Woo hoo finally receive my first ever Google cheque which i earn through google adsense. It took me about one year to earn and i am now targeting to earn my next cheque in 6 month time. For those who still have not hit the US$100 dollar payout, dun give up just keep blogging and the cheque will reach your letter box soon.

My first nuffnang cheque

Tech tips

1) Tabbing – Use Ctrl T for a new tab in both Firefox and Internet explorer. Use Ctrl W to close a tab then you can also hit Shift Ctrl T to reopen the closed tab. To go to address bar you can use Ctrl L to jump to there. For Firefox you can use Ctrl K to get into the search box. Lastly you can use the mouse center button to click on a link and it will open the site in a new tab.

2) Create a personal letterhead – Instead of keep on retyping the same on a word document (E.g contact number, name, etc) you can create a personal letterhead. Go to the template folder (look under Documents and settings in the local disk, usually the C drive). Click on a template icon (it has an orange bar across the top).

In the word template or master copy that opens, type in all the personal bits you want. For instance, name, cellphone number and e-mail at the top right corner of a header and an inspirational message in the footer. Add a visual if you like. Under file, select Save As and name the template, for example, seashell-lttrhd. Next, go back to the template in the template folder and right-click on it to Create Shortcut. Right-click on the shortcut and paste it on the desktop.

Now every time you double click on the Word icon on the desktop, your personalized letterhead pops up.

3) Never forget a task – use a sticky - Tired of seeing sticky note pasting all over your table or wall. You can download this Zhorn software. Install the program and it sits on the QuickLaunch bar. Click it once and a yellow window pops up. You are allow to create up to 32 stickies. Right-click the icon to manage the stickies, save them and lock them up if they are important so that you do not accidentally delete an important reminder. You also set a sound alarm to to alert you.

4) Create desktop shutdown icon – This is to teach you a slightly faster way to shutdown your PC. Right-click anywhere on the desktop and click on New then Shortcut. In the box, type: “shutdown -s -t 00″. Click Next. In the box called “Type a name for this shortcut”, type a brief name or leave the default “shutdown.exe” alone. Click Finish. Now you will see an icon says shutdown.exe on your desktop. If you want you can Right-click on it go to properties and change your icon. The next time you want to power down your PC it is just one double-click.

5) Exclusive search – Use a minus “-” in front of a word that you do not want it to appear in your search results. For example, you search for “Soccer news” you do not want to see Ronaldo news you can type this way “Soccer news -Ronaldo”.

6) Search for the right picture - Finding pictures that are safe for reuse or for reuse with modification can be quite difficult. One way is to go to www.google.com then go to the Advanced Image Search to narrow down the hunt and choose your preferred settings under Usage Rights.

7) Gmail shortcuts - Gmail’s have too many shortcut for one person to remember all. In fact there is just one easy-to-remember shortcut that you need to know. First, go to Settings, turn keyboard shortcuts on, save the changes and log out of Gmail. Then log in again, Hold down Shift, hit the question mark key and the entire menu of shortcuts will appear.

8 ) To control your browser - Useful shortcut key to control your browser. When you have several tabbed pages open in Firefox, Hit Ctrl+Tab to move the tab on the right or Hit Shift+Ctrl+Tab to move to the tab on the left.  To add .com to a web address press Ctrl+Enter and to add .net press Shift+Enter. Using Ctrl+D will bookmark a site.

9) Creating subsidiary ID to your Gmail address- Lazy to create multiple account when ask to register in order for you to be able to access the site and afraid that you will start to receive spam email. By adding + and a word before the @ sign, you can create a subsidiary account. For example if your default Gmail address is anything@gmail.com and you want to use it to sign up for an online newsletters. You can do it in this way; anything+newsletters@gmail.com. Then go to Gmail to setup a mail filter to store, archive, label or delete messages sent to this address. Another way i s to insert one or more full stops into your address, for example, a.nything@gmail.com or a.n.y.t.h.i.n.g@gmail.com.

10) Portable browser – Download this takeaway version of Firefox, called Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition, from Firefox_portable. Install in on external hard disk, USB flash drvie, etc. Then set it up with add-ons and saved passwords. Now this will save you a lot time when using other people PC because you will save the time finding the website and keying the password. The best part of this solution is that no personal data gets left behind in the host PC after you pull out the device.

11) To find out the song title - Make full use of the advantage of the cell phone in-built microphones and together with music identification software you can find the song title easily. You can try this popular freeware, Shazam which is very popular in Apple’s iPhone. But Shazam has also release the app for Blackberry, Symbian and Windows Mobile platforms.

For PC and Mac users, you all can use Tunatic but you need to have a microphone install first for the software to work.

12) Find your Blackberry PIN – Instead of going to Options>Status>PIN, users can just start a new email or SMS and type in “mypin” in the message field. Hit Enter and the PIN comes up.

13) To completely delete a file - Pressing delete and then empty your Recycle Bin does not delete the file completely. Other user can make use of some program to restore all your deleted files. To completely destroy a file you need some software such as Eraser or Permanent Eraser. This kind of software will overwrite the deleted file many time to make it almost irretrievable.

14) Windows 7: create power consumption report -In Windows 7, click start and type “cmd”. Right-click the menu item and click “Run as Administrator” Next type in “powercfg -energy”. A file called energy-report.html will be created with details of your device’s power usage.

15) Gadget galore – In Windows 7, you can enhance your desktop with mini-apps called gadgets. Simply right-click on the desktop and select Gadgets. In the new pop-up window, click “Get more gadgets online” at the bottom right-hand side of the window. Example of gadgets are Full Moon, AccuWeather, wireless network meter, etc. There are now more than 3600 gadgets available for download.

16) Make Windows 7 key work harder – Press it together with the left or right arrow key to automatically resize the current window to fully occupy the left or right half of the computer screen. Or press the Windows key and the down arrow to minimize an open window. Press the Windows key together with the up arrow to get the window to fill up the whole screen.

17) Make the monitor look better - Windows 7 now come with a new monitor calibration tool. This save you the money and time to install a calibration software. This tool is found in Control Panel then click on the Display icon. There you will see the Calibrate Color button. Take your time to adjust it until you find it comfortable to look at the screen.

18) Web searches from Start - To perform Internet searches in Windows 7, go to the Start Menu and enter “gpedit.msc” in the Start Menu search box to access the Group Policy Editor. Then double-click on User Configuration in the right pane and select Administrative Templates followed by Start Menu and Taskbar. In the list of settings, double-click and enable “Add search Internet link to Start Menu”.

19) Problem recorder - If you have problems installing or uninstalling software or removing a virus, here is an additional tool. The problem steps recorder documents all the steps performed on the computer and creates a zip file so that every detail can be shared and studied. Click Start and type in “psr.exe”, press Record to start the process and end the recording before creating the zip file.

20) Write in a new Gmail window - In order to write a new email message without moving away from the e-mail message you are currently reading. Hold down Shift C while clicking on Compose. A new window will open and you can start writing a new email.

21) Use camera as copier - Place the magazine or book as flat as possible on the table. Then set the camera lens at the middle of the zoom range this will move lens away from the wide angle which carries some distortion. Hold the camera above the center of the page and as flat as possible. Turn on the macro mode (the flower symbol). Off the flash, you do not want to over expose the page.

via Digital Life, Nov 18, 2009.

This video show you how to hack Google for free music, games, ebooks and other software. But after watching the video i feel that it is more of how you make full use of the search engine. Not really hacking. Watch this video tutorial and learn how to search Google for free stuff. Please wait for a while for the video to load, there is a bar on the top right of the video showing the loading time. Hope you enjoy the video.

via wonderhowto

Youtube screen capture

It was at first thought to be another april fool joke but it is true that you could flip a youtube video upside down. I just try it myself it is still working all the lettering and tumbnail are upside down too. Try it now before google take it down anytime. This how you do it. First copy the URL from the labeled box on the right. (Be sure it’s the URL box and not the embed box.) Next, paste your URL into your browser window and add &flip=1 to the end of it with no spaces.

Example the original URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAh_K4yb-k0

Example the flip URL: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAh_K4yb-k0&flip=1

via About.com

Red Hulk

The image result i did a search using term “Hulk” after that i apply the red color filter.

Yellow Robot

The image result i did a search using term “Robot” after that i apply the yellow color filter.

Google Chrome

Browser vendors often make strong claims about their responsiveness to vulnerability reports and their ability to preemptively prevent exploits. But at the first day of Pwn2Own competition Firefox, Safari, and Internet Explorer were all exploited. Moreover Safari was the first to be exploited. Google Chrome was the only one left standing. This is due to Google Chrome browser’s sandboxing feature and the operating system’s security measures together pose a formidable challenge. For full report you can check it out at Ars technica.

A newly develop aplication for Android by the name Torrent Droid. This app is able to search the web for the torrent file you are looking for after you have do a barcode scan on a piece of media. (eg. dvd, game, software) First of all u need to turn on the application and then use the phone camera to capture the product’s UPC barcode. After that it will  launch a search to find a torrent of the scanned media. Torrent Droid allows the user to then transfer or send this torrent file to the user’s home computer running uTorrent and the uTorrent Web Gui. The full version of Torrent Droid will be released within a month. Hope you enjoy the video.

Source: zerofate