Free Online Tips Blog

Route tracking/sharing was bit of a problem when I was a teenager. But things are changing fast, really fast. We now have online route tracking apps which we may use to share routes with friends, relatives. When Google maps was first launched we used to have fun tracking the (in)famous Pentagon building, Red Square, or the Taj Mahal. But now you may use it as a route tracker!

At Sanoodi you start creating a new route on the Google map with the help of markers and save it. Calculate the distance (in miles) in respect of landscapes. Apart from Sanoodi, you may also do that at RouteSlip or Gmap-Pedometer. But at Sanoodi you may share your route/activity with others. Who knows .. you may find a friend of yours doing a similar activity same place, same time! A pretty nice and innovative Web2.0ish attempt to build the worlds first online route-tracking community!

At Sanoodi, you may upload .gpx track outputs from GPS devices, map directly onto Google maps and share it. This is really helpful for runners/cyclists/bikers. It has also integrated Flickr photos with Google maps. So if someone creates a route that goes past the Howrah Bridge, images related to Howrah bridge will be displayed in the map making things a bit more realistic and fun. Nice integration of Google and Yahoo aaps!

For years, webmasters have been spending hours to search for their favorite domain name. Nothing wrong if someone spends days and nights to search for apt domain names. But the most painful step in this whole episode is the search method. You enter a domain name, click on the search button, and wait for the availability status of that domain. And yup .. in most cases you find that the domain is already taken which is much more frustrating, irritating!

But with the introduction of AJAX based domain lookup tools, life gets bit more easier. At Ajaxwhois and InstantDomainRegister type out a domain name and get instant results! (No need to press the search button.) Ajaxwhois even has two handy Firefox extensions which enables you to integrate the domain and whois lookup search facilities into your Firefox searchbox.

PsychicWhois (beta) is WAY ahead of the former two. It is very similar to Google suggest. Once you start typing, it provides you suggestions or possible domain names thus reducing your exertion to a great extent and increasing the probability of finding a suitable domain in less time. Hence the name ‘Psychic’ I guess! As a part of their marketing strategy, they have also released widgets for websites/blogs. Browser compatibility may be a BIG issue. For more, read the note at the bottom of their page.

Microsoft’s virtual desktop manager has been an effective Windows XP desktop manager for quite a while now. But Yod’m may be an effective replacement to it.

Just like MSVDM (the Microsoft version), Yod’m lets you create three additional desktops. But when switching desktops in Yod’m, you get a nice rotating 3D cube which makes it bit more impressive.

Another interesting feature of it is its ability to show the the exact number of windows in the taskbar in a particular desktop. In MSVDM we get to see a fixed taskbar. In both cases though you may change the wallpapers of the four desktops.

Yod’m is a freeware which even doesn’t need installation. Simply download, unzipp and start using it!

Download Yod’m: Link  Download MSVDM: Link  Via: Download Squad

UPS, the world leader in logistics, have recently launched a cool online flash based whiteboard which lets you send a ‘hand written’ message/greeting to your friend. You create a whiteboard, leave a message and send a mail to your friend to view the message.

The whole concept is very similar to sending egreetings or ecards. But why say its a ‘hand written message’? Well .. to make things interesting they have created a fictitious character called Mr. Brown, representing UPS. Once your friend visits the UPS whiteboard, Mr. Brown says .. “Hey there .. your friend wanna give you this message” and starts writing the message on an online whiteboard!

BTW UPS is celebrating its 100th year of service and this is a part of their unique whiteboard advertising campaign.

“Imagination at work”? Yup .. rightly so!! General Electric has launched an useful online drawing board where you may draw up your ideas. You may also invite your friends via email or AOL instant messenger and draw together which makes it an effective collaborative tool. So you may use it to draw up a logo or a web layout and share it with your client or colleague. They have named this unique drawing board as Imagination Cubed. You will require atleast Flash Player 6 or 7 (for better performance).

Once you enter this drawing board, you will see a ‘pen tool’ which you may drag and start drawing. Apart from a mere pen tool, it has a whole lot of other tools like shape tool, stamper, line tool, type tool, background tool. Undo and Clear options lets you to step back or clean up mess. The File menu lets you save your work or send it to your friends. Nops, it doesn’t let you save your work as a gif/jpeg/png image. A copy of your work is saved in their servers (no time specified) and a link of the same is sent to your email address for future access. Happy drawing!!

Related: Convert files online with Zamzar

Today I was searching for an online file conversion tool to convert a Microsoft DOCX file to a PDF format. So I started searching the web and discovered Zamzar. This is just a real hand little website I found for online conversion of files. You know this is important, cause its done online. So you don’t need to download a software. Zamzar works like this ..

1. Browse and upload a file to convert.
2. Select the format to convert the file to.
3. Enter your email address to receive converted files.
4. Click on the CONVERT button.
5. Zamzar converts the file and sends you a link via email from where you may download the converted file to your PC.

In my case, it took less than 9 mins to receive the PDF file and believe me the resultant file was pretty nice. Zamzar can simultaneously convert a maximum of 5 files (of same extension). Apart from Microsoft Word to PDF conversion, you may convert iTunes AAC files to MP3, Flash (flv) files to MP4 for iPod use, etc. (All supported formats) Another nice feature is its ability to convert online videos at the click of a button! Wonder how? Click here to learn more.

Well that it for now folks! Enjoy

Related: Test your website for cross browser compatibility

To change password of an user account, we need to go to User Accounts panel in Control Panel, choose the user account, click on ‘Change my password’ link, type current password once and new password twice. Too lengthy a process isn’t it? Here is handy tip to change Win XP passwords in DOS mode and believe me, it takes less than 5 seconds!! Let me share the hack with you all!

Steps to change password

1. Click on ‘Start‘ and then on ‘Run…‘.
2. Type ‘cmd‘ (opens up the command prompt).
3. Now type net user * (do not omit the spaces)
4. You will get a prompt like ..

   Type a password for the user:

5. Type the desired password and press Enter key. Also note that you wont see *****s as you type but don’t worry.
6. You will again get a prompt like ..

   Retype the password to confirm:

7. Retype the password and press Enter key. Here too you wont see *****s as you type but don’t worry.

Thats it!!! Oh no .. wait .. Did it cost you more than 5 secs? OK Try this ..

Steps to change password quicker

Start all over again from Set #1 (above). In Step #3 above type net user username newpassword (do not omit the spaces) and press Enter key.

Switch profile and check your new password

This is another handy tip! Just press Windows key + L This will lock the computer and prompt you to enter password. Select the profile and enter the new password. If you get logged in that means the password is successfully changed. This again is another smart way to switch user accounts as also lock your computer.

Sounds good .. right? Try it. And hey .. you need to do this in administrative mode or else you will get an error messag: access denied

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We love to spend hours chatting in various chat rooms. We love to meet strangers, make new friends, share our emotions with them, and so on … We even try harder to see who is avoiding us. But do we ever wonder who are we really chatting with? (Of course if you really know him/her personally, then therez no prob.) Herez an award winning short film by Geoffrey Haley which I found at Youtube and it explains the story to a great extent I guess. Its titled ‘The Parlor’ (duration ~11mins). So what goes inside the chat rooms? Check it out!

Yet another colorful Indian festival is coming and this time its the Holi (as in Hindi) or (Doljatra as in Bengali). It is a spring festival and celebrated among the Hindus (and sometimes among all sections of the society). This year it will be celebrated on 3rd March. This is a typical spring festival where colors (in the form of powder and water) or rang/gulal (as in Hindi) are thrown or sprinkled on each other and this continues till late afternoon. Once this is over people spend lots of time rubbing their skin with soap and net unless it is ‘rang’ free. I too used to do that and usually felt feverish the next day. Some of the colors even used to take a few days to get cleaned. Its been quite a while, I have stopped playing Holi, mainly due to the notorious side effects of the synthetic ingredients of the colors. Hence the title!

But for you all, here are a few safety tips:

• While buying holi color powders and water colors, make sure you buy them from a reliable shop. The quality of colors matter the most as better the colors, lesser the risk of your skin getting harmed.
• Wear a piece of thick cloth in your head and then a cap to protect your hair.
• Try to oil your hair and skin heavily so that the colors get cleaned easily.
• Wear old clothes (preferable full shirts and jeans) so that they can be disposed off.
• Ensure that you take a heavy breakfast in the morning. Do not take any food in between if your lips and tooth are all filled with colors.
• The quality of colors is pretty bad these days and so try avoiding getting drenched by your friends.

Hope you have a safe and happy Holi!

Grab your Holi gift: Pepsi Nex 2: Maximum Typing

We all love to surf the ever-expanding web and I prefer to waste a few hours in doing that on a daily basis. To make things faster, I use a set handy of shortcuts. Let me share the shortcuts with you .. (I prefer to use Firefox as my default browser. But I do use Internet explorer (IE) too.)

To do	Press ..(In Firefox )	Press ..(In Internet Explorer)
Open new tab	Ctrl + T
Open new window	Ctrl + N	Ctrl + N
Open link in new tab	Hold down Ctrl key and click the link
Open link in new window	Hold down Shift key and click the link	Hold down Shift key and click the link
Go to next page	Shift + Backspace	Alt + Right (->)
Go to previous page	Backspace	Alt + Left (<-)
Find	Ctrl + F	Ctrl + F
Find next	F3	F3
View source	Ctrl + U
View selection source	Select the lines > Right click > Click on “View Selection Source”.
View history	Ctrl + H	Ctrl + H
	TIP: This is a pretty smart feature that helps you find a previously viewed webpage very easily. For example in the morning I found a nice online bike racing game but didn’t manage to play it due to lack of time. In the evening I wanted to try my luck but unfortunately I didn’t remember the URL. So I pressed Ctrl + H and then typed “bike” in the searchbox. Firefox gave me a list of URLs that contain the word bike in the title. It made my task easy and I found the URL! This tip works in IE too.
View Bookmark	Ctrl + B	Ctrl + B
	TIP: This is another smart feature that helps you find a bookmark very easily from a long list. The trick works similar to the previous tip.
Bookmark a page	Ctrl + D	Ctrl + D
Refresh page	F5	F5
Clear local web cache and refresh page	Ctrl + F5	Ctrl + F5
	TIP:Helps you see the latest version of the current webpage.
Increase font size	Ctrl + Scroll Up	Ctrl + Scroll Up
Decrease font size	Ctrl + Scroll Down	Ctrl + Scroll Down
Outline table cells	Ctrl + Click
	TIP: This shortcut is very handy specially for web designers and it helps in viewing the boundaries of a table cell (td).
Google a word from the current page	Select the word > Right click > Click on “Search Web for “word“
Close a tab	Move your cursor over the tab > Middle click
Move a tab	Click on the tab > Drag it before/after a tab and drop
Use Google’s I am feeling lucky feature	View tip

Apart from this list there are plenty of other Firefox/IE shortcuts/tips available in the following webpages:

• Firefox Help: Keyboard Shortcuts
• Firefox Shortcuts and Tips Also includes some cool games
• Hack Attack: Mouse-less Firefox
• Internet Explorer Keyboard Shortcuts
• A list of Internet Explorer keyboard shortcuts