Timeless Tales

• Connect your Pen Drive or USB drive to your computer .
• Now a dialogue window will popup asking you to choose among the options as shown in the figure.
  

• Don't choose any of them , Just simply click Cancel.
• *Now go to Start--> Run and type cmd to open the Command Prompt window .
• *Now go to My Computer and Check the Drive letter of your USB drive or Pen Drive . ( E.g. If it is written Kingston (I:) , then I: will be the drive letter .)

• *In the Command Window ( cmd ) , type the drive letter: and Hit Enter .

• *Now type dir/w/o/a/p and Hit Enter
• *You will get a list of files . In the list , search if anyone of the following do exist
• 1. Autorun.inf
• 2. New Folder.exe
• 3. Bha.vbs
• 4. Iexplore.vbs
• 5. Info.exe
• 6. New_Folder.exe
• 7. Ravmon.exe
• 8. RVHost.exe or any other files with .exe Extension .
• If you find any one of the files above , Run the command attrib -h -r -s -a *.* and Hit Enter.
• Now Delete each File using the following Command del filename ( E.g del autorun.inf ) .
• That's it . Now just scan your USB drive with the anti virus you have to ensure that you made your Pen Drive free of Virus .

If Apple has not yet launched the new iPhone in your country, but if could somehow you managed to get one.You can unlock it to use it on any GSM Network using a tool called Pwange.It can also unlock/jailbreak iPhone 2G or iPod Touch on Firm ware 2.0

What is JailBreaking an iPhone??

Jailbreaking is the means of modifying the iPhone’s file system in order to install other application that are not provided or approved by Apple to be used with the iPhone, but remember that this can cause problems and void the warranty.

Currently, Pwnage Tool 2.0 is compatible with Mac and supports the following devices and firmwares:

1. iPhone (1st Gen) with 2.0: Activated, Unlocked & Jailbroken, (with support for third party applications).
2. iPod Touch with 2.0: Activated & Jailbroken, (with support for third party applications).
3. iPhone (3G) with 2.0: Activated, Jailbroken (with support for third party applications).

Download Pwnage Tool 2.0 (Mirror 1)

Check out the tutorial by SizzedCore on How to unlock the iPhone using the Pwnage Tool.

Via - Sizlopedia.

There are emails and emails and then their is GMAIL. I thought all their was to an email is a unique id and the usual read, compose, send cycle. Then I came across this nice little GMail tip tucked somewhere in a Google How to. And as all tips go, this one can be put to some nice uses. If you are reading this tip for the first time, its all thanks to the Google geeks, say the thanks not to me. Just as I "discovered" it and found some uses for it, I hope you do too.

So here's the little tip for all you GMail users and the GMail newbie.

Let's say your address is SantaClaus@gmail.com (Believe me, Uncle Santa would be the happiest to get this tip. It will take care of all his mails on Christmas Eve)

Any email sent to the permutations of the id will be forwarded to your email. What kind of permutations, you might ask? Like these, for example -

Santa.Claus@gmail.com

S.antaClaus@gmail.com

Sant.aClaus@gmail.com

...and so on with the dots.

You can play around with the placement of the dots. The fun doesn't end here. You can place multiple dots too, like - S.a.n.t.a.C.l.a.u.s@gmail.com, though anybody with such an id would be quite "dotty" !

Their is another interesting feature up GMail's sleeve and it is called 'Plus Addressing'. The way it works is simplicity itself. You can tweak your main GMail account for some special purposes. Just follow me...

First go to the Settings option in your Email. Navigate to Filters  Create new filter.

Here in the "To" field enter your email ID + the name you would like to create. For e.g.; if your GMail ID is SantaClaus@gmail.com, you can create a filter - SantaClaus+gifts@gmail.com for all your mails regarding gifts.

Next you need to specify where you would like the mails to this ID sent to. You can select any of the five options...

Now, as Santa you can use the SantaClaus+gifts@gmail.com and all your mails using this id will be filtered according to your selection.

This is quite handy for organizing your Inbox. For example, their may be some forum mails or newsletter which you just want to archive for a later read. You can use a specially created id just like this for sorting them. Another use that I find really useful is to use this feature to create a temporary id and delete it when I no longer need it. I am sure you will be able to find your own uses for this nifty GMail trick.

As for Santa, does he have a GMail id?

There is a lot of useful information on the web nowadays. In this case I would like to talk about eBooks. Books or eBooks can be very handy, and you can find almost any book that you can remember. You can find older books or books that are still on the shelves.

Only a small amount of people don't know what eBooks are. Almost everyone has used one before.

I gathered some websites with free eBooks for download hopping they can come in handy.

FreeTechBooks.com

This site lists free online computer science, engineering and programming books, textbooks and lecture notes, all of which are legally and freely available over the Internet.

Classical Authors Library

Here you can find the Classical Authors library containing over 1000 books. All the books you wished to read but you can't find or just don't want to buy, here they are. All the classic books you heard about all your life.

Tech Books For Free Download

This one has programming books. They go from Java to Python through C/C++. It also has books on database, security, and more. All you ever wanted to know about these areas, even if you are already an expert.

Free Ebook Downloads

This one has more categories than I can remember. This website can seem a bit confusing with all the Google adverts, but the info is there and it is worth it.

There are much more websites for free books out there, but these four will keep you entertained for a few weeks.

Why would you want to map a folder to a drive letter? Maybe some folder you work with constantly is hidden under a convoluted folder structure, like:

‘U:\Data\User Files\Shared\Clients\VIPClient\Pensky File\Project 232\’

Wouldn’t it be easier to refer to it as: R:\ ?

This is pretty common to do with network locations under Tools -> Map Network Drive. However I didn’t know of a way to do this with local folders until recently. You can either do it via command line or use a simple program known as Visual Subst.

(1) Using “subst” command

Under Windows, there is a legacy dos command named “subst”:

C:\>subst /?
Associates a path with a drive letter.

SUBST [drive1: [drive2:]path]
SUBST drive1: /D

drive1: Specifies a virtual drive to which you want to assign a path.
[drive2:]path Specifies a physical drive and path you want to assign to
a virtual drive.
/D Deletes a substituted (virtual) drive.

Type SUBST with no parameters to display a list of current virtual drives.

C:\>

(2) Visual Subst

Fortunately there is an easier way to utilize this command than having to remember the command line every time you want to use your files. The free windows program Visual Subst will manage these drives for you.

This program will not only allow you to create these ‘Virtual Drives’ but will also set them up on reboot.

From their site, download the installer if you plan on having it apply the virtual drives on startup. That way, it will install a start menu link for you and give you ready access to all virtual drives.

For anyone who works with a long folder name constantly, you will find that this really helps out when you are dealing with anything that needs to access these folders a lot!

Make the Folder Invisible (not hidden)

This works both on Windows XP and Vista, not sure about other Win versions. What this will do is make selected folder invisble, not hidden. The folder will be only visible when you try to highlight it (see below). If you want to make sure that no one discovers it by chance then also move it to the corner of the screen.

How to Create Invisible Folder ?

1. Create a new folder.

2. Rename: Highlight the folder and Click ‘F2′ button. Hold the ‘Alt’ key and type in 0160 (you won’t see those 0160 numbers while typing them). Press Enter. Note, you have to use the numpad to enter these numbers.

3. Change icon: Righ click the folder >> Properties >> Customize >> Change the icon >> Select the blank one >> Ok.



4. Done.

If you use Google (and who doesn’t? Oh! well maybe these people don’t), here are a few simple, interesting and useful Google search tips and facts you may have forgotten all about:

1. The asterisk is a search wildcard. For example, searching for three*mice finds three blind mice, three button mice, etc.

2. Google search currently has a hard limit of 32 words - that’s keywords and special syntax combined. Search terms after the first 32 words are ignored.

3. Google’s Boolean default is AND, which means that, if you enter query words without modifiers, Google will search for all of your query words.

4. The Google synonym operator, the ~ (tilde) character, placed in front of any number of keywords in your query, asks Google to include not only exact matches, but also what it thinks are synonyms for each of the keywords. For example, search for ~legal, you will get results for lawyer, attorney, law, etc.

5. Google is case insensitive. If you search for Three, three, THREE, even ThrEE, you get the same results.

6. Numrange searches for results containing numbers in a given range. Just add two numbers, separated by two periods, with no spaces, into the search box along with your search terms. For example, If you’re looking to spend $800 to $1,000 on a nice 3 to 6 megapixel digital SLR camera, Google for: slr digital camera 3..6 megapixel $800..1000.

7. Page size in Google results is never going to be more than 101 KB. That’s because Google doesn’t index more than 101 KB worth of a given web page.

These days when you want to learn how to do something, the web is usually a wise first port of call. One of the many positive developments of Web 2.0 has been the rise of a whole bunch of high quality web apps dedicated to sharing knowledge online.

In this post, I want to help you tap into 14 innovative social and non-social communities dedicated to helping you learn online: from being more productive to playing guitar along to your favorite song.

Learn to cook

1. imcooked is a web community dedicated to filming and uploading cooking videos.

2. iFoods.tv is another food video community, but this one features professionally produced tutorial videos.

Learn to mix drinks with what you have

3. ExtraTasty allows you to search drink recipes or enter the ingredients you have into the ‘My Bar’ section of the site. Doing so will narrow down the search to only drinks you can make with the ingredients you currently have in your bar.

Learn what rare words mean

4. Definr is a minimalist web interface that performs one important function: to instantly define the word you input. You’ll receive search results almost before you’ve finished typing, and can get a definition with a single click.

Learn to play music

5. Show Me How To Play is the musician’s web app. There’s plenty of free videos available you can use to learn some really great tracks.

Learn another language

6. italki helps you find a language partner, get answers, share files, get language resources and join groups. If you’re learning a language but don’t know anyone to practice with, this web app could be the answer to your woes.

Learn how to make stuff

7. Instructables is an online community of enterprising DIY fanatics who share and use tutorials on doing just about everything under the sun: from building a gingerbread house to constructing a garage from the ground up.

Learn where the cool events are happening

8. Flavorpill is a very hip events aggregator for key American cities.

Learn to live sustainably

9. Make Me Sustainable is a social community for people trying to live in a more sustainable way. The Carbon and Energy Portfolio Manager is a neat way to keep tabs on your impact.

10. Carbonrally promises to help you reduce global warming (in a small way) by undertaking quick and easy challenges.

Learn to manage your finances

11. Mint is an award-winning secure web app to help you manage your finances. It helps you track debt, view multiple accounts simultaneously and keep track of your income and your expenses. The slick interface also includes a number of visualization options.

Learn to be more productive

12. Remember the Milk helps you create simple to-do lists for everyday tasks.

Learn where to go

13. Wikitravel is a user-generated worldwide travel guide currently serving over 17,000 locations. If you don’t want to spend money on a glossy travel guide, Wikitravel should do the trick.

Learn where your site’s visitors are clicking

14. Crazy Egg generates a heat map of your site to help visualize where your visitors are clicking and navigating. Measure the performance of ads and which elements of your navigation aren’t working as they should be.

please share in the comments about any other good Web Apps you knw..

You might have seen it before on someone else's laptop, and wondered how you can get down with the hibernation game. Why doesn't it show up by default on your shutdown screen?? Don't have hibernation envy!

I'm referring to seeing 4 options to choose from on your Shut Down menu of Windows XP. After this hack the Hibernate option will stay there without the need to press the Shift key any more.

Well- let's get to it:

The first thing to do is get a hold of Microsoft's hotfix KB893056. MS wants you to call its customer support to get it, but instead- you can use this web-form to request it immediately.

After we installed the hotfix, we need to make some small registry changes. Get it here

For those of you working in a Workgroup environment and using the friendly "Welcome Screen" you need to run the Reg-file called: "1 AddToShutdown". If you use the classic logon screen you can also run the 2nd Reg-file to set Hibernate as the default action in the menu.

When you're finished just restart the machine and check it out!

Needless to says that you must have the Hibernate feature on in your Control Panel's Power Options. or else nothing would appear obviously.

Enjoy :-)

Here’s one software that productivity nuts will love. If you’ve ever needed to catalog files, change extensions, add something to a filename in large batches you know the suffering that is “right click, select, type, enter” done over and over and over again. If you need a tool that can simply edit filenames, rename extensions and so on in a very powerful, customizable way, read on!

I set out to find some sort of tool because I need to catalog files in batches of 100 about every two days. I get a batch of stuff in txt format and I need to do the following operations.

• I need the files to be in the following format [ID - Number.txt]
• I also need them in this format [ID - Number.html]

Practically this means that I need “032 - 001.txt”, “032 - 002.txt” and so on (all the way to 100), also in .html format and I need to be able to customize all of this because for the next batch I will need “033″ at the beginning.

Doing a Google search and trying a lot of free software that popped up I finally found Batch File Renamer. Not a fancy name, not a fancy program, but it gets the job done better than I’ve seen with other apps. First, head over to the Cerebral Synergy download page, scroll down and download Batch File Renamer.

Once installed go to a folder where you wish to rename the files. Right click on the folder and select “Batch rename files…”. The tool will be launched and you are greeted with a somewhat stark and daunting interface. At the top-left you can navigate through folders, on the right you can see all the files in the folder. By clicking on the checkboxes you can add or remove files from the renaming list.

So take a look at some files in one of my folders, the naming is all over the place. I just launch file renamer and apply the following settings. First of all, I go to the “Change Name” box on the bottom left. I check “Catalog Files” and set the start number to 001. I also go to the “Edit Name” part on the bottom right and I prefix file names with the number I need, let’s choose “032 - “. You will need a space both before and after the hyphen if you want it spaced out like I have it. I leave all other options unchanged.

Click “Start” at the bottom, and click no if you don’t need to see the output first, yes if you do (I usually click no) and let ‘er rip. It will rename all files in a jiffy and you will be left with a nicely cataloged list, take a look to the right to see what happened to mine.

I mentioned that I also need the extension to be changed to .html as well, but I need separate files for that. Just copy the folder, paste it and rename it. One folder could be called “Txt”, the other “Html”. Right click on the Html folder and run Batch File Renamer. You should see you nicely organized list of files. Let’s uncheck the catalog option and the prefix option, although if the order doesn1t matter it doesn’t really make a difference if they are renamed again. Go to extensions and check “Change all extensions to” and then type “html”. Click start and all files will be converted to html files.

Experiment with the program it’s quite versatile and usable, I think we may getting a bit too productive and organized!

Download Batch File Renamer from the Cerebral Synergy home page

It’s happened to all Windows users. After downloading Windows security updates, the PC then informs you that it needs to restart.

What’s especially annoying about this is that when it tells you this, you’re always in the middle of something important. Like writing an email or looking for Paris Hilton pictures on Google. Even if you choose the option “no”, the nag box bounces back 5 minutes later to harass you again.

Here’s how to disable the nag box telling you to re-start the computer.

Go to the start menu, choose “run” and in the box, type cmd and press enter. When the black command line box comes up, type

sc stop wuauserv and then press enter.

That’s it!

I just read a really cool trick on Sizlopedia I didn’t know about, how to hide any file inside a picture file. This could come in handy if you have some naughty secrets on your hard drive, or if you just have some sensitive data. Apparently it’s very hard to trace and find these files, but I guess if someone really wants to it’s still not impossible. You will need Winrar to pull it off, so if you don’t have it, follow the link to download the trial (which you can actually use beyond the expiry date).

First of all, you need to put the file you want to hide and the image in the same folder. Select both files and create a rar file out of them. This is easiest if you select both files right click on one of them, and select the add to rar archive option. Now you will have to open the command promt. This is found in the Start Menu, under accessories.

You will need to navigate to the folder where the files are. You can go to the parent folder using “cd..” and enter a folder using “cd foldername”. When you’re in the correct folder type “copy /b yourimage.jpg + yourrarfile.rar newimagename.jpg”. As you can see the original image file is first, then the rar file you created, and then you can specify the filename which you want to get in the end.

Thanks to Sizlopedia for the article

There is a feature in Windows which isn’t too known called the send-to menu. Right-click any file and you’ll see it there, with options to send the file to a mail recipient, fax it and so on. I find these options terribly useless, with possibly the exception of send to compressed archive, but since I use a separate tool for that it becomes redundant.

There is a way to modify that menu and put shortcuts in to whatever you want, let’s take a look at how to do it. Windows XP users, open up the run box and simply enter “sendto” and you’re there. Windows Vista users need to type “%APPDATA%\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo” into the same place. Vista stores all this in the folder “Users\User\Appdara\Microsoft\SenTo” and the %APPDATA% string will whisk you away to that folder with your current user.

Once there you can create and delete shortcuts as usual, and you will be able to access them from the right-click menu. I use this heavily in my job where I assign different tasks to people. I usually process 5-10 at once and them send them to 1-3 people. When I’m done with one, I quickly send it to the Assignments folder. All the assignments I need to send will be copied there, so I can just pull them into an email as an attachment and delete them when done. This is a great way to productively manage work flow like this actually!

Yes, it takes only 7 shortcuts, master them and you’ll defintiely be a lot faster. These 7 shortcuts are meant to make browsing and basic PC tasks easier. While couple of shortcuts are Firefox only, most should work pretty much on any browser.

Mouse Scroll Button

Anyone who spends a considerable amount of time on the web should find this shortcut absolutely invaluable. I am not sure about whether this works in IE 7, but if you use Firefox then you can use your mouse scroll button to open links in a new tab. It’s a finger-tip shortcut to the frequently used ‘right click -> Open Link in New Tab’ combination. Plus, since it’s at your finger tips it’s really easy to get used to it.

Quick Searches

There are two things that makes Firefox my favorite, one is tabs and the other is quick searches. I am surprised by the amount of people who still don’t know about it. If you haven’t tried it before you should definitely do so now.

Firefox’s Quick Search functionality allows you to set up one-click acess to searching your favorite websites. Whether it’s Wikipedia, IMDB, Youtube… whatever, by setting up a Quick Search for any of these websites you will be able to search it rite from the address bar.

How to:

• 1. Go to the website you want to setup a quick search for.
• 2. Right click on the search field and select ‘Add a Keyword for this Search…’
• 3. Come up with a short word and enter it into ‘Keyword’ field.
• 4. Press OK.
• 5. Next time you want to search that website just go to the address bar and type-in the keyword and the search term.

Open New Tab Window

Firefox only. Basically clicking on Ctrl+T opens a new blank tab. It’s also the easiest one to remember.

Using Google as unit converter

Need to convert USD to EUR ? Maybe miles to kilometers? Whatever the units are, you can instantly do it with Google. Just type-in your querry (”45 GBP in USD”, “31 miles in km”) as any other search term and search. Google will instantly convert entered units and show you the result.

OpenDNS

Keeping a long story short, this one lets you speed-up and secure your web connection. There is nothing to download or install, all you need to do is open your connection settings and change the DNS servers to the ones provided by OpenDNS. For step-by-step howto and video demo see OpenDNS review here.

Show Desktop Shortcut

‘Windows Button + D’ collpases all active windows to the Taskbar. If at any given time you need to get to some icon on your desktop, that is the fastest way to get there.

Copy, Paste and Cut

These 3 shortcuts are the holy grail of a speedy user. They are a absolute must-know and work pretty much anywhere.

• Ctrl + C: Copy
• Ctrl + V: Paste
• Ctrl + X: Cut

Got another ground shattering shortcut ? Let everyone know about it in comments.

Your computer running Windows isn’t running in the same speed that it used to run when you first used it. It’s slower, crappy, takes a while to start and tests your patience like anything. There are many reasons for this, let’s try fixing up a few things on your slow Windows PC:

Slow Start Up
There can be a variety of reasons to Windows loading slow during start up. Go to Run, type msconfig and hit enter. Under the ‘Start Up’ tab, uncheck the unwanted programs and press OK. Things should be a bit fine the next time Windows boots.

Another program worth mentioning here is StartUp Delayer which will help in setting after how much time programs should be loaded after Windows boots. For instance, you could set your instant messenger program to load 50 seconds after Windows starts up.

Slow Loading Start Menu
If the Start Menu items are loading slowly, you can open the Registry Editor by typing in the Run menu ‘regedit.exe’ and pressing Enter. Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop. Look for MenuShowDelay, and double click to edit the value. The lower the number specified, the faster the Start Menu will load.

Slow Right Click Context Menu
Probably the Windows Right Click menu on your computer is loading slow because too many programs added unwanted entries there. Just download this program called Mmm, install it and then modify your context menu to remove unwanted items to speed it up.

Slow Send To Menu
If the Send To menu loads slowly, you can type ’sendto’ in the Run Dialog, and remove unwanted items in the Explorer Window that appears. This should add some speed to it.

Slow Defragmentation
The Windows Defragmenter can’t get any slower. You need to have an alternative to the Windows Defragmenter, and Defraggler is just one of the best ones available in the market. It’s free, and works like a charm and can speed up defragmentation manifold. For some alternatives, see Five Free Programs to Defragment your PC.

Slow loading My Computer Window
If the My Computer Window loads slowly, in the Explorer Window, go to Tools >> Folder Options >> View and uncheck ‘Automatically search for network folders and printers”

Slow loading Add or Remove Programs Applet
This is one of the most annoying piece of programs present in Windows, it takes ages to load if you have a considerable number of programs installed on your computer. You can either use the all-in-one CCleaner for this purpose, or get MyUninstaller that comes as a speedy replacement for Add or Remove Programs.

Slow Ending of Unresponsive Programs
If you’ve clicked on ‘End Task’ if any program is running unresponsive, you might have noticed that the program is not terminated immediately. You can alter this by going to Run >> regedit.exe >> HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\ and change this value to 1000.

Disable Animations and Appearance Overhauls to maximize performance
If you’re a serious performance junkie, you probably won’t bother about eyecandy. Go to System Properties in the Control Panel. Click ‘Advanced’, then ‘Performance’ and click ‘Adjust for best performance’. This might boost your PC’s performance up a bit.

Additional Tips:

- Always keep your computer clean. Remove Junk and Unnecessary registry entries. Use CCleaner for this purpose, one excellent tool that just does what it says.

- Don’t keep installing software. Install a program only if it really serves you a purpose.

- Keep as less programs as possible running on the System Tray. This essentially means reducing the number of programs that start during Windows start up.

Pidgin (formerly GAIM) is a good multi protocal messaging client. I won’t say it’s the best out there, but it’s still good and worth using. If you frequently hang out on multiple instant messengers, dispose them all and start using Pidgin. Here are some tips for those who’re using Pidgin already and those who’ve just downloaded it:

Plugins

Ah! Most Open Source applications allow you to install plugins to add additional features, and Pidgin is no exception. It comes with a set of plugins that are deactivated by default. You can go to Tools >> Plugins to configure them.

Buddy Notes and Buddy Status Notifications are two cool plugins among others in the list. Can’t get enough from Pidgin? Want character counter? Maybe a plugin to synchronize your chat history across multiple PCs? Add more functionality with more plugins. Even more plugins here.

Buddy Pounces

This is a relatively powerful feature in Pidgin, and could turn very useful. Basically, it’s like making Pidgin perform an action when a buddy signs in/out/sends a message and so on.

You could set sound alerts, make Pidgin automatically open the chat window, or execute a command or an application.

So how do you set up Buddy Pounces? Just go Tools >> Buddy Pounces and click ‘Add’ to configure.

Control Idle Status

From Tools >> Preferences >> Status/Idle, you can control settings related to your Idle Status. You can configure Pidgin to report idle status based on keyboard/mouse use, or last message, the minutes before idle status and also set the status message to be displayed if you go idle.

Chat History

You can set Pidgin to log chats and conversations in basic text/html format by going to Tools >> Preferences >> Logging.

Themes

The beauty of Open Source, may be. There are a variety of themes available for Pidgin, and you could grab one yourself and give a new look to the multi protocol IM. Get Pidgin themes from here (search for pidgin).

Customize Fonts

Yes, that’s possible. If you dislike the default font sizes, you can alter them from the Tools >> Preferences >> Conversations dialog box.

So how do you start:-


Step 2) Write stuff that's interesting for people to read. They should visit you often.

Step 3) Be observant...be on a lookout for interesting happenings around.

In case you need tips on how to draw traffic to your blog, go through this post.

Will be coming up with a post on Adsense. So keep hooked!!
In the meanwhile, Happy Blogging!!

It's worth going through & trying your luck at. I'll try mine...maybe little later :-)

Here's a small tip...courtesy an email forward from a friend -





Amazing, Simple & true. Thanks to MS & the guy who sent me the e-mail forward.