Google Nexus One Online Marketing Failure

Google is closing down the online store for its Nexus One smart phone. The move comes just four months after Google launched the touch screen Nexus One to compete with Apple’s iPhone and Research in Motion’s Blackberry.   in a strategic shift that signals the failure of its bid to market the device directly to consumers on the Web.

google-nexus-one-smart-phone

This move is an effect of marketing failure of Google’s bid to market the device directly to consumers online. It’s because we as a customer likes a hands-on experience before buying a phone.

Nexus One sales have lagged well behind the iPhone. In just 74 days, 1 million units of the original iPhone were sold, compared with about 135,000 Nexus Ones in the same time frame.

But Google Android has the potential to be the No. 1 or No. 2 player in its market, Google insisted.

Google Now Shows Short Answers To Your Questions

google logo

For people like me Google isn’t just a search engines, it’s more than that.I bombard it with lot of innovative queries/question to find accurate answers.This accuracy will only get better in Google, as they have announced a new feature in Google search that shows the short answers to your questions on Google, queries that you perform to find some basic facts.

For example, if you search for independence day of india, this is what you’d see as the first result.

The first result August 15 is the short answer to your query here.

Google Short Answers

If you expand Show sources,you will see the list of sources from where the result snippet has been taken.For example, try searching Sachin Tendulkar Date Of Birth:

Google Short Answers test

I guess this would be a time saving feature in Google search.You need not read the entire web page to get your answer just the result page would suffice.Remember that Google may not show these short answers to all types of your queries.

Download Picasa Web Albums Without Installing Picasa Desktop Software

Picasa logo

Are you using Picasa web albums to store your pictures online, but doesn’t have Picasa desktop software installed in your system to download the Web albums to your hard drive? Well, here is a solution available if you want to download entire picasa web album of any user (albums set to public only).

Thanks to Bradley Beach, for coming up with Picasa Webalbums Assistant, who has developed this simple Java program primary to help his dad who is a Mac user to download photos from Picasa web albums when Picasa was not available for Mac OS.I’ll help you out in using this tool to download picasa web albums of any user that are available publicly.

1. Download Picasa Webalbums Assistant 3.1 and extract the zip file [You will see PWA3.jar file and a lib folder].

2. Now you need to run the .jar file in Windows.Here I’m going to run it using command line.Go to Start Menu and type cmd in the search.Right click on the cmd.exe and click Run as administrator.

run cmd as administrator

3. Now in the command prompt, type java –jar followed by the file path, as shown in the following screenshot:

Running a .jar Java program in command line

Here G:\\Soft\\PWA0_3_1\PWA3.jar is where the .jar file is located in my system.

4. Just click Yes (accepting the terms)when you get the Welcome message of PWA as shown here:

PWA welcome message accept

5. Now you will the main PWA program running with basically three options.If you know the user ID of the Picasa Web albums, click Get User Public Albums and enter the user ID and click OK.

PWA screenshot

User ID in PWA

6. Now you will have a list of all the public albums of that particular user ID.Use CTRL + Select to many albums and click select to get the thumbnail previews.

Select an album in PWA

gathering information PWA screenshot

7. From the thumbnail previews generated, select the files that you want to download and click Download Selected at the bottom.

Thumbnail preview in PWA

8. Select the location to save the pictures and wait till the pictures have been downloaded completely.

Select Save Location in PWA

Downloading PWA Picasa web albums

That’s it, you have now downloaded the entire Picasa Web albums of the user without even installing Picasa desktop software in your system.

Download Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool KB890830

microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool

The Microsoft Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool May 2010 edition is available for download now. This tool can detect and remove prevalent malicious software like Blaster, Sasser, and Mydoom.

It is advisable that everyone who uses Windows to install this update. This Update is applicable to Windows 2000, Windows 7, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista, and Windows XP.

Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool – May 2010 (KB890830)

Download size: 1.2 MB (Through Windows Update)

Update type: Important

After the download, this tool runs one time to check your computer for infection by specific, prevalent malicious software (including Blaster, Sasser, and Mydoom) and helps remove any infection that is found. If an infection is found, the tool will display a status report the next time that you start your computer. A new version of the tool will be offered every month. If you want to manually run the tool on your computer, you can download a copy from the Microsoft Download Center(Link Given Below), or you can run an online version from microsoft.com. This tool is not a replacement for an antivirus product. To help protect your computer, you should use an antivirus product.

You may need to restart your computer for this update to take effect.

Manual Download from Official Microsoft Site:

Download size: 9.7 MB

Download: Click Here (From Official Site) – Update: Link expired

Also read about Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool KB890830 for April 2010, and you may also want to read about other updates released by Microsoft in May 2010: KB978542, KB978213.

Details: Microsoft Security Bulletin MS10-031 (KB978213)

Windows Update

Microsoft Security Bulletin MS10-031 (KB978213)

The Microsoft Patch Tuesday has arrived once again, this time Microsoft has come up with two critical patches (MS10-030 and MS10-031) addressing various vulnerabilities that could allow remote code execution without user consent.We have already covered about MS10-030(KB978542) in an earlier post, now let’s talk about MS10-031.

This new security update KB978213 resolves a privately reported vulnerability in Microsoft Visual Basic.Similar to the latest vulnerability found in Outlook Express & Windows Mail (addressed in MS10-030), this particular vulnerability too could allow remote code execution, especially when an user with admin user rights logged on and runs the Visual basic for Applications, through the above said vulnerability, the attacker can pass a specially crafted file to the VB for apps runtime, allowing the attacker to take the control of the victim’s computer, the attacker now gains most of the admin rights, he may install new programs, or view/change/delete user sensitive data or he may even create a new user with full administrative rights.

This update has been rated “Critical Update” for all versions of MS Visual Basic for Applications SDK and other third-party apps that use MS VBA.

Rated ‘Important Update’ for: Microsoft Office XP, Microsoft Office 2003, and the 2007 Microsoft Office System

Affected software include: Microsoft Office XP Service Pack 3, MS Office 2003 Service Pack 3, 2007 Microsoft Office System Service Pack 1&2.

You should install this critical update patch without delay.You may also be interested in downloading Visual Studio 2010 to keep your Visual Basic up-to-date.
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Microsoft Windows Security Update KB978542 (Bulletin MS10-030)

Windows Update

Microsoft has released a new critical security bulletin “Microsoft Security Bulletin MS10-030” on May 11, 2010 addressing vulnerability in Outlook Express and Windows Mail that could allow remote code execution (KB978542) for Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

outlook express logo

This new windows security update KB978542 addresses a privately reported vulnerability in Microsoft Outlook Express, Windows Mail & Live Mail which could allow remote code execution if the mail client user visits a malicious e-mail server setup by the attacker.Then the attacker may successfully exploit this vulnerability to gain the same rights as that of the mail client user, this could be even worse if the client user has administrator user rights.

Security Update KB978542 Rating:

Microsoft Outlook Express – Critical

Windows Mail – Critical

Windows Live Mail –  Important

Update Type: Important

Date Published: May 11, 2010

Download and Install this important security update to keep your Windows up-to-date.

KB978542 Direct Download Links:

Windows 7 x64 – Windows6.1-KB978542-x64.msu (3 MB)

Windows 7 32-bit  – Windows6.1-KB978542-x86.msu (1.8 MB)

Windows Vista – Windows6.0-KB978542-x86.msu (1.8 MB)

Windows Vista x64 – Windows6.0-KB978542-x64.msu (3 MB)

Windows XP –  WindowsXP-KB978542-x86-ENU.exe (1.3 MB)

For more details on this bulletin, read MS10-030

This critical update is part of Microsoft’s Patch Tuesday (May 11, 2o1o) patches.Read about MS10-031.Also read about previously released bulletin from Microsoft, MS10-018

[How to] Repair Install Windows XP without Data Loss

Have you ever faced any problem like ntldr file missing during the start up of Windows XP? During the cases of critical Windows file gone missing or corrupt, Windows will not Boot and hence cannot start. What will you do in such case where your data is at stake?

There may be many solutions available, but repairing Windows using the Windows XP setup CD will be the best. In repair install your data will be intact and no data loss will occur if everything goes right.

If you install a new copy of Windows then some of your data will be lost.

What is Windows XP repair Install?

In Repair install, all the Windows files and registries will be copied to your Hard drive from the Windows XP installation CD. The installed program files and personal data on your hard drive will not be affected in most cases.

How to perform Windows XP repair Install?

Requirements:

Your Windows XP installation CD and key

Follow the steps below:

1. Insert the Windows XP CD to your Optical Drive and Start your computer.

Make sure that the computer boots from the installation CD. If it is not booting from the CD try changing your boot options in the BIOS.

While booting from the CD, press any key to start the process.

boot_from_xp_cd

Xp_setup

2. Press ENTER to set up Windows XP.

Do not press R. It will start, Recovery Console which is not desirable.

Welcome_ro_setup

3. Press F8 to Agree the License Agreement.

F8_agreement

4. Press R to start the recovery install

Select the currently installed Windows XP location which you want to repair. Press R to repair the installation.

repair_xp

Now it will copy the files.

copying_files

5. Press ENTER to reboot or else wait until it reboots by itself

Setup will continue after restart.

reboot

6. Do not boot from the CD after start up

After booting up from your hard drive it will continue installation. Follow the normal installation process.

installing_windows

After successful installation, your computer will restart once again. It may take some time during the first startup.

first_boot

Now your desktop should be accessible. In case of any problem do leave a comment.

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Disable Facebook Notification Emails

facebook logo

Many Facebook users while signing up, normally ignores to setup their notification settings that they normally ignore to setup notifications settings and as a result, they start receiving too many emails for various actions taken on Facebook involving that particular user.This at times may be annoying for those who usually spends good amount of time in Facebook involving in many actions in the social networking site.If you want to disable such notifications from Facebook, this is what you must do:

1. Login to your Facebook account , under the Account menu on the top right screen, click on Account Settings.

Facebook account settings

2. Now under the My Account, click on the Notifications tab.

Facebook Notification settings

3. Check against the notifications for which you want to notifications via email or SMS.Uncheck against all to stop receiving all email notifications.

That’s it, you will now be able to control your email and SMS notifications as you wish.

You might also want to read our guide on how to setup Facebook page for your site.

[How To] Stop or Disable Hotlinking and Bandhwidth Theft using .htaccess file

We found out that many of our copyrighted popular posts have been copied by many of the bloggers. But with so many traffic hungry bloggers around, it is impossible to track and warn each of the bloggers.

Now, our main concern is that many of our copyrighted images are not only copied to other blogs but also hotlinked. This is a serious issue with every popular blog where hotlinking results to bandwidth theft. Now if you are having similar problems of hotlinking or not, you should disable hot linking for sure.

What is Hotlinking or Inline linking?

Inline linking (also known as hotlinking, leeching, piggy-backing, direct linking, offsite image grabs) is the use of a linked object, often an image, from one site into a web page belonging to a second site. The second site is said to have an inline link to the site where the object is located.[wikipedia]

This is when you insert an image to your blog from an image URL of someone else’s site instead of uploading the image to your server. Many people with limited server storage size tend to do this.

How to stop Hotlinking and Bandwidth theft using .htaccess file?

In order to disable hotlinking follow the steps below:

1. Open your .htaccess file by saving it.

.htaccess file is present in the public_html folder of your blog. This can be accessed by using the ftp client like FileZilla. Hope all webmasters know this. Save the file and open it using notepad.

dot_htaccess

2. Add the code to disable hotlinking of your images

Add the following code to your .htaccess file and save it back to your public_html folder.

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(.+\\.)?yoursite\\.com/ [NC]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteRule .*\\.(jpe?g|gif|bmp|png)$ http://imagehostsite/warning.jpeg [L]

Change the orange colored code according to your need as shown in the example below.

Example: [Click to Enlarge]

disable_hotlinking

The RewriteCond can be added according to your purpose. If you have any other blog where you want to use the images, then add another line with the site’s address as we have done in the example.

Important notes:

1. Backup your .htaccess file before doing the changes.

2. in the RewriteRule line, you cannot use a warning image uploaded to your site because the warning image itself will be blocked. So upload the image to some other servers like blogger or other image hosting sites

3. The RewriteCond can be added according to your purpose. If you have any other blog where you want to use the images, then add another line with the site’s address.

Now after performing the changes, you can check the other site where your images are hotlinked. An example is given below where our most popular post Reset Windows XP, Vista, 7 Password Using USB Drive or CD was copied.

hotlinking_blocked

Hope you have seen something like ours. Any feedback will be appreciated.

You can also see how to protect your wordpress internal files using .htaccess.

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Convert YouTube Videos To Animated GIFs

youtube logo

GIFs are always the preferred choice if you want to embed any short video (length typically less than 10 seconds).This allows users to quickly watch the video as animation instead of waiting for the video to load fully which also requires a user’s click to start streaming.Also these GIFs can be used as avatars for your profile on web forums.

You can easily make an animated GIF from any video on your computer using desktop programs like Adobe Photoshop or Camtasia Studio or VirtualDub.

Even though you can download any YouTube video and save it to your PC and convert it into a GIF, but then you may want a direct conversion tool that doesn’t require you to download the video and do the conversion for you online, right? Here’s a website GifSoup, that will do this for you for free.

1. As a first step, register yourself for GifSoup.

2. Now go to GifSoup and enter the YouTube video URL in the box and click “Create Gif”.

Enter YouTube URL in GifSoup

3. Now you will be taken to the customization page, where you can preview the video, and also enter your custom parameters like custom video length etc.Click Finish to complete the conversion process.[Note that there’s a 15 second limit on the length of the video, as the output file size will increase upon the increase of the video length].

Custom GIF conversion settings in GifSoup

4. Now your converted GIF will be shown on another page.Click on the image to download the GIF.

YouTube Video Converted using GifSoup

Sample Output:

Here’s the converted GIF of a  YouTube video that I have got after conversion.

MJ Moonwalk GifSoup conversion