Google+ Plus is awesome but one of the most annoying things, was that I was receiving many emails with regard to the Google+ notifications. There is an easy way using which you can configure the email notifications that get delivered or you can stop them altogether.

1. Login to your Google+ account and then towards the top right side of the screen click on the ‘gear’ like button. You will now see a dropdown menu and choose ‘Google+ settings’ there.

2. Now you will be taken to a page where you can choose the events for which you will receive notification in email and SMS.

3. Select the events for which you want to receive an email or SMS notification. In my case I disabled all the notifications as I don’t want any emails or SMS as I get notified by Google+ Android app.

Do any of you prefer to receive Google+ notifications in SMS? I felt that until there is a way to post to Google+ via SMS there is not point in receiving notification via SMS.

Now that you are active on Google+ and have been using it for a while, let us find out how to delete a comment that has been posted on your stream. It is useful to know this as there might be cases when you might want to delete a comment from one of your posts.

How to Delete a User Comment from your Google+ Plus Stream?

1. Open the post from which you intend to delete the comment. Then towards the right side there will a small dropdown button which looks like an arrow head, click on it. Now you will find a menu popping up, here choose the ‘Report or remove comments’ option.

(click image to enlarge)

2.  Now you can see two buttons appear for each comments in the post. Use the cross button to delete the comment but if you intend to report the comment for abuse then use the flag button.

(click image to enlarge)

3. After you hit the cross button, Google+ will ask for your confirmation. Hit the delete button to delete the comment.

The comment should be gone now.

Did you ever had a need to analyze the cache folders of web browsers? Many times we can extract lot of useful files from our web browser’s cache, this can save has the hassle of re-downloading the files again, one such example is image files.

Nirsoft has got three useful utilities namely Opera Cache View for Opera web browser, Mozilla Cache View for Mozilla based browser & Firefox and IE Cache View for Internet Explorer. These three utilities same functionality only difference between them is that each one is for that particular browser.

These utilities don’t require any installation just download and run it. These Cache viewer display each and every file that is stored in the browser’s cache folder. The following details about the files in cache can be found: URL, Content type, File size, Last modified time, Last fetched time, Expiration time, Fetch count and Server name. The cache files can be sorted based on the file types like image, text, video, audio, or application.

You can easily select one or more items from the cache list, and then extract the files to another folder, or copy the URLs list to the clipboard. These browser cache viewers allow you to select one or more cache files from the list, and than export the list into text/html/xml file (‘Save Selected Items’ option), copy the URL list to the clipboard (Ctrl+U), copy the entire table of cache files (Ctrl+C), and then paste it to Excel or to spreadsheet. You can also extract the actual files from the cache, and save them into another folder, You can do that by using the ‘Copy Selected Cache Files To’ option (F4).

We tested these utility in Windows XP and Windows Vista.

Download Opera Cache Viewer

Download Mozilla Cache Viewer

Download IE Cache Viewer

This tip would allow you to customize your Opera web browser’s title to your choice. Opera is a browser that can be customized to our taste so if you are an Opera user then read on.

How to Customize Opera Browser Title

1. Open up Opera web browser and type enter “opera:config#UserPrefs|Title” (without quotes)

2. Enter the name or title of your choice in the field that is presented to you.

3. Now save the config and close your browser.

4. Reopen your Opera browser and now you should see your title or name in action.

Hope you find this tip useful. Let me know if you have any questions.

Many people still use Internet explorer even though we have better alternatives like Opera, Firefox etc. This tip would tell you how you can create a shortcut and open Internet Explorer with a blank page.

How to Open Internet Explorer with a Blank Page using Shortcut

1. Create a shortcut in that enter the below mentioned entry (include the quotes)

"C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE" -nohome

2. Now save the shortcut with name of your choice.

3. That is it now when you use this shortcut to open Internet Explorer it would open with a blank page

You can also set the homepage to blank by entering “about:blank” in Internet Options > Homepage.

I recently moved Shivaranjan.com to DreamHost that went on well. Let me share with you the steps that I followed to move Shivaranjan.com across the Web hosts.

1. Backup the Current WordPress Database: Back up your WordPress database. WordPress has provided wonderful tutorial on how to backup wordpress database.

2. Backup all the WordPress files from you blog’s root directory: Backup the entire contents of your blog and save it in your local hard drive using your favorite FTP program.

3. Change the name server settings in your domain control panel: Change the name server details of your domain in your domain control panel to point to the new web host. e.g ns1.dreamhost.com

4. Put up a maintenance notice in your blog: Put up a maintenance message in your blog. I did this by creating a index.html file that contained the message and put in my blog directory.

5. Uploading the entire contents of your blog to your new web host: Using a your favorite FTP program upload the entire contents of your blog to new host.

6. Create and Import your old database to your new web host: Once the DNS changes have been propagated you would be able to create a new database in your new web host. Now import the database that you backed up in step 1 into the new database. WordPress has given a tutorial on restoration of database from backup. Note DNS propagation takes around 12 hours to get reflected.

7. Change the wp-config.php file: Now edit the wp-config.php to input the new database host name, database name and database password.

That’s it you are done, now your site should be up and running. This what exactly I did to move two of my blogs from my previous web host to DreamHost and this worked flawlessly for me.

Note: This post is a part of tutorial group writing project organized by Monika.

I finally moved Shivaranjan.com to DreamHost web hosting. My previous web hosting was was good but their mysql server was a screwed up one. Most of the time I would always get a message which would say “Mysql went away”. This was brought to their notice many times but I felt that they did not take any action to resolve it.

Why DreamHost?

Far the past three weeks I was doing lot of research on web hosting and finally zeroed in these web hosting companies:

• DreamHost
• Media Temple
• Blue Host
• Hostgator

I was already using Dreamhost for Blogg-buzz which is working good till now. John earlier was using some very crap hosting where he faced lot of downtime and sometime back he also moved to DreamHost. Quickonine Tips another popular high traffic technology blog is also hosted on DreamHost, they even put a post that ultimately made my mind to go with DreamHost.

How much downtime did I face?

The total downtime that I faced was close to 13 hours and now my blog is up and running very well.

If you have any issues with my blog please let me know so that I can fix it as quickly as possible.

I participated in Daily Blog Tips’s Blog Writing Project: Tips & Tricks and I am one of the finalist there. There are totally 122 tips and tricks post that cover various topics, below I am posting the ones that I liked the most.

1. 7 Tips to Overcoming Writer’s Block by Susan (I often face this)
2. How to Access Blocked or Restricted Orkut by Abhishek (Very useful)
3. Top 10 Most Creative Relaxation Ideas by Sparky (Will be helpful when I am stressed)
4. 15 Tips to Increase Your Productivity with Power Point 2007 by Ashish (My next presentation is going to be awesome and I going to get promotion)
5. How To Style Author Comments Differently by Michael

I am posting the complete Tips and Tricks list, do let me know which ones you liked.

Blogging

• 7 Tips for Brand New WordPress Blogs by Daniel Harisson
• Blogging Satisfaction by David
• The Top 10 Four-Letter Word of Real Estate Blogging by Mariana
• 3 Surefire Ways to Run a Totally Radical Blog Contest by Phil
• 5 Ways to Increase Internet Traffic to Your Blog by Aseem
• Is Your Blog Easy to Read? by Pat
• 3 Ways Your Blog Can Get You a Hot Date by Phil
• How to Increase Blog Subscriber Number by Dean
• Four Ways to Encourage Comments on Your Blog by Jordan
• A Simple Blog Promotion Tips for Newbies by Costa
• 5 Easy Ways to Get Bookmarked on Delicious and Become Hot by Moshin
• 5 Tips for a Successful Blogging Gig by Arnold
• 10 Tips for Writing Bookmarkable Content by Skellie
• Three Cool Things To Do With Your Feedburner Feed by Rhys
• How to Run a Smashing Blog Contest and Win with It by Vijay
• Tips For Blogging In The White Mountains Of AZ by Scott
• Are Your Blog Posts Actually Useful? by Matt
• 4 Free Tips To Get More Exposure For Your Blog by Kyle
• Shot Through The Glass Ceiling by Betshopboy
• Tips on Gaining Page Views and Returning Visitors Using Post Series by Sarah
• 3 Ways to Optimize Your Blog Homepage by Nathan
• Tips on Keeping the Creative Juices Flowing by Ajay
• Must Read Tips for Writing a Post that Attracts 15,000 Readers by Joseph
• 5 Tipps um Leser zu gewinnen (German) by Stefan
• 27 Tips for Building a Kick-Ass Blog by Ahmed
• Tips on Promoting Your Blog by Madhur
• Tea Party Girl’s Tips and Tricks for a Beautiful Blogging Life by Jenny
• 7 Tips to Overcoming Writer’s Block by Susan
• 10 Simple Ways to Show Reader Appreciation by Ronald
• Group Writing Projects and Blog Carnivals: 5 Tips to Increase Blog
  Traffic Using Them by Alfa
• 5 Tips To Increase Comments by Ad Tracker
• How to Build Lasting Relationships with Your Readers by Vivien
• 10 Easy Ways to Improve Your Blog Posts by Tejvan

Business & Career

• 3 Tips on How to Motivate Your Team by Mabel
• 60 Stock Tips for Investment Success by Blain
• Magic Tricks for Great Leaders by Anna
• Client Profiles: Secret Tips by Corinne
• 15 Tips to Increase Your Productivity with Power Point 2007 by Ashish
• 10 Top Tips For Finding Internet Business Ideas by John
• Online Home Based Jobs: 5 Tips to Find Legitimate Ones by Alfa
• 10 Tips for Successful Presentations by Computhomas
• 6 Tips to Generate Outstanding Ideas by Luciano
• A Microsoft Word Resume Tip That You have Never Heard by Jacob
• Top 10 Financial Mistakes to Avoid by Tejvan

Entertainment

• How To Avoid the Dreaded Fat-ass Disease When You Sit and Play Poker All Day by Sparky
• Tips for Using Film Critics by Glenn
• Five Tips for Making Soccer/Football Exciting (or at Least Tolerable) by Hairy
• 7 Easy Ways to Make Time Despite the Fall TV Season by Cullen
• How to Keep Your Marriage, Despite you Heavy Metal Addiction by Alexandre
• Life Tips Learned from High School Musical by Holli

Food

• 4 Tips on Making Your First Wine by Ben Evert
• A Couple of Coffee Tips and Tricks by Audrey
• Tips to Saving on Food by Pink Elle
• 15 Tips to Help You Dine with the Best by Andrew
• Quick Meals, Not Fast Food by Geoff

Health & Fitness

• 3 Tips to a Healthier You by Just Me
• One Secret Tip to Improve Your Health by Niels
• Top 10 Most Creative Relaxation Ideas by Sparky
• 3 Mind Tricks to Feel Better by Anna
• 10 “Get The Body You’ve Always Wanted” Tips, Tricks and Motivators by Mike
• How To Be Gorgeous Like Me by Kendra
• Tips and Tricks for Recovering from Epi-lasik by Paris
• Tips on Not Living Fat by Suzi
• Effective Ways to Losing Weight by Tine
• 8 Foundation Tips and Tricks by Paris
• Some Tips on Preventing Childhood Obesity by Tina
• Thirteen Tips to Help You Resume Your Health & Fitness Program if You Get Off Track by Janie
• 10 Tips to Avoid Becoming Depressed by Tejvan
• Tips for Interval Training by Shane
• S*x, Health, and Money – 4 Tips from the Law by Legal Andrew

Make Money Online

• 18 Tips for Writing PPC Ads by Derek
• 4 Easy Ways to Make More Money with Adsense by Egon
• How I Improved my AdSense CTR by 51% by Using AuctionAds by Ashwin
• 5 Ways to Become an Expert Online and Make Money! by Chad
• 7 Key Skills Of The Successful Adwords Advertiser by Vittorio

Photography

• 101 Tips and Tricks for Better Photos by Ciaran
• Go Steady With Your Camera & Take Shake-free Photos Without a Tripod by Samir
• How to Organize Your Travel Pictures by Em Dy
• 6 Tips to Take Great Photographs by Rajaram
• Warning: These 9 Photoshop Techniques May Result In Great Photos by Brian

Technology & Internet

• How to Access Blocked or Restricted Orkut by Abhishek
• 4 Powerful Tricks of the Viral Video Trade by Jonathan
• Tips and Tricks: How to Write, Send, Reply, and Forward E-Mail by Lillie
• Orkut Tips and Tricks by Sahil
• How to Format Your Phone Without the Security Code by Abhishek
• Facebook Tips and Tricks by Sahil
• Tips and Tricks to Get More Out of Your Laptop Battery by Shivaranjan
• 10 Forums to Make You a Better Blogger by Fred

Travel

• 5 Tips for Saving Money on a Colorado Ski Vacation by Stacy
• 18 Quick Tips to Get Money for a Trip by Max
• Seven Easy Tips for Saving Money on Travel by Linda
• Long-Haul Flights: 5 tips for Comfort by Sheila
• Tips for a Great Holiday by Pink Elle

Web Development & SEO

• How I Got Aerobed to Number One in Google by Julian
• Webmaster Tip: Optimize Your Site for Google by Chris
• Optimize Your Webpage by Edward
• How To Style Author Comments Differently by Michael
• How to Edit Your Blog Theme Without Messing Up by Nirmal
• Blog SEO Tips by Marco
• Simple SEO Tips to Improve your Blog’s Search Rankings by Sumesh
• 7 Steps for Creating a Successful Community by Karthik
• 9 Tips to be More Creative by CSS
• How to Setup a Domino Effect of Traffic by Steven
• 10 Top Tips to Drive Traffic AWAY from Your Website by Ben
• Tips to Optimize Your Blog and Get Maximum Visits by Bikram

Random Topics

• 3 Tips to Refinancing Your Home Mortgage by Phil
• Calypso Inspiration: How To Talk Like a Pirate Wench by Anita
• 5 Tips for Crafting Effective Criticism by Annie
• Three Strategies for Surviving your Short Stay in the Slammer by J.D.
• Basic Cleaning Tips and Tricks by Jester
• S*x Tips and Tricks for Both Men and Women by Jae
• Forgotten Someone’s Name? Use These Tricks by Dee
• Beware of Fakes on Ebay by Paris
• Tips for Men by Lori
• Down and Dirty with A Car! by Pink Elle
• 3 Tips and Tricks for Encouraging your Husband to Get Started on That Honey-do List by Shazia
• Hi! Iam Jimbo and Iam an Addict! by Jimbo
• Bible Peace Tip by Jay
• Five Quick Tips On Evaluating Your Kids Teachers by Scott
• One Simple Trick to Master any Language by Blaiq
• 5 Tips to Being Interesting by John

Firefox add-on PDF download allows you control the behavior of Firefox in four different ways:

1. Download the PDF file.
2. Open the PDF file.
3. View the PDF file as HTML
4. Bypass PDF download

Why Firefox add-on PDF download is worth installing?

When ever you click a link that points to a PDF file you would have observed that the PDF file gets opened inside the browser itself. If you are using Adobe acrobat reader for viewing PDF files then you know how long your Adobe acrobat reader to takes to load. By installing this add-on you can custom control the behavior of your Firefox browser to your need moreover PDF file format is a very popular file format that you would encounter frequently so it makes lot of sense to have this add-on.

Various options that Firefox add-on PDF download offers: ( refer to the screenshots, click them to enlarge)

Download Firefox add-on PDF Download

Let me know your feedback on PDF download.

The title of the post is self explanatory.

Found Via Madman2k.net

Apple has officially announced the much awaited iPhone which everybody was looking forward to hear about.

Wondering what is Apple iPhone?
iPhone combines three products — a revolutionary mobile phone, a widescreen iPod with touch controls, and a breakthrough Internet communications device with desktop-class email, web browsing, maps, and searching — into one small and lightweight handheld device. iPhone also introduces an entirely new user interface based on a large multi-touch display and pioneering new software, letting you control everything with just your fingers. So it ushers in an era of software power and sophistication never before seen in a mobile device, completely redefining what you can do on a mobile phone.

Specifications of iPhone:

• Screen size: 3.5 inches
• Screen resolution: 320 by 480 at 160 pixels per inch
• Input method: Multi-touch
• Operating system: OS X (whoa that’s really cool)
• Storage: 4GB or 8GB
• GSM: Quad-band (MHz: 850, 900, 1800, 1900)
• Wireless data: Wi-Fi (802.11b/g) + EDGE + Bluetooth 2.0
• Camera: 2.0 megapixels
• Battery: Up to 5 hours Talk / Video / Browsing, Up to 16 hours Audio playback
• Dimensions: 4.5 x 2.4 x 0.46 inches
• Weight: 4.8 ounces / 135 grams

The iPhone initially would be available in 4GB and 8GB versions which would set you back by USD $499 and USD $599 respectively. The iPhone is expected to be available in US by June 2007, 4th quarter of 2007 in Europe and first quarter of 2008 in Asia.

My View:
I am pretty impressed by this product and going to definitely buy it when it is launched in India. The iPhone’s smart sensors have really taken over me. The iPhone features three smart sensors that controls the iPhone’s behavior. iPhone’s accelerometer detects when you rotate the device from portrait to landscape, then automatically changes the contents of the display, so you immediately see the entire width of a web page or a photo in its proper landscape aspect ratio. The proximity sensor detects when you lift iPhone to your ear and immediately turns off the display to save power and prevent inadvertent touches until iPhone is moved away. An ambient light sensor automatically adjusts the display’s brightness to the appropriate level for the current ambient light, thereby enhancing the user experience and saving power at the same time.

I would say that the iPhone is currently the best smart phone that money can buy. I feel the other mobile manufacturers like Nokia and Sony Ericsson would come with some thing similar soon. Well iPhone has come into my upgrade list and hopefully it will replace my Nokia 663O smart phone by 2008. All I can advise you right now is to start saving money and get the iPhone at the earliest.

Via Gizmodo

Blogg-Buzz is a cool service for bloggers like you and me who would like to know the latest buzz that’s happening in the blogosphere. Blogg-Buzz at present operates in a similar way to the popular social networking site Digg. The main difference that sets apart Blogg-Buzz is that here you can submit content only from blogs.

If you are a blogger then you would definitely know the pain of getting your blog post to the Digg front page as many members of Digg community hate blog posts and usually term them as “Blog Spam” even though your blog post may be original and Digg worthy. So to address these needs of all bloggers, myself and John hit upon the idea of launching Blogg-Buzz.

How do you get benefited by being a part of Blogg-Buzz?

1. You will get traffic from Blogg-Buzz.
2. Many bloggers are going to be a part of Blogg-Buzz so you can get to interact with them via private messages.
3. You will get new readers for your blog.
4. Your blog post need not compete against big news sites to get to the front page of Blogg-Buzz and that is one of the greatest advantage that Blogg-Buzz has to offer you.

So what are you thinking? You can sign up for Blogg-Buzz right away here. Blogg-Buzz currently is in alpha stage so there may be bugs which I request you people to report that to us using the contact us form. People now start buzzing and let the game begin.
A special thanks to bloggers Carol, Ashish Mohta and Sreedhar for helping us out in launch of Blogg-Buzz.

Update: Ashish has written a post on how to go get going with Blogg-Buzz.

A friend of mine was recently struggling to burn a bin file which he had downloaded as the Cue file which usually accompanies the bin file was missing. So the in this post you will learn how to create cue file for a bin file. Let us imagine you have bin file called “abc.bin” for which you need to create a cue file.

Step 1: Create a separate folder and copy the file “abc.bin” into that folder

Step 2: Open Notepad. Notepad can be opened by Start>Run>type “Notepad”

Step 3: Copy and paste the the code that is given below in notepad and now paste your  bin file name along with the extension over abc.bin.

FILE “abc.bin” BINARY
TRACK 01 MODE1/2352
INDEX 01 00:00:00

Step 4: Save the file by setting Save As type to All Files and not the default text document setting with the file name abc.cue in the same folder where you have copied the abc.bin file. Refer to the screenshot given below.

Step 5: Once you have done this you should be able to burn this bin file with any of your favourite burning application.

I hope this tutorial for creating a cue file would be immensely useful for you.

Fujitsu has unveiled 2.5″ 300GB capacity hard drives for notebooks which is the largest available capacity of currently. The drives are powered by 4200 rpm drive motor and use perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) for storing data on the hard drive. These hard drives will be connected via SATA interface featuring native command queuing (NCQ) technology and expected power consumption is around 1.6 watt. The pricing of the new drives as of now is not yet revealed.

My View:
The move to make larger capacity hard drives is always welcomed as the space needed to store your data is always growing. I would love to add this 300GB drive in my notebook, the only thing that I feel is not appropriate here is the 4200 rpm motor which drives the hard drive. I currently feel that even 5,400 rpm hard drives which ships with most notebooks are also not very fast performers. With introduction of these new drives the laptop hard drives are now matching the desktop hard drives in terms of capacity but they have a long way to go in terms of performance.

Apple has released firmware update for 5G video iPod which claims to fix the following bug that Apple believes was present:

Some customers may experience an issue where a Fifth Generation iPod will reset when attempting to play certain MP3 files or podcasts encoded as MP3. This symptom may occur with any MP3 file encoded at 32Khz or higher with a mono channel.

I tried to play some files which had mono channel and were encoded in 32KHz but I could not find any problems with the older firmware. I think Apple should have been more specific to the bug which they are referring. One more thing I am not sure of is whether this bug which they are referring to affects the newer 5.5G iPods.

I request all my readers who are using 5G video iPod to upgrade to the latest firmware. The latest firmware for you 5G iPod can be updated only using the iTunes 7 or later so get yourself latest iTunes from here.

Get most of out of your iPod’s battery: 8 Tips to Improve Apple iPod’s Battery Performance (Life)