Technically Personal!

The ‘Read Receipt’ concept of Microsoft outlook client is not provided by any of the email providers on the net. It has been a long time requirement to find out when your mail was read by the receiver.

Spy Pig is an email tracking service which lets you find when your email was read by the person without letting them even know about it. It uses a unique image which you can embed in your email. This email is tracked and you get notified in some time.

SpyPig isn’t perfect though. People who read their e-mail as plain-text (like me) can’t be fooled by SpyPig, because any images at all will appear as attachments (and we all know not to open attachments when we don’t know what they are, right?). People who read their messages in rich-text can’t be fooled by SpyPig either, and people whose e-mail providers strip out images or attachments for them are protected also. Only folks who read e-mail in full HTML are subject to SpyPig’s prying eyes. Also, there’s a configuration change that Outlook 2003 users have to make before the service will work for them.

Though the service is neat, I would still prefer some sort of a plugin or script which can do all the work for me like uploading the image etc. But, if you are desperate to know if your email was actually read or not, you can still take that pain!

Try Spy Pig now!

If you like this blog and think that it has helped you, feel free to buy me a coffee :)

Have you ever received a bootup error or startup error thats says correputed Boot.ini file? Or maybe you just need to make a minor change to boot.ini file but didn’t now where to locate it?

The boot.ini file is a simple text file that is stored on the root of the boot drive / hard drive.
You can edit this with any plain text editor like Notepad (may need to unhide the file first).

If more than one option is available in boot.ini, a menu will be displayed at boot up listing the choices. An example of the boot menu for a dual-boot system with the added option of Safe Mode in Windows XP is shown below. These entries are determined by the contents of boot.ini.

One of the most common reasons for editing boot.ini is to reduce the “timeout” setting.in order to speed up booting. This is easily accomplished by using the System Configuration Utility (often called msconfig). Open Start-Run and enter “msconfig”. The box shown below will open.

Click the tab “BOOT.INI” and the figure shown next will open. The contents of the boot.ini file are shown and a number of configuration settings are available. In the middle right is a box where the settings for Timeout can be changed. This example is for a dual-boot system and another common reason for editing is to change the default operating system in dual-boot setups. Note that there is a button “Set a Default” as well as buttons “Move Up” and “Move Down” (grayed out here). If there are multiple entries in the boot display, their order can be rearranged here. There are also a number of advanced options that experienced computer users may look at. These other functions are discussed in the Microsoft references in the sidebar.

Example of a boot display menu Please select the operating system to start:

Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Safe Mode
Microsoft Windows Me

Use the up and down arrow keys to move the highlight to your choice.
Press ENTER to choose.
Seconds until highlighted choice will be started automatically: 26

For troubleshooting and advanced startup options for Windows, press F8.

There are two sections in a boot.ini file. The first is [boot loader], which contains two settings that apply in general. The entry “timeout={ some decimalnumber}” is the time in seconds that the system waits before it loads the default operating system. This is set to 30 unless you make a chanThe default system is determined by the next line “default={address of operating system} For most home PCs the entry is “default=multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS”.

The second section of a boot.ini file is [operating systems]

The names that appear in the boot display menu are taken from this section. The display names are those that are enclosed in quotation marks following an equals sign.

Note about Windows Vista-
It should be noted that Vista uses a different way of managing the boot process. There is no longer a text file called boot.ini. Boot information is stored in a Registry-like file called the Boot Configuration Data (BCD) store. Extensive information on the new boot process can be found at this Microsoft site. Vista comes with a command-line tool bcdedit.com for configuring BCD. However, the command-line tool is rather complicated to use and a free editor called EasyBCD has a graphical user interface that is simpler to use.

If you like this blog and think that it has helped you, feel free to buy me a coffee :)

The only issue with re-installing Windows is that you have to be careful about the reactivation process. By default, if you use the OEM CD that came with your computer when you first bought it, re-installing Windows should be a breeze and you won’t have to reactivate.

However, this may not always be the case. If you don’t use the original CD that came with the computer, you may have to re-activate. Also, sometimes even when you use the same CD, it may not force you to re-activate XP.

Windows XP stores the activation information in the wpa.dbl file, which is located in C:/Windows/system32/ directory on your hard drive.

Now assuming your hard drive letter is C: you would need to do the following!

1. Double click my computer
2. Double click on your hard drive icon
3. Double click the Windows folder
4. Find the system32 folder and double click to open up the contents
5. Locate the wpa.dbl file and right click and either send it to your floppy drive or right click and select copy and then minimize your window screens and right click on the desktop and select paste.

Now store the “wpa.dbl” file in a safe place, preferably on a media disk like a floppy or CD-R just in case you need to format or reinstall your Operating system you won’t need to bother with activation.

Now when the time comes that you have to reinstall Windows XP for any reason, go through the normal installation routine, but when you get to the register your version screen at startup select register later.

Once the computer is up and running copy, the latest version of wpa.dbl to the following

C: Windows\system32 directory.

I really wish I had known about this “tip” sooner rather than later because it sure would have saved me from having quite a few headaches! I’ve been meaning to reinstall XP on my sole Windows box but have opted against doing so for this very reason. Now that I know activation will not be an issue I just may tackle this without the worries I once had.

If you like this blog and think that it has helped you, feel free to buy me a coffee :)

• The male gypsy moth can “smell” the virgin female gypsy moth from 1.8 miles away.
• If you feed a seagull Alka-Seltzer, its stomach will explode.
• The longest place-name still in use is: Taumatawhakatangihangakoauauotamateaturipukakapikimaungahoronukupokaiakitnatahu, a New Zealand hill.
• The flag of the Philippines is the only national flag that is flown differently during times of peace or war.

Well, these are just few of more than 2200 Unnecessary Knowledge available on www.UnnecessaryKnowledge.com

The interface of site is pretty simple, no registration is required just point your browser to the site and start. You can vote for every unnecessary bit of information flashing on your screen, voting takes you to the next information, you can also write comments on every information, share the information with a friend and upload new information.

However, the site does not claim anything like, how genuine the information is, yet some of them seem to be true.

Try it, in your leisure. I found it addictive, irrespective of the genuineness of information, I liked viewing the information. Do share with us, how you liked it.

Update: I bumped across another site www.unkno.comwhich is very much similar to the above one!

If you like this blog and think that it has helped you, feel free to buy me a coffee :)

Firefox 3 about:config file is the core configuration file of Firefox. By editing about:config file we can get amazing hacks for Firefox 3. Firefox allows the users to change many preferences in the about:config file so it’s totally ethical to do it. Here are more than 35 of the Most Popular Firefox 3 Tweaks!

To get the Firefox 3 configuration file type “about:config” at address bar.

You will be shown a warning page. Click the “I’ll be careful, I promise!” button to proceed.

On the main page, you will see a long list of configuration entries. Enter the name of the key you want to update in the “Filter” field. The list will narrow to only the entries that match your keyword as you type.

To modify the value, simply double click on the entry value field and update the entry. That’s all!

Isn’t that simple? Now, let’s get to the tweaking.

1) Disable Extension Compatibility Checks
extensions.checkCompatibility = False
extensions.checkUpdateSecurity = False

2) Location Bar (Set number Auto Complete URL at Address Bar)

This is a good hack to trim down that huge auto-complete list on your URL bar. By default it displays maximum 12 URL

browser.urlbar.maxRichResults = #

Enter Number at # (3,10,12 etc)

3)  Disable the session restore function

Firefox 3 automatically saves your session every 10 secs so that whenever it crashes, it can restore all your tabs. While this is a useful feature, some of you might find it irritating. To disable this function, toggle the value of browser.sessionstore.enabled to False

Config name: browser.sessionstore.enabled
Default: True
Modified value: False if you want to disable the session restore function

4)  Stop Displaying Website Icon (Favicon) in Address bar & On Tab

browser.chrome.site_icons = False

5)  Extend Spell check to forms

layout.spellcheckDefault = 2
Change Value from 1 to 2

6) Disable Blinking Text

browser.blink_allowed = False

7) Speed Tweaks

network.http.pipelining false to true
network.http.pipelining.maxrequests 30 to 8
network.http.max-connections 30 to 96
network.http.max-connections-per-server 15 to 32
network.http.max-persistent-connections-per-server 6 to 8
network.http.pipelining.ssl false to true
network.http.proxy.pipelining false to true

Adjust the Session Restore Saving Frequency

Same as tip 3, if you decided to keep the session restore feature on, but want to reduce the session saving frequency, change the value of browser.sessionstore.interval so that Firefox will save the session at a longer interval.

Config name: browser.sessionstore.interval
Default: 10000 (in msecs, equivalent to 10secs)
Modified value: Set it to your desired value. 1000 means 1 sec and 60000 means 1 minute.

9) Enable Advanced Color Profile Support

Firefox has this advanced color profile features that display higher image quality. It is not enabled by default as it has a negative effect on the performance of the browser. If you are concern with the image quality rather than the performance, you can activated it via the gfx.color_management.enabled setting

Config name: gfx.color_management.enabled
Default: False
Modified value: True (if you want to activate the color profile support feature)

10) Disable Antivirus Scanning

This is mainly for Windows users. By default, Firefox 3 automatically scan the downloaded file with the default anti-virus application to make sure it is free of virus. If you download a big file, it could take a long time for the whole scanning process to complete. To increase the performance of the browser, you might want to consider disabling the anti-virus scanning via the browser.download.manager.scanWhenDone key.

Config name: browser.download.manager.scanWhenDone
Default: True
Modified value: False (if you want to disable it)

11)  Disable Annoying Browser Behavior

dom.disable_window_open_feature.menubar
dom.disable_window_move_resize
dom.disable_window_open_feature.titlebar
dom.disable_window_open_feature.toolbar

Set all of above to value False

12) Remove Tab Close Button from all Tab and set A single Close Button at Right

browser.tabs.closeButtons = 3

Single Close Button to control all Firefox Opened Tabs. (value should be 3 and not 2 Thanks Andreas )

13) Disabler Browser Toolbar Tip

browser.chrome.toolbar_tips = False

14)  Configuring The Scrolling Tabs

When you opened many tabs, Firefox will not keep on reducing the tab width. Instead, it shows a scrolling bar so that the min width (100px) is conserved and you can scroll to find your tabs. If you are those who don’t like the scrolling tab function and prefer Firefox to show all the tabs, regardless how small it is, you can set the value of browser.tabs.tabMinWidth to 0 to disable it. Similarly, if you want Firefox to display more tabs before showing the scrolling button, you can reduce the default value to a lower value, say 75 pixels.

Config name: browser.tabs.tabMinWidth
Default: 100
Modified value: 0 if you want to disable the scrolling functions, other values to set the min width value

15)  Extend Scripts Execution Time

In Firefox 3, a script is only given 10 seconds to respond, after which it will issue a unresponsive script warning. If you are hooked on a slow network connection, you might want to increase the script execution time via dom.max_script_run_time to cut down on the frequency of the no script warning.

Config name: dom.max_script_run_time
Default:10 (in secs)
Modified value: 20, or any values greater than 10

16)  Show More Tabs on Single Firefox Window before Scrolling

browser.tabs.tabMinWidth = 75

Setting lesser value with reduce Tab width

17) Past Copy Content with Middlemouse Click

middlemouse.paste = True

18) Scroll webpage in One Go

mousewheel.withaltkey.action=1

19) Disable Delay Time While Installing Firefox Add-on

security.dialog_enable_delay = 0

(Zero is number of seconds Firefox should wait while installing Add-on)

20) Increase History Undo Close Tab Limit ( Recently Closed Tabs )

browser.sessionstore.max_tabs_undo=15

By default you can undo 10 recently closed tabs inorder to increase your history closed tabs. Change number 13 to as per your choice.

21) Handling JavaScript Popups

When you come across a site that executes a javascript open new window function, and if the popup window is without all the usual window features, i.e. back/forward/reload buttons, status bar etc, Firefox will automatically treat it as a popup and will not open it as a new tab. However, if you find this to be a nuisance and wanted to open all new windows in a new tabs, you can specify it via the browser.link.open_newwindow.restriction setting.

Config name: browser.link.open_newwindow.restriction
Default: 2 - Open all JavaScript windows the same way as you have Firefox handle new windows unless the JavaScript call specifies how to display the window
Modified values:

• 0 – open all links as how you have Firefox handle new windows
• 1 – do not open any new windows
• 2- open all links as how you have Firefox handle new windows unless the Javascript specify how to display the window

22) Open Firefox Default Search Bar Result in New Tab

browser.search.openintab=True

23) Right Click View Source in Your Favorite Editor

view_source.editor.external=True
view_source.editor.path= Path of Editor

(e.g. path C:\Program Files\npp.4.8.2.bin\notepad++.exe)

24) Lower The Physical Memory Used When Minimized

This tweak is mainly for Windows users. When you minimize Firefox, it will send Firefox to your virtual memory and free up your physical memory for other programs to use. Firefox will reduce its physical memory usage, when minimized, to approximately 10MB (give or take some) and when you maximize Firefox it will take back the memory that it needs.

The preference name does not exist and needs to be created.

Right click on the background and select New->Boolean.

Enter the name when prompted: config.trim_on_minimize
Enter the values: True

25) Increase/Decrease the Amount of Disk Cache

When a page is loaded, Firefox will cache it into the hard disk so that it doesn’t need to be download again for redisplaying. The bigger the storage size you cater for Firefox, the more pages it can cache.

Before you increase the disk cache size, make sure that browser.cache.disk.enable is set to True.

Config name: browser.cache.disk.capacity
Default: 50000 (in KB)
Modified value:

• 0 – disable disk caching
• any value lower than 50000 reduces the disk cache
• any value higher than 50000 increases the disk cache.

26) Select all text when click on the URL bar

In Windows and Mac, Firefox highlights all text when you click on the URL bar. In Linux, it does not select all the text. Instead, it places the cursor at the insertion point. Regardless which platform you are using, you can now tweak it to either select all or place cursor at insertion point.

• False – place cursor at insertion point
• True – select all text on click

27) Same Zoom Level For Every Site

Firefox remembers your zoom preference for each site and set it to your preferences whenever you load the page. If you want the zoom level to be consistent from site to site, you can toggle the value of browser.zoom.siteSpecific from True to False.

Config name: browser.zoom.siteSpecific
Default: True
Modified value: False (enable same zoom preferences for every sites)

28) Setting your zoom limit

If you find that the max/min zoom level is still not sufficient for your viewing, you can change the zoom limit to suit your viewing habits.

Config name: zoom.maxPercent
Default: 300 (percent)
Modified value: any value higher than 300

Config name: zoom.minPercent
Default: 30 (percent)
value: any value

29) Configure Your Backspace Button

In Firefox, you can set your backspace to better use by getting it to either go back to the previous page or act as page up function.

Config name: browser.backspace_action
Default: 2 (does nothing)
Modified value:

• 0 – go back previous page
• 1- page up

30) Enable/Disable Single Click to Select Whole URL in Address bar

To Enable Single Click Select URL of address bar use the below about:config Tweak

browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll = True

To disable Single Click Select

browser.urlbar.clickSelectsAll = False

31) Emule/ed2k link association (Linux users)

network.protocol-handler.app.ed2k= /usr/bin/ed2k
network.protocol-handler.external.ed2k = true

32) Auto Complete URL while You type at address Bar

browser.urlbar.autoFill=True

33) Auto Export Firefox 3 bookmarks to bookmarks.html

Unlike the previous version, Firefox 3 backup the bookmarks file in places.sqlite rather than the usual bookmarks.html. Since bookmarks.html allows us to export and sync our bookmarks with other browser, it will be very useful if Firefox 3 can backup the bookmark to the bookmarks.html as well.

Config name: browser.bookmarks.autoExportHTML
Default: False
Modified value: True (auto export bookmarks file to bookmarks.html)

34) View Source in Your Favorite Editor

This is very useful for developers who are always using the ‘view source‘ function. This tweak allows you to view the source code in an external editor.

There are two configuration need to be made:
Config name: view_source.editor.external
Default: False
Modified value: True ( enable view source using external text editor)

Config name: view_source.editor.path
Default: blank
Modified value: insert the file path to your editor here.

35) Increasing ‘Save Link As‘  timeout value

When you right click and select the ‘Save Link As…‘, the browser will request the content disposition header from the URL so as to determine the filename. If the URL did not deliver the header within 1 sec, Firefox will issue a timeout value. This could happen very frequently in a slow network connection environment. To prevent this issue from happening frequently, you can increase the timeout value so as to reduce the possibility of a timeout.

Config name: Browser.download.saveLinkAsFilenameTimeout
Default: 1000 (1 sec)
Modified value: any value higher than 1000 (value is in msec)

36) Animate Fullscreen Toolbar Collapse mode

In Firefox’s fullscreen mode, toolbars and the tab strip are hidden at the top of the screen and only shown on mouseover. To draw attention to this, there is an animation of the toolbar sliding upwards and off-screen when fullscreen mode is toggled on. For performance issue, the animation of the collapse of the toolbar only appear for the first time. For some reason that you may love/hate the animation, you can adjust Browser.fullscreen.animateUp to switch it on/off for every collapse.

Config name: Browser.fullscreen.animateUp
Default: 1 (animate the toolbar collapse only the first time)
Modified value:

• 0 -disable the animation
• 2- enable the animation for every collapse

37) Autohide Toolbar in Fullscreen mode

In fullscreen mode, the toolbar is set to autohide and appear upon mouseover. If you have a need to view the toolbar at all time, you can toggle the value of browser.fullscreen.autohide to False to always show the toolbar.

Config name: browser.fullscreen.autohide
Default: True (always autohide)

Modified value: False (always show the toolbar)

P.S: Many of above about:config hacks are available in Older Firefox Version, at the end if some thing goes wrong then feel free to restore your about:config to older setting see the below image of how to restore about:config

Hope you guys like this Firefox 3 hacks, If you have any tips or hacks related to Firefox 3 about:config, hacks, tweaks do let me know I will include it in above list.

If you like this blog and think that it has helped you, feel free to buy me a coffee :)

By using amazon’s filter, we’re able to perform simple task that extracts a huge list of free digital books made available for free by amazon. Unlike the hard copy, these ebooks does not come with illustration, just text. Download Free Books from Amazon

The only free ebook with 240 pages of colour images is the Blue Planet Run: The Race to Provide Safe Drinking Water to the World. The hardcopy in Amazon is selling for $33 but the soft copy is free, but the link is not prominent. Follow the instruction below, you’ll get your free ebook from Amazon.

Howzzat?!!

If you like this blog and think that it has helped you, feel free to buy me a coffee :)

Direct-to-home (DTH) television is no longer just about digital picture quality. Companies are competing to offer more channels, games and attractive packages for subscribers.

Dish TV - regional programming
Zee’s Dish TV claims to transmit the maximum number of channels with 225 channels on offer. They have 12 transponders which means that they have the capacity to show over 400 channels. Dish TV is the only DTH provider which offers subscribers solutions for vehicles, ships, trains, airlines and computers, in addition to its direct-to-home service.
Dish TV’s vast regional content also makes it stand out. They have the widest and most in-depth regional content and offer eight language options. They also provide a movie-on-demand service for
regional languages.
Dish TV offers a free set top box with one year’s subscription. You get the set top box free by paying Rs 3,990 towards one year’s maxi subscription which is inclusive of installation and activation charges.

Prasar Bharati - no subscription fee
Prasar Bharati was launched in December 2004, making it the oldest DTH player in the market. It offers 20 radio channels while private stations offer only 10. Prasar Bharathi also has 50 television channels, and plans to extend the number to 100 soon.
All the channels are free which is why they have no subscription charges. They do not sell DTH boxes. They are available at various dealers priced between Rs 1,000 to Rs 3,000.

Tata Sky - interactive applications
Interactive applications are provided for all age groups. There are educational programmes for children.
Tata Sky offers a cooking channel which features cookery shows that are repeated through the day.
They also offer active darshan in which they feature live images of certain temples including the Shirdi Sai Baba temple, Siddhi Vinayak and Kashi Vishwanath.
Tata Sky has a tie up with Shaadi.com and runs classifieds too.

Big TV - monthly customised packages
The latest entrant into the DTH market, Reliance’s Big TV claims that its 32 movie channels gives it an edge over other DTH services in the market.
They offer 32 movie channels, in addition to the 200 plus regular channels. Big TV also offers
subscribers the chance to watch 12 images at one time. Others have only four live channels which cover only news and sports. Big Tv include entertainment as well!
Big TV has also introduced special packages. For the South they have the Rs 1,990 package where 105 channels are free for one year. For just Rs 200 extra subscribers can get three additional sports channels. Subscribers can customise their packages every month,” he said.

DTH connections in India-
Prasar Bharati: 1.5 crore
Dish TV: 36 lakh
Tata Sky: 20 lakh
Sun Direct: 10 lakh
Big TV: no figures available yet (launched last week)

If you like this blog and think that it has helped you, feel free to buy me a coffee :)

I pity Microsoft. Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 was released just a few days back and one feature which was making all the headlines was the new “porn mode” in IE8, where the browser erases all traces of what you browsed after your session is over.

And like any other Microsoft product, even this has been proved DUD. According to the website Webwereld.nl, forensic experts in Holland found it easy to retrieve browsing history after testing the Porn Mode (InPrivate function).

Christian Prickaerts, a forensic IT expert with Dutch security firm Fox IT, said that forensic experts would find it “peanuts” to retrieve browsing history data.

Microsoft claims that, when surfing in private browsing mode, IE8 does not store any information about your history, searches or cookies. Although researchers were not able to retrieve specific URLs, they were still able to restore the browsing history and deduce which websites were visited.

While many surfers would not have the technical expertise to retrieve web history, the finding from the Dutch researchers dents Microsoft’s claim that you can keep your browsing history private.

In Firefox 2.0 and 3.0 surfers can delete their browsing history but this too can be retrieved using forensic tools, which puts IE8 closer to the open-source browser.

If you like this blog and think that it has helped you, feel free to buy me a coffee :)

Few days back I had told you how to Use GMail to send mails from other Email IDs. Today we will take a look at how to get your GMail into Windows Live Mail.

Note:  This is for Windows Live Mail and not Windows Mail which replaced Outlook Express and is included in Vista.

For checking a GMail account with different clients you do need to make sure your GMail has POP enabled. Go into your GMail \ Settings \ Forwarding and POP/IMAP and enable POP to for all mail which will transfer the entire inbox or just the mail you get from this point forward. Also you can choose weather or not to keep a copy on Google’s servers.

The first thing you will want to do is log in to your Live account if you haven’t already and click on “Add an e-mail account”.

Next enter in the account information for the email address, password and Display Name you want include and click on Next.

You then get a message advising you to follow instructions on setting up POP in GMail.  Just ignore that because we already set it up at the beginning of this article.  You may want to check this account as your default however.

If you like this blog and think that it has helped you, feel free to buy me a coffee :)

The most annoying thing in Vista is the time it takes for staring up. XP is much better in this regard, but still I get irritated when I am forced to restart my PC. Most of the time this happens due to myself frequently installing things that i shouldn’t and end up trashing the PC which results in a restart.

Follow the tips below to “warm-boot” the windows instead of “cold booting” it! Geeks might be knowing about it, so please excuse if you do!

Windows Vista: Select Start, then click on the padlock button icon and from there, hold down the SHIFT key while clicking on the “Restart” choice.

Windows XP: Its pretty much the same. Select Start. Select “Shut Down…” Hold down the SHIFT key while clicking on the “Restart” button.

If you like this blog and think that it has helped you, feel free to buy me a coffee :)