Computer World
The survey for those who make websites!
Jan 18th
Recently I came to this page where a survey was made for the web developers. I attended it. It is worth a try. You could know what you are doing by attending it. Come on.. Take it!
Take the survey directly! Click HERE
Tweak Your Windows Performance – Tested, Works!
Nov 25th
Well who doesn’t need a performance boost to their computer? Well may be someone who have a ‘Dell Studio’ with 4 GB ram and 1GB graphics card will laugh about performance boost… 
Anyway there are people like me who need little tweaks to speed up their system. Heres some simple steps to make your windows work faster..
There are a few unwanted “features” windows offer that eats up your CPU, they are good tools though but if performance comes above visual effects in your priority list then this trick is for you..
On Windows :
- Right Click on ‘My Computer’ select ‘Properties’
(Short-cut: Win Key + Pause/Break) - If you are using Windows Vista, Click on the ‘Advanced system settings’ on the left panel
- Now you are in ‘System Properties’ window, click on the ‘Advanced’ tab
- Saw the ‘Performance’ section? click ‘Settings’ next to it
More >
How to download Official Windows Updates?
Nov 10th
Ever thought of downloading Windows Updates from their site without using ‘Automatic Updates’? If you are a ‘techie’ you must have thought of it at least once. Here is a simple way to do this :
- Go to the Windows Update Web Site. Make sure you open it in Internet Explorer, for some reason this site wont open in any other browsers!
- In the left panel, under Other Options, select “Personalize Windows Update”.
- Under “Set Options for Windows Update”, select the checkbox for “Display the Link to Windows Update Catalog under ‘See Also’”, then click “Save Settings”. More >
Hidden Tools in Windows XP
Oct 31st
Do you know? There are lots of tools that makes your life easier by configuring them in your Windows XP? But some of the cool tools are hidden by Microsoft for some reason, dont ask me why.. Anyway here are a handful of them..
To run any of these apps go to ‘Start’ => ‘Run’ and type the executable name (ie charmap).
- Character Map = charmap.exe (very useful for finding unusual characters)
- Disk Cleanup = cleanmgr.exe
- Clipboard Viewer = clipbrd.exe (views contents of Windows clipboard)
- Dr Watson = drwtsn32.exe (Troubleshooting tool)
- DirectX diagnosis = dxdiag.exe (Diagnose & test DirectX, video & sound cards)
- Private character editor = eudcedit.exe (allows creation or modification of characters)
- IExpress Wizard = iexpress.exe (Create self-extracting / self-installing package)
- Microsoft Synchronization Manager = mobsync.exe (appears to allow synchronization of files on the network for when working offline. Apparently undocumented).
- Windows Media Player 5.1 = mplay32.exe (Retro version of Media Player, very basic).
- ODBC Data Source Administrator = odbcad32.exe (something to do with databases)
- Object Packager = packager.exe (to do with packaging objects for insertion in files, appears to have comprehensive help files).
- System Monitor = perfmon.exe (very useful, highly configurable tool, tells you everything you ever wanted to know about any aspect of PC performance, for upper-geeks only ) More >
15 Useful Mozilla Firefox Tricks! Make it faster and better!
Oct 9th
Everybody’s favorite open-source browser, Firefox, is great right out of the box. And by adding some of the awesome extensions available out there, the browser just gets better and better.
In my case I love Firefox 
, its the best I think. Anyway its your choice, but please stay away from IE 6 or earlier. They are really waste to display modern sites.
But look under the hood, and there are a bunch of hidden (and some not-so-secret) tips and tricks available that will crank Firefox up and pimp your browser. Make it faster, cooler, more efficient. Get to be a Jedi master with the following cool Firefox tricks.
- More screen space. Make your icons small. Go to View – Toolbars – Customize and check the “Use small icons” box.
- Smart keywords. If there’s a search you use a lot (let’s say IMDB.com’s people search), this is an awesome tool that not many people use. Right-click on the search box, select “Add a Keyword for this search”, give the keyword a name and an easy-to-type and easy-to-remember shortcut name (let’s say “actor”) and save it. Now, when you want to do an actor search, go to Firefox’s address bar, type “actor” and the name of the actor and press return. Instant search! You can do this with any search box. Note : In newer Firefox you have to goto ‘Manage search engines’ then select ‘Edit Keywords’.
- Keyboard shortcuts. This is where you become a real Jedi. It just takes a little while to learn these, but once you do, your browsing will be super fast. Here are some of the most common (and my personal favs):
- Spacebar (page down)
- Shift+Spacebar (page up)
- Ctrl+F (find)
- Alt+N (find next)
- Ctrl+D (bookmark page)
- Ctrl+T (new tab)
- Ctrl+K (go to search box)
- Ctrl+L (go to address bar)
- Ctrl+= (increase text size)
- Ctrl+- (decrease text size)
- Ctrl+W (close tab)
- F5 (reload)
- Alt+Home (go to home page)
- Auto-complete. This is another keyboard shortcut, but it’s not commonly known and very useful. Go to the address bar (Control+L) and type the name of the site without the “www” or the “.com”. Let’s say “google”. Then press Control+Enter, and it will automatically fill in the “www” and the “.com” and take you there – like magic! For “.net” addresses, press Shift+Enter, and for “.org” addresses, press Control+Shift+Enter. Cool right?
- Tab navigation. Instead of using the mouse to select different tabs that you have open, use the keyboard. Here are the shortcuts:
- Ctrl+Tab (rotate forward among tabs)
- Ctrl+Shift+Tab (rotate to the previous tabs)
- Ctrl+1 to 9 (choose a number to jump to a specific tab)
- Mouse shortcuts. Sometimes you’re already using your mouse and it’s easier to use a mouse shortcut than to go back to the keyboard. Master these cool ones:
- Middle click on link (opens in new tab)
- Shift+Scroll Down (previous page)
- Shift+Scroll Up (next page)
- Ctrl-scroll up (decrease text size)
- Ctrl-scroll down (increase text size)
- Middle click on a tab (closes tab)
- Delete items from address bar history. Firefox’s ability to automatically show previous URLs you’ve visited, as you type, in the address bar’s drop-down history menu is very cool. But sometimes you just don’t want those URLs to show up (I won’t ask why ). Go to the address bar (Ctrl-L), start typing an address, and the drop-down menu will appear with the URLs of pages you’ve visited with those letters in them. Use the down-arrow to go down to an address you want to delete, and press the Delete key to make it disappear.
- User chrome. If you really want to trick out your Firefox, you’ll want to create a UserChrome.css file and customize your browser. It’s a bit complicated to get into here, but check out for this tutorial soon.
- Create a user.js file. Another way to customize Firefox, creating a user.js file can really speed up your browsing. You’ll need to create a text file named user.js in your profile folder. You can find custom built user.js file at techlifeweb.com.
- about:config The true power user’s tool, about.config isn’t something to mess with if you don’t know what a setting does. You can get to the main configuration screen by putting about:config in the browser’s address bar.
- Add a keyword for a bookmark. Go to your bookmarks much faster by giving them keywords. Right-click the bookmark and then select Properties. Put a short keyword in the keyword field, save it, and now you can type that keyword in the address bar and it will go to that bookmark.
- Speed up Firefox. If you have a broadband connection (and most of us do), you can use pipelining to speed up your page loads. This allows Firefox to load multiple things on a page at once, instead of one at a time (by default, it’s optimized for dialup connections). Here’s how:
- Type “about:config” into the address bar and hit return. Type “network.http” in the filter field, and change the following settings (double-click on them to change them):
- Set “network.http.pipelining” to “true”
- Set “network.http.proxy.pipelining” to “true”
- Set “network.http.pipelining.maxrequests” to a number like 30.
This will allow it to make 30 requests at once. - Also, right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it “nglayout.initialpaint.delay” and set its value to “0”.
This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.
- NOTE : I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY PROBLEM OCCURED DUE TO CHANGING UNWANTED SETTINGS
- Limit RAM usage. If Firefox takes up too much memory on your computer, you can limit the amount of RAM it is allowed to us. Again, go to about:config, filter “browser.cache” and select “browser.cache.disk.capacity”. It’s set to 50000, but you can lower it, depending on how much memory you have. Try 15000 if you have between 512MB and 1GB ram.
- Reduce RAM usage further for when Firefox is minimized. This setting will move Firefox to your hard drive when you minimize it, taking up much less memory. And there is no noticeable difference in speed when you restore Firefox, so it’s definitely worth a go. Again, go to about:config, right-click anywhere and select New-> Boolean. Name it “config.trim_on_minimize” and set it to TRUE. You have to restart Firefox for these settings to take effect.
- Move or remove the close tab button. Do you accidentally click on the close button of Firefox’s tabs? You can move them or remove them, again through about:config. Edit the preference for “browser.tabs.closeButtons”. Here are the meanings of each value:
- 0: Display a close button on the active tab only
- 1: (Default) Display close buttons on all tabs
- 2: Don’t display any close buttons
- 3: Display a single close button at the end of the tab bar (Firefox 1.x behavior)
Into the world of jQuery..
Oct 5th
As you must have noted by now am a freelance web-developer. Just recently I started learning JavaScript with jQuery. Yeah I know, as always too late to get into these stuff..
Well jQuery features made my eyes open! Wow! It is so simple yet powerful, you could edit the DOM – Document Object Model ‘anytime’ after the loading so easily. and the effects, widgets, themes, all of it makes Web Development a child’s play! So I started playing with it too. I’m currently renewing my personal website to this ‘Feature-Rich’ environment.
I wanted my website to be creative yet simple. I didn’t wanted it to be a bloggy-style one. So I started checking out for my other options, suddenly I got this idea, why not Vista? I am using one. Why can’t I give my site a ‘Vista Compatible’ mode? So I started working with the ‘Vista Project’. I named it ’WowVista’ please don’t ask me why I can’t answer that, “Trade Secret” ;P
I hope it gives you a Vista look and feel. Enjoy!
iPhone can be hacked with a single SMS!
Aug 1st
Charlie Miller, the hacker who discovered a hole in the new Apple Safari in ten seconds in the Pwn2Own contest, can now take complete control of an iPhone by merely sending a text message. And no, you don’t even have to open it! 
Once taken control, the hacker can exploit the hole to make calls, steal data, send text messages, and do basically anything that the user can do with his iPhone. Miller and his partner Colin Mulliner demonstrated this scary scenario to CNET writer Elinor Mills at the Black Hat Security Conference on July 29, 2009. The two are professional researchers with a security firm and are just showing Apple the many security loopholes in their device.
