Jago

Firefox Can Turn Off The Computer After Downloading Complete

Say it's midnight and you want to call it a day. But the issue is that you are downloading some huge files from the Internet via Firefox and at your current internet speed, the download will take another two hours to finish.

You could either cancel the downloads, or leave the computer in running state (think environment), or just install Auto Shutdown from mozilla.org.

As the name suggest, this extension will turn off the computer automatically as soon as Firefox has downloaded all the pending files in the queue.

If you not using Firefox, try the shutdown command in Windows that will turn off the computer after the given time. For instance, if you want to turn off the computer in next two hours, type the following in Windows Run box:

shutdown -s -t 7200 [7200 = 2 hours]

The Auto Shutdown extension of Firefox internally executes the same command.

Related: Shut Down Your Computer Quickly

Stretch YouTube Videos To Fit the Browser Window, Better Than Full Screen

You already know about the Full Screen mode in YouTube video player that scales the current video to fill the entire desktop screen.

The one big problem with full screen mode in YouTube player is that you cannot do anything else on the computer while the video is playing - you have the exit the FullScreen before initiating any other task.

There's however an excellent alternative to Full Screen mode and that's about auto resizing the video player to fit the browser window. When you resize the browser window, the dimensions of YouTube Video player will change accordingly.

Here's how you fit the YouTube video in the browser window:

Say a YouTube Video URL is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr3x_RRJdd4

To watch this clip in a resizable browser window without switching to Full Screen, just rewrite the above URL a http://www.youtube.com/v/vr3x_RRJdd4

In other words, just append the YouTube video ID to this URL www.youtube.com/v/VIDEO_ID and stretch your browser window. You can then easily switch to other tabs, open new applications or do anything else while the YouTube clip is still playing in the maximum possible screen area.

Laptop Mouse with a USB Storage Drive

Microsoft today unveiled the Mobile Memory Mouse 8000 for your laptop computer.

The unique feature of this ergonomic mouse is the USB transceiver that doubles as a 1 GB Flash drive - so you have one less device to carry while on the move and it also frees up an additional USB port on your laptop.

Another improvement over the Wireless 8000 Laser mouse is the charger - earlier they had a separate rechargeable base but with Mobile Memory Mouse 8000, the mouse can be connected using a magnetic cord to the UBS transceiver without requiring a separate power supply.

Related: Microsoft Desktop 7000 vs Natural Ergonomic 4000 Keyboard

Why Use Adobe Acrobat Instead of other PDF Converters

The marketplace is flooded with PDF writers that promise to convert any file format into PDF.

Like Acrobat, you can install these third-party PDF generators as virtual printers and create PDF files from any application that has the Print button. Some services allow you to convert files by email - you send them a file as an email attachment and they'll mail it back to you as a PDF.

That's not all. WordPerfect and OpenOffice have in-built PDF printers. Microsoft released a free PDF add-in for all popular Office 2007 programs except Outlook. Then there are online suites like Google Docs and Zoho Office that allow you to save documents as PDF inside the browser without requiring any add-ins.

When there are so may Acrobat alternatives for creating PDF files, why spend a few hundred dollars for buying a single license of Adobe Acrobat? Adobe offers some reasons for using Adobe Acrobat software:

Adobe supports PDF files opened in the free Adobe Reader only if the PDF was created by an Adobe product.
Adobe makes the most compact and most accepted PDF files. Clones often don't do everything necessary in all cases to meet court standards.
Adobe PDF is structured (tagged) allowing your firm to meet government Section 508 accessibility requirements.
Only Adobe allows you to Reader-enable a PDF so that users of the free Adobe Reader can fill and save PDF forms locally for offline use, review, comment or markup, type anywhere in the PDF document using the Typewriter tool and digitally sign PDF documents.
New standards around PDF will always appear in Adobe products first. One recent example: PDF/A (PDF for Archive), an ISO standard adopted by the US Federal Court system, the NARA (National Archive and Records Administration), and the Library of Congress as the standard format for archiving digital documents.
Adobe offers OCR, creation, watermarks, redaction (delete sensitive or confidential text and images), bates numbering, review, etc. all in one package, not spread across several packages or requiring additional products.

So should you uninstall that free PDF converter and shell out $300 for Acrobat Professional ? Well if you are an enterprise user or in the legal industry or work in teams gathering comments and reviews from colleagues and customers, the answer is mostly yes.

ISO has ratified PDF/Archive as the standard for long-term preservation of electronic records. But if you are like most of us and create PDFs for personal use because they retain the formatting and layout or just because PDF files are safe from editing, then the free Acrobat clone in your computer can stay without problems.

DMCA Notice of Copyright Infringement - Sample Template

If you discover your content published illegally on another website without permission or attribution, the first step is to send a polite email to the owner of the website.

If the website owner fails to respond to your email requesting removal of plagiarized content, it may be time for you to send a formal DMCA letter to his web hosting company and also to his advertising partner(s) (like Google Adsense) that are helping him monetize content which is actually owned by you.

While web hosting firms and online advertising companies will immediately comply to your requests, they will also ask you to send them DMCA notices in a proper format with all the necessary details and proof.

Let's take a fictional case - Mr John Q. Public of www.mycontent.com finds his content on another website called www.copypaste.com.

Following is a Sample DMCA Notice that John can submit to the web host of copypaste.com and also to Google.

Subject: Notice of Copyright Infringement

The copyrighted work at issue is the text that appears on www.mycontent.com/page1.html and www.mycontent.com/page2.html

The URLs where our copyrighted material is located include www.copypaste.com/abc.html and www.copypaste.com/xyz.com

You can reach me at myemail@mycontent.com for further information or clarification. My phone number is +1-202-393-3984 and my mailing address is John Q Public, 323, Park Avenue, Willcity 39232 CA.

The email address of the website owner, who has reprinted our content illegally, is alex@copypaste.com.

I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described above as allegedly infringing is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.

I swear, under penalty of perjury, that the information in the notification is accurate and that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

John Q Public
February 11, 2010 [14:50]

If your DMCA Notification letter meets all the requirements, the web host will expeditiously delete (or ask the customer to remove) that material.

While most web hosting companies will accept your DMCA notices via email, Google (for Blogger and Adsense) requires you to snail mail or fax the DMCA document with your signatures.

As a workaround, you can take a picture of your signature and paste that as in image in the Word Processor. Then you fax the document to Google DMCA department via Skype, Email or online.

More on Online Content Plagiarism.

Manage Multiple Accounts on the Web Without Logging Off

Do you have several accounts on GMail but dislike logging off from one account to check emails in another account. For instance, you and your wife use the home computer for checking emails and one has to log off before the other person can log-in. (See: GMail Multiple Sign-in)

Or do you want to use Google Web Search anonymously without them recording your search habits. But at the same time, you want to remain logged into other secure Google services like Google Notebook, Blogger or GMail.

If answer to any of the above is yes, you will love CookieSwap Firefox extension. Most websites use Cookies to store your login information and you can have just one cookie per website per web browser but with CookieSwap, you can maintain multiple cookie profile and switch between them in a click.

You can create a profile that logs into your Gmail account but when you want to Google, just switch the profile. You stay logged into GMail but with still anonymously surf on Google.

Get CookieSwap from addons.mozilla.org

Related: How to View or Delete Cookies of Any Website

Sync Facebook Photos with Microsoft Outlook Contacts

If some of your Microsoft Outlook contacts are also Facebook friends, you will find OutSync pretty useful.

OutSync takes the profile photos of your friends from Facebook and adds them to the matching entries in your Microsoft Outlook Contacts List. The utility also lets you to selectively update Outlook contacts.

Update: OutSync is no longer active but you can use Yahoo Mail to export email address of Facebook Friends which you can then import into Outlook using CSV format.

You can then sync Outlook with your mobile phone and see photos of your friends appear during calls instead of the plain text names.

~~OutSync~~ works with Outlook 2003 or 2007. It was originally written by Mel Sampat, a Program Manager in the Windows Mobile team at Microsoft.

The main benefit of OutSync is for users who sync their smartphones with Exchange or Outlook. Updated contacts are copied to your iPhone, Windows Mobile, Android or BlackBerry devices, and their photos appear during phone calls.

See more Outlook add-ins for social networking.

How to Embed Large Photos In Web Pages

Say you have an extremely long screenshot image or a high resolution photograph (like a 360° panoramic image) that you want to embed in web pages.

The standard IMG tag may not be the best approach when inserting really big photos because 1) wide images break the layout of your web page as they span outside the standard width and 2) large images are heavy in size so you web page loading time will become much higher.

If you were to insert such a big image in you web page, a very neat option is Zoomify which you can see in action below - your visitors can view (or even zoom, pan and scroll) the gigantic image in full resolution without leaving the current web page.

Update: Zoomify is no longer free but you embed large images using Google Maps tiles or with the help of zoom.it.

And since Zoomify renders the image in Flash, it's another good alternative for webmaster to prevent casual downloading of their images. Like Google Maps, the large image loads in tiles and only the visible portions are downloaded on the visitor's computer so the waiting time is reduced quite a bit.

You download a small executable from Zoomify website and pass on the image that would embed in the web page. Zoomify will slice it into tiles and you can upload the to any web space. Then you add a small Flash code to your web page that embed the Zoomify Flash image viewer. That's it. Everything is configurable including the initial zoom, menu bar, etc.

Zoomify is a commercial software but they provide a free version called Zoomify Express which is good enough for most of us - no restrictions, no image watermarks. Available for both Mac and Windows.

Google Picasa or Windows Photo Gallery - Which is Better?

Like Picasa from Google, Windows Live Photo Gallery is free desktop software from Microsoft for managing your pictures and videos - the software works on both XP and Windows Vista.

Having worked with both the software for some time now, here's a quick review and comparison of Windows Live Photo Gallery with Picasa (do not confuse Picasa desktop software with Picasa Web Albums).

Round 1: Interface & Ease of Use - Both Picasa and Windows Live Photo Gallery have a pleasant and intuitive interface with basic photo editing capabilities. You can zoom, rotate, search, add ratings, tags and text captions to your photographs very easily. In Picasa, it is possible to select multiple images from different file folders by holding then on to the image tray but in Windows Photo Gallery, you can select images only from the current folder.

Round 2: Speed - When it comes to speed, Windows Photo Gallery wins over Picasa by a huge margin. Picasa, in the last few months, has become extremely slow - the software sometimes even freezes while importing new media content into the library. Windows Live Photo Gallery is lightning fast when you compare the start-up speed or when it process new photographs.

Round 3: Screen Saver - Picasa Screensaver (now known as the Google Photos Screensaver) allows you to add live photo streams (like Flickr RSS Feeds, Yahoo! News Photos) while in Windows Live Photo Gallery, only the local photos appear in the slideshow. Unlike Windows Live Screensaver, Google Picasa Screensaver supports dual monitor screen - alternate photos appear simultaneously on both the screens.

Round 4: Download Video Clips, Pictures from Digital Camera - Windows Live Photo Gallery taken an intelligent approach here - the moment you connect your still camera to the computer, Windows Gallery will logically group the photos based on the date when the photos where clicked. That makes selecting and transferring photos from the camera to the hard drive a snap. And unlike Picasa, Windows Live Photo Gallery is again very fast.

Round 5: Bells & Whistles - There are some features which are unique to both the photo management software. Picasa lets you create large wall posters from your images, photo collages, web galleries or even small movie clips from your still photos. You get none of this in Windows Live Photo Gallery but for an excellent Photo Stitcher that will help you build panoramic photos automatically or even Google Maps wallpapers.

Round 6: Integration with External Services - In Picasa, you can upload images to Picasa Web Albums, videos to Google Videos or photo blog in Blogger. In Windows Live Photo Gallery, pictures can be uploaded to Windows Live Spaces while videos go to MSN Soapbox, a YouTube like video sharing services from Microsoft.

Flickr vs Picasa Web - Which is better for Storing Images.

Conclusion - Windows Live Photo Gallery is extremely fast and efficient. It works so well when it comes to downloading photographs from the digital camera. You can also this as the default image viewer on Windows.

Picasa is a solid application with pretty good features but very slow. If speed is not a concern and you are a Blogger or Picasa Web Albums user, this may be the way to go.

Remove Callouts and Arrow Markers in Google Maps Screenshots

When you search Google Maps for an address or driving directions, Google Maps shows you the address location with a colored arrow marker and a callout window that has links to driving directions, photographs, review and more.

If you were to take a screen capture of Google Maps without these arrows and callout information window, here's a tip:
To just hide the Callout window, click anywhere on the Google Map outside the arrow marker. To bring that information window back, click the arrow marker again.
To remove both the marker and callout window forever from the screen, right click over the arrow and select "clear search results" from the onscreen popup menu.
Related: Make Wallpaper from Google Maps
Caution: Google Policy says that you must get written permission from Google to reuse any images (instructive or illustrative screenshots) from Google Maps and Google Earth as they do not own the copyright to all of the imagery or information supplied on these platforms.

Weekly Technology Podcast - Episode 2

Facebook People Search Engine Is Live for Outsiders
Non Facebook members can use the public search box on Facebook's home page to find friends who may have public profiles on Facebook and contact them.
Download Your Favorite Blogs and Websites for Offline Reading
Webaroo then creates an offline copy of the site that you can browse or search as if you are connected. Based on your settings, Webaroo periodically checks the original web pages for modification and if there are any, the software automatically updates the local cache.
Share Your Favorite Webpages on Social Bookmarking Sites
Shareaholic make it extremely easy for you to share web pages on the popular social websites - just right click over any webpage and select your favorite bookmarking service from the Firefox contextual menu where you want to share that page.
Yahoo! Mail Better Than Google GMail or Hotmail
Walt Mossberg of WSJ says that the new Yahoo! Mail is better than Google email and the new Windows Live Hotmail.
Increase Google Adsense Income with Simple but Effective Tweaks
Use Google Adsense Sandbox to see image and Flash ads that are likely to appear on your web pages for visitors from different countries across the world.
How to Find Email Addresses of People Who Plagiarize Content
If the person is blogging under an alias (say "PeterCool008") - search for that term on Google. It's very likely that he has used the same alias when registering on other web forums and social networking websites.
Microsoft Attorneys Knock the Door of Windows AutoPatcher
Microsoft announced XP SP2 in August 2004 and have have released hundreds of security updates and hotfixes since then.
The Most Time Saving Firefox Features That We Often Overlook
Open any website in Firefox that you love and press Ctrl+D to bookmark the site. Now scroll to that website name in Firefox Bookmarks menu, right click and select Properties. Type any text in the Keyword field and click OK.
Should You Enable Adsense Whitelist (Allowed Sites Option) ?
With Adsense Whitelist in place, you miss an opportunity to monetize this indirect traffic though the visitors will still see Google ads on your web pages, advertisers will be charged by Google but the Adsense revenue won't be shared with you.
Keep All your Office, Home and Notebook Computers in Sync
Your goal is to sync the data (music, documents, photos, etc) scattered across multiple computers or even directly access files stored on computer A from computer B.

Turn Your Mouse Pointer Into a SpotLight for Presentations

Spotlights are commonly used in concerts and musical theaters to focus an audience's attention on a performer as he moves around the stage.

MouseLight has borrowed the concept from theatres and applied it your computer where the actor is the mouse cursor and the stage is the desktop screen.

Also see: More useful tools for presenters

When you are doing a PowerPoint presentation or a software demonstration and want the audience to focus on some specific area of the screen, MouseLight puts a circular spotlight around your cursor and highlights that area allowing your audience to follow you - the rest of the screen outside the spotlight circle is dimmed automatically.

There's another advantage of MouseLight - If you are work on a large screen or a dual monitor, it's so common that you keep losing track of the mouse pointer. With MouseLight, just press the hotkey and you'll immediately know where the cursor is placed on the screen. No guesswork required.

MouseLight is available for Windows only, Mac users have a similar application called Mouseposé.

Related: Do Live Presentations without a Projector

Screenshot of Adobe Photoshop Express - Web Based Photoshop

Screenshot of online Adobe Photoshop Express, edit images in the Web Browser [click to enlarge]

Fauxto, Picnic and other online photo editors may soon find the going very tough is Adobe is all set to introduce a very cool online version of Adobe Photoshop (called Photoshop Express) that's free and requires just a web browser with the Flash plug-in.

Bruce earlier said that the web version of Photoshop may not be as feature-rich as the desktop Photoshop but still offers better image editing options than the existing desktop image editors - Photoshop Express is something in between Picasa and Photoshop.

John Loiacono, senior VP of creative solutions at Adobe, showed this screenshot of the Online Photoshop application at the ongoing Photoshop World conference in Las Vegas. Thanks John Nack.

FeedBurner Ads Losing Charm Ever Since Google Acquired Them

FeedBurner RSS Income

Like Google Adsense, FeedBurner Ads Network (FAN) never had a problem finding advertisers and their payout is pretty high - some ad campaigns on Computer & Technology channel can cost advertisers up to $10 CPM (FeedBurner's share is 35%).

And while Adsense is only for websites, FAN lets you monetize web content as well as RSS feeds.

But there's a small problem - you may have a good RSS subscriber base and dozens of advertisers may be running campaigns on your site / feed, that may not always translate into revenue.

In the graph, the red line shows the average number of RSS subscribers of this blog in the last 12 months while the blue line depicts the advertising revenue generated by FeedBurner each month.

As you can see, the site traffic + RSS subscriber base has increased and there are around 10-12 active ad campaigns all this time but the advertising income from FAN is constantly headed south, more so in the last 3-4 months and that's exactly the period when FeedBurner became part of Google.

Can that just be a coincidence?

Unfortunately, there are still no good alternative to FeedBurner for monetizing RSS feeds. Let's hope Google makes this service attractive as before (for Publishers, from the monetization point of view).

Get Dr. Dobbs Journal and MSDN Magazine for Free

Some very interesting news for software developers.

You can now subscribe to the digital editions of Microsoft MSDN Magazine and Dr. Dobb's Journal for free. MSDN is primarily for programmers who are using Microsoft technologies while the Dr Dobb's covers almost all languages and platforms.

Just login using your Windows Live ID to subscribe to MSDN Magazine and Dr. Dobbs Journal Digital editions. [Update: This offer is no longer valid]

The issues of Dr Dobb's Journal and MSDN Magazine are also available for download in PDF format.

And if you are based in India, you also stand a chance to win an XBOX 360 or Zune if you subscribe to these electronic magazines before October 15.

Windows Live Writer Supports Blogger Photos, YouTube

As expected, Microsoft today released a new build of Windows Live Writer - it's still a beta product but with some welcome improvements.

I find the new release of Windows Live Writer is more fast and responsive than the previous versions. Here's a quick recap of some other very useful features added in WLW v2008:

1. Upload Images to Blogger Directly - If you have a blog hosted on Blogger, you can include local photos in your blog posts and Windows Live Writer will automatically upload them to your Google Picasa web account.

2. Debugging made simple: If you are trying to publish a new blog post or retrieving some existing post for editing but WLP is not getting through, you can find the root of the problem from WLW log file.

The Log file has been there since day 1 but now WLW makes it extremely simple to view it in your default text editor. Goto Help -> About -> Show Log File.

3. Print / Print Preview - You can print blog posts directly from WLW just like you would do inside Microsoft Word or any word processor.

4. Embed YouTube Videos in Blogs - Earlier you had to download a separate Insert Video plugin to embed web videos in your blog posts but now that feature is inbuilt - just type the video URL and WLW will automatically generate the embed code. Pretty handy. More Windows Live Writer Plugins.

Windows Live Writer supports YouTube, Splashcast, Brightcove, Google Video, MySpace, Revver and MSN Soapbox.

Maximum Number of Google Adsense Ads Allowed on a Page

Google Adsense allows a maximum of three standard ad units, two Adsense for Search boxes, three Adsense link units ~~and three Adsense referral units~~ to be placed on any web page.

The program policy says:

Currently, AdSense publishers may place up to three AdSense for content units on one web page. you may also place a maximum of three link units and two search boxes on each web page.

You may place up to three link units on a page, in addition to the three standard ad units and two search boxes that.

If you place more than one ad unit on a page, our system will display unique ads to each ad unit. Because the system automatically displays an optimal number of highly targeted Google ads on each page, in some cases, the maximum number of ads may not always appear. In this case, the ad unit will be displayed as a transparent box or will contain any alternative ad or colour specified in the ad code.

The Adsense Bible also says - "No Google ad may be placed on pages published specifically for the purpose of showing ads, whether or not the page content is relevant."

Related: Adsense Tips for Improving Revenue

Synchronize Files, Folders across Multiple Computers Automatically

Imagine a scenario where you have multiple computers that are all connected to the internet - the home desktop runs Windows and contains all your music and family photos, the office computer stores official documents but while traveling, you prefer to carry the Macbook.

Your goal is sync the data (music, documents, photos, etc) scattered across multiple computers or even directly access files stored on computer A from computer B. For instance, if you add some new photos to your home computer, they should also become available in your Macbook pictures folder as well so that you can enjoy the pictures while on the move.

Similarly if you have work from both office and home, the documents on the Office computer should be accessible for editing from the home computer and once edited, it should automatically replace the outdated version sitting on the office desktop.

The Solution - When your files are scattered across computers and you hate transferring data via CDs, FTP, email attachments or USB cables, a neat time-saving solution is FolderShare - a free software utility from Microsoft that can synchronize the contents of folders on different computers over the internet.

To get started, you download the FolderShare software on each of the computers that you want to synchronize and then select the folders that you would like to keep in sync - a good example is the "My Documents" folder.

Update: Folder Share is no longer available but a good alternative is SkyDrive or Dropbox.

FolderShare runs in the background and automatically syncs files across different computers. If a particular machine is offline, the document will be synched the next time you connect it to the web.
Other than sync, FolderShare can also be used to download files in shared folders from any computer remotely via the web browser (similar to PurpleNova or Dekoh).

There are absolutely no limitations expect that the maximum size of individual files should not exceed 2 GB. Windows Live FolderShare is a perfect alternative to online backup services like Mozy or IDrive - the moment you connect your computers to the net, content of one computer are automatically backed on the hard drive of the other computer(s) that may be located in the nearby room, your office or somewhere else.

And though FolderShare is from Microsoft stable, it supports file sharing on both Mac and Windows computers.

Related: Synchronize File Folders with Good Sync

Use Facebook People Search Engine

Facebook today added public search listings meaning. if you agree, your name and profile picture will appear in organic search results when people look for your name.

See: Reverse Email Search with Facebook

A simple Google search for "inurl:www.facebook.com/p/" suggests that there are over 26.5k public profiles on Facebook already.

There's more - outsiders or non Facebook members can use the public search box on Facebook's home page to find friends who may have public profiles on Facebook and contact them.

How Do Search Engines Discover Facebook Profiles ?
Normally search engines like Google or Yahoo! discover new web pages only when they are linked from another website that's already in the index of search engines.

Would anyone have a clue how Google would discover your Facebook public profile when it's not hyperlinked from any other site.

Related: Most Innovative Facebook Groups

New Version of Windows Live Writer 1.0 Coming Very Soon

Bloggers rejoice! You can expect to download and play with the final release of Windows Live Writer 1.0 as early as this week.

The New York Times gave a small hint when it said that the new Windows Live Software Suite will be the first full release and that the Windows Live installer includes the Windows Live Writer blogging application.

Now we have an indirect confirmation from Joe Cheng who is the main Microsoft developer at the Windows Live Writer team.

Joe probably configured the new Windows Live Writer 1.0 release to work with his blog and that led to a style-detection Temporary Post. Though the post is deleted from the main blog, it stills exists in the cache of my newsreader. (see screenshot)

windows live writer

A temp post is normally created by WLW when you update your blog style. In Joe's case, the blog theme is same as before so he probably did a fresh installation of WLW 1.0. Can't wait to see what goes in the new release.