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[How To] Backup And Restore Windows 7 Sticky Notes

December 24, 2010 by bharath

sticky-notes-windows-7

Sticky notes in Windows is a fastest way to quickly take a note or add quick reminders, the easy way. You can easily add a new sticky note by searching for “sticky notes” in the Start Menu and by launching the Sticky notes application.

If you use sticky notes much, you might want to save and backup them so that they can be restored and used on another computer. Follow these below steps to learn how you can do this.

Steps:

1. Navigate to the following folder in your explorer:

C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Sticky Notes\StickyNotes.snt

Where <username> is the your Windows user account name through which you are logged on.

2. You need to enable the option to show hidden files and folders in order to see the “AppData” folder and StickyNotes.snt file in your explorer.

Sticky-notes-folder-windows-7

3. Now you just need to copy the above file to another external media like USB flash drive or external Hard disk, to save the backup and later move it to the same folder (mentioned in step-1) of the target PC where you want to see these sticky notes.

You can use this tip to restore your sticky notes on a new computer or on the same computer when you reinstall your Windows 7 copy replacing the older installation.

Make Phone Calls From Gmail For Free All Through 2011

December 21, 2010 by bharath

If you are located in US and Canada, Google has some very good news for you. You can now make free phone calls to all your pals till the end of 2011. When this feature was launched initially in August 2010, Google said that it would offer free phone calls service to the U.S. and Canada till the rest of 2010. According to a recent blog post at Official Gmail blog, the free service has been extended through 2011.

gmail phone call free

To get started with calling phone numbers in Gmail, get the Gmail voice and video chat plugin click on the “Call Phone” that appears at the top of your chat list and you will see the dial pad. You can either dial the phone number or enter a contact name to start a voice phone call. If you have a Google Voice phone number, you can even display it as the outbound caller ID and receive calls made to this number inside Gmail as well. It may not be as good as other leading VOIP solutions like Skype but still a decent one.While calls to the U.S. and Canada are free, calls to phones outside the United States are charged as per the following rates list.

gmail phone call rates

For more information, go visit gmail.com/call.

[Tip] Restore Accidentally Deleted Contacts In Gmail

December 15, 2010December 15, 2010 by bharath

Have you accidentally deleted any contact in Gmail while syncing the contacts between various devices that you possess? Have you ever mistakenly deleted a wrong contact that had almost similar name to the contact that you wished to delete?

Yes, these sorts of things do happen now and then! But Gmail think-tank seems to be wary of these accidental deletions that happen to users like us. Gmail has announced highly useful “Restore Contacts” feature that lets you quickly recover contacts that you had previously deleted. With this, you can restore any deleted contact information deleted from your Gmail account in the past 30 days.

How To Use?

To use “Restore Contacts” feature in Gmail,

1. Login to your Gmail account.

2. Go to the Contacts page inside your Gmail.

3. Click the “More Actions..” drop-down button and choose “Restore Contacts”.

restore contacts link under more actions in gmail

4. In the new “Restore Contacts” dialog box, choose the time stamp to where you want to restore your contacts. You can restore the contacts to any point within the past 30 days.

Restore contacts in gmail

When you restore the contacts to an earlier time frame, all the contacts added since then will be deleted. All the contacts that you had deleted will be back.

[Via] Official Gmail blog

[Tip] Remove Skype Icon From Windows 7 Taskbar

December 15, 2010 by bharath

If you are using the latest version of Skype on your Windows 7 machines, you might now be very aware of the fact that Skype pins itself to the Windows 7 taskbar.

skype icon in taskbar

This is a bit annoying as you don’t want Skype to reside in the taskbar and occupy the useful space. If you are wondering how can this be removed from your taskbar, this is what you have to do:

1. Click on the Skype taskbar icon and sign into your Skype account.

2. Click on the “Tools” menu and choose “Options” from the list.

3. Click the “Advanced” button under Skype options.

Skype options list

4. Under the “Advanced Settings”, uncheck against “Keep Skype in the taskbar while I’m signed in”.

Skype options advanced settings

5. Click the “Save” button to save settings and close the window.

That is it! Now, close the Skype window and it should disappear from your taskbar as well.

Quick Tip: Show Or Hide Bookmarks Toolbar in Chrome

December 10, 2010 by bharath

google chrome

Usage of bookmarks is surely on the rise these days, the fact that so many bookmarking related services are now increasing also explains this fact. Google has a dedicated bookmark bar just below the address bar. Bookmarks bar in Google Chrome is pretty much useful to quickly add, or open your favorite links stored under the bookmarks folder. However you might want to have a choice whether to show the bookmarks bar or not in your Google Chrome. It’s pretty much simple and most of the Chrome users might be already knowing this tip. In case you don’t, read on..

Tip: By default bookmarks bar is shown in Google Chrome. To toggle between enable or disable the bookmarks bar, just press Ctrl + Shift + B.

no bookmarks bar in chrome

>> Alternatively, you can right-click on the bookmarks bar and choose uncheck “Always show bookmarks bar” option to hide the bookmarks bar. Once hidden, you need to use the above said keyboard shortcut to enable the bookmarks bar again.

Always show bookmarks bar in Google Chrome

[Tip] Enable Web Apps In Chrome 8

December 10, 2010 by bharath

chrome web store

Google has recently launched the Chrome Web Store, where you can find number of web apps , extensions and themes for Google Chrome. If you want to enable the web apps in the recently released Google Chrome 8 (they’ll show up when you open a new tab), follow these steps:

1. Make sure Google Chrome is not running on your computer.

2. If you are on a Windows machine, right-click on the Chrome shortcut, and choose “Properties” from the context menu. In the “Target” filed under “Shortcut” tab, append it with “ --enable-default-apps" (without quotes but with the initial space). In general, the target field should look like this:

C:\Users\<User Name>\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe --enable-default-apps

Chrome shortcut properties

3. Click “OK” to save the settings and close the properties window.

4. Click the wrench icon, Tools > Extensions.

5. Expand the “Developer mode” icon.

6. Click on the “Update extensions now” button.

chrome extensions page

7. Open a new tab and now you must see the all the web apps that are currently enabled for your Chrome. The default web apps are Google Docs, Google Calender, Gmail etc.

Apps page in Google Chrome

This tutorial is intended for Google Chrome 8 running on Windows machine, if your are on Mac or Linux, you might want to read the original story at Google OS blog.

Upgrade To Facebook New Profile

December 6, 2010 by bharath

Facebook has finally decided to give a facelift to the Facebook profiles. The new Facebook profile page will have basic information like where are you from, where you studied, your work location etc. Below that, there are some recent pictures where you have been recently tagged.

Below your profile pic, you will find some of your featured friends. Facebook lets you to choose the features friends from your list of friends, whom you feel are more important to you. You may create new groups of friends or may also choose to feature existing friend lists.

The new Facebook profiles also enables you to share your interest and activities. You can list the projects that you worked for your employer (you can also tag co-workers who worked with you!), favorite music bands, sports teams, political affiliations, and your favorite people you admire etc.

Facebook’s new “infinite scroll” feature lets you easily browse your photos. You can now search in the Friends page with number of dimensions like: search by name, hometown etc.

How To Start Using New Facebook Profile ?

1. Go to facebook.com/about/profile and click “Get the New Profile” button.

2. The page will list some of your information that Facebook already has. Click the “Edit Profile” link to add some more details about you.

When you are done, your new profile page will look like the one shown in the above pic, and all of your friends will be notified showing that you now have the new profile.

Please note that once you upgrade to new profile, there is no option to get back to the older version of the Facebook profile as of now. All the Facebook profile pages of your friends will be shown in the newer format no matter whether they are using the new profile version or older one.

via Facebook blog

[Tip] Force Chrome To Use Flash Player 10.2 Beta

December 4, 2010December 4, 2010 by bharath

Google Chrome logo

Adobe has recently updated the Flash Player and released the beta version of the Flash Player 10.2. The newer version included a major feature upgrades like Stage Video hardware acceleration which decreases your CPU utilisation when playing HD videos. When you download the flash player and install, you will understand that it’s only going to be used by all the browsers except Google Chrome. You may wonder why is Google Chrome left alone! But the fact is that Google Chrome (32-bit browser) includes a built-in Adobe Flash Player. Chrome automatically updates the Flash Player whenever there is new version of Chrome is released.

So even though you have installed the beta version of Flash Player 10.2, Chrome still uses the stable version of the flash player. To make Google Chrome use the 10.2 beta version instead, follow these steps:

1. Open Google Chrome, type about:plugins in the address bar and hit enter.

2. Expand the “Details” button on the upper right corner

3. Under the “Flash”, you should see two versions, one is the integrated plug-in and the other is the system plug-in file.

If you are on Windows, the location of the integrated plug-in would be :

C:\Users\<UserName>\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Applications\<version>\gcswf32.dll

location of the system plug-in would be:

C:\Windows\system32\Macromed\Flash\NPSWF32.dll

If you are on other platforms, these are file names for the integrated and system plug-ins:

Platform	Integrated Plug-in	System Plug-in
Windows	gcswf32.dll	NPSWF32.dll
Mac OS	Flash Player Plug-in for Chrome.plugin	Flash Player.plugin
Linux	libflashplayergc.so	libflashplayer.so

4. To force Chrome to use the beta version of the flash player, you must disable the integrated plug-in gcswf32.dll (i.e the plugin that is found in the Chrome folder) as shown. Click “Disable” button against it.

Disable integrated flash plugin in chrome

And when you have done that, it should look like this:

Disabled integrated flash plugin in chrome

That is it! Restart Google Chrome and see if the browser is able to load the flash content on the pages( ex: this Stage Video). If it is able to do, then it is to understood that the it is making use of the beta version of the flash player.

Note:

If you disable the Google Chrome’s integrated flash player plug-in, you will no longer receive the important security updates for the built-in plug-in and you need to use the system installed plug-in which has to be updated manually. Also, disabling this built-in Chrome plug-in will disable the Google Chrome’s sandboxing techniques incorporated to make the plug-in more secure. It is highly recommended that you use the integrated plug-in unless you really want to test some features using flash player beta on Chrome.

If you want to enable the integrated plug-in back, enable it in the step 4 to make run Chrome using it.

[via]

Fix The AVG Post Update Issue With Windows 7 64-Bit Computers

December 3, 2010 by bharath

64-bit Windows 7 users who are using the free AVG 2011 edition and downloaded the free update 271.1.1/3292 (432/3292) released yesterday have found that this update conflicts with Windows 7 and make it non-bootable, when they tried to restart the system just after installing the update. The affected systems fail to boot the Windows leaving an error message:

STOP: c0000135 The program can’t start because %hs is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the program to fix this problem.

AVG responded quickly to do the damage control and issued a few fixes addressing this post update 3292 issue. Apparently AVG has pulled the update from their servers and issued a detailing on how to fix it:

Fixing the Windows 7 64-Bit Issue Post AVG Update:

According to the information issued by AVG,

>> If you have installed the AVG 271.1.1/3292 (432/3292) update and haven’t restarted your system even after the prompt by the AVG to do so, you are lucky. Just install this Fixcorex utility from AVG, this will undo all the changes affected by the update and you can safely restart your Windows after you run this program.

[or]

Alternatively you can delete the following files manually from your system:

C:\Program Files\AVG\AVG10\avgrsx.exe

C:\Program Files\AVG\AVG10\avgrsa.exe

C:\Program Files\AVG\AVG10\avgchsvx.exe

C:\Program Files\AVG\AVG10\avgchsva.exe

>> Critical- If the AVG update has dumped your Windows: If you have already installed and restarted your machine and not able to get into your Windows 7 installation, read this tutorial to fix the issue.

The issue was reported in some Windows 7 users running 64-bit OS. If you have not downloaded the update your system is fine and no need to worry at all.

[Tip] Start YouTube Video From A Specific Time

December 2, 2010 by bharath

We all love YouTube and the ever increasing millions of videos continually posted on it. We like to share the videos with friends over various social networking platforms (yeah, for the same reason, youtu.be URL shortening service was launched by Google!). Everything is fine and cool, no problem with sharing and watching as long as videos that you share are short in length. But what do you do when you need to share a video which is a bit longer and you wanted to emphasize on only specific portion of the video? Yeah, YouTube has added support to quickly skip or start any video from specific time frame. To do this, you just had to append the time (“t=”) parameter to the URL of the video. Where you can specify the time in seconds (or in minutes) to instruct the video to load from that particular time.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suTDT6-Q8NE#t=61s                
                     or
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suTDT6-Q8NE#t=1m1s

If you open the above URL in your browser, you can see that the video starts from 1 minute 1 second mark.

Now YouTube has decided to cut down this manual work on the users’ part. When you watch any video, just right-click on it and you will see a new “Copy video URL at current time”. You will now have the URL with “t= “ parameter appended to the video automatically corresponding to the point of the time in the video at which you selected this option.

Copy Video URL at current time

[Via] Labnol