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“Show hidden files and folders” Doesn’t Work in XP
The symptom of this problem is every time you select the Show hidden files and folders options under Folder Options, the screen just flashes when you click OK and the hidden files and folders are not unhidden. You can fix this problem with a registry hack:
1. Click Start > Run and type REGEDIT
2. Click the plus sign next to HKEY_CURRENT_USER
then SOFTWARE
then Microsoft
then Windows
then CurrentVersion
then Explorer
then Advanced
On the right side, double click the hidden value and give it a value of 1.
You should now be able to enable hidden files and folders.
This is a issue caused by virus, so please make sure to use a updated virus scanner.
Add Background Image to Google
There are some third party scripts and sites to enable background image for google.com page. Now the great Google itself introduced a way to add background image to your Google home page.
Procedure is very simple.
- Navigate to http://www.google.com/addphoto
- Upload a photo or select an existing one
All set good to go now. Hope u like the new background feature.
How to Get Free News Alert from Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror Logo
Sorry for disappointing you.
Recently Dialog has started to offer SMS alert service from Twitter. You can send free SMS from the specified followers. I’m gonna tell you how to exploit this free service and get free Daily Mirror alert on your mobile.
- Open a Twitter Account
- Activate “Twitter SMS Alerts” on your Dialog Mobile
- Follow Daily Mirror
- Set to receive SMS alert from DM
You can use this simple method to receive free SMS alert from almost any news agency having Twitter account.
You can use this same technique to get alerts from many Twitter feeds such as Cricket, Astrology etc.
Have fun.
Convert Your Blog into a Mobile Compatible Blog
Have you ever wondered on “How to convert my blog into a Mobile friendly blog??”. Answer is very simple.
There are thousands of methods to do it, but here I’m telling you the easiest way of creating a mobile compatible site.
- First visit the URL http://www.google.com/gwt/x
- Enter your blog’s address and click “Go”
- Now copy the URL from your Address Bar
- Create a sub domain (e.g. http://m.mayuonline.com)
- Redirect your sub domain to the URL copied on the step 3
That’s all. Now ask your friends and readers to visit your blog using their handheld devices on the newly created sub domain.
You can access my blog on your mobile devices at http://m.mayuonline.com
Hope you enjoyed the tip.
Install / Enable HUAWEI E156G on Ubuntu
As mentioned in my previous post I bought Mobitel HSPA connection. When I bought the connection, I bought a new modem too (HUAWEI E156G).
Modem is working perfectly fine on Windows with Mobile Partner software but when it comes to Ubuntu it has problems.
My previous modem E220 had almost no issues on Ubuntu. As you connect your modem everything is done on plug-and-play basis, but when it comes to E156G it was not the same case. First I thought the USB Modem is not even recognized as a device, but Ubuntu did find it but didn’t bring up any pop-up as it does for E220.
Did a googling and found out the way. Hope it’ll be helpful as many people are buying Mobitel HSPA these days.
- First right click on the Network icon and choose Edit Connections
- Now choose Mobile BroadBand tab
- Click on Add button and choose Mobitel
- Once you done with the wizard click on Mobitel and choose edit
- there make sure you have *99# as Number and Mobitel3g as APN.
Click on the image to enlarge it
That’s all now you can connect to Internet using HUAWEI E156G. If you’re using a different provider then change the Number and APN accordingly.
SEO: Demand your second click
One of the reasons why people often have high bouncing rate is because of the bad usability issues in the pages. Your blog’s bouncing rate is 90% means; ninety out of hundred people, who came to your blog, puked and went away.
Usually bouncers are considered a negative statistic: the blog failed to engage them enough to entice even a second page view.
Here few tips on how to improve usability of a blog, in order to reduce the bouncing rate. When a user comes to your blog for the first time, you must make him a loyal visitor. Unique visitors will stay in your blog and click through several links, only if you have good content as well as good usability throughout the blog.
Colour Scheme
Home page is the most visited single page in your blog. We need to give colourful but simple design. Colour scheme must match the theme of your blog. If you’re making a fan blog for ‘Twilight Movie’ then you can use dark colours, but no point of using dark colours for a business blog.
For an example have a look at Harry Potter official site and Virtusa Corporation’s site. You can differentiate the colour scheme they’ve used.
Meaningful Graphics only
Use meaningful graphics. Don’t just use some red roses around your blog unless your blog is a niche blog for Valentine’s Day.
Excessive use of Ads
Don’t use Ads excessively. Google AdSense is obviously the easiest way to harvest some money out of your blog, but if you use them excessively it’ll look bad on your blog. Visitor will get an impression that, this is a fake blog trying to rip off a click from me.
Search Box
When visitors find interesting articles in your blog, they tend to go for a search inside the blog. If you don’t have a search box then you’re losing your potential second click.
Related contents
One of the advantages when you make a blog for targeted audience or a niche blog is you’ll have related contents. If a visitor interested in one of your article then probably he’ll be interested in another article too. It is recommended that you’ve got a niche blog to have low bouncing rate, though it’s not always possible.
Be Proud and show your contents
You must be having good popular contents in your blog. Show those popular contents to your users. This is why most of the popular blogs such as Daily Blog Tips having a section in side bar for popular contents and recent contents. A pleased visitor will definitely click on a link.
Colour of the Link
Visitor will identify a link in seconds if we have blue underlined links. When you use different colour for your links, it may confuse your visitor and he’ll end up closing your page. But always remember it’ll not always true. There are some popular blogs using different colour links. Why give trouble to your user?
- Image by LollyKnit via Flickr
I can recommend you to have blue colour link.
I recommend you to try Google Analytics to check bouncing rate. If you’re using Google Analytics once you logged in, you can see the bouncing rate for your site.
Now you can upload files to Google Translate
Google Translate added a new option to upload documents you want to translate. Now you can upload Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, PDF files, HTML and text files to translate.
By the way, Google gives you following warning too.
Unfortunately, Google converts your documents to HTML and then it translates the HTML file, so the translation doesn’t preserve the layout or the embedded images. You can upload Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, PDF files, HTML and text files.
This is not exciting news for Sri Lankans as we don’t have translator for both Tamil and Sinhalese. The only South Asian language to be listed in Google Translate is Hindi.
Hope someone will make translator in our local languages. I’m sure community will come to help when someone initiates the project. We can’t rely on Google for their support as they’ll have proprietary rights over their products.
Windows Live Messenger Sign in Problem???
Are you failed to login to Windows Live Messenger? Are you getting some garbage error codes when you try to sign in??? If so do the following stuffs.
- Restart your router/modem.
- Restart Windows Live Messenger
- Try pull-the-plug and re-plug routine, if software fails.
- Restart the computer (if you haven’t already done so a dozen times)
Error message is shown in Live Messenger
Hope it’ll work for you. You can check more about Windows Live Messenger Error codes on techarena.in
Attachment fails in Gmail???
When you upload attachments to Gmail, you may get error messages saying “failed to attach!”. If you come across such error message first thing you need to do is, installing latest Adobe flash player.
You can get latest Adobe flash player from http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/ . In given address you can check whether you’re having the latest version of the flash player. If you don’t have one, please install the latest version.
Google says this feature is not supported in Linux; therefore Linux users will have to wait some time.
If you’re already on latest version of Adobe Flash Player (as I’m writing this article, latest version of flash player available is version 10.0):
- Switch your attachment settings from ‘Advanced attachment features’ to ‘Basic attachment features’ (click Settings and select the General tab to change this setting). Save your changes and try to upload your attachment again.
- Try another browser: if you’re on IE then install Firefox or Chrome and check the feature on it.
- Disable your proxy: Most of our home users don’t use this feature, so don’t worry.
- If you continue to have trouble after following these suggestions, report it here.
PS: Now you can upload up to 25 MB to Gmail , but make sure your mail receiver also using Gmail, because if he can’t receive 25 MB attachment then no point of sending a mail with 25 MB.
How to Watch Blocked ‘YouTube Shows’ Videos
When YouTube introduced YouTube Shows, I was flying and happy beyond imagination. Soon I come to know that most of the shows are not available to Sri Lankan users.
I was so annoyed. I wonder why YouTube shows the shows that are not available to our region. When you click on a video, it’ll return an error message saying “This video is not available in your country due to copyright restrictions”.
When I asked from Google, this is their answer….
Some YouTube content partners choose to make their videos available only to certain countries. For instance, they may only have the licensing rights for a particular region. On occasion, YouTube does block specific content in order to comply with local laws in countries where YouTube has been launched. For instance, certain Nazi imagery is unlawful in parts of Europe.
They block the videos based on IP address. Since our IP address shows that we’re coming from Sri Lanka, YouTube will display above message to us.
Even to most of the European users, it’s the same story. I was digging in net and came across this wonderful Proxy.
http://www.hypercloak.com will help you to watch most of the shows. Go to that site and enjoy YouTube shows.
Study Medecine
