Month: March 2010

Google India Launches New Shopping Tool In Google Search

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nokia e71 price compare google india

Online shopping is yet to gain momentum in India.The high prices in online sites compared to open market  prices is a major barrier for the slow progress of online shopping particularly true in case of gadgets.

However, this is not the case with countries like US where online shopping has revolutionised the market, and the popularity automatically follows huge competition and thus lesser prices even compared to open market prices in such countries.

The reason behind mentioning about online shopping status in India is because Google has just launched a new feature “Shopping tool” in it’s Indian website.This can be accessed from the “Show options” menu when you search for any purchasable item in Google.

How To Use Google Shopping Tool To Find And Compare Prices Online?

Well, Google shopping tool will provide you with some basic information about the price of a particular item and also online price comparisons of the same item in different online shopping sites.

Just search for any item (ex: Nokia 5800) in Google.Click on the “Show options” link to expand the options.

show options in google search shopping

In the options menu click “Shopping” tab

shopping link Google Show options

Now you will have the price details of your item (Nokia 5800 here) according to various online shopping sites.Just review and compare the prices from different online shopping sites.

price compare Google india

You can also filter results by entering custom price range which you can find the in the options menu > Shopping > Prices tab

RSS Subscription Extension For Google Chrome

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Feed_subscription_Chrome_example

Unlike most of the other browsers like Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer or Opera, Google Chrome doesn’t automatically gives a quick way to subscribe to RSS feeds in a web page with a single click.

If are very much used to the other browsers then you might be feeling inconvenient in Google Chrome due to lack of this quick RSS feeds subscription feature.

Well, if you are just worrying about this missing RSS subscriptions support, you should look at this great extension “RSS Subscription Extension” developed by Google.

This extension auto-detects RSS feeds on the page you are reading and upon finding one will display an RSS icon in the Omnibox, allowing you to click on it to preview the feed content and subscribe.

Also the extension has 4 predefined web-based feed readers (Google Reader, iGoogle, Bloglines, My Yahoo).However you can add any web-based feed reader of your choice to this list.

install RSS subscription extension chrome

Here’s how any website offering RSS feeds will look like after installing this extension.Observe the RSS icon in the Omnibox.

RSS feed subscription icon chrome

Download RSS Subscription Extension for Chrome

Nokia Ovi Contacts 1.5 Updated

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Ovi_contacts_v1.5

Nokia, after listening to the feedback from the users in Beta Labs community, decided to make some tweaks to the Ovi Contacts 1.5 client (see the changes below):

Improvements to the Ovi Contacts 1.5 :

  • Pop-up note for incoming chat messages
  • Additional file types for file sharing: contact card & presentation

This new release of Ovi Contacts 1.5 is available for S60 5th edition phones like Nokia N97, N97 Mini, Nokia 5800 etc.

Download Ovi Contacts 1.5 (You need to sign in to Nokia Beta labs to download else you may a see a 403 error)

Via [Nokia Beta Labs]

Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer(Critical) – KB980182

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Internet explorer logo

Microsoft has issued emergency patch to address 10 possible holes in Internet explorer that also includes a critical vulnerability that has been exploited in attacks.

This cumulative security update patch covers a publicly disclosed critical vulnerability (released in Security Advisory 981374) in Internet Explorer 6 and Internet Explorer 7 (Note that IE 8 is unaffected by this vulnerability addressed).However, the security bulletin MS10-108 which was released yesterday addresses 9 more additional vulnerabilities some of which also effect Internet Explorer 8 and are not disclosed publicly.

Microsoft Security Bulletin MS10-018 – Critical : Cumulative Security Update for Internet Explorer (980182) [aka Out of Band Internet Explorer Security Update]

Target platforms: Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, Windows 2000, Windows Internet Explorer 7 Dynamic Installer, and Windows Internet Explorer 8 Dynamic Installer.

KB980182:

Security issues have been identified that could allow an attacker to compromise a system that is running Microsoft Internet Explorer and gain control over it.You can help protect your system by installing this update from Microsoft.

All Windows users (including Windows 7) download and install the latest Windows update KB980182 to make your software more secure.

For more information, read the MS10-018 bulletin.

Google Crawling, Canonicalization and Indexing Explained

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google logo

Have you ever noticed that your blog posts are indexed in blog search in few minutes but it doesn’t come so fast in the main index? Why some of the posts are indexed faster than some of the other posts? Are sitemaps really helpful for indexing? How can you get your posts indexed faster?

All the questions really hit us much of the time. The answers are explained here.

In this post we will see:
1. The Main Difference between Indexing and Crawling
2. Main Use of Sitemaps and pings
3. Which blog posts are indexed faster
4. Google Canonicalization of the Crawled Contents

1. Difference between Indexing and Crawling

When you post an new content in your blog, Google may crawl your post but may not index it in the main index. In case of blogs Google blog search may crawl your new URLs within few minutes but it may not to the main index.

Even though Google crawls your post it doesn’t mean that the post will be indexed. Google follows certain standardization process according to its policies that the crawled content is first analyzed for quality content and then sent to the main Index. You can read further how this standardization is done below. So crawling and Indexing in Google are different.

2. Main Use of Sitemaps and pings

If you think that by submitting your sitemap to Google or by pinging to Google your posts will be definitely indexed. Google uses the sitemaps submitted to it to crawl the content, new URLs and finds out the quality content to get them indexed in Google. Google does not guarantee that by submitting your sitemap your content will be indexed. Again the Canonicalization process comes in to index the contents.

3. Which blog posts are indexed faster

This is really a big question mark. Well explaining according to Google, posts or contents from well knows blogs(popular ones) and which have good quality contents will be indexed faster. Popular blogs with good contents will be will be frequently crawled and index. So if you want your posts to get indexed faster, then get your blog well known and post good content.

Now your question will be what is good content! You can find the answer below.

4. Google Canonicalization of the Crawled Contents

Google has its own set of rules and policies that are applied to the crawled contents and decides whether to index the content or not. This process is the Google Canonicalization process which is done to produce relevant and quality results. So any blog post with good content will pass this standardization process will be indexed in a short duration of time. As far as we have seen, good content is the one which has a unique style and which has more keywords that are searched frequently in Google. But the process of Canonicalization frequently changes as the policies change, so we cannot define which are Good posts permanently as far as Google is concerned.

So you have learnt that in order to get your contents indexed faster you need to:

  • Popularize your blog
  • Produce Good and Quality content
  • Use relevant Keywords
  • Have a Unique Style of your own (Do not Copy and Paste)

You can watch Google explaining the details of blog indexing below:

Disclaimer: The content above are the sole views of the author not of  www.techrena.net which is only the medium of communication.  www.techrena.net does not take any responsibility of any incident resulting from the information provided here.

How To Deal With “Firefox is already running..” Error ?

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You might have observed this error message many times while trying to open Firefox too soon after it was closed or may be due to closing Firefox abnormally (without deleting the lock file) or not shutting down the Firefox properly or when your Mozilla can’t find profile folder in the expected location

“Firefox is already running, but is not responding. To open a new window, you must first close the existing Firefox process, or restart your system.”

Firefox not responding

An article in Firefox Knowledge Base explains why this error occurs:

This error can occur in Firefox 3 because of a delayed shutdown, if you try to reopen it too soon after it was last closed

Solution 1 : End processes

The one popular and easiest solution to this is to kill the process in the Windows task manager.To do this right click on your Windows taskbar and choose “Start Task manager”.

start task manager

Locate the process called “firefox.exe” (each instance of Firefox when running multiple pages) in under the processes tab:

processes in Task manager

Right click on the process and choose “End Process” or simply use “delete” from your keyboard.

End a process in Task manager

And now re open Firefox browser and it’ll also recover tabs from your last session that you have just ended abruptly by stopping the firefox.exe process.

Solution 2: Remove the profile lock file

This requires finding the location of the Firefox profile in your computer and deleting the lock  files under your profile.

Step 1 :

Press Windows+R button to open run command prompt, type “appdata” and click ok

appdata run command


Step 2:

Now a windows explorer window will open up then navigate to the following folder by the give paths:

C:\Users\<user name>\AppData\Roaming folder  — Windows 7 and Windows Vista

C:\Documents and Settings\<user name>\Application Data folder – Windows XP and Win 2000

Navigate to Mozilla >Firefox >Profiles from there

Step 3:

Delete the file “parent.lock” from your profile folder.

parent lock firefox profiles

via [Matt Cutts]

Note:

The methods given here are exclusively for Windows based systems.

Note that this will only solve the current issue with Firefox, however we can’t guarantee that Firefox will not behave like this in future.

File Transfer Feature Launched In Orkut and iGoogle Chat; To Be Available In Gmail Soon

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orkut logo

Do you frequently use chat in Orkut and iGoogle rather than using standalone Google Talk desktop client? And feel for the missing “File sharing” option that is available in Google talk ? You may not have to compromise from now on since Google has announced the introduction of file sharing option right inside the Orkut and iGoogle chat.

How To Send A File In Orkut Chat ?

Start chat in Orkut, and click on the “Actions” drop down menu and click “Send a file..”

send file orkut chat

Select the file you want to share/send to your friend and click ok.Your chat buddy has to accept the file similar to how do it in Google Talk to receive the file.

orkut_filetransfer_send_file

You can virtually share any file like pictures, documents, and other files with your friends while chatting in Orkut and iGoogle.

Google also promises that this file transfer option would soon be introduced in Gmail chat as they are working on it.

Watch The Large Hadron Collider Experiment Live Webcast (March 30, 2010)

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LHC first physics live

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) located in Geneva, Switzerland is all set for the first ever proton collision to collide protons at 7 Tev (trillion electron volts).There’s no guarantee that scientists will achieve 7 TeV collisions tomorrow, however the LHC will continue its run till 2011.LHC will be shut down for approximately a period of a year in preparation for achieving collisions of 14 TeV during the next run of LHC.

The LHC first physics proton collision event is set to begin in a while.CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) is offering live webcast which include live footage from the control rooms of the LHC accelerator and experiments; updates on progress of beams and collisions; interviews with experts on the physics of the LHC at 7 TeV, Live from the ATLAS Experiment, Live from the ALICE Experiment, Live from the CMS Experiment etc.

Link: Watch LHC Proton Collision Event LIVE

The live webcast will continue till 6:15 PM (CEST) or 04:15 PM (GMT).

Link : LHC Proton Collision event webcast schedule

LHC Big Bang experiment Timeline

Date Event
10 Sep 2008 CERN successfully fired the first protons around the entire tunnel circuit in stages.
19 Sep 2008 Magnetic quench occurred in about 100 bending magnets in sectors 3 and 4, causing a loss of approximately 6 tonnes of liquid helium.
30 Sep 2008 First "modest" high-energy collisions planned but postponed due to accident.
16 Oct 2008 CERN released a preliminary analysis of the incident.
21 Oct 2008 Official inauguration.
5 Dec 2008 CERN released detailed analysis.
20 Nov 2009 Low-energy beams circulated in the tunnel for the first time since the incident.
23 Nov 2009 First particle collisions in all 4 detectors at 450 GeV.
30 Nov 2009 LHC becomes the world’s highest energy particle accelerator achieving 1.18 TeV per beam, beating the Tevatron’s previous record of 0.98 TeV per beam held for 8 years.
28 Feb 2010 The LHC continues operations ramping energies to run at 3.5 TeV for 18 months to two years, after which it will be shut down to prepare for the 14 TeV collisions (7 TeV per beam).

[Table via Wikipedia]

How To Disable Multiple Tab Previews of Browsers in Windows 7 Taskbar

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web_browsers

Tab preview feature in Windows 7 is very helpful. But sometimes if your Internet browser has the facility of tab preview for each tab opened, then it may be annoying. It is actually better to have only one preview of the tab which you were active last to avoid all kinds of confusion in selecting the tab previews. An example of multiple previews of each tab in the taskbar is shown below:

multiple_tab_preview

This kind of previews is normally seen in Internet Explorer 8 as it comes with this feature by default.

You can disable multiple tab previews for the popular web browsers like IE8, Mozilla Firefox, Chrome etc. Follow the steps below for each browser.

Internet Explorer 8

To disable tab previews IE 8 go to Tools->Internet Options->Tabs->Settings

internet_options_ie8

ie8_tab_settings

In the Tab Settings Uncheck Show previews for individual tabs in the taskbar. Click OK.

tabbed_browser_settings_ie8

Now restart the Browser, you will find the multiple previews gone.

Mozilla Firefox:

To disable tab previews in Firefox, open a new tab. Enter in the address bar as:

about:config

This will open the configuration page.Now in Filter Type:

browser.taskbar.previews.enable

Make the value to false by double clicking on it. Now your previews will be only one for the currently active tab.

mozilla_firefox_about_cofig

Google Chrome:

In Chrome there is no settings to disable multiple tab previews. But you can change the shortcut compatibility settings to disable previews.

Go to any shortcut of Chrome like in the Start menu or desktop. Right click on it and select Properties.

chrome_shortcut_properties

Go to Compatibility Tab and check Run this program in compatibility mode for: and select Windows Vista (Service Pack 2). Click OK.

shortcut_compatibility_chrome

Now you have learnt how to disable multiple tab previews feature in the World’s most popular browsers. If you want to enable them back, follow the reverse process.

LG GW620 : LG’s First Android Phone Launched In India

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Lg logo

South Korea’s electronics giant LG has announced the launch of its first ever Android OS powered mobile handset LG GW620 in India on the same day when Motorola released its yet another Android powered smart phone Motorola Milestone.

GW620 has many interesting features including 3” Touchscreen, slide QWERTY keyboard, 3G support, Android OS v1.5 , 5 Megapixel camera with LED flash and much more.

Check out LG GW620 features, specifications, pictures, and price here :

Pictures:

LG gw620 picture 1

LG gw620 slide picture 2

Specifications Review:

Also known As LG Eve, LG InTouch Max GW620 & LG LinkMe
Type Touchscreen with slide QWERTY keyboard
Dimensions 109 X 54.5 X 15.9 mm
Weight 139 g
Display TFT,
320 x 480 pixels, 3″
Operating System Android OS, v1.5 (Cupcake)
Camera 5 MP, LED flash, auto focus, 2560 x 1920 pixels
Memory Internal: 150 MB
External : expandable up to 32GB
Talk time Up to 8 h (2G) / Up to 7 h 40 min (3G)
Standby: Up to 600 h (2G) / Up to 500 h (3G)
Network GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 (2G)
HSDPA 900 / 2100 (3G)
Connectivity Bluetooth v2.0
Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g
microUSB v2.0
3.5 mm audio jack
A-GPS
Applications – MP3/WAV/eAAC+/WMA player
– MP4/DviX/WMV/H.263/H.264 player
– Document viewer (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF)
– Organizer
– Photo/video editor
– Voice memo
Battery Type Li-Po 1500 mAh

Note: We have made this table similar to that of Motorola Milestone (which is also incidentally launched earlier today in India) so that you can actually compare the features of both the phones.

Price:

LG GW620 has been priced at Rs 16,490 in India & $400 (approx) in US.