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[Tip] Enable Secure “HTTPS” In Facebook

January 28, 2011January 26, 2011 by bharath

Facebook has just announced the availability of HTTPS/SSL all the time on the Facebook. If you enable HTTPS mode, all the data beginning from the password you type at the login page would be encrypted when it travels between the browser and the Facebook server, offering a more sophisticated security for your stay on Facebook. HTTPS mode isn’t new, you might have seen this while doing any transactions on the internet. A similar HTTPS/SSL mode is also optional on Gmail and Hotmail.

# Who Should Consider HTTPS Secure Mode For Facebook?

Facebook suggests that if you frequently use your account at public internet access enabled places coffee shops, restaurants, airports, libraries and schools etc.

# How To Enable The HTTPS Mode In Facebook?

Open your account settings page and click on the “Account Security” section. You will find the “Secure Browsing (https)” option and check against “Browser Facebook on a secure connection (https) whenever possible” and click Save.

Can’t find the option in your account? You may have to wait! Facebook will rollout the option for all the users in the coming weeks starting from today.

When you enable the HTTPS mode and log back into the Facebook, you will see this in the address bar.

# What Are The Downsides?

While you press hard for enabling more secure HTTPS mode, you might have to compromise on the page load speeds part. Facebook alerts users that enabling encryptions mode means that pages take longer than usual time to load. Also many third-party applications are currently not supported in HTTPS mode.

# Social Authentication

Besides this, Facebook has one more interesting feature announcement about using Social authentication. Facebook is now testing this feature which now lets users to authenticate by using pictures of their friends (like the one shown in the screenshot):

[Via] The Facebook Blog

[How To] Disable System Beep Sounds In Windows 7

January 26, 2011January 26, 2011 by bharath

Windows system beep sounds turn up when your perform some invalid action (ex: pressing a wrong key or clicking or choosing a invalid button on window etc.) or when some error dialog appears. The beep sound also appears when you are using volume control.

(Click the Play button to listen to the sound; requires QuickTime Player plugin)

While the use of such beep sounds can be dated back to olden days when computers didn’t have sound cards but just built-in speakers producing various beep sounds to notify the troubleshooters help diagnosing the issues. Well, the times have changed, even though the desktops and laptops ship with internal speakers producing beep sounds, they are hardly useful when you are using advanced operating systems like Windows 7 as we have more sophisticated diagnosing mechanism to troubleshoot the OS issues. Too many beeps, you would easily get annoyed. Follow these steps to disable the system beep sounds in Windows 7.

This can be done in either of the two ways:

>> Method-1:

1. Type “device manager” in the Start Menu search box and open the Device Manager from the results under “Control Panel” items.

Alternatively, press Windows key + R to open the Run command. Type “devmgmt.msc” and hit enter to open the Device Manager.

device management run command

2. From the Device Manager window, choose “Show Hidden Devices” under “View” menu.

Show hidden devices in Device Manager

3. Scroll down the list until you find “Non-Plug and Play Drivers” and click on it to expand.

Non-Plug and Play Drivers in Device Manager

4. Right-click on the Beep item and choose Properties.

beep sound in device manager

Warning: Do not click “Uninstall” as the option will completely remove the beep sounds from your Windows 7, you might find it hard to reinstall the same again.

5. In the Beep Properties, click on the Driver tab

beep properties driver

From the Start up type, choose “Disabled” from the list.

Click OK to apply and save the settings. You need to restart the system for the changes to take effect. To enable the beep sounds again, just choose “System” from the list in the step-5.

>> Method-2:

We can also achieve our desired result from the Control Panel, let’s see how to do it.

1. Open the Control Panel and click on the Hardware and Sound item link from the list.

Hardware and sound section in Control Panel

2. Click on the Change system sounds link under the “Sound”.

hardware and sound in control panel

3. Under the Sounds tab, scroll down to find “Default Beep”

Sounds in Control Panel setting

Choose “None” from the list under Sounds and click OK to save the settings.

Default Beep sound settings

You are done! But please not note that these are the settings for current sound scheme for your Windows 7. In future if you change the settings, the default beep sound may be enabled again automatically. Hence we suggest you to use method-1 if you completely want to disable the internal speakers system beep sound.

[Tip] Get Warned Before Closing Multiple Tabs In Google Chrome

January 22, 2011 by bharath

If you are used to Firefox browser for long, you might be aware of the warning message or confirmation message that appears when you try to close multiple tabs as you can see in the following screenshot:

Quit firefox confirm

This is quite useful when you hit the close button accidentally with multiple tabs opened. Unfortunately such feature isn’t there in Google Chrome by default. But thanks to “Chrome Toolbox” extension developed by Google itself, the extension adds this missing feature and can be configured from the extension settings.

To get started, just install the Chrome Toolbox, and open the extension options. Check against the “Confirm before closing multiple tabs” and that is it. Now you will get a confirmation message like below when you try to close multiple tabs in Google Chrome.

chrome warning before closing multiple tabs

Chrome Toolbox Options is really an interesting extension which is aimed to increase the user’s productivity. You can many find various handy options which you would otherwise feel missing in the browser. For instance when you enable “When the mouse pointer hovers an image, show image floating toolbar” options, you get additional options for each image on a page to view the original image in its natural size, or to use a magnifier or to use it as your wallpaper etc. There are plenty other useful options as well. We recommend that you install this extension from the Chrome extensions gallery to enhance your browsing experience in Chrome(link added below).

Install Chrome Toolbox

[via]

Delay Services In Windows 7 To Speed Up The Boot Time

January 21, 2011 by bharath

delayed start programs in Windows 7

Is your Windows starting up too slow even after performing the suggested optimizations? Wonder what more you can do to save on your computer’s boot up time? Consider delaying the non-essential services so that they can be run once the system has completed the booting and has enough free time to load these services. Windows services are the ones that are needed by various programs installed on your PC. Even though some of the services need to run along with the Windows boot, some may be delayed to start so as to reduce the high activity during the start-up. Delaying the Windows services was introduced for the first time in Windows Vista and is now available in Windows 7 as well. By default Windows automatically sets some services like Windows update, Google update (if installed), Windows Font cache etc. to start delayed.

But you might want to consider delaying other third party services to boot your Windows even faster. Take the following screenshot for instance, you don’t need to run the “Apache web server service” along with boot, you can safely delay it so that your Windows gets loaded a touch quicker.

Apache service in windows

>> To see all the services installed on your Windows, type “services.msc” in the Start Menu search and open the services.msc from the results.

Alternatively press Windows button + R to open the RUN command and type services.msc and hit enter to open the Services window.

>> To see all the services which are already set to “Delayed Start”, first click on the “Startup Type” column and then click “Status” column. All the delayed services will be shown as “Automatic (Delayed Start)” next to them under the Startup Type.

Delayed start programs

>> To delay start of any service (for instance Apache2.2 in this case), just right-click on the service and choose “Properties”

>> In the Properties window, choose “Automatic (Delayed Start)” from the drop down menu under Startup Type filed.

Editing properties of service

Click “OK” to apply the settings and close the properties window. Now the startup of the selected service would be delayed. You can safely set “manual” and “disabled” services to delayed startup, however you should be careful while handling important services like Windows related services which are set to start automatically by default .

Search Gmail Labs Features As You Type

January 21, 2011 by bharath

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.

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

[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]

Track Stolen Laptops With Quick Heal Free Laptop Tracker Service

January 7, 2011 by bharath

Track stolen laptops with Quick Heal laptop tracker

Do you own a laptop? Do you worry about its security? Here is a good news for you! Quick Heal Technologies has launched a free laptop tracker service (available in India only). This is a very good initiative from the PC security software maker Quick Heal, I would say.

The good thing about this free service is that anyone can use this service free of cost irrespective of whether they use Quick Heal software or not. But if you are a Quick Heal user, it just gets better and much easier. The tracking service makes use of the MAC IDs of the laptops to locate them with IP address and it has also made it easier for law enforcement authorities to check if the laptops they found are on the reported stolen laptops list.

How To Use Laptop Tracker Service:

The prerequisite for using the service is you must have your MAC address for at least one of your various network cards. For starters, MAC address is [Quote from Wikipedia]:

A Media Access Control address (MAC address) is a unique identifier assigned to network interfaces for communications on the physical network segment.

We had already covered a detailed guide to find the MAC address of your computer’s NIC(Network Interface Card). Please go through it and note down MAC addresses for all of your network cards (LAN, Wireless, Bluetooth etc.) and carefully note down and store them for future use.

1. Go to www.trackmylaptop.net

>> If you are already a user of Quick Heal anti-virus or Internet Security suites, just register yourself for the laptop tracker service by providing the Quick Heal product key and other details as required. The advantage for the Quick Heal users here is that they don’t need to provide the MAC ID manually. The MAC IDs will be automatically obtained and stored in the database during Quick Heal activation or update.

>> If you are a non Quick Heal user and have your MAC ID of your stolen or lost laptop with you, go to this page and fill-in the required details and click “Register Now”. Quick Heal will regularly search through its database and will notify you in case it finds a match.

If your laptop was stolen, and if you’ve got the MAC ID of it, you can register your MAC ID with this free tracker service and hope that the your stolen laptop gets connected to internet one day or the other. One more advantage of using this service is that you can also get to know whether a used laptop that you are planning to purchase is a stolen one.

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.

[Tip] Sort A List Alphabetically In MS Office Word 2007 & 2010

December 30, 2010 by bharath

Microsoft Office 2010

Recently I was working on a big list of words that are to be sorted alphabetically for easy use. I was checking various online sources . Yes, there are online tools available to just to that. But if you have Microsoft Office Installed on your Windows, it’d be a better way to accomplish this task. Microsoft Word can sort data according to various criterion and here we’ll just try to know how to sort the data alphabetically. Advanced users of Microsoft Office should well be aware of this but if you are a starter probably you should read the following guide to learn how you can do it in Microsoft Word 2010 or MS Word 2007.

1. Open the Microsoft Word application.

2. Paste the list that you want to sort in the new document.

3. Select all the words using CTRL + A

Select the whole list in Office 2010

4. Now find a small sort icon in the Paragraph group under the “Home” tab. Click on the icon.

5. A new dialog box will appear inside the Word application window. Choose “Text” option from the dropdown list under the Type and choose “Ascending” radio button. Click OK.

Sort Text Dialog box in Word 2010

That is it. Your list is now sorted alphabetically as you can in the screenshot below:

Sorted list in Word 2010

[Tip] Disable ‘Recently Closed Tabs’ In Firefox

December 25, 2010 by bharath

Firefox recently closed tabs

Firefox lets users to quickly reopen few of the recently closed tabs for quicker access. Even though the users can go to the history and access all of the webpages that were accessed or closed previously, the “Recently Closed Tabs” that appears under the “History” menu item is surely a timesaver for many of us. But yes, there are people who don’t like this feature. You can always configure Firefox to not to remember any of your recently closed tabs or manually configure it to remember certain number of the recently closed tabs. Here is what you have to do:

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

2. A warnings message will be shown, accept that you would be careful while working the about:config entries.

about:config firefox warning

3. In the “Filter” filed, type the following text code and look for an entry which exactly matches with it.

browser.sessionstore.max_tabs_undo

About:config settings in Firefox

4. Double click on the entry. By default it will hold a value “10”, meaning that it will remember and show the last ten recently closed tabs. Here we want none. So change the value from 10 to 0.

Change number of tabs closed undo setting

That is it! Firefox will no longer remember your recently closed tabs. If you have entered any other non-zero value, Firefox will let you see that many number of the most recently closed tabs.