CustomizeGoogle is a Firefox extension that lets you do a whole lot of customizations of Google home page, Gmail, Google Reader, etc. including:

• Remove ads (thats a Big relief!)
• Anonymize your Google userid
• Add a result counter in search result
• Filter spammy websites from search results
• Add links to WayBack Machine (webpage history)
• Remove click tracking

and much much more!

What if you have your very own Google home page with a gorgeous wallpaper of a Ferrari car in the background? Or maybe a mind blowing landscape!

Searchslate offers you some neatly customized Google homepages with themes of the following categories: Space, Nature, Abstract, People, Places, Fantasy, Cars. Search results will be same as you get in Google itself as they have used the Google Custom Search in the backend.

Finally I decided to quit bachelors club. The day was 27th February, 2009 when I tied the knot with my little angel Swarnali, whom I have dreamt of in my dreams, thought of in my subconscious mind and somehow missed for the last 30 years. She happens to be a decent writer, story teller and is somewhat blessed with a poetic mind. So if you feel WebTips is all about Tech Tips, time to rethink!

In the coming days you will be happy to see her contributions here itself.

So, a BIG hello to you Swarnali ! Lets not miss the chance and grab the opportunity to read your penning in the days to come.

If you also feel you can be a contributor to this weblog, write to me at rabanerjee@gmail.com.

Say your ID is myemailid@gmail.com So while logging into your Gamil account you just need to type “myemailid” into the Username field and provide the valid Password associated with that account in the Password field…right??

Now instead of typing “myemailid” in the Username field, insert a dot (.) somewhere in between the letters (Say after the word ‘my’ which changes your Gmail ID to my.emailid@gmail.com), provide the valid Password associated with the login ID “myemailid” and click on the Sign In button. What did you get?

Yes Gmail lets you log in into your account although you mistyped the Username (my.emailid@gmail.com instead of myemailid@gmail.com).

Hence, to conclude, Gmail reserves the Username you used while Signing Up, ONLY for you and blocks any attempt to create Usernames using exactly the same string as in your actual Useername. So next time be very careful in choosing your Gmail Login Id.

NOTE: Don’t try this with Yahoo! mail. It wont work. Don’t know whether it will work with other free email service providers.

This is quite surprising! I opened my Yahoo mail and found all the new spam mails are showing date of delivery as 2038 . Here is a sanpshot:

The mails in the inbox are all ok. I wonder if this is the new era of email spamming. If you have an solution to this pls do drop a line.

So .. you have setup your own blog at your self-hosted WordPress site. You also may have setup your Feedburner url to publish your RSS feed. And finally you want to redirect the feed url which may look like http://www.example.com/feed or http://blog.example.com/feed to http://feeds.feedburner.com/MyFeed. To do that Google (who aquired Feedburner last your) recommend the FeedSmith Plugin:

For the best results using FeedBurner with your self-hosted WordPress site, we recommend the FeedBurner FeedSmith plugin (originally authored by the legendary Steve Smith). The plugin will detect all ways to access your feed (e.g. http://www.yoursite.com/feed/ or http://www.yoursite.com/wp-rss2.php, etc.), and redirect them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber. It will forward for your main posts feed and optionally, your main comments feed as well.

Just download the Feedburner Feedsmith plugin and follow the steps as detailed in the document. Thats all! Now seat back and enjoy!!

Incase you want to host the feed in your own domain using Feedburner try MyBrand which lets you use your own domain name to host your feed instead of feeds.feedburner.com. Sounds interesting huh? Give it a try. Details available here.

Hi guys! Just check the following Ad-War-Tisement. I prefer to call it Ad-War-Tisement and not advertisement since its a Ad-War between corporates and everyone has to say something.

1. It all started with BMW.
2. Reply came from Audi.
3. Meanwhile Subaru needs to say something.
4. While Bentley Chairman wanted the last word.

Have fun!!

Do you have something like this to share? Email us or post a comment.

Facebook apps are rapidly growing its popularity among the users and here I am reviewing an application I like the most and its called iThink. iThink is an application (a social tool rather) that lets you Express and Share your opinions with your friends as well as other users who cast their Vote in favor or against it. Opinions can be created under various categories like Careers, Global Issues, Relationships, Politics, Technology, etc. Thus you can get a clear idea what the rest of the world thinks with respect to your opinion. Another nice feature of this application is that it lets users to comment apart from just casting their votes. So if you disagree with an opinion, you may opt to comment and explain why you disagree.

A ranking system is also in place to excite the users to use the app on a regular basis and climb the ladder but I don’t feel its the power to build opinions and interact rather that excites me to use this app. Not to forget its excellent interface, completely in sync with the default interface of Facebook.

Here is a nice example that explains what I am talking about
(to get a glimpse inside Facebook you need to Add iThink first which hardly takes half a minute I guess)

On 5th of January, I posted an opinion: Firefox is better than Internet Explorer.

No. of votes casted (till now): 200
People who agreed: 64% or 128
People who disagreed: 36% or 72

(You may also get a social breakup of the voters as per their Gender, Age group under the ‘Insights’ block)

Conclusion: A majority of the Facebook-iThink users feel Firefox is better than Internet Exporer which to me seems gr8!

A few of the most popular opinions @ iThink:

1. Pepsi is better than Coke. (428,306 voted, 28% agreed, 809 comments)
2. Long distance relationships don’t work. (413,938 voted, 59% agreed, 354 comments)
3. Osama Bin Laden is still alive. (407,391 voted, 87% agreed, 113 comments)
4. No sex before marriage. (3,458 voted, 12% agreed, 67 comments)
5. Men cheat more than women. (406,463 voted, 54% agreed, 185 comments)

Blogging at Blogsome is getting easier and more exciting I guess. Previously I used to have this cache problem a lot. Let me explain it in brief …

Say you create a page (thats where I face this problem a lot) or a post in your blog. Now when you attempt to make certain changes and republish, you cant seem to see the changes in reality! You may wonder if this has something to do with your browser. Well yes it may be.

How to clean browser cache?

Whatever be your browser (Firefox, Internet Explorer, etc.) just press Ctrl + F5. There are other ways (pretty hectic yet useful) to clean the browser cache .. just take the help of Google/Yahoo to find it. Now does that solve your problems? Yes?? Gr8! If not, read on ..

How do I clean server cache of my blog at Blogsome?

Previously I used to do this. I used to rename the page from /page-name-1/ to /page-name-2/and republish, open the page in my browser, rename the page from /page-name-2/ to /page-name-1/ and republish it. Grrr .. too hectic and often it didn’t work too smartly.

But now I have a simpler way to clean the server cache of of my blog hosted at Blogsome!

Now, I simply ..

1. log in to my account
2. Go to Manage tab
3. Click on Hacks tab
4. There you will find the following line .. If you make a change to your blog and it doesn’t take effect (which shouldn’t happen very often) try clearing the cache. (Screenshot) Yup you guessed it right .. I just have to click on the clearing the cache button! Thats it!!

NOTE: If that doesn’t solve your probs, keep experimenting or simply post your probs in the famous Blogsome forums (famous cuz I have learnt a lot simply reading the old posts).

» How to create a customized 404 error page at Blogsome?
» Test your website for cross browser compatibility
» Stop visitors from leaving your blog early

Want to know more about web cache? Read this doc.