Firefox 3 Rocks

Its official. Firefox 3 rocks. Gina Trapani’s Lifehacker.com blog is one of my personal favourites on the web. I am a regular visitor and subscribe to the blog on my Google Reader too. She has a nice post up about the recently released Firefox 3 and some of its quirks. Nice, nice browser, better than Firefox 2 in its memory usage. Tasty extensions as usual. Rock on!

Web 2.0 on the Desktop

Ever wished you could do away with folder structures on your desktop/laptop computer? The visual idea we have about files and folders as objects and collectors has become so innate to file organizers that it gets irritating some times to find files. With the proliferation of high bandwidth and the huge increase in the data being collected and stored by people, the mp3 revolution, the p2p revolution, etc., finding data and organizing data has become a bane on the desktop. None of the three primary operating systems offer a convenient way to automatically and intelligently sort the data in downloaded files into categories, which explain what the files consist of and what they do.At least I have this problem of downloaded files not getting noticed after I download them. I download papers, articles, files, programs on to my desktop and at times, they clutter the desktop, but when I am done organizing them (into folders) I find it difficult to find the files I need. With file names such as “do2376.pdf” “math_izz_ipr_pdf.pdf” and “web45ghu.exe”, most downloaded files and programs have neither an unambiguous name nor an indicative meta data which shows what the file/setup program contains.

• A useful and underused technique in Windows could have been implemented into the tooltip system. The tooltip is a very common meta data organizer which lets us know what we are doing in Excel sheets, tells us the names of commands or what they do, and so on. Unfortunately, although people use tool tips well otherwise, it is not popular with the masses who create content which can be downloaded or programs.
• The linux desktop offers a great alternative to the folder maze. Enter Leaftag. This is a nifty little set of utilities which can tag folders and files and make the information inside the folder make sense. What is especially interesting is that on linux systems with Leaftag there will still be files as usual, but they could be tagged in case you want to remember something about them.
• Delicious‘ system of social bookmarking is a great way to organize information on the web specific to a user’s browsing activities. It is interesting what a combination of RSS and Delicious bookmarks can do. Why is it not possible to do the same within the framework of a desktop?
• There is a software for Windows too, as shown in this lifehacker post:

In order to encourage you to tag new files as they’re created, tag2find can also monitor your new files and prompt you for tags. tag2find then provides a couple of ways to search through your tags, both of which seem to provide snappy results. Add to that automated tagging by filetypes, tag clouds, and Windows Media Player integration, and tag2find is a surprisingly powerful tool.

I await more proliferation of the ideas of Web 2.0 to the desktop. But this is second in line after my favorite wishful hack idea: instant-on computers. (And no, I don’t mean boot times of under 15 seconds as you get in SSD powered computers.)

Gtalk Themes

Click on the link above to download Help.pdf and MyTheme .rar

Extract MyTheme.rar to your computer

Read Help.pdf and install MyTheme.exe to your computer

This program was given to me by a friend. It is an awesome way to set background pictures in your gtalk chat windows. It also enables another feature that is sorely missed in gtalk. Emoticons! Yeah, you get loads of them with this theme. This is a nice way to add some color to your gtalk! Have fun!

Remove Virus in XP that Blocks Access to Orkut

There is a certain virus that prevents XP users from opening www.orkut.com from any of the available browsers (Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera etc).

For many Orkut addicts, it is nearly impossible to live without Orkutting.

So here we have the solution for your problem.

Follow the steps exactly as written here and in the same sequence.

Procedure:

1. Press CTRL+ALT+DEL. Open the Task Manager and go to Processes.
2. Look for svchost.exe under the image name. Find the ones that have your username under the Username tab.
3. Press DEL to kill these processes. Click Yes to ignore the warning.
4. Repeat for more svchost.exe files with your username and repeat. Be careful not to kill svchost.exe with system, local service or network service.
5. Now go to My Computer.
6. In the address bar, type “C:\heap41a” and press Enter. Delete all the files in here.
7. Now go to Start. Click Run and type “Regedit“.
8. In the menu bar click Edit and then click Find.
9. Type “heap41a” and press Enter.
10. The display will show you the following:
    “[winlogon] C:\heap41a\svchost.exe C:\heap(some number)\std.txt”
11. Press DELand click Yes to ignore the warning.
12. Close the Registry Editor.

BANG! The virus would be gone!

Note: Please format all your pen drives because the virus might be hidden in there in a microsoft.exe autorun.inf file, which you might not be able to find. This would mean you should repeat the whole procedure above. (After the pendrive is formatted.)

Now you should be able to access Orkut without much trouble!

Remove Virus in XP that Disables “Show Hidden Files”

There is a certain virus that prevents XP users from viewing the hidden files.

The virus meddles with the ’Show hidden files and folders’ option in the Folder Options and the option keeps bouncing back to ‘Do not show hidden files and folders’, despite repeated trials.

Here is how you can set this problem right:

Navigate to the windows registry:
Go to Start menu
Click Run
Type regedit in the text box and then click Enter.

When the Registry Editor opens, perform the following steps:

Go to the following registry key:

Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE and then open Software.Under this navigate to: Microsoft -> Windows ->  Current Version -> Explorer Then go to Advanced -> Folder -> Hidden -> SHOWALL
Delete the value CheckedValue.
(Its type should be REG_SZ and data should be 2 or 0.)

Create a new DWORD value called CheckedValue (same as above, except that the type is REG_DWORD).

Modify the value data to 1 (0×00000001).This should enable you to select the ‘Show hidden files and folders’ option without much problem.Do drop in comments if there are further queries and we shall try to find answers.

Custom Highlight Color in MS Word

Highlight colors in MS Word cannot be customized. There is a better way to choose custom colors for highlight.

Go to “View” and click “Toolbars” and then click “Tables and Borders”.

Select the text you wish to highlight.

Click the “Shading Color” button.

You can choose a number of colors from the drop-down list.

Now you can highlight your text in any color you want.