadThemAll, JSView, ScrapBook, Yoono, FlashGot) and they have all added several new items to the right-click menu.

The contextual Firefox menu wore a cluttered and extremely confusing look until I installed Menu Editor - a must have Firefox extension.

As the name suggests, Menu Editor lets you rearrange (move) existing menu-items, group similar commands or remove items that you rarely use (e.g., View Page Source is useless for non-techies and they can safely hide it).

You can also use the Menu Editor extension to re-arrange and trim your Firefox Menu bar on the top (that has the File, Edit, Help commands)

The extension definitely makes you feel more productive because, with the junk removed, you'll find the frequently used menu items much much faster. [See the Firefox contextual menu after the Menu Editor treatment - much better]

Menu Editor | Screenshots [Access it from the Firefox Add-ons Dialog]

Real Video Player 11 Can Rip YouTube Videos. Wanna try it ?

The new RealPlayer 11 is like a powerful download manager for Internet Videos - it allows you to watch, download and burn streaming videos clips from YouTube and most other video sharing websites including Google Video and MySpace.

Real Player 11 will put a "Download this video" button on web pages that have embedded video content - you can click the button to start the video download process. Firefox and IE are supported.

Multiple videos can also be downloaded simultaneously and you can even burn the video content onto a CD or a DVD disc using RealPlayer itself.

If you are happy with good-old Firefox extensions for downloading Youtube clips, RealPlayer 11 can even be used as a universal video player to watch videos in Flash, Windows Media, Real and Quicktime formats. [very similar to VLC Media Player]

I have some Real Player 11 invites courtesy Mike and will be happy to pass them to you. Available only for Windows though a Mac version is expected later this year.

Looking for a Job ? Get a Video Camera

Job seekers in India now have an opportunity to impress employers with their presentation and communication skills without meeting the prospective boss physically - just create a 2 minute video and upload it to Monster.

Monster India, one of of popular job portals here like Naukri.com and TimesJobs, have launched a new feature called "Video Resume" where job applicants can upload video files for free along with their regular text-only resumes.

Once your video is approved by the system, employers will be able to search and scan the video files like other text resumes.

Video resumes could be a good way to gain the attention of the recruiter when he has to shortlist only some candidates from a list of few hundred resumes. It's the same as adding a picture to your profile on some social networking website - the profile views will be much higher.

The video resume files on Monster India are accepted in most common video formats and can be upto 50 MB in size (less than 2 minutes).

Use Notepad, Vim or Any Text Editor with Firefox for Writing Text

Ever tried editing your Blogger Templates or Wordpress Themes in Firefox ? Or a Wikpedia story that spans several paragraphs ? Editing large blocks of text in Firefox is both confusing and dangerous because it's so easy to make mistakes.

Here's an extremely useful Firefox extension for you called "It's all text" - though the name offers no hint about the purpose of the extension, it enables you to edit or write text in Firefox using any external text editing software like Notepad, GVim, etc.

It's-all-text extension adds a small "edit" button near the textboxes in Firefox and if you click that button, the existing text opens up inside your favorite text editor.

You can edit the text and then close the editor - your text will automatically appear in the Firefox textbox. [think round-trip editing]. There will be a short Ajax style glow to hint that the text has changed.

The extension will be very handy for editing long blogger templates, Wikipedia entries, composing new blog posts in Wordpress web editor, writing blog comments, editing files in Web based FTP programs or replying to forum threads in Internet message boards.

Geeks may configure Firefox with Vi or Emacs while others may configure it with Notepad, UltraEdit or other text editors. Highly recommended.

Shorthand Typing: Write Emails in Outlook More Efficiently

When we compose a new email message in Outlook or reply to an existing email, the body of our email will always have some text phrases that we type repeatedly. For instance:

When you get a blog tip, your reply may have - "Thank you for the tip."

When someone wants your phone number, you'll write - "You can reach me at 123-322-323 anytime during the day."

Hate typing the same text in different emails over and over again ? Here's an alternate solution:

You probably know of an old feature in Microsoft Outlook (and most other Office applications) called AutoCorrect that recognizes spelling errors and replaces them with the correct words as you are typing.

Other than fixing typos, AutoCorrect can be used for creating shortcut command for auto typing long lines of text.

For instance, you can set "familygreeting" as an AutoCorrect entry for Outlook some long line of text like "Hope you and everyone in your family is doing good." Whenever you type familygreeting in the message, Outlook will replace that with the greeting text. More text with less number of keystrokes.

The Autocorrect feature in Outlook can be accessed from Tools -> Options -> Spelling -> Spelling and Autocorrection

You can use this excellent feature to auto insert long email addresses or your website URL in the email message. Warning: Don't use common English words as autotext entries since Outlook will not warn you before making the replacement.

Convert Powerpoint Presentations to Flash with GMail PPT Viewer

GMail now has an inbuilt PPT viewer that lets you view Powerpoint attachment as a Flash picture slideshow in the web browser itself without requiring Microsoft PowerPoint application.

This slideshow feature of GMail will be useful since you no longer have to download the full PPT attachment in order to view that 16th slide of the presentation.

Here are two additional situations where it may help:

1. If you have to view a presentation on some computer that has no copy of PowerPoint, gmail yourself the PPT file and watch the slides inside the web browser.

2. GMail converts every slide of your Powerpoint presentation to a Flash (swf) file - if you manually advance the entire PPT slideshow using the arrows, all the slides will become available as Flash files in your browser's temp folder.

Just a quick way of transforming Powerpoint slides into SWF documents without using any desktop conversion software. The swf files may then be embedded in your blog for sharing with readers. Nothing great since Scribd can also convert your PPT to Flash paper.

Do you know if GMail Powerpoint viewer can read PPS (Powerpoint Show) formats.

Search Video Clips from Popular Video Sharing Sites In One Place

How do you find videos on the web related to some topic? The Youtube website is probably a good place to start but if you confine the search only to YouTube, you will miss so much exciting stuff that exists in other places.

Google Video, MySpace, DailyMotion, iFilm, Metacafe, Revver, Veoh, Reuters, Yahoo! Videos, BrightCove, MSN Soapbox, AOL, Grouper...these video sharing websites may not be as big as YouTube but they still have a great fan following and host tons of video clips that may well be of your interest.

We often ignore searching video content on these "non-YouTube" sites because of lack of time - fortunately, this problem is now a thing of the past with uLinkx - a comprehensive video search engine to help you conveniently search multiple video websites from one place.

uLinkx provides RSS search feeds for your video search queries. And you can also watch any of these videos without leaving the uLinkx website - no more hitting the back or forward buttons in your browser.

My favorite feature is the Live Video search which is like a common wrapper for all video sharing sites. You execute a live query on YouTube or sites right inside uLinkx.

Other than video search, uLinkx can be used for bookmarking video clips from multiple sites or organizing them in video playlists. [image a single playlist that streams videos clips coming from different sources like YouTube, Metacafe and Google Video]

Wishlist - more customizable RSS feeds and support for BrightCove and Blip.tv. I also faced problems subscribing to the Video search feeds in Newsgator but they worked fine inside Google Personalized homepage.

Add a "Save as PDF" Button to your Websites and Blog Pages

Want site visitors to print or download your blog posts as PDF documents ?

PDF Online, the free PDF conversion service that helps you create PDF files of your Microsoft Office documents, has released a new online tool for converting HTML web pages to PDFs.

Here's how the new service works - bloggers add a small Javascript snippet in the blog templates, visitors can click the "Save Page as PDF" button and the current web page will be rendered as a PDF document.

Though the "SavePagesAsPDF" service is in closed beta, you can still give it a try as show below:

Real Example - Print Google.com as PDF

When the SavePageAsPDF service goes live officially, you will be able to track all the PDF conversion activities on your website helping you visualize the most popular content on your blog.

More on the service at pdfonline.com/ and pdfonline.blogspot.com/.

This will be in direct competition with HP Print Widget that also allow printing blog posts and RSS feeds as PDF documents.

Update: You can directly embed the URLs in your blog posts without using any javascript. Use the following values for cURL instead of encodeURIComponent(document.location.href)

Classic Blogger - <$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>
Blogger XML Template - data:post.url
WordPress -

Run Windows Vista, Office 2007 Together Without Installation

Too lazy to install the new Office 2007 or Windows Vista on your machine ? Worried that the new software might break existing stuff on your computer or may not work at all ? Here's something for you - Windows Vista cum Office 2007 inside Windows XP.

Microsoft today released a free combo VHD edition of Windows Vista and Office 2007 Professional which includes Publisher, Excel, Outlook, Outlook, PowerPoint, Access, and Word.

You can download this all-in-one package from Microsoft Download Center and run it on your Windows XP computer without making any modifications by using the free Microsoft Virtual PC software.

Start the Virtual PC software and just open the Windows Vista cum Office 2007 image - the software will run independent of your existing XP SP2 setup and will not alter or install anything on the computer.

Excited ? There's a small catch - though the Office 2007 / Vista image file is free, it is a bit bulky (~2 GB to be exact) and requires addition 10 GB of free hard drive space for running smoothly inside the Virtual PC software.

If you think your Broadband connection can take the load, get the Office 2007 cum Vista installer from microsoft.com/downloads/ (file available in VHD image format).

Software Serial Numbers and CD Keys on Google

Software License details of Adobe Photoshop, Premiere, Microsoft Office, Windows XP and tons of other software can easily be located on Google by running this simple query:

"Belarc Advisor Current Profile" "Software Licenses" "Software Name" key:

These are actually real software inventory reports generated by Belarc Advisor, a popular tool often used to backup software licenses.

The only problem is that innocent users have placed these HTML reports in public directories of their web servers, the search engine spiders index them and in-turn expose the secret software keys to the whole world.

Though most new Adobe and Microsoft software will require additional web or phone activation, that is not mandatory if the Belarc reports have Volume License keys. Scary.

How to Stop GIF Image Animations from Playing in IE or Firefox

Unlike Macromedia Flash movies, you cannot right click a GIF animation to stop it from playing over and over again.

Here's a very simple trick to prevent GIF graphics from animating in your web browser window - once the web page has stopped loading and GIF frames start to animate, just hit the ESC key on your keyboard.

That will immediately disable all the GIF animations on that webpage. In order to replay the animated images, you'll have to reload the page by pressing F5 or Ctrl+R.

If you want to permanently block GIF animations in your browser, do the following:

In Firefox - Type about:config and change the value of string image.animation_mode from normal to none.

In Internet Explorer - Tools -> Options -> Advance. Uncheck the box in Multimedia group that says "Play animations in web pages"

Good Looking Profile Picture for Posting on the Web

The popularity of social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook or Bebo have created a demand for Photoshop experts because people want to look perfect and glamorous in their profile photographs on social websites.

For this reason, Snappy Snaps, a photo company in UK, has launched a special "photo airbrushing service" that turns any normal photograph into a flawless image.

You get lean thighs, wrinkle free face, no dark circles under the eyes, white straight teeth and an overall slim look without dieting or a visit to the beauty parlor - it's all done using the good old Photoshop.

No wonder, this Snappy Snaps image transformation service is massively popular especially among the MySpace and Facebook crowd.

Including a picture is the best way to increase responses to your profile but what type of photograph should you upload on your profile - the Yahoo! Dating portal has some solid advice that definitely goes against the airbrushing rule:

• Don't forget to flaunt your smile.
• Choose a photo of just one person – you!
• A clear, well-lit picture will make you more appealing.
• Show off how you look on an average day.