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.

Turn Your Printer and Scanner into a Copier Machine

Got a printer and scanner but no Xerox copy machine? With no effort, you can combine the printer and scanner to build your personal digital photocopier machine and make copies of your documents at the click of a button.

This is possible through iCopy, a free software utility that combines the scanner and printer into a versatile copier that requires no installation - you can even run the iCopy software from a USB drive.

Here's how iCopy works - you insert the document / paper inside the scanner, enter the number of copies that you want and hit the big blue copy button.

iCopy also provides you control over the image settings and quality so that the final document copies consume less ink during print. It works with all printers and any TWAIN-compatible scanner (nearly all scanners are TWAIN compatible).

iCopy Photocopier software is available at sourceforge.net.

When both Domain Name & IP Address are banned, Use Calculator to Access that Website

How to bypass the internet content filtering software of your school or office using just the calculator application (Start->Run. type calc.exe). This unique Mathematics based trick will probably work when websites are blocked in your institution or corporate network based on the host name or their IP address.

The trick is to convert the human readable website address that's blocked (like bebo.com) into an IP address (208.75.184.160) and again translate this value to a decimal address which is probably not blocked by the website filters.

Here's a step by step guide to render www.myspace.com to a decimal address:

1) get its IP address (216.178.39.74), by pinging the name (if you have a direct internet connection) or if you only have access via a web proxy then find it out by using network-tools.com.

2) start your PC's calculator, and change it to scientific mode (using the "View" menu)

3) enter each of the four IP octets, one by one, converting them to binary (enter number and click on the "Bin" radio button)

Thus 216.178.39.74 becomes
216 = 11011000
178 = 10110010
39 = 00100111
74 = 01001010
Notice how any binary numbers less than 8 digits long have had leading zeroes added to pad them out. Reassembled into IP address order, you get 11011000.10110010.00100111.01001010

4) Remove the dots, so you get one huge line of binary, thus: 11011000101100100010011101001010

5) Copy this binary string

6) Go to your scientific calculator, and hit the "Bin" button FIRST (as you are about to enter binary), THEN paste in the binary string.

7) Click on the "Dec" button on your calculator, and you will get the converted value of 3635554122

8) Add the hypertext protocol prefix and paste into your browser's address bar: http://3635554122

I used to be in a place that had websense, where both website names and their corresponding IP addresses were blocked. However was able to get limited access by converting the IP address to decimal, which websense (at the time) did not know about. This might have changed since, or if your school runs an old version it might still work. Note that if you surf away from the page you might hit websense blocks again unless you manually reconstruct the next address you want to get to.

An Effective Home Remedy For Fixing Scratched CDs or DVD disks

It's a three step process -

• apply a layer of banana, then
  
• spread it using the banana peel and finally
  
• wipe the surface using a soft cloth.

This method may bring some of your old but priceless CDs back to life.

Before You Leave the Windows Laptop or MacBook Unattended..

What is the best way to protect your laptop computer against theft? Most would say that treat your laptop (or tablet) like the cash in your wallet and therefore never leave it unattended, even for a minute.

Easier said than done - it's not always practical to carry that heavy notebook with you all the time. For instance when you are in a conference, you won't like to carry the computer to the restroom or to the nearby coffee vending machine but that time maybe more than sufficient for a thief to walk away with your expensive notebook.

So what's the next best option to ensure that your laptop and the extremely important data doesn't disappear ? Either lock the Laptop with security cables or get the free utility called Laptop Alarm.

Laptop Alarm is like an anti-theft siren that only rings (using the in-built speakers of the laptop) when someone tries to logoff or shutdown the machine or removes the charging AC power cord or unplugs the external mouse attached to your laptop.

Laptop Alarm is Windows only but MacBook users can get the free iAlertU utility that will even capture the photo of the thief using the webcam and email it to any specified address.

Get LaptopAlarm (Windows Notebook) | iAlertU (Apple Notebook)

Caution: The Laptop Alarm won't work in the case when the thief is clever enough to turn off the laptop by pressing the power button.

How to Play MP3 Songs Stored on your Home Computer at Work

Problem: You have tons of MP3 music files, podcasts and other Windows Media Audio songs on the hard drive of your home computer neatly organized in playlists. You hat burning this music to CD but still want to listen it while in office or from other computers in your home or want to share the same music with your friends who can be in any part of the world.

Solution: All you need is SimplifyMedia and the popular iTunes media player - both are available for Mac and Windows. It is expected that SimplifyMedia will support WinAmp, Windows Media Player pretty soon.

It works like this - you add the music folders to SimplifyMedia watch-list on your home computer that contain the songs you would like to access or listen from other computers. When you are in office, you again login into SimplifyMedia and start iTunes where you'll find the same home music library under Shared Playlists. Hit play and the music or podcasts stream over the internet. Quite simple.

When you install Simplify Media software on additional computers, you are connected automatically when you log in with the same screen name. To share the music with other friends, you can invite them via email and they too can listen to our iTunes music playlists on their computers.

However, you cannot use this system to copy songs from the home computer to work or transfer them to the iPod.

Free Video Editing Software for Producing Movies

You want so many video editing features for free ? Well, it may be possible as here are some good options for editing that don't cost a dime.

But before you read this list, check the CDs that shipped with your handycam - most camera manufacturers like Sony, Canon and Panasonic generally provide a decent video editing software with the camera. OK, back to the list of free video editing software:

Windows Movie Maker - The best video editing tool for Windows that's absolutely free and chances are you already have it installed on your computer as part of XP SP2. Microsoft Movie Maker has all the basic video editing tools plus a good collection of transitions and video effects.

There's an in-built movie titler that lets add you styles to text titles including ticker taps, zoom and even the scroll effect. And if you are feeling lazy, just hit the AutoMovie command to have the entire video produced for you with intervention.

Avid Free DV - Avid Free DV, poor cousin of Avid Xpress Pro, has all the basic video and audio editing features and allow you to put video in two tracks simultaneously. They have an extensive collection of tutorials online to help you get started quickly.

Support both Mac OS and Windows XP platform. Infact, you can even play with keyframes for generating custom moves and transitions. Ships with the Avid Title tool.

JahShaka - An open source video editing software that is currently in Alpha stage but has features found only in expensive video editing software suites.

Works on Mac, Linux and Windows. The interface might take some time for you to get started otherwise the software is definitely the most powerful one out there. And the price is just right. $0. Also does 3D effects which you won't find in other free video editors.

Jumpcut.com - Jumpcut is a web based video editing software and now it's even part of the Yahoo! family. You upload a video or small clips just like importing inside a desktop software.

There are dozens of transitions and special effects. You can import photographs from your Flickr or Facebook account to mix them with the videos. The jumpcut editor is intuitive enough and there is good title support as well. And your movies are published online automatically. Perfect for quick vlogging and video podcasting.

Finally... While the above video editing software should satisfy the needs of most home movie makers, you can probably consider Adobe Premiere Elements or even Muvee AutoProducer for more features and better control over the final output. They have trial version to help you try out the software before actually buying it.