Search Gmail Labs Features As You Type

Gmail is great, and so are its labs features that would come handy for most of the Gmail users. To enable a particular lab feature in Gmail, users just had to go to the “Labs” tab under the settings page and choose the required lab feature from the list. But over the time, what happened was a huge in the number of such labs features added to the Gmail. As such now there are more than 50 labs features available under Gmail Labs section. Finding and selecting the item needed from them is just getting troublesome for few users like. Agree that there is always the built-in search feature (using CTRL + F) feature available in all the browsers to narrow down your search, it would have been better had Google, the giant search engine had added a small search engine to their Labs section to avoid scrolling. Gmail engineers have now responded quick enough to add not just a search feature but with Google Instant-like “search-as-you-type” feature.

Gmail labs instant search

If you haven’t really figured it out, go try it and enable this Google HD Video chat option from the Gmail Labs.

[Tutorial] Using Priority Inbox In Gmail

Gmail priority inbox overview

Google has just launched this brand new “Priority Inbox” feature inside their popular email service Gmail. The above an illustrative image taken from the official Gmail blog shows the quick overview of the what this new feature has to offer for you. If you are one of those who gets thousands of emails most of which are “not really” important, Gmail’s priority inbox lets you organise them in a better way by showing the emails that you should probably be reading first in a sorted manner based on your priority and on Gmail’s knowledge of picking the important mails based on your reading over the time. Without wasting much time, lets get straight into the details on making it ready for the first time for your inbox.

Steps:

Find “New! Priority InboxBeta” link in red at the top right corner of your Gmail inbox window.

New priority inbox

When you click on the link, a window with a video pops up, quickly go through the video to get to know about this new feature or you may totally skip it as well.

Click on “Try it now!” link at the bottom of the video and you will be shown a initial configuration window.Priority inbox beta getting started

The window will show some of your mails that Gmail thinks as “Important” or “Not Important”. If any one of the mails are shown in the wrong category, you can tell the Gmail it by clicking on the appropriate buttons : click on minus sign Priority minus signin case if the mail is wrongly placed in the “Important” category and click on plus signPriority plus signif there is any wrong mail in the “Not Important” category.

Once you have done the required changes, click on the “That looks right. Go to Priority Inbox!” link at the bottom of the window. Be patient until priority inbox gets activated for you.

Activating Priority inbox

Priority inbox first use

Here you go…Priority inbox has been activated and a new “Priority Inbox” label appears just above the classical “Inbox” label inside your Gmail.

Priority inbox label

And here’s how your new priority inbox should look:

Gmail Priority inbox look

It will have three sections: “Important and unread”, “Starred” and “Everything else”. You can still click on Priority plus and minus signsat the top of your mail to train Gmail work smart in choosing the important and unimportant mails for you.

You can still customise your inbox from the pop-up window that appears when you click on any of the sections mentioned above. For instance, if you click on the down arrow present next to “Important and unread” label, you will see the following set of options:

Priority inbox pop-up options

Let us know your feedback on the new Gmail priority inbox through your comments.

[Tip] All You Need To Know About Windows 7 Calculator

Windows 7 Calculator

Windows has always been coming with a default calculator for performing simple math calculations. However the users have always preferred to use other third party software for performing their day-to-day calculations as Windows calculator had limited functionalities or rather I’d say many of us weren’t aware of the full functionalities of it. The scene has changed now, Windows 7 now has the most powerful calculator with a some good new features embedded into it. Let’s look at those new features one by one:

1. Calculations History:

The Windows 7 promising new calculator gives for the users to view the history of calculations performed on it. Either press CTRL+H or pick “History” option from the “View” menu in the calculator.

Calculator history in Windows 7calculator_previous_calculations

Shortcut: Ctrl+H

Use Ctrl+Shift+D to cleat the calculation history or F2 to edit the calculation history.

2. Programmer mode:

This would be the feature that you would appeal to all those IT professionals around the globe who need to often perform basic programming conversions for the programs that they are developing (For instance converting a value from Decimal to its equivalent Hex code etc.), this is where the new “Programmer Mode” option in Windows 7’s calculator could help. Go to View> select Programmer to work on this mode.

Shortcut: Alt+3

Windows 7 Calculator programmer mode

3. Statistics mode:

Windows 7 Calculator statistics mode

Statistics mode helps you in your day-to-day statistics calculations like finding the average of your monthly expenses, finding standard deviation, standard deviation of population etc. Use add button to first add the numbers from your data, then click on the corresponding button to let the calculations done.

Shortcut: Alt + 4

Additional Functionalities:

Apart from the above main features, there have been some enhanced functionalities built into the Windows calculator:

Date calculation:

You have two basic options to perform under this: they are

1. You can calculate the difference between two dates

2. Add or subtract days to a specified date

Shortcut: Ctrl+E

Windows 7 Calculator Date Calculation

Worksheets:

You can perform Mortgage, vehicle lease, fuel economy calculations using Worksheets option.

Windows 7 Calculator worksheets menu
Windows 7 Calculator fuel economy

Unit Conversion:

Windows 7 Calculator unit conversion

Unit conversion lets you perform various conversions from one unit to another..the available units include: Angle, Area, Energy, Length, Power, Pressure, Temperature, Time, Velocity, Volume and Weight.

Shortcut: Ctrl + U

Windows 7 Calculator Keyboard Shortcuts:

Click here for a full list of keyboard shortcut keys that you can use with Windows 7 calculator.

For more tips and updates on Windows 7, you can subscribe to our RSS feeds via email.

New Orkut Upgrade Brings More Facebook Like Features

orkut logo

Orkut team has yesterday announced minor upgrades to the Google’s social networking site, definitely in a attempt to catch up to the Facebook’s domination in the arena.This is evident since the launch of new version of Orkut with changes like enabling friends to comment on the status updates,auto-magic groups, file transfer in chat etc.

The new upgrade to the site will bring three feature changes:

# Scraps are now being replaced by conversations:

“From now on, all scraps you send to your friends will also show up in your profile, making it easy to start new conversations”

You can even comment on the ongoing conversations that any of your friends have already started, now this conversation will start appearing in your profile, much like that way how Facebook shows them up.

# Private scraps:

You can now send a private scraps to your friends which will be visible to only selected friends:

orkut private scraps

To keep something secret, just send a private scrap to your friends, and just those people selected will see it

# Privacy Levels:

Orkut has added privacy settings for each of the individual items like who can see content on your profile, who can send a scrap to you, etc.

orkut_new_privacy_settings

Every piece of content on orkut (a scrap, photo, video, etc) will be labelled with a privacy level, so you know who else is seeing it or not

What do you feel about these new changes ? let us know.

Drag And Drop Attachments Onto Message In Gmail

Gmail has announced yet another small but really a time saving feature to its users.Now you can just drag and drop attachments from your PC, onto the message in Gmail while you are composing it, provided you are using either Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox 3.6.

To add attachments to your email, just open the folder, where the target files (attachments) are located and now tile your windows so that you can see both the explorer window and resized browser windows.Now just drag the files on to the browser window and they will automatically be attached to your message.Follow the screenshots given below:

gmail drag drop attachment

gmail drag drop attachment

gmail drag drop attachment

As of now this new functionality is only available in Firefox or Chrome.But Google is planning to extend this to all other browsers as soon as they support this feature.

Via Official Gmail Blog

Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0 Download

Microsoft .Net logo

Microsoft has released .NET Framework 4 last week along with Visual Studio 2010.The latest version of the .NET Framework is now available both as a Web installer as well as a stand alone installer.If you have been following our blog off late, you must have read our post about how to find the version of the .NET Framework installed in your windows.The newer applications that require Microsoft .NET Framework 4 will automatically trigger a download of the component, if it’s not been already installed on the user’s computer.

.NET Framework consists of the core framework that goes behind all the modern windows based applications.The .NET Framework model’s downward compatibility lets it to work along side with older versions of the .NET Framework.The newer version introduces many features besides improving the performance.

.NET Framework 4 Features:

Net Framework 4 poster

.NET poster via Brad Abrams

  • Improvements in Common Language Runtime (CLR) and Base Class Library (BCL)
  • Innovations in the Visual Basic and C# languages
  • Improvements in Data Access and Modeling
  • Improvements in performance and scalability
  • significant enhancements to ASP.NET that provides more control over HTML, element IDs and custom CSS
  • Improvements in Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF)
  • New added support for Windows 7 multi-touch, ribbon controls & taskbar extensibility features.
  • Improvements to Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) (Ex: support for WCF Workflow Services)
  • Innovative new parallel-programming features (Ex:parallel loop support, Task Parallel Library (TPL), Parallel LINQ (PLINQ) etc.,)

Complete list of new features/changes is available at this page.

Download .NET Framework 4 :

Link 1: Standalone Installer

Link 2: Web Installer

Requirements : Windows XP SP3 /Windows Vista SP1 or later versions (both 32-bit and 64-bit versions)

[Spotted] Google Testing New Colorful version

google official logo

For the past few weeks I have been spotting a brand new colorful version of Google in Google Chrome (working only with google.co.in but not with google.com).As I digged into find more about this, I came to know that only few people around the world are currently seeing this new version, luckily I am one amongst them.

The main improvement in the new version is the addition of colorful icons on the left hand side of the search window (enabled by default) which are only used to show up in current version only when you click “Show Options” link.Also as you can see in the following screenshots (Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh in my case), your current location is being added below the search box (which you can change anytime).

location in new google

Here are the screen shots that I have taken on my laptop.

Screen Shots:

google homepage new version

google new page navigation

google colorful version

I don’t know many number of people getting this, I personally like this new version.I would really like to hear from you about this, if you are also getting this Google’s new version.

Samsung Jet 2 Mobile Phone Specification

Samsung Electronics has announced Jet series in India with the launch of Samsung Jet 2.  It’s the same as original Jet but apparently with an “easy-to-use user interface of a conventional mobile phone” and provides consumers the benefits of advanced features of a smart phone.

The Jet 2 feature set remains the same with 800MHz applications processor, 3.1-inch AMOLED touchscreen display (WVGA), Dolfin browser, DLNA compatibility, Media browser, one-finger zoom, FM Radio, SNS widgets and Smart Unlock. The phone runs on TouchWiz UI 2.0 but also features Motion UI and Media Gate 3D.

samsung jet2

The full specifications and features has been described below.

Feature Description
Network 2G Network    GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
3G Network    HSDPA 900 / 2100
Display AMOLED resistive touchscreen, 16M colors
Size 3.1 inches, TouchWiz v2.0 UI, Accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate and Motion UI, Proximity sensor for auto turn-off
Memory Internal    2GB / 8GB
External microSD, up to 16GB
Connectivity Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g
Bluetooth    v2.1 with A2DP
microUSB 2.0
Camera 5 MP, 2592 x 1944 pixels, autofocus, LED flash
Geo-tagging, face, smile and blink detection, wide dynamic range
Video 720×48 30fps, QVGA
Processor Qualcomm MSM6246, 800Mhz processor
Music MP3/WMA/eAAC+/WAV player, Stereo FM radio with RDS, FM recording
Battery Li-Ion 1100 mAh
Stand-by    Up to 422 h (2G) / Up to 406 h (3G)
Talk time    Up 8 h 20 min (2G) / Up to 5 h (3G)
Browser WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML
GPS A-GPS support, Route 66
Messaging SMS, MMS, Email, IM, Push Email
Colors   Available Black, Mystic Purple

samsung jet 2

It has some more Smartphone features like Multi-tasking Manager,  Microsoft® Exchange ActiveSync®, Continuous Shot, Panorama Shot, Mosaic Shot, Frame Shot, Fast 3D Touch and Motion-Response Interface.

The price in India will be Rs 19500 (INR) according to Samsung Retailer.

New Feature in Orkut: Auto-Magic Groups

Orkut has launched another new feature called “Auto-Magic Groups”.

Auto-Magic Groups automatically suggests friend groups (to filter updates) and suggests labels for them too.Just like friend suggestions that are coming in Orkut off late, you can either accept the suggestions or you may just ignore them.

orkut beta Logo

As you can see in the below screen shot, a link called “edit groups” will appear at the right corner of the ‘Friend updates’ tab.If you click ‘edit groups’ link, it will open all existing groups (that you have created) plus new groups suggested by orkut.You can further customize them from there.

This is what Orkut engineers have to say about this new feature in orkut blog.

This new feature makes it easy to filter your friends’ updates based on relevant groups, right on your orkut homepage, so now you can easily see only the updates from a specific group of people at a time. Try it out by selecting a group from the "groups" drop-down menu on your homepage!

automagic groups in Orkut

This feature I guess initially available to few selected users and will soon be rolled out for all.