Technorati Favourite Exchange Program

So, finally I have also decided not to miss the bus and join the program.

For a blogger, it is highly unlikely not to have stumbled across the Dosh Dosh's favourite exchange program, So I am not going into details. But if you wanna know go straight to Dosh Dosh.

In short, rules of the game are as follows:

• Click here to add me as your Technorati Favorites or use the button on the sidebar of this blog for the same purpose.
• Then, leave a comment on this post with your Technorati Fav link, so as to allow to add you to my Favorites (simple, give and take!).
  
• And finally, link to this post with your post and I would add a link to your blog in this post (only if you are interested in link exchange).

Following Blogs have already been added to my list. I target to make it to...........I don't know;

Nirmaltv

IndiaPRBlog

Voluntary Death

Six Degrees of Inspiration

Our Journey

TechChee

Technospot

Technodiary

Blog@fyais

Sizlopedia

Technix Update

Zath

Computer Mobile Corner

AskaX World

Rishiraj

Random Expressions

Digital Phocus

Serendipity

Fast Lane Transport

Dosh Dosh

Techlives

Gouravonomics

Blogging for Money

Quasi Fictional

Versa Creations

Azazil

Money Conciousness

Home Based Business

Millionnzdollars

Jameo-tips

Make Money Online

Brown Thoughts

The Filipino Enterpreneur

My Affiliate Journey

Because I was bored

Use Internet Explorer within Firefox

Every serious blogger, at one time or other, has to tweak with his template and whenever you do so, it is suggested that you should check it in all available and prevalent browsers, especially Firefox and Internet Explorer.
Now a die-hard fan like me finds it very irritating to open IE, just for this purpose. Then this convenient Fire-fox add-on (IE Tab) comes to my rescue. It is a superb attempt by Mozilla to be one-up against the competition.
The First screenshot shows the area around my system tray. A left-click on the IE icon changes the currently open tab into Firefox (and then this IE icon changes to Firefox icon). To open it into IE, now I have to left-click at the same spot (where now a Firefox icon is available). i.e. it acts like a toggle switch.
The second screen shot is of the open tabs, where an IE icon confirms that the tab, although open in Firefox, but actually is currently using IE platform.
The third shot is of the download site, where you can download the IE Tab add-on.
It is a highly recommended add-on for all Firefox lovers, who are forced to live with IE. Thums-up Firefox.

How to determine the RGB / hex color code of a pixel

I have just stumbled upon the latest article from Nirmal about a detailed procedure for finding the hex colour code of background. The procedure is a real elaborated effort on his part. But this can easily be done with the help of a small utility "Colour Cop" [Download here].
The screen cap shows two tools; eyedropper and a lens, which can be dragged to any part of your screen. A zoomed image of the area around that tool can be viewed in the bottom square (preview pane) of color cop. The color of the central pixel of that preview pane is shown in the upper square along with the RGB as well as the hex code.
If you want to change the hex code into RGB or vice-versa, simply type the value in the corresponding place. Isn't it simple. It is.

Google Desktop goes multi-lingual

Yesterday Google announced that they have released the Google Desktop 5 application in as many as 29 languages, Hindi being among one of them.

Read the complete story at the official Google Blog.

Irfanview 4.00: A fast and sleek webtool for image management

IrfanView is a very fast, small, compact and innovative FREEWARE (for non-commercial use) graphic viewer for Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista.

The official website of IrfanView claims that Irfanview is trying to create new and/or interesting features in its own way, unlike some other graphic viewers, whose whole "creativity" is based on feature cloning, stealing of ideas and whole dialogs from ACDSee and/or IrfanView! (for example: XnView has been stealing/cloning features and whole dialogs from IrfanView, for 7+ years).

IrfanView has the ability to convert images between most of the supported formats. IrfanView can also perform some basic image editing and processing functions, including cut, crop, resize, resample, change the color depth, adjust brightness, and adjust contrast.

A new version Irfanview 4.00 has just been released. You can check out the new features at versiontracker and download it from there. Alternatively you can directly download the new vresions from this link.

Speed up Mozilla Firefox

How did you like my recent post in which I had compiled some tips for speeding up your Windows XP. Now is the turn of your Mozilla.
Mozila’s Firefox browser can browse much faster than other browsers. Why wouldn’t you make it even faster?
Mozilla firefox blog has come out with a few tips for increasing the speed of your browsing. They claim them to be increasing your speed by upto 40%.
I have given them a try and found some definite change. I cannot attach any percentages to that, but definitely there was a noticeable change.
Why not try these tips out for yourself. They are grouped into two categories; Simple and advanced.
Go, check them out.

To speed up Firefox you have to make a little minor tweaking. You can make Firefox perform up to 40% faster for page transfers. With just a few clicks and some typing, you can experience faster browsing and surfing Firefox. 1. Open the Firefox “config” page: click into the Firefox Click to read more

Explore the Web - sans ads

Have you ever noticed the growing trends of advertising on net; pop-up, pop-under, adword, adsense and what not. Placement of ads is an integral part of web designing and the creators of web pages are always on the look out for luring you to click on the ads displayed on their sites.

What this all mean to the user. The hapless creature is often found gasping to search and focus on the actual content on the page.

Here are a few tips to keep these annoying ads away from you.

1. For pop-ups / unders
Its easy. Your browser itself can take care of it. You have just to set the correct option. For example Firefox Mozilla 2.0 has the option here at Tools>Options>Contents. You can also set exceptions for the sites for which you want to allowing pop-up.

2. For Malware causing pop-ups:
You may still occasionally see pop-ups even after step 1. This is due to some Malware hidden in your computer. For htem you may have to use some removal kit like Ad-Aware or Spybot Search & Destroy.

3. And for others

For Firefox...use the free ad-on Adblock-Plus. Click Mozilla Blog for more information

For Internet Explorer...upgrade to IE7Pro, which not only has ad-blocking feature, but also provides you tab-browsing etc.

Few more tips to make your Windows XP faster

Did you read my previous post to make your Windows XP faster. Here are a few more tips, you can use to still increase the performance of your machine.

1. Disabling Error Reporting

By default, WindowsXP will request to report application errors to Microsoft.
To turn this off:

• Right click > My Computer on the desktop
• Select Properties > Advanced > Error Reporting tab
• Check Disable error reporting

2. Remove MSN Messenger

Many times it is seen that MSN Messenger is of no use. Turn it away from always starting in the system tray, by

• Go to Start > Run
• enter following :
  

"RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %windir%\INF\msmsgs.inf,BLC.Remove" and run.

3. Turn-off Built-In CD Burner

If not using the built-in CD burner software that comes with Windows XP, then why loading it?:

• Open > Explorer
• Right click the drive which is your CD burner
• Go to Properties
• Click > Recording tab
• Uncheck Enable CD recording on this drive

Speedup Windows XP in Minutes!

Although Windows Vista has slowly started to spread its wings, but still Windows XP is de facto standard of most of the desktop as on date.

As we know XP is a feature-rich OS, but it is pain to find people often complaining about the slowness of their systems running on XP, just because it is more resource sucking.
I just came across a nice tutorial (about 10 beautiful tips) to make your XP lean and thin and speed up my machine.
Why not give them a shot...! Try yourself.

1. Disable extra startup programs

Several items add up to the start up list when you install different software. Such programs are loaded when your system boots and remain in memory (RAM), they also continuously use processor. Here are is what you have to do to make them go away:

• Goto Start>Run, type "msconfig" > OK.
• Click startup tab
• Uncheck all th extra items which are of no use.
• OK.
• On restart a dialogue box will appear.

For rest of the tips, Click here

New version of Picasa (from Google) Released

Picasa, the complete image management software from Google, helps you instantly find, edit and share all the pictures on your PC. Whenever you open Picasa, it, by itself, searches all pictures in your computer and files them into neatly organized albums. The smooth drag and drop feature gives working with picasa a real good experiance.

What's more, with Picasa, you can easily edit your photographs - try changing hues, contrast, brightness or use the unique single click editing for many effects at once. You can make fascinating albums and share through emails, make gift CDs or sent them to your blog at blogger.

Click for...

More Information
Download (Latest version, 2.7) Size: 5.12MB, (Freeware)
Download (from Google)