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[Tip] Get Imagery Update Alerts For Your Favorite Places In Google Maps And Google Earth

January 31, 2011 by bharath

We all love to follow our favorite places our hometown, our college, places where we used to play with our friends etc. on Google Earth and Google Maps. But we don’t really know when the imagery in these applications gets updated. Wouldn’t it be good if we get notified as and when there is an update in the imagery? Google has just done that! They have released a new app, called “Follow Your World” which lets you track of your favorite places in Google Maps and Google Earth and lets you notify any physical changes in your corresponding subscriptions.

To get started, visit the Follow Your World homepage, set your location for which you want to get imagery update (you can manually search and locate it or you can do it through longitude and latitude values). Scroll down and you will see your email address to which these updates will be delivered, check the details and click the “Submit” button when you are done. You will receive email whenever there is a physical change in the imagery of the places that you have subscribed. As Google Maps and Google Earth make use of the same imagery, you can then see the changes in both the products.

[Fix] “Windows Setup could not configure Windows on this computer’s hardware” Error

January 27, 2011 by bharath

When you are installing Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 on an advanced 512-byte emulation
(512e) format disk drive that is configured to emulate like a RAID disk will most likely encounter the following error:

Windows Setup could not configure Windows on this computer’s hardware.

Microsoft has now addressed this issue in a dedicated KB article, suggesting a possible resolution.

According to Microsoft, the issue can be fixed with either of the two methods mentioned here. Follow these suggested solutions before installing the Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2.

>> Method-1: Downloading The Appropriate Drivers For Hard Disk

Download the latest drivers for your hard disk drive (32-bit or 64-bit) from the Intel website and copy them to a flash drive or burn onto a CD or DVD and then use the media during the Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2 setup phase.

>> Method-2: Changing The BIOS Settings

Warning: Working with BIOS settings could lead to a serious problem with your computer if you apply incorrect settings. Use this option at your own risk.

Open the BIOS settings by pressing the appropriate key just after your turn on the computer, and under the SATA Configuration (hard drive setting) to either AHCI or IDE. That is it, you don’t need to install the driver that you got through the method-1.

Hard disk drive SATA BIOS settings

[Via] Windows KB article

[How To] Create A Shortcut To “Safely Remove Hardware”

January 27, 2011 by bharath

What do you do to remove your plugged in USB device like flash drive? You need to move your mouse to the system tray and locate the small USB icon “Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media” (in case of Windows 7 and Vista) and click on it and confirm that you want to remove or stop a particular USB device.

Safely-remove-hardware-media-tray

But even though it is simple, it is often tiresome as you need to expand the arrow in the tray and locate the small icon (Windows 7). This where you wish you had a shortcut at some other easily accessible place. A desktop shortcut for this “Safely Remove Hardware” dialog would be much more handy. If you are like me, get to know how to create a Safely Remove Hardware shortcut in Windows 7 and Vista by following these steps.

1. Right-click on your desktop, choose New > Shortcut.

New shortcut on desktop

2. In the next window, paste the following code in the “location of the item”

%windir%\system32\rundll32.exe shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL hotplug.dll

Safely remove hardware shortcut code

Click the “Next” button to continue to the next step.

3. Give the shortcut a meaningful name and click the “Finish” button to complete the setup.

Shortcut name

4. The new shortcut icon appears on your desktop.

Safely remove hardware shortcut

If you have plugged in the USB flash drive, double-click on the shortcut icon to see if it works. It should open the Safely Remove Hardware window, showing you the list of currently plugged in devices (USB and non-USB as well).

Safely remove hardware window

Select the particular device that you want to unplug or remove and click the “Stop” button to stop the device.

The advantage with this kind of shortcut trick is that you can choose to have a shortcut key setup for even more quicker access.

To assign a shortcut for the Safely Remove Hardware shortcut, just right-click on the shortcut and choose a unique keyboard key combination to assign as hotkey.

Safely remove hardware shortcut key

[How To] Create a Shortcut To Clear Your Clipboard

January 26, 2011 by dennis

Whenever you copy anything while using your computer, the computer uses a special place known as Clipboard to place the data. Suppose you copy some text from a text file, the information(data) gets copied into the Clipboard. Then when you paste the text to your desired location, the data is transferred from your clipboard. The clipboard is used for any type of copy action done.

Now, you have copied some data and hence it is now present it in your computer’s clipboard. Suppose the data you are handling is a sensitive one and hence you don’t want to leave any trace, even in your clipboard. So how do you do it? Here is the simplest answer known.

Steps to create a shortcut to clear your clipboard:

1. Right click on your desktop, go to New—>Shortcut.

2. In the New Shortcut window, Type

cmd /c "echo off | clip"

and press Next

3. Type in a Shortcut Name of your choice and Finish.

Now you can click on the shortcut anytime you want to clear your data off the clipboard.

[Tip] Voice Search For Google Chrome

January 8, 2011 by bharath

Voice Search for Google Chrome is a useful extension that lets you to quickly search the web using your voice input.

Google Voice search feature is nothing new, Google has been offering this feature for various Android, iOS and other smartphones for a while but I don’t why they haven’t really tried getting this handy feature for PC users. The extension of course is not built by Google. You need to have a built-in or an external microphone to use this feature. The extension comes with preloaded search engines like Google, Yahoo, Bing, WikiPedia, Wolfram|Alpha, DuckDuckGo, YouTube etc. The extension also integrates a speech button into all the HTML5 search input boxes. Just enable your microphone say a word like for instance “Sony Ericsson Arc” just add the search engine name before your query, like “Google Sony Ericsson Arc” to search in Google.

This is experimental feature and the voice input may not be accurate. Also, English is the only supported language for now. The extension is also missing a keyboard shortcut to activate the voice search. Though the extension is not so impressive but it is a good start, we hope Google comes out with an official app for Chrome, until then try using this.

Install Voice Search for Google Chrome [from Google Chrome web store]

[How To] Enable The Details Pane In Windows 7 Explorer

January 3, 2011 by bharath

Unlike the earlier Windows versions, the Windows Explorer in Windows 7 has been revamped a bit to make it appealing to the users. Any Windows Explorer window in Windows 7 can have at least 3 panes i.e., Navigation Pane, Preview Pane and Details Pane. For Library folder, there would be an additional pane called Library Pane which would be displayed at the top just below the address bar.

For now, we are concerned about the Details Pane. It is the pane that appears at the bottom of the window and displays the important information about the file or folder selected. While it is enabled by default in Windows 7 and Vista, some may find it missing in their explorer windows. In case it is disabled, this is how you can enable the Details Pane again:

Steps:

1. Open any Windows Explorer window.

No navigation pane in Windows 7

2. Click on the Organize button and from the drop down menu, roll over to the “Layout” and select “Details pane”

Details pane in Windows 7 explorer settings

3. You should now see the Details Pane at the bottom of your Windows Explorer window as shown in the screenshot.

CTRL + Tab Tabs Preview Feature In Firefox

January 3, 2011 by bharath

Firefox has changed a lot since the inception of the Firefox 3.6. A lot of features have been added since then. One such feature is previewing the opened tabs. We have already discussed how to enable all tabs preview in Firefox 4. Now let’s see how to enable the other variant of tabs preview feature, the Ctrl + Tab tabs preview (similar to Windows 7’s Alt + Tab preview) in Firefox 3.6 or later versions. Ctrl + Tab preview is disabled by default and if you hit Ctrl + Tab without enabling this, you can just switch the tabs. With Ctrl + Tab preview enabled, you can actually see the preview of tabs which would be very much useful. Follow the steps to enable the same.

Steps:

1. Type about:config in the Firefox address bar and hit Enter.

2. Accept the warning message and proceed to the Firefox about:config page.

About:config Firefox warning

3. Type the following code in the filter and find the boolean key with the same name.

browser.ctrlTab.previews

ctrl-Tab preview firefox setting

4. By default, the value for this key would be set to “false”, meaning that the tabs preview feature has been disabled. As we want to enable this, just double click on the boolean entry to change its value to “true”.

That’s it! Just hit CTRL + Tab key to preview the thumbnails of all the tabs opened in a current Firefox page as shown in the first screenshot. Just change back the value to “false” in the step-4 to disable the tabs preview feature.

[How To] Add RSS Feed Autodiscovery To Your Site

January 2, 2011January 2, 2011 by bharath

Almost every website offers updates via RSS feeds these days. This is the fastest way to notify the readers about the updates in the site. When it comes to blogs, blogging platforms like Blogger, WordPress etc. enable RSS feeds by default and the RSS feed autodiscovery would also be enabled in most cases. But at times what can happen is the tiny code that enables the RSS autodiscovery may go missing and the RSS feed can’t be discovered automatically.

How to find whether RSS autodiscovery is enabled?

Just open your website or blog in the browser (Firefox or Internet Explorer).

Firefox:

If the RSS feed icon appears in the address bar, your site has RSS autodiscovery enabled.

If you don’t see the RSS feed icon, it means that RSS autodiscovery is disabled.

Internet Explorer:

The RSS feed button will be in bright color when your site has RSS autodiscovery:

The feed icon will be greyed out when feed autodiscovery is not enabled:

Clicking on the icon will show the available subscription options.

Enable RSS Autodiscovery:

Just add the following code to your site header to enable the RSS autodiscovery:

In general, if you are using Feedburner, the code would look like:

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="Feedburner Feed" href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/feedburner-id" />

Replace “feedburner-id” with your Feedburner ID.

If you are using WordPress, add the following code to your header.php file.

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS 2.0"href="<?php bloginfo(‘rss2_url’); ?>" />

Just refresh your site after adding the code and you should now see the RSS autodiscovery being enabled:

[How To] Tweak The Low Battery Notification In Windows 7

December 31, 2010 by bharath

Working on your notebook which is having a pretty high battery life? And wonder why you are being notified even when you have pretty much time left to plug into an AC power supply?

Windows takes into account the average laptops with battery lives around 2-4 hours and Microsoft has accordingly set the battery levels after which the users get notified and eventually pushing Windows into Hibernate mode after reaching a critical stage. But if you consider the case of the users with long battery backups, they would still be having more than enough time to save their current work, get plugin the power supply to the laptop. So if you are once such user, you might want to change the low battery actions on your laptop. Before that, let’s see what are the different battery levels considered by your Windows OS.

>> Low battery level is where you will laptop starts showing the first low battery notification and the low battery level usually lies in the range of 10-12%.

low battery in Windows 7

>> Reserve battery level is where your Windows starts acting and gets ready for hibernating, in most cases it will be around 7-8% lying closer to the critical battery level.

reserve battery level

>> Critical battery level is where your laptop goes into Hibernation mode immediately and it’ll be around 5% in general.

Critical battery in windows

Now that you have got the basic idea about different battery levels, let’s get into to details of changing the low battery notifications in Windows 7.

Steps:

1. Type “power options” in the Start Menu search and open the first result under the Control Panel section.

2. Now select the power plan for which you want to change the low battery notification settings, and click the “Change plan settings” link found next to the power plan.

3. In the “Edit Plan Settings” window, click on the “Change advanced power settings” link found at near the bottom.

Edit power plan settings in Windows 7

4. Scroll down to “Battery” section in the Advanced settings tab and click the “+” button to expand it.

Battery advanced power plan settings

5. You may adjust the settings for each of the battery levels i.e Low battery level, Reserve battery level and Critical battery level.

Low battery notification settings

Click “OK” once you are done to apply the settings. That’s it.

[How To] Create And Enable Mobile Version Of A Blogger Blog

December 30, 2010 by bharath

With the growing usage of iPhones, Android devices and other smartphone devices around the world, the number of people who access the internet from their mobile devices. Considering this, it is now very essential that you create a mobile version of your website or blog just to make sure that it fits perfectly on the screens of such devices. If you are a blogger and using WordPress, it’s pretty much easy to setup a mobile version of your blog with plenty of plugins serving the purpose. But what about Blogger? If you still don’t know, the answer is Yes! now you can. Blogger has recently announced the mobile templates for Blogger. But this now is available as an opt-in functionality on Blogger in Draft.

Here’s how you setup and active a mobile version for your blogspot blog without using any hacks:

1. Log in to Blogger in Draft.

Blogger in draft

2. Click on the “Settings” link for you blog

Blog settings link on Blogger dashboard

3. Go to the “Email & Mobile” tab under “Settings”.

4. Under the Mobile Template, choose the first option (Yes, On mobile devices, show the mobile version of my template).

5. You can click on the “Mobile Preview” button to see a preview of how your blog will look on a mobile device

Blogger mobile preview

6. Click the “Save Settings” button at the bottom once you are done.

You have successfully enabled the mobile template for your blog now. Test it by visiting your blogspot blog from a mobile phone or use the QR code found in the mobile template settings to directly go your site on your mobile device.

techrena QR code