Protect Your Laptop From Theft In Conferences, Libraries..

Your notebook is not just an expensive piece of hardware – it also contains your personal information, confidential office documents, log of websites that you have visited recently and so much more that a theft or even an accidental loss could put you at some serious risk.

And do not estimate laptop theft as a rare phenomenon. Some estimates suggest that a laptop is stolen every minute and most of them are never recovered.

While travelling or attending a conference, the easiest option to secure your laptop against theft is to put in the case and carry it on your shoulders all the time. Treat the laptop like the cash in your wallet and never leave it unattended even when you are just taking a short break for the restroom or the coffee vending machine.

Now that’s the most ideal approach but not a practical one – would you disconnect the power cord, network cable and external mouse and place the laptop back in the bag just because you want to quickly grab a glass of drinking water from the pantry next door or pick another book from the library bookshelf?

In such situations, an extremely useful utility is LaptopAlarm. It’s like an anti-theft siren that 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 (syfer.nl) is Windows only but MacBook owners can get the free iAlertU utility (ialertu.com) that will even capture the photograph of the thief using the inbuilt webcam and send it to any email address. Just make sure these screaming alarms don’t ring inadvertently else that can put you in an embarrassing situation.

Laptops and other portable devices are frequently lost (stolen or misplaced) in hotel rooms, libraries, airport security counters, coffee shops and taxis. If you are frequent traveler, consider getting an insurance cover for your notebook. They will atleast cover cost of the laptop incase of theft, accidental damage or misplacement.

A YouTube Download Manager Similar to Real Video Player 11

Some may recall the Real Player 11 software that lets you download streaming web videos in a click. When you are watching a video on say YouTube, Real Player 11 adds a "Download this video" hover button near the video player - you just have to click this button to initiate the video download process.

Orbit Downloader is a free download manager that not only offers a similar approach as Real Player 11 but also extends it to Flash Animation movies, audio files and other media content embedded in web pages. And Orbit works with practically all web browsers including Maxthon and Opera.

As you see in the screen capture above, Orbit adds a small button when you hover the mouse over the YouTube player - click that button to download the video or song to your hard drive. And since Orbit is a full fledged download manager, it can make multiple connections to the same file so it can download faster.

Not just YouTube or Yahoo! videos, Orbit can be used with MySpace music, Pandora or even Rapidshare files. It also supports the RTSP and MMS protocols so you can try grabbing those programs on BBC and CNN.

www.orbitdownloader.com | download.com

The Easiest Way to Save Youtube Videos: Kiss The Address Bar

Kiss YouTube offers an innovative approach for downloading video clips from Youtube. No browser bookmarklets, no software to install, just remember the KISS "Keep It Sweet & Simple" principle.

While you are watching a video clip on the youtube website, just add the word "kiss" to the video URL in your browser address bar and hit enter. The video is ready to be saved on your computer in FLV format.

For instance, if the Youtube URI is something like youtube.com/watch?v=ls1954aa, you can download the clip by adding the word "kiss" in front of the youtube.com domain name. Hence the final address becomes kissyoutube.com/watch?v=ls1954aa which will have the link to save that clip.

Let Firefox Turn Off The Computer When All Files Have Downloaded

Say it's midnight and you want to call it a day. But the issue is that you are downloading some huge files from the Internet via Firefox (see screenshot) and at your current internet speed, the download will take another two hours to finish.

You could either cancel the downloads, or leave the computer in running state, or just install Auto Shutdown from mozilla.org.

As the name suggest, this extension will turn off the computer automatically as soon as Firefox has downloaded all the pending files in the queue.

If you not using Firefox, try the shutdown command in Windows that will turn off the computer after the given time. For instance, if you want to turn off the computer in next two hours, type the following in Windows Run box:

shutdown -s -t 7200 [7200 = 2 hours]

The Auto Shutdown extension of Firefox internally executes the same command.

Internet Radio Broadcasting in your Google Talk, MSN/Live Messenger or Yahoo Messenger

With the help of our GTalk2VoIP service all Google Talk, MSN/Live Messenger and Yahoo Messenger users now can connect to a number of Internet Radio Broadcasting stations and start listening radio streams. No additional software to install, just follow the instructions below.

Step 1. Subscribe to the service in one of the possible ways:

• 1st Way. Open your IM messenger and invite new recipient whose user id is service@gtalk2voip.com.
• 2nd Way. Go to GTALK-TO-VOIP and submit your user id by pressing "Invite!" button, then accept the invitation from service@gtalk2voip.com.

Step 2. Send RADIO command to service@gtalk2voip.com to get list of available radio stations, remember a numerical ID of any.

Step 3. Send RADIO ID command to service to get connected.

Step 4. Accept incoming call from the service.

For Google Talk users. Google Talk user can invite radio station contact into their list of contacts by adding a contact like: ID@radio.gtalk2voip.com (i.e. 100@radio.gtalk2voip.com). When contact appears online, press Call button to connect to the radio station.

Examples:

Ruslan: RADIO


service: Welcome to GTalk2VoIP - Free Voice Gateway for Google Talk, MSN and Yahoo!
Type 'HELP' for more information
You entered: RADIO

LIST OF AVAILABLE RADIO STATIONS:

100 - Classic Country Music from Heartland Public Radio [http://128.177.3.80:4064/]
101 - Cowboy Cultural Society Radio - an American tradition since 2002 [http://205.188.215.232:8028/]
102 - Atlantic Sound Factory - ASF Radio [http://69.31.50.146:80/]
103 - 100.7 Jack FM, San Diego [http://38.116.132.31:9024/]
104 - 102.7 FM The Fringe [http://64.72.124.89:8134/]
105 - 181.fm - The Buzz (Your Alternative Station!) [http://scfire-nyk0l-1.stream.aol.com:80/stream/1022]
106 - 181.fm - The Mix Channel (70s, 80s, 90s and Today's Best Music) [http://208.53.158.167:8032/]
107 - 181.fm - The Eagle (Your Home For REAL Classic Rock!) [http://208.53.158.126:8030/]
108 - .977 The 80s Channel [http://scfire-ntc0l-2.stream.aol.com:80/stream/1040]
109 - 1.FM - Channel X [http://209.51.161.54:8072/]
201 - KCRW World News [http://scfire-ntc0l-2.stream.aol.com:80/stream/1047]
202 - Sporting News Radio [http://scfire-chi0l-2.stream.aol.com:80/stream/1057]
203 - KPFK - Southern California's 90.7 FM News, Talk & Music [http://64.27.31.66:80/]
204 - WBUR 90.9 FM, Boston's NPR News Station [http://205.234.188.21:80/]

Ruslan: RADIO 100

service: You entered: RADIO 100
Please, accept call from gtalk2voip

Incoming call from service@gtalk2voip.com at 6:38 PM on Sunday
service: Connecting to FM Radio Station [100]: Classic Country Music from Heartland Public Radio
Connected to: Classic Country Music from Heartland Public Radio

Please note, that...  

• If radio has not started to play in 5 secs, try to drop the call and connect again.

Related: FM is on GTalk

Find Any Email in GMail With Simple Search Commands

While some GMail users download email locally to Outlook or Thunderbird and then use desktop search programs like Copernic or Windows Desktop Search to find emails, GMail itself has some powerful search capabilities.

Let's look at some common search scenarios and possible solutions:

Q: I have hundreds of unread emails in my Gmail Inbox but not all of them show up on the main page. Can I bring up view in GMail containing only unread messages.

A: label:inbox is:unread

Q: My boss sent me a PDF document last month that I can no longer locate in the Inbox. Can you help me find it.

A: from:Name_Of_Boss filename:pdf after:2007/07/01 [yyyy/mm/dd]

Q: I received an email from Paypal support last week. I am not sure if I deleted the message, archived it or marked it as Spam.

A: from:Paypal in:anywhere

Q: I have dozens of unread email messages in the Inbox but I am in a hurry to check them all. Show me just the messages that are for me.

A: is:unread after:2007/09/03 to:your.email@address.com

Q: Ryan is a good friend who send me pretty interesting PowerPoint / Word files that often have inspirational quotes, beautiful natural landscapes and funny slide shows of Cats. I love it all but they take too much space.

A: from:Ryan has:attachment [Select all and then delete]

Q. I accidentally deleted an important email message from a colleague. My GMail trash is already overflowing. How do I retrieve that particular message.

A: label:trash Name_Of_Your_Colleague

Q: I use GMail to automatically backup my WordPress blog. The database backup are stored via email attachments as Zips. Since I am running short on GMail storage, I would like to delete all backups that are older than two weeks.

A: filename:.zip before:2007/08/15 wordpress

Q: While chatting over Google Talk, Veronica sent me a link to her Flickr pictures.

A: in:chat from:veronica flickr.com

Q: Show me all emails from my Boss that he marked Urgent or Important in the subject.

A: from:Boss_Name subject:(Urgent OR Important)

Q. I have two contacts in GMail with similar names - Peter King and Peter King Junior. Can I see emails the received from the former contact.

A: from:Peter King -Junior

Search Shortcuts: Instead of typing label:unread, you can simply type l:^u

Important: Unlike Google web search, GMail won't suggest search results that contain plurals or misspellings of your search query. For instance, a search for "computer" will only show email with that exact word - you won't see messages containing the word "computers".

Turn Your Mouse Pointer Into a SpotLight, Perfect for Presentations

Spotlights are commonly used in concerts and musical theatres to focus an audience's attention on a performer as he moves around the stage.

MouseLight has borrowed the concept from theatres and applied it your computer where the actor is the mouse cursor and the stage is the desktop screen.

When you are doing a PowerPoint presentation or a software demonstration and want the audience to focus on some specific area of the screen, MouseLight puts a circular spotlight around your cursor and highlights that area allowing your audience to follow you - the rest of the screen outside the spotlight circle is dimmed automatically.

There's another advantage of MouseLight - If you are work on a large screen or a dual monitor, it's so common that you keep losing track of the mouse pointer. With MouseLight, just press the hotkey and you'll immediately know where the cursor is placed on the screen. No guesswork required.

MouseLight is available for Windows only, Mac users have a similar application called Mouseposé. MouseLight for Windows is available for $20 while the Mousepose for Mac costs only $10.

Not to be confused with Apple Desktop Search Software which is also known as SpotLight.

FM is on GTalk

FM is on your GTalk now ( Teen Taal 110...,only hindi songs)

for this u need to follow these steps...,

1) add this id in ur GTalk: service@gtalk2voip.com

2) then add: 110@radio.gtalk2voip.com

after completion of these 2 steps

then make a cal to 110@radio.gtalk2voip.com than u wil be directly connected

to teen taal FM radio station

Related : Internet Radio Broadcasting in your Google Talk, MSN/Live Messenger or Yahoo Messenger

Download Your Favorite Blogs and Websites for Offline Reading

Offline Explorer, wget, WinHTTrack Copier, Teleport.. there are tons of software utilities (both free and commercial) that let you download web pages to your local hard drive - they'll mirror complete websites, image galleries and everything else when your computer is connected to the web.

But there are some issues with most of these offline browsers. How do you browse or search web pages once they are saved locally? How do you update the local information when the source data has changed? Can you transfer the web content from computer to your mobile phone or the USB pen drive?

Enter Webaroo - a free offline browser cum search engine that is not-so-geek and should solve all the above problems.

Once you install Webaroo, you suggest a list of blogs, websites, videos, podcasts or any online content that you would like to browse offline. If you are too busy to make suggestions, you can install readymade Webaroo packs - popular websites arranged in categories. [like the News pack will have CNN, ABC, WSJ, etc]

Webaroo then creates an offline copy of the site that you can browse or search as if you are connected. Based on your settings, Webaroo periodically checks the original web pages for modification and if there are any, the software automatically updates the local cache.

The software also provides visual hints for outgoing hyperlinks that are already available in the local cache.

You'll also be impressed by the brilliant interface of Webaroo. It's a highly recommended tool especially for mobile workers who travel frequently or remain offline most of the time. Webaroo will make sure that you do miss any of your favorite news sites or blogs.

And if you own a Windows Mobile phone like the O2 or HP IPAQ, you can even browser the saved web content in your phone.

How to Find Email Addresses of People Who Plagiarize Content

Content plagiarism is a serious concern on the Internet. You spent an entire day writing that comprehensive review of the Nikon D80 DSLR camera only to realize that hour later, some lesser-known websites and blogs have reprinted your article word-by-word without giving you any credit.

To get your content removed from the another website, the first step (that works in 99% of the cases) is to send a friendly email to the owner of that site.

But sometimes finding the email address of the person, who ripped off your content, may be the toughest part. Here are some indirect tricks to help you locate email addresses of offenders.

Step 1. If the offending site is self hosted, you are very likely to find the email address of the website owner through the public whois database. I prefer DomJax (review) for quick retrieval of website registry information.

Step 1(a). If the website is self hosted but the whois information is private, try the following query on Google (replace xyz with the actual site address)

xyz.com -inurl:xyz.com - This might show up some real email addresses for that domain.

Step 2. If the site is hosted on Blogger, WordPress or other blogging platforms, leave a comment in any of the blog posts. Most bloggers generally read and respond to user comments.

Step 3. Now the trickiest part - there's no "Contact Us" form on the website and there's place for you to write comments. Well, don't give up yet because you still have good options:

3(a). Use Technorati or Google Blog search to find other sites / blogs linking to that offending site. It's quite possible that the offender may be maintaining multiple websites that are cross-linked for maximum Google Juice. There are chances that contact information is available on one of his/her legit sites.

3(b). If the person is blogging under an alias (say "PeterCool008") - search for that term on Google. It's very likely that he has used the same alias when registering on other web forums and social networking websites.

When you get hold of his public profile on some site like Digg, MyBlogLog or say DigitalPoint forums, look for the IM aliases. If his YIM! is xyz, you know that an email addressed to xyz@yahoo.com will, very likely, land in his inbox.

Alternatively, most web forums allow Private Messaging. Sign up for that forum yourself and send a private message / email. That may be the last resort.

Never quit - I know it takes some effort to track down the plagiarists but that should not deter you from actively pursuing your case. Remember that search engines, including Google, still have issues figuring out the original source of web documents.

Turn XP into Vista - Show Thumbnail Images in Windows Taskbar

Visual Task Tips is just a 90 kb utility that makes your Windows XP taskbar look like the one that ships with Vista.

You can hover the mouse cursor over any application in the taskbar and instantly see the latest thumbnail screenshot of that Window without actually switching to that application.

Pretty useful when you have tons of similar application open on your screen and the application titles aren't descriptive enough.

Get Visual Task Tips at visualtasktips.com [freeware]

Don't Lose Work If IE 7 Browser Crashes or Hangs All of a Sudden

Say you have over half a dozen websites open inside IE 7. But suddenly your Internet Explorer window closes without warning or simply freezes and stops responding. You have no other option but to kill the IE 7 process (iexplore.exe) via the Windows Task Manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del).

In either of the cases, there's no record of web pages that were open in your IE window prior to the crash. What do you do in such a situation?

Firefox 2 users are lucky because the Mozilla browser has an excellent Session Restore feature that auto saves the browser tabs and will restart exactly to the previous state in the event of a crash or freeze.

While Internet Explorer version 7.0 has no such feature to recover work from a crashed session, you can download a free add-in called IEPlus to bring the very useful "Session Restore" feature of Firefox in your IE browser. [see screenshot]

The next time your IE crashes, you won't have to search the browser cache to recall the names of the websites that were open - IEPlus will just ask for your confirmation and will auto-restore the browser automatically to the previous state. Nothing is lost.

And if you click the "No" button in the confirmation dialog, IEPlus shows you a list of websites that were open in IE prior to the crash - you can open sites selectively, a lovely feature that's missing even in Firefox.

IEPlus on Download.com

Which Version of Adobe Flash Player Is Running On My Machine

If you are not sure whether Adobe Flash Player is installed in your web browser and if installed, what version of the Flash Player are your running - here's a simple trick.

Visit this page on Adobe.com. If you have the Adobe Flash Player plugin, the page will display the exact version of the Flash Player. If Flash is missing on your machine, you won't see the line the says "Adobe Flash Player is Installed."

Make sure you perform this check separately for IE and Firefox / Opera.

What's new in Flash Player 9 that's on Adobe Labs

While the latest version of Adobe Flash Player is 9.0.47.0, Adobe have recently released an updated version of Macromedia Flash Player 9 (9.0.60.184) that supports H.264 in addition to the original On2 VP6 codec (but not Sorenson Video).

Why upgrade to Flash Player 9 with H.264 support

What that means in simple jargon is that you can now use the same Flash Player 9 to play Quicktime .mov and the iPod .mp4, m4v videos in your web browser without installing the Apple Quicktime plugin. Video encoded in Quicktime or MPEG-4 formats (not divx or xvid) will play in the Flash Player just like other Flash Video files (e.g. YouTube) and SWF movies.

Before you download Flash Player 9 H.264 version, make sure you clean up you existing installation of Flash Player 9 / 8 else the upgrade will fail.

Adobe Labs, Tinic Uro and Dan Rayburn have more indepth information about the new Flash Player 9 and how it compares with Quicktime and the existing On2 VP6 codec.

Switch Your Laptop Between Home and Office Network Easily

People have been Shared a network connections profile manager called NetSetMan, who frequently travel with their laptops. Each time they get to a new location, they have to manually change settings of their network card and browser proxy server before connecting to the internet.

Though NetSetMan has a free full version, some comments have pointed out that the license prohibits use of the software at work or any commercial purpose.

If you need to shuttle your notebook computer between home and various office locations, the other good alternative is Net Profiles that again helps you effortlessly change your network connection settings .

With Net Profiles, you create various profiles for each of your network settings and you can easily switch from one to another. Can also be used for managing network printers, mapped drives and multiple Wi-Fi wireless networks.

Avoid Office Embarrassments; Stop Web pages from Autoplaying Music or Videos

Lot of websites (especially myspace) embed background music (and sometimes video clips) in web pages that automatically begins to play as soon as you open the site in your web browser - there's no confirmation.

Music and Videos that autoplay in the browser is not that big an issue if you keep your speakers muted or use the headphones, but it can be very embarrassing in all other cases - you don't want your cubicle neighbours to know that you just visited an amateur website.

Here's how to block autoplay of music and videos that's embedded in webpages:

Internet Explorer - Got Tools -> Internet Options -> Advanced. Scroll down in Settings, and then under the Multimedia heading, uncheck Play sounds in web pages and Play videos in web pages.

Mozilla Firefox - Install the Stop Play extension available at Mozilla.org. Stop Play plugin disables autoplay of embedded media but you can play it later when you want. Alternatively, you can completely block the audio-videos files from auto-downloading that also speeds up web browsing.

Related: How to Stop GIF Animations in Browsers

Coffee Chart: What's Inside Your Favorite Coffee Drink

The next time you order some coffee at your favorite coffee shop, this coffee chart should come in very handy - it illustrates the small differences between the common espresso flavors.

This excellent coffee selection diagram is a work of Lokesh (thanks IndiaUncut) - the chart helps you with the complex pronunciation of coffee names as well as the ingredients inside.

Microsoft Hackers Now Have an Official Blog

"Hackers @ Microsoft" - that's the name of a new Microsoft blog officially launched on blogs.msdn.com which also hosts thousands of other blogs written by Microsoft Employees.

The pitch says - Microsoft employs some of the best hackers in the world and actively recruits them and develops them. At his or her core, a true hacker is someone who is curious and wants to learn how systems work. This can and of course at Microsoft is done in an ethical, legal manner.

Microsoft does have hackers, and its time to introduce you to some of them and show you what it is, exactly that they do. The new Microsoft Hackers blog is located at blogs.msdn.com/hackers.

Create Family Tree Charts inside Microsoft Office

A family tree diagram (aka pedigree charts) depicting the ancestors and descendants of your family with their pictures, birthdays, and other interesting stories can serve a wondeful personalized gift for your grandparent's upcoming wedding anniversary.

Or can you can hang them as a painting on the wall of your living room. Or just post it on your blog website so that the whole world knows about the various generations of your great family and the intresting events in their lives [like how did your great-grandpa first met your great-grandma]

Creating a family tree or even a family history book from scratch is really very simple - all you need is the names, photographs of your family members, some important dates and those special stories[probably your grandma can be a big help here].

Once this basic databases on paper is ready, download any of the following Microsoft Office templates depending on what kind of chart you want to create. It's that easy:

Family History Book for Microsoft Word

Family Tree Template for Microsoft Excel

Family History Template for Word - Theme 2

These family tree templates have everything from your mom-dad's courtship days to medical history to family traditions to past vacations.

And if you are interested in just designing the family tree, just head straight to the tree section skipping the other details. No standalone family tree maker software is required - And if you don't have Microsoft Office, you can still use templates from Zoho Writer, Writely, Zoho Sheet or even Google Spreadsheet.

Create an Organization Chart Without Visio or Powerpoint

Forbes has a new website where anyone can create org charts for their company or browse through the organizational charts of other publicly listed U.S. companies like Google, Microsoft, Dell, Yahoo!, etc.

The org chart software is completely web based and free but can help you create professional looking organization charts via a simple Flash based drag-n-drop interface just like Microsoft Visio or SmartDraw.

To make a connection, drag a person over his/her boss, wait for the boss to turn orange and then release. To make an unconnected employee the boss of someone already on the chart, drag the boss over the employee and wait for the flash. Once it flashes, move the boss above the employee and release.

Wait, there's something even more useful. You can search the Forbes org charts database for company names or even individual employees in a manner similar to Google Finance (search as you type). Clicking the employee name will show his current status / position in the organization.

You can navigate the org charts using a Google Maps like navigation controls. The charts can later be printed as picture diagrams or text outlines.

Forbes Org Charts - Corporate Org Chart Wiki

Make Flowcharts, Home Office Layouts and Other Diagrams Online

Best4c is another web based Visio to help you create flowcharts, network diagrams, floor plans and other designs online.

The application is complete web based but has the look-n-feel of a desktop application with collapsible palettes on one side and property pane for the selected shape on the right.

You drag-n-drop objects / shapes on the drawing canvas and can easily rotate or resize them - since they are vector images, they do not suffer from pixelation when you expand the size. And the inbuilt library of graphic images is impressive.

With all the baggage, Best4c flowchart editor is pretty responsive and loads quickly in your web browser. Works across all browsers.