Month: May 2010

Check & Compare Your Video Streaming Speeds At YouTube Video Speed History

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youtube logo

Have you ever checked out this new YouTube Video Speed History Page? If you haven’t, go and check it now.It actually gives you some idea of the broadband speed (at what YouTube videos could load over a period of time) with comparison to your neighbours ISP speed.

By looking at the graphs, you can easily decide whether your ISP is justifying the charges you pay for them by providing the speed as promised.

Look at the following screenshots taken by me, I’m at least happy that my ISP is providing me a speed which is slightly greater than the average speed of my City (Hyderabad), and the country, even though we are far behind the global average speed Sad

Go to YouTube Video Speed History page and check your ISP’s performance now.

ScreenShots:

YouTube_Video_Speed_History

Pic-2

YouTube speed comparision chart

Also the sudden small dip in speeds around the end of April and beginning of May 2010 is possibly due to the SEA-ME-WE 4 Undersea Cable System Outage and the repair that was going on at that time.

How To Report About Third-Party Adsense Ads Distributing Malware

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Google Adsense Logo

Earlier this year, Google has made Google-Certified ad networks available to all publisher by default.It is intended to benefit the users who can now attract additional advertisers from third party ad networks to their site through Adsense.This was really an impressive move by Google to benefit its Adsense publishers.

But off late, we have been hearing various complaints about the ads from these third party networks circulating malicious code through Adsense.

For example, quite a number of Adsense publishers with a good anti-virus program installed on their system have figured out that the following virus alerts protruding from their program whenever they open the page containing that particular ad:

http://curves.com/?=345 contains a trojan

Are you one of those publishers experiencing the problem? have no clue about how this is happening ?

Google-certified ad networks who want to place ads in Adsense publisher sites must adhere to all AdWords policies in general.But in this case, the particular ad network which was already certified by Google, started spreading malware later on and as a result some Adsense publishers who were displaying ads from these third party ad networks have been recieving the reports of attacks on their website readers computers through Adsense code.Google however has revoked that particular network’s certification.

We recently learned of a malware-infected creative that came from Aggregate Knowledge, a third-party ad network that was certified by Google at the time. As a result, we revoked that network’s certification, and their ads are no longer eligible to appear on any AdSense publisher sites.

How To Report If You Face Similar Problem?

You need to report through AdWords ads feedback to report about  ill behaviour of a particular ad network from this page.

You need to note the URL of the webpage that this particular ad takes you to when clicked (Warning: Don’t never click on your own ads, instead ask your readers who had faced the problem to pass on the URL to where they were being taken by the ad).Also you need a screenshot of the ad to submit to the AdWords team for analysis.

The report from would look like this one:

AdWords feedback report

Embed A Tweet In Your Blog Post

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Twitter logo

Twitter has recently added a feature that lest us to integrate or embed any tweet in to the web pages by generating HTML code for that particular tweet.Blackbird Pie lets you embed tweets into any web page by generating static HTML tweets for posts.

1. Go to Blackbird Pie and enter the full Twitter tweet URL there (as you see in the screenshot) and click Bake it.

Blackbird Pie enter Tweet URL

2. It will now generate an embeddable HTML code along with a preview to show how that particular tweet will look on your site after embedding.

twitter blackbird pie tweet preview

If you are not familiar with working on HTML code, avoid editing the code as far as possible.Just use copy and paste.

Don’t forget to follow  @Techrena on twitter.

In Pictures: Google’s New Design

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google official logo

Back in April 2010, we have notified all our readers about the changes to the then current Google home page version.This is now being officially announced by Google and has been rolled out to the most of the users worldwide.Previously the users used to get the new version (while in testing) only when they were using Google Chrome.But now it has been expanded to other browsers as it gets official status.We are posting some of the pictures of Google’s design depicting what’s has been changed.

Official Pictures:

Logo design: Old Vs New

The new Google logo compared to the old one is much lighter, brighter and simpler.

Google new official logo

Search Options Panel:

The left Search Options Panel is now more or less a visual treat.The font size of the items has been increased and small thumbnails have been added before each item in the panel.Clicking on More search tools would expand the panel and bring in more search tools.

Google left panel comparision
Footer:

The blue shading and the underlines under the links have been removed and the width of the search box has been increased while lightening the color.

Google footer comparision

Varying Search Options:

The categories in the left hand side Search Options panel would be different for different types of search queries.For instance, as shown below, the categories appearing would be different for a search query like “T20 World cup” than when you do a search for “Levis 501”.

Here’s an example of how Google search result page turns out for the above said queries.

Google would more likely return news results for these sort of sports or events related queries.
Google result for sports query

You would be more likely to see images/videos and shopping results for these sort of queries.

Google results fot shopping query

Do you welcome these changes? how do you feel about these new changes?

Tip: Close All Your Open Applications At Once In Windows

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Windows logo

Are you the one who extracts the most of the multitasking from your computer by simultaneously opening too many applications and switching back to one another.But when it comes to closing all application, it’s a bit difficult to close the each application one by one , isn’t it?

What about closing all the open application windows at once with a single click ? Yes, that’s what the tiny program “CloseAll” from ntwind has too offer.

Just download the latest version of CloseAll from the links given at the bottom of the post and extract it to the program files (C:\Program Files\) on your hard disk.For easier access drag the CloseAll.exe to your desktop or Quick Launch Bar pin to the taskbar in your Windows 7.

CloseAll drag to taskbar

Now just click on this shortcut to close all application windows that are currently open.You calso make use of the advanced option to exclude certain programs to be closed by CloseAll, by adding a exclusion list,

to add a simple exclusion list, go to the CloseAll shortcut properties and go to Shortcut tab, find Target under this tab.Add -x="app-to-exclude.exe": for example:

-x="explorer.exe|firefox.exe|msnmsgr.exe"

CloseAll properties

Click OK and save the settings.So now if you click CloseAll, all application windows except the Windows Explorer, Firefox and MSN Messenger will be closed.

Download CloseAll (Zip file, 36 KB)

Speed Up Windows Boot Up and Startup Using gpedit and DPS

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In Windows PC, slow boot up and slow startup is one of the major problem we face. During the starting of Windows, it may take a lot of time to come to the logon screen and then to the desktop. This kind of problem is common in PCs which are older and a lot of programs are running.

One method we have already posted to speed up your Windows PC is by using MSCONFIG. Here, we will be solving the slow boot up problem using Windows Boot Performance Diagnostics of Diagnostic Policy Service(DPS).

Diagnostic Policy Service (DPS) will detect Windows Boot Performance problems and attempt to determine their root causes. These root causes will be detected and corrective actions will be taken to solve the problems.

Follow the steps below to enable Windows Boot Performance Diagnostics.

1. Open Local Group Policy Editor

Press Start + R and Type gpedit.msc and press Enter. Incase of

2. Go to Windows Boot Performance Diagnostics

In the Left Pane of  Local Group Policy Editor go to the location:

Computer Configuration—>Administrative Templates—>System—>Troubleshooting and Diagnostics—>Windows Boot Performance Diagnostics

Windows_Boot_Diagnostics

3. Open Configure Scenario Execution Level of Windows Boot Performance Diagnostics

Now in the right pane Double Click on Configure Scenario Execution Level.

Configure_Scenario_Execution_Level

4. Enable Windows Boot Performance Diagnostics

Now Click on Enable and Select Scenario Execution Level as Detection, Troubleshooting and Resolution. Click OK

Enable_Windows_Boot_Diagnostics

If you select Detection and Troubleshooting only then  the root causes will be logged to the event log when detected, but no corrective action will be taken.

Now Windows Will Diagnose your Startup problems and try to fix them for a faster boot and startup.

Important Notes:

Note 1: Windows Boot Performance Diagnostics is a part of the Diagnostic Policy Service(DPS). So DPS should be running in your computer in order to successfully diagnose the problems. To check whether the service is running or not, Press Start + R and Type services.msc. Check out for Diagnostic Policy Service.

services

Incase if it is not started, you have to start it using MSCONFIG. To do that, Press Start + R and Type msconfig. Go to Services tab and Check Diagnostic Policy Service. Press OK.Note 1:

msconfig

Note 2: This service is available only in Windows Vista and Windows 7. And Local Group Policy Editor (gpedit.msc) may be available only with versions like Professional or higher.

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Tip: Make Taskbar Previews Load Faster In Windows 7

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Windows logo

Taskbar thumbnail previews take a bit of time to appear when you hover your mouse cursor over any taskbar icon in Windows 7.This delay if set by default to 400 ms by the OS.However, if you want to change the delay time so that the taskbar thumbnail previews load faster, here’s the tutorial that you need to follow.

1. Go to Start Menu, right-click on Computer and select Properties

my computer properties in windows 7

This will open the System Properties window, click on Advanced system settings.Alternatively you can use Windows + Pause/Break shortcut key to open the same.

System_properties_windows7

2. Now under the System Properties, go to Advanced tab and click Settings under Performance.

Advanced Settings in System Properties

3. This will open up Performance Options windows, now there, uncheck “Animations in the taskbar and Start Menu”.

Performance Options under Visual Effects in Windows7

This option should be deselected since, you may not see much  difference after trying out this tutorial if you keep this option checked.

4. Now go to registry editor by typing regedit in the run command (shortcut: Windows + R).Navigate to

HKEY_CURRENT_USER > Control Panel > Mouse

Find the entry “MouseHoverTime” under it.

Mouse Hover Time in Regedit
5.You will find a default value of 400 against it in the Data filed.Change this value to something like 100 or even less that that.

Edit MouseHoverTime string value

That’s it, now you have decreased the Mouse hover time which in turn will make the taskbar thumbnail previews to appear more faster.

You can subscribe to our RSS feed via email for more tutorials under Windows 7.

How To Uninstall All Your Windows 7 Games

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Windows logo

Windows 7 much like the previous versions of Windows (Windows XP, Windows Vista), has some wonderful preloaded games in it.The games include Chess Titans, FreeCell, Hearts, Internet Games, Mahjong Titans, Minesweeper, Purble Place, Solitaire, Spider Solitaire.For some reasons, if you want to disable or unstill any game or all the games that came with your Windows 7, here’s the procedure you need to follow:

1. Go to Start menu and type “Windows Features” in the search, click on the first result under the section Control Panel.You can alternatively go to Control Panel> Programs> Turn Windows Features on or off option.

turn windows features search

Programs and features in Windows 7

2. Under the Windows Features window, click expand button to see all the 11 games that came with your Windows 7.You can uncheck any desired game to uninstall it from your Windows or you can uncheck entire Games section to unstill all your Windows 7 games.

Games in Windows features turn on or off

Click OK to apply the changes, wait for few minutes for the changes to effect.

Applying changes to Windows features

3. You can go to your Games Explorer by typing games in the Windows 7 start menu search and you can see the games that are currently available in your Windows.If you have disabled all the games by unchecking the Games folder in the Windows Features section, you will no longer find any games here.

Synchronize Windows Clock With Internet Time Server

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Windows 7 clock

Windows Clock as you all know is really got a makeover ever since Windows Vista has arrived and is really appealing to many Windows users, who earlier were using other software like Google Gadgets to see a analog clock  on their desktop instead of default Windows Clock.

Do you know that you can actually synchronize your Windows clock with several internet time servers if you have an internet connection.

This tutorial is based on Windows 7 and Windows Vista based systems.(Although it’s till valid for Windows XP).

1. Open the Windows clock popup from your taskbar.Click on Change date and time settings.

change date and time settings in windows

2. In the Date and Time settings window, go to “Internet Time” tab.Click on Change Settings.

change windows clock settings

3. Check “Synchronize with an Internet time server”.You can either choose windows time servers or NIST servers.Click Update Now.

Internet time settings windows clock

You have configured your Windows clock to synchronize automatically with the internet time servers.

Wake Up, Google !

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Google Adwords logo

Before you read this, I want to let you all know that I’m a big fan of a Google and I can’t even imagine the life without Google, so much is its impact on the worldwide netizens.As an avid internet user, Google works great for me and it saves my time, warns against visiting sites that are spreading malware, offering me a free mail and what not, I enjoy every bit of their services.

Now as a webmaster/blogger too, I reiterate the same what I have said in the above paragraph.Majority of the websites or blogs on the internet are still surviving on Google’s SE traffic.

Unfortunately people there are some people who are trying to exploit the Google’s services which have got a tremendous global internet reach among the internet users.The most exploited services being Adsense, Adwords.I’m afraid Google is just relaxing a bit allowing off late.Google is just becoming the toy in the hands of the bad people.Adsense arbitrage, MFA sites all these are just small examples of the dreadful exploitation.

I just observed two things today while browsing (screenshots added) today and here is why I think it’s for Google to wake up and tighten the screws.

#1. Link selling or link buying is completely against the Google Webmaster guidelines but still valid according to Google Adwords/Adsense, funny? Why should Google be promoting the link selling websites through Adwords and Adsense.Look at the following screenshot  that I’ve taken from a leading technology blog.Obviously the author of the blog has no choice to block them until he really sees such ads himself.

Backlink selling ads in Adsense

#2. Try Googling for “adsense” (in Google.co.in).Just notice what you see in the sponsored links on the right hand side of the page.

Buy an adsense account ad

Adsesnse account for Rs.500/- ($10)? WTF? I went and checked out to find out what that site is all about.Well, it is violating every rule in the Google’s book.Even one of my friends blogged about this adsenseindia.tk scam last week, consider someone who just wants to know about Adsense lands up on this page through the sponsored links and pays them for an Adsense account? He gets cheated right? It’s a complete scam and even if you get an account from there, it would be banned sooner or later.

I know that anyone can create a Adwords or Adsense account and setup ads like these.But keeping such advertisers in the network will definitely going to haunt Google in the long run.Go clean the mess, Google.