Enable/Disable iGoogle Auto Refresh

Adding ?refresh=0 to the iGoogle link will not stop iGoogle from refreshing automatically but practically it extends the time between two refresh. This is the most simplest and effective way I have discovered. This method will make iGoogle to refresh slowly..

http://www.google.com/ig?refresh=0

Free Norton Security Scan and Clean

Almost all of us get frustrated with our anti virus program installed on our computer as it my not be able to protect us from all the type of infections. Our anti virus many times does not detect and protect us against viruses in pen drive, spyware getting installed on our computer from internet and other security risks.

On the first time when you start the scan it will download all the updates required to detect and repair any virus infections found on your computer. In all this is the best program to proof check you computer for any kind of virus or trojan infections and repair them.

Download Norton Security Scan and Clean

Top free apps for iPhone 2.0

The iPhone 2.0 is out with the iTunes 7.7. A free app section can be found on iTunes Store but here is a quick round-up of the Top free really useful Apps found at the iTunes store.

Google Mobile: The original Google.com already has quite a good support for iPhone browser but this Apps get features like search as you type & quick call, etc.

• Remote: This is a wonderful app which is used for controlling your Apple or iTunes right from from your iPhone.
• Facebook: The socializing app from from Facebook. It let you set your status, watch others feed, manage your friends, chat with them, check your inbox, etc.
• Exposure: The flickr app in your pocket. Capable of browsing photos on flickr, create or read comments on pictures, see recently uploaded pictures fromyour contacts, etc.
• AIM: The IM client from AOL for your iPhone.
• Twittereffic: The twitter client for your iPhone. Do everything on Twitter from your Phone.
• NYTimes: Is there any thing better than reading NYTimes on your iPhone.
• MySpace Mobile: Another social networking app for iPhone.
• Typepad: The new way to blog, right from your iPhone.
• eReader: Read PDF eBooks on iPhone.
• Light: Turns your iPhone into a Flash light.
• To Do: For managing your tasks & notes.
• Voice Notes: Audible way of managing your tasks from your Phone.

Kosmix Search: Instant Encyclopedia

The New York Times ran an article this weekend about an emerging company, Kosmix, that takes a whole new spin on search. The article describes the Kosmix experience quite well: “For a key word or topic that a user enters, Kosmix gathers content from across the Web to build a sort of multimedia encyclopedia entry on the fly. For many queries, the results are pretty satisfying and look as if they have been compiled by a human editor, not a computer.”

My ears always perk up when I hear someone mention a search competitor to Google that shows promise. Search is a tough market that Google has pretty well cornered. But a page with dynamic, robust information from a variety of multimedia sources (including standard search results) is not a competitor so much as a suppliment, and this one is definitely worth checking out.

I’ll share a personal example to highlight the comparison between Google and Kosmix. My doctor recently sent me a letter saying my Triglycerides are slightly high - which means I need to cut back on my sugar intake (unbeknownst to you, I am possessed by a dessert vacuum that eats any and all sugary foods in sight). At first I Googled, and came up with the typical list of sites to check: WebMD, About.com and Wikipedia.

But then I tried my search on Kosmix, and rather than having to click back and forth between a bunch of links, I had whole page of information to peruse. The Kosmix page had a wikipedia summary, articles, resources, videos, images, Q&A, blogs and even tweets! I was (and still am) thoroughly impressed. It’s like an instant Encyclopedia page, but on crazy-awesome Internet steroids.

Wanna try something scary? Try Kosmixing yourself (Yes, I just used that term as a verb).

Google Summer of Code 2009

Students, want to gain real world software engineering experience and get paid? We are now accepting applications for Google Summer of Code^TM 2009, our global program to introduce university students to the wonderful world of Open Source development. For our fifth Summer of Code, students can choose from 150 Free and Open Source software projects, in technical areas as diverse as gaming to humanitarian efforts to operating system design. All accepted students will be paired with a mentor from academia or industry and will receive coaching in all aspects of software development over the course of their three month coding project. Successful students will receive a stipend of 4500 USD for their participation in the program.

Check out the program Frequently Asked Questions and the extensive set of resources for student applicants on the program wiki, then talk to your prospective mentors about your ideas. Each mentoring organization has provided an ideas list to help get your creative juices flowing and learn more about what the project needs. Our mentors are also very excited to hear from students who have their own plans for improving their code bases, so let their ideas inspire rather than constrain you.


You can find knowledgeable folks on hand to answer questions in #gsoc on Freenode and on the program discussion list, or you can keep up with our announcements on various social networking sites.


We'll be accepting student applications through April 3, 2009 at 19:00 UTC. Best of luck to all of our student applicants, and get those applications going!

RichCopy: Best File Copying Utility

RichCopy is a visual file copying utility that helps you copy or move files at a much faster rate. It has existed since the days of Windows 95 but (unless you’re working at Microsoft) you may have never heard of RichCopy before as it was an internal tool not for public use.

Microsoft has now removed those restrictions and released RichCopy as a public download though the associated license agreement (EULA) is outdated and still refers to RichCopy as an "internal tool".
RichCopy - A Better File Copying Tool

There are several reasons why you may want to use RichCopy for file copying operations on your Windows computer. First, it can copy files from multiple places (or folders) into a single location. You don’t have to run multiple copy processes for consolidating files (like music, photos, etc.) that may be spread across different directories.

And unlike the default copy process in Windows that copies files in sequence one after another, RichCopy can copy multiple files in parallel thus speeding the process.

RichCopy is especially useful when copying a large number of files or for moving big files - the tool lets you pause and resume file copy operations so if something bad happens, like a dropped network connection, you don’t have start the copy process all over again.

There’s something for geeks as well who use XCOPY on the command line. RichCopy is not just faster than XCOPY but all features available in the GUI version of RichCopy can be used from command line as well.

Backup Device Drivers

One of the major windows problem for any windows user is locating, downloading and installing the device drivers on a windows reinstall after formatting the hard drive.

In order backup all the drivers on your computer, follow the procedure given on how to use DriverBackup.

1. Download DriverBackup from here

2. Simply unzip the program to any folder and execute the program and click Start Backup to start the backup for all the drivers installed.

3. Store the backup some where on hard drive

4. That’s it Done.

You can restore the backup of the drivers any time you want, as it creates a self extracting backup.

Find Programs To Open Unknown File Types

It happens many times when you have a unknown file type, which cannot be recognized in windows with any of the program installed in your computer. In that case you have no clue about the program which can open that file, you cannot open file by double click.



OpenWith.org provides a free desktop application which lets you find out the correct program to open a unknown file type. More over it will let you download the free program alternative which can open that file.

Know New Mail notification in TitleBar

I'm often doing something on my computer and want to know if I have new mail without having to keep my Gmail window open. But if you keep Gmail minimized or in an inactive tab sometimes all you see in the browser title bar is something like "Gmail - Inbo..."

New feature to Gmail Labs called Title Tweaks that changes the order of the elements in the browser title bar to put the more important things first. Once you turn on Title Tweaks from the Labs tab under Settings, your browser title bar will display something more like "Inbox (3) - Gma...".
That way you can see how many unread messages you have even if the window is minimized.

Undo Sent mail in GMail

Sometimes I regret sending a message the morning after. Other times I send a message and then immediately notice a mistake. I forget to attach a file or email the birthday girl that I can't make her surprise party. I can rush to close my browser or unplug the Internet — but Gmail almost always wins that race.

Now you can do just that. Turn on Undo Send in Gmail Labs under Settings as shown below


Saving this setting you’ll see a new “Undo” link on every sent mail confirmation. Click “Undo” as shown in the pic below and you’ll grab the message before it’s sent and take you right back to compose.

This feature can't pull back an email that's already gone; it just holds your message for five seconds so you have a chance to hit the panic button. And don't worry – if you close Gmail or your browser crashes in those few seconds, it'll still send your message.

Unable to Open .vbs

Recently when i was playing with .vbs scripts, they didn't open. I was unable to open even a simple script in my machine. They(.vbs) were not associated with the right program. These associations were modified coz of viruses/Trojans activity. Though the virus is removed but its damages were not covered. Below is the step-to-step process of associating that program back to .vbs

Go to Control Panel
-->Folder Options
-->File Types
--> Search for Extension .vbs and associate the same with the program wscript.exe in :\windows\System32\ for GUI based scripts. However for Console based scripts you can associate with cscript.exe at the same path.

Common DOS Commands

Typing DOS commands on the Windows Command Line prompt is a most efficient and faster way of doing things in Windows XP. Here's a run-down of the most useful DOS commands available in Windows XP.

DOS Command-line tools must be run at the prompt of the Cmd.exe command interpreter. To open Command Prompt, click Start, click Run, type cmd, and then click OK.

ipconfig - Windows IP configuration
Useful for troubleshooting your internet connection. Displays the current IP address of your computer and the DNS server address. If you call your ISP for reporting a bad internet connection, he will probably ask you to run ipconfig.

fc - Free BeyondCompare in XP
FC is an advanced DOS Command that compares two files and displays the differences between them. Though the file comparison results are not as interactive as BeyondCompare or Altova DiffDog, fc is still very useful. You can even set fc to resynchronize the files after finding a mismatch.

type - open text files sans Notepad
Similar to Unix cat command, Type is my favorite DOS command for displaying the contents of a text files without modifying them. When used in combination with more switch, type splits the contents of lengthy text files into multiple pages. Avoid using the type command with binary files or you'll hear alien PC beeps and see some greek characters on your PC.

ping - Say hello to another computer
Ping network command followed by the web-address or IP address tells you about the health of the connection and whether the other party is responding to your handshake request. Ping tool can also be used to convert the web address to a physical IP address.

tree - visual directory structure
You often need to take prints of your physical directory structure but XP has no simple "visual" commands for printing directory contents. Here, try the Tree DOS command and redirect the output to a text file.

tree > mydirectory.txt
print mydirectory.txt

attrib - make hidden files visible
Attrib lets you change attributes of System files and even hidden files. This is great for troubleshooting Windows XP. Say your XP doesn't boot ever since you edited that startup boot.ini file (Hidden), use attrib to remove the Hidden attibute and edit the file using EDIT dos command.

assoc - which program will open that .xyz file
The assoc DOS command can be used to either isplay or even modify the file name extension associations. The command assoc .htm will quickly tell you the name of your default web browser (see picture)

move - more flexible than copy-paste
Say you got a lot of XLS and DOC files in you MyDocuments folder and want to move only those XLS files that have their name ending with 2006. In XP Explorer, you have to manually select each file and then cut-paste to another folder. However, the DOS move command make things much simpler. Just type the following at the command prompt:
move *2006.xls c:\2006Reports\

find - advanced file search with filter
Find is the most powerful DOS command and even more useful than the Windows Desktop Search tool or the Windows Find Wizard. The find command searches for a specific string of text in a file or files. After searching the specified file or files, find displays any lines of text that contain the specified string.

To search your hard disk to find and display the file names on drive C: that contain the string "Google" use the pipe (|) to direct the results of a dir command to find as follows:
dir c:\ /s /b | find "Google"

Quick tip - Drag to avoid typing: When your command acts on a file or folder, you must type the path to that folder after the command. You can save typing time by dragging the file or folder from Windows Explorer into the command window.

To view help at the command-line, at the command prompt, type the following:
CommandName /?

Adding FileNames in Command Line

If your work requires extensive use of the Windows command line, this is a useful trick to improve your efficiency. When you drag and drop files to the command line window, it automatically fills in the complete path of the file.

Note that the existing text also remains intact, so if you drag and drop after typing “cd “, the file or folder name is appended to it - “cd C:\test.txt” for example.

This trick works on all versions of Windows - from 95 to XP, but not on Windows Vista.

IT firms see low or flat salaries for 2 more years

Friends a very sad news for all those Soft. geeks

Mon, Mar 9 11:15 PM

Against expectations that the job market and compensation levels might begin to show signs of recovery by next year, senior executives in the country's top information technology companies expect compensation levels to remain low over the next two- to three years. "The market is cold and there are fewer jobs, for the next two or three years, salaries will be low," T.V. Mohandas Pai, member of the board and director of human resources at the nation's second largest software exporter Infosys Technologies, told Hindustan Times.

The economic slowdown has adversely affected all sectors, including information technology, which relies heavily on demand in the West, especially the United States, which is India's largest market. "Good people will not be laid off but the key challenge is compensation," Pai said.

Tata Consultancy Services, India's largest software exporter which employs over 1,00,000 people, is also eyeing a scenario where wage hikes will not be significant. "We expect salaries to remain flat in financial year 2010 while demand for specific skill sets will drive salaries over the next two-three years," a TCS spokesperson told Hindustan Times.

However, experts at staffing firms, interpreting industry statements, say IT companies probably do not want to set high expectations for their employees amidst uncertain economic conditions and that the job market might well improve by the end of the year. "We expect the market to improve by the end of the year and organisations probably do not want to raise their employees' expectations," said Rohit Ramani, director at staffing firm EmmayHR, part of the Dutch Randstad group.

Ruchi Hajela

Courtesy : Yahoo.com

How To: Display The Shutdown Menu When Your Computer’s Power Button Is Pressed

By default, your Windows XP will shut down when the Power button is pressed. It’s a good idea to change it so that the shutdown menu is opened instead, especially if you have little kids running around the house.

It’s quite easy to change it:

Step 1:
Go to your Windows XP’s desktop and right-click it. Select “Properties” and the Display Properties window will appear.

Open the “Screen Saver” tab and look for the “Power” button near the bottom of the window. Click it.
Step 2:

In the “Power Options Properties” window that opens, go to the “Advanced” tab.

There is a dialog box in the “Power Buttons” section. Choose what you want Windows to do when the power button is pressed.
“Ask me what to do” will make it open up the shutdown menu.

Step 3: Click “OK” and restart your computer. From now on, pressing the power button will open the shutdown menu, letting you decide what you want to do.

Remove / Delete Boot.vbs Autorun Virus

Boot.vbs is a virus which is from the family of W32/Autorun.worm.h worm which attempts deploy itself to the root directory of all the drives by creating the autorun.inf files. Autorun.inf files in the root directory of each drive will execute the virus when ever user opens that drive.



Boot.vbs virus comes from W32/Lsetspy-C worm which also creates the following files on your computer as dxdlg.exe, wscript.exe and kinza.exe. Its located in windows at the following locations:

* C:\Windows\System32\dxdlg.exe
* C:\Windows\System32\boot.vbs



Here is the removal procedure to remove boot.vbs virus completely in 5 minutes.
In order to remove boot.vbs virus you will need to end the primary process of the boot.vbs virus named dxdlg.exe, wscript.exe



Normally for removing this worm you will need to boot in safe mode but with we will tell you the procedure to remove this boot.vbs virus without booting in the safemode


1. Again our Process Explorer comes handy. This will be helpful in our virus removal journey.Download this here

2. Run process explorer and Locate the following process, right click and select Kill Process or press Del key and Enter to end the process named dxdlg.exe and wscript.exe

3. Press Window + R and type msconfig and press Enter, click the startup tab



4. Uncheck the entries containing the names dxdlg.exe, wscript.exe and click OK



5. Now, Search for the following files on your computer and delete them from any where found in your computer.

dxdlg.exe
wscript.exe
boot.vbs
kinza.exe



Note: Also delete all the autorun.inf files in the root directory of the drive using autorun eater tool here. Now you need to remove the registry changes done by the virus in the registry



6. Open Start Menu >> Run, type regedit and press Enter.

Navigate to the following path:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Winlogon



7. In the right pane, double click the edit the value of Userinit and set the value as “C:\windows\system32\userinit.exe” there should be nothing else written with this value mentioned.



8. Close registry and restart your computer, boot.vbs virus will be gone.

Mobile as a remote monitoring camera

MultiEyeVision, a Pune based company has launched a tool called Observer that turns mobile phones into remote monitoring cameras. The camera’s images can be viewed from any internet connected device. You need a GPRS enable smartphone for this, or you can buy a pre-configured mobile phone from them.You have to start the Observer application on the mobile, and place it where you want and login to your secure account from anywhere in the world and view the image stream over the internet Control the capture settings of the Observer from the Internet itself.

The Observer is a regular mobile phone that is pre-configured to perform the additonal functions of image capturing and streaming on demand. In order to view the images being grabbed by the Observer, the user simply needs to log-in to our secure web-portal on the internet with his/her username and password.

Because of the limitations of GPRS speed, it is presently not possible to send video (which requires higher transfer speeds). However, Observer can capture and transmit image streams upto a rate of 3 images per minute, which is adequate for the applications discussed here.The default resolution of captured images is 320x240 pixels. The high resolution captures are 640x480 resolution.The images can be stored for viewing later or even get emailed to you at specific times.


It works on Nokia S60, S40 (3rd edition) camera phones whereas recommended models are Nokia 3500 Classic, Nokia 6300, Sony Ericsson W810.For using the software with your own phone, you’d need to pay 2.5K INR.

Opening IE in Firefox

Firefox has bundle of advantages when compared to IE but people tend towards IE due to its better ability in Script handling.

So how would be the idea of opening IE as a separate Tab in Firefox. Download this add-on below and its all done.

IE Tab

Remove Ahsan Computer Virus | Kill Ahsan Virus

Recently my desktop was infected with this Ahsan computer virus, the virus came from mobile phone memory card. I was quite happy as after a long time I had to deal with this virus called Ahsan Virus which was quite easy to remove. I removed this virus without any anti virus in around 5 minutes only.

It was not as much fun as this ahsan was quite easy to remove even with out any help of any antivirus. Let’s see what are the most common symptoms of ahsan virus on a windows computer.

Ahsan's-Computer

Ahsan virus renames My computer to Ahsan’s Computer, renames Recycle Bin to G. W. Bush

, disables registry editing and don’t allow you to show hidden files and folders through folder options.



Let’s discuss the full step by step procedure to remove ahsan virus, and you don’t have to boot in safe mode to remove this ahsan virus

1. Download process explorer from here, extract the .zip archive and run it by clicking procexp.exe make sure to kill all the process with name Firewall.exe , CSRSS.exe shown in process explorer.

ahsan-virus-process

Ahsan's-virus-process

2. Now, download Everything search tool from here, and find and delete all the files with following names.

Type these files names in the search tool and delete all the files.



Note: Delete csrss.exe files found outside C:\Windows only and autorun.inf files in C:\Windows and in the root directory of all the drive like C, D, E drive and your removable pen drive etc

system.exe
csrss.exe
Home video.avi.exe
autorun.inf



3. Go to Start >> Run and copy and paste the following command given below and press enter.

REG add HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\System /v DisableRegistryTools /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f



4. Now go to Start >> Run and type regedit and press enter,

Search and delete all entries with name "Ahsan" , site 110mb.com and Bush.



5. Navigate to the following registry path and delete any key value names with NoFolderOptions

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Policies\Explorer
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\Current Version\Policies\Explorer



6. Navigate to the following registry path

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Explorer\Advanced. Find the value "Hidden" .

Right click it and modify it to 1. If Key value hidden is not present there then you will need to create it and close registry

7. Again open Start >> Run and type msconfig and press Enter.

Locate the startup entries by ahsan virus and uncheck these entries and also make sure you remove any thing suspicious in Start Menu >> All Programs >> Startup Folder

msconfig-Ahsan-virus

Uncheck the entries named CRSS and A.M.K.B_Pk and click apply and Ok.



8. That’s it done, restart now.

Hide Drive in My Computer

This setting allows you to control which drives are visible in My Computer and Explorer. It is possible to hide all drives or just selected ones.

Open your registry (press win+r and type regedit , hit enter )
goto

[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\
CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer]

and find or create the DWORD “NoDrives” there by right clicking on explorer -> NEW -> DWORD value .

The “NoDrives” value uses a 32-bit word to define local and network drive visibility for each logical drive in the computer. The lower 26 bits of the 32-bit word correspond to drive letters A through Z. Drives are visible when set to 0 and hidden when set to 1.

If your not happy working in Hex, add these decimal numbers to hide the drive(s):

A: 1, B: 2, C: 4, D: 8, E: 16, F: 32, G: 64, H: 128, I: 256, J: 512, K: 1024, L: 2048, M: 4096, N: 8192, O: 16384, P: 32768, Q: 65536, R: 131072, S: 262144, T: 524288, U: 1048576, V: 2097152, W: 4194304, X: 8388608, Y: 16777216, Z: 33554432, ALL: 67108863

For example to hide drive A and drive D, you would add 1 (A) + 8 (D) which means the value should be set to “9″.

To disable all the drives set the value to “67108863″.

Restart Windows for the change to take effect.

Note: These drives will still appear in File Manager, to remove File Manager, delete or rename winfile.exe.

Registry Settings

User Key: [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\
Explorer]

System Key: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\
Explorer]

Value Name: NoDrives

Data Type: REG_DWORD (DWORD Value)