Tips and Tricks

Disable Google Instant Search Permanently [Simple Solution]

Sudeep Kumar Rana+ — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 13:03:30 +0000

I personally feel that google instant (google auto-suggestion) is shouting on us with their predicted results. Sometimes it’s good to have suggestions but most of the times it is quite irritating. Is there any way to disable google instant search permantly? Google is trying to hack our mind and affecting our thought process with google instant. We start with a search term from our mind but often end up with google instant solutions.

How to disable google instant search permantly?

Few months back disabling google instant was quite easy. There was a little gear icon available at the extreme right – top corner. This was the icon used to control our search preferences but today I noticed that it was not there. I thought, google has made it mandatory to use their instant suggestion feature.

But, that’s not true. Still we can disable google instant search permantly by accessing the google preference page.

Here is the hidden link to access google preference page: http://www.google.com/preferences?hl=en

Click the above link -> Google Instant predictions -> [select] Never show instant result

That’s it. Now google search won’t show you instant suggestion. But it will still show the older way of suggestion.

This is a permanent solution as long as you clear your system cookies. Once you clear your cookies things will go back to google instant search. Actually, google is trying to force us to live with google instant search.

you can disable all suggestion from google but this one will not be permanent. Its just for knowledge.

How to disable Google Suggestion and Instant Search?

Access google from this link : http://www.google.com/webhp?complete=0&hl=en

You won’t find any kind of suggestion from google search.

Note: Disabling google suggestion is not permanent and once you close the window and re-open google in other window, suggestions will come back but instant search will not work until you clear your cookies.

Watch Indian TV Live Online – Free Streaming Software

Sudeep Kumar Rana+ — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 08:37:32 +0000

Finding online TV is a big hassle. There are so many websites engaging in showing online Indian TV but sadly they all are crappy. There are links for channels but no one works actually. I am sure if you are reading this article you must have experienced such bad websites so many times.

After checking so many spammy sites, we sometimes believe that watching tv online is not possible or limited to few channels only.

Is streaming of Indian TV live on internet free?

The answer is Yes, there are some genuine services to show live TV online for free. One of such software is Fm Tv INDIA Toolbar.

Free Live TV Streaming FmTvINDIA: Its name is self descriptive. FM & TV channels from India. This small software came into picture during mid 2007. Its been around 5 years now with around 6 Lakh downloads.

What can FmTvINDIA Software do?

Ask, whats not? Watch Indian TV channels, live cricket, listen to FM channels, Indian literature books, Old Comics, Games and lot more features.

This small software cum toolbar is less than 2 MB but very powerful.

Its a big market and even google is thinking to launch its tv service but this will take time and it won’t be free, but this toolbar will be free forever. If something goes wrong you can send a contact mail to its team and they try to resolve the issue.

Download Live TV software FREE

Alternative Link to free software

Install Windows 8 Over Windows 7 : Easy Steps

Sudeep Kumar Rana+ — Sun, 04 Mar 2012 07:51:12 +0000

Windows 8 is out and everyone is rushing to try the new marvel microsoft has made. But beware, if you are not a computer professional or just have little knowledge about installing windows, you might loose all your data.

Installing windows has many options and you must choose the right one you need.

You can:

Make a fresh install. All previous data will be market invalid. If its a new PC then go for it.
You can upgrade your existing windows to windows 8. If you want to replace older version with the new windows 8 then choose this option.
You can dual boot and enjoy both windows version without replacing or deleting the older version.

How to make a fresh install of windows 8 over windows 7:

If your PC is new with no operating system installed or you don’t care for your previous windows 7 or win xp installation. Follow these simple steps and install windows 8 easily.

Step 1: Insert windows 8 DVD and boot with it. If you are running an existing version of windows then boot up your windows, insert win8 dvd. Go to my computer and double click setup.exe file inside win8 dvd.

Step2: In the next step it will ask you to install some updated. It’s your choice to cancel or install. To cancel, click “No Thanx” and proceed.

Step 3: Enter the Product Key. If you are using a consumer preview setup of windows 8 just like me you can use this key: NF32V-Q9P3W-7DR7Y-JGWRW-JFCK8

Step 4: Next it will ask you “What do you want to keep in windows 8 consumer preview”. You can choose any of these 3.

Windows Settings and Personal Files and Apps : To preserve almost everything.

Just Personal Files: To preserve My Document type of archived folders.

Nothing: Your personal files will be moved to a folder windows.old folder.

Step 5: It might ask you to install certain apps. You can install them later if you are in a hurry to get the new windows look. Hit restart and you are done.

That was all about how to install windows 8 over windows 7. Try the new marvel of microsoft.

4 Best Free Alternative to Photoshop for Windows

Sudeep Kumar Rana+ — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 18:04:27 +0000

In the series of Free Alternatives, this time we have got 5 best free alternative to photoshop for our readers. We all love giving a fresh look to our photos but not everyone can afford such expensive software like photoshop ($650). If you are professional photographer then its good to have a licensed copy of adobe photoshop. But if you are a normal photographer just like me who like to take snaps not so often then free alternatives to photoshop to give a fresh touch to our photos is very nice.

I am going to present the best free alternatives to photoshop which anyone can use without worrying about any licencing fee.

4 Best Free Alternative to Photoshop

InkScape.org: This is my first choice because of many reasons. Its an open source vector graphic editor with many capabilities of coreldraw, adobe illustrator. I always try to follow standards and InkScape is just like me, it follows W3C standards.

It offers a full free software, very nice documentation to learn all basics and almost all how and what, gallery, discussion forum (not very rich but you will find it useful sometimes).

At the time of writing of this post the most stable release of this software was version 0.48.2.

Supported OS: Windows (all flavors including windows 7), Mac, Linux (Ubuntu)

Download InkScape for Free

PhotoPlus Starter Edition: This is a very nice free alternative to photoshop with few very useful features.

Straighten photos and crop to common print sizes.
Remove unwanted objects from pictures
Repair old and damaged photos
Paint and blend with artistic brushes and lot more.

PhotoPlus starter edition is absolutely free and if you like the basic feature and ready for more advance features then you can upgrade it anytime. I prefer to use the basic starter edition.

Download Free PhotoPlus Starter Edition

PhotoFiltre : If you are a fan of photoshop artistic tools just like me then this is a must have tool for you. It offers all useful filters like Sharpen, Blur, Noise, Relief, Color, Visual Effect, Frames etc.

A detailed introduction is available with all the useful features explained nicely. It has so many filters to use, that’s why it is named PhotoFiltre.

Download PhotoFiltre Free Edition

Pixia: A Japanese software with all the cool photoshop features. Among all other choices of free alternative to photoshop, I like Pixia because of several different reasons. It is very close to photoshop window. Some of its features are even better than photoshop. However its not very rich of features but very useful as a basic image editing software.

Very small file size. 7MB software and supports windows 7/ XP/ Vista.

Download Pixia free

4 Best Free Alternative to Photoshop.

All download links are of free software download links. Try them all and enjoy photoshop like software for free.

How Much Time I Spend on Facebook

Sudeep Kumar Rana+ — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 13:44:51 +0000

I hate facebook because its eating my time like a monster. Is there any way to track how much time i spend on facebook?

Today, I am coming up with a solution for all my readers who like to quit or minimize time spending on Facebook or Twitter. If you are addicted to any other site this solution will help you too.

Before I tell you the tool which will help you to minimize your time spending on non-productive site i like to realize you how serious this problem is?

Spending time on Facebook is Non-Productive

Facebook user graph is going up like a rocket. We all love this social networking site which enable us to talk to our friend and relatives like never before. Spending time on Facebook is like a daily dose. We can take leave from work but not from facebook. Can you see how serious this matter is? Yes, It’s as serious as smoking.

A research have showed that in America people spend more than 20% of their internet time on Facebook. Yes! 20%. This is really a serious problem as we are getting addicted to this slow poison. Yet we are unable to break this circle of checking facebook. Do you know why? There is no one to stop us.

Not anymore. I am going to give you an anti-facebook tool.

Recommended Reading: Disable facebook ticker easliy.

Know How Much Time I Spend on Facebook

First choice (a chrome extension):

Install -> Facebook Runner in your google chrome browser and you are done.

Now, a mom is here to tell how much time you spent on facebook. You can reset timer daily, weekly, monthly. Its really easy and might help to minimize your time on facebook.

Second choice (for more extensive details):

I am talking about RescueTime. This is a real time management tool while working online. The above solution was for facebook only but RescueTime is super exciting. It tracks all your computer activities, categories that and display them with the help of various graphs. It shows your work efficiency. Its not just a simple tool to know how much time i spend on facebook or online but a lot more than that.

Using RescueTime is very easy. SignUp as a free user. Install a small 1MB software (track your activity, don’t worry it’s not a virus or trojan ). Complete profile and you are good to go.

RescueTime runs in background and track your activity silently. You can access these details by clicking the RescueTime icon under your startup panel (A startup panel is a panel containing small icons near your system time). Double click it and choose “RescueTime.com Dashboard”. Enjoy log of what have you done online. Whether you are being productive or just wasting your time. Now, you know in detail how much time I spend on facebook?

Free Alternative of SMS for Smart Phones

Sudeep Kumar Rana+ — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 17:43:55 +0000

Addicted of sending short messages to friends. Sending messages specially STD or STD is very costly. If I tell you that, sending messages on mobile is becoming free then you might call me mad but we are smart, we can find free alternative of sms.. Why would mobile companies allow us to send SMS for free?

Well, they are not allowing us to send free sms but we are allowing ourselves to do it.

These are the best free alternative of SMS

WhatsApp: Just install this free app and enjoy sending free messages and videos to anyone using whatsapp on their phone. If you are addicted to send sms or like to impress your girlfriend that you know ways to send free sms then use this lovely app. Very nice interface and quite easy to use.

KakaoTalk (Best free alternative of sms among all these): This is again like WhatsApp type of app but with more flexibility and usage. Whats app is not free for iPhone but KakaoTalk is free for every platform. Send text messages, video, photos. The best part with WhatsApp and KakaoTalk is that they support wifi too. That means if you are connected to a wifi then send unlimited messages without paying even for data charges.

NimBuzz (not ~~Numbuzz~~): This is again a good messenger for all your need. But its not like sms. Nimbuzz allows you to connect with many messenger services like gtalk, windows live, yahoo and now facebook chat too.

Among all these my personal choice is KakaoTalk. It scans your mobile numbers and tells you who all are using KakaoTalk and add them in your list so that you can contact them easily. KakaoTalk allows you to send message to a contact and whenever that person will connect his mobile to internet via packet data or wifi the message gets delivered. Thats really smart. These are my best choices of free alternative of sms. I send lot of sms to my friends i use one of them almost daily. Now it’s your time to try these free alternative of sms on your smartphone.

Benefits of these free alternative of sms:

Why sending costly sms when you can send them for Free.

Unlimited messages to send. No limit for the day or month.

Not just send text messages but also pics and short videos.

Enjoy these free alternative of sms and send unlimited messages without worrying about your mobile bill.

Watch TV on Youtube: Google TV will be available on Youtube

Sudeep Kumar Rana+ — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 17:21:48 +0000

There is a good news for all the TV lovers. Very soon google will launch Google TV on youtube and then a new battle will start with Apple TV. After so many great services google is all set to launch its own TV service. That is big.

Google is planning to roll out a new feature called Discover. This feature will allow its users to sort categories so that they can watch videos more efficiently.

Google have said in its blog that viewers of this new service will be able to all the things they do on computer like liking a video, add to a playlist or even they can rate a video they like or dislike.

Earlier google collaborated with logitech but that company backed out as they faced some big losses in the project. Now google is all set with their new hardware partners Samsung and LG and aiming that this new product will be pushed into the market very soon.

As we know youtube is owned by google and recently there was a big change on youtube looks. That complete makeover was for this new google tv release. This new app will be for big screen tv’s where user can surf, watch and sort videos very efficiently. If you like watching animal planet then subscribe to that channel and enjoy all previous episodes, documentaries on your big screen tv.

Recently Youtube executive Robert Kyncl have said that very soon 90 percent of the traffic on the web will be in the form of videos and we are planning for the same. This stats looks weird but they are partially true. Recently youtube released stats that every minute many hours of videos are being uploaded and nearly 70 percent traffic on youtube is from outside US. That means the whole world is set for this new trend and google is ready for the giant step in this direction.

Lets see how this service will rock the internet or it turns out to be a flop show just like google buzz.

Download Video Songs from Youtube for Free

Sudeep Kumar Rana+ — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 13:21:55 +0000

This is going to be very easy. Downloading video songs or any other video from youtube for free is super easy and without any software.

Its like open youtube, search video song and click download. But where is the download button on youtube. I know its not there but we can make a download button very easily and after that we can download any video song and even full movies which are available on youtube.

Without wasting much of our precious time, let me come straight to the point.

This trick is only for Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome browser. So make sure you are using any of these.

I will talk about both the browsers.

Lets download Youtube video on Google Chrome browser.

Make sure you are working on Google Chrome.

Download Google Chrome Youtube Downloader Plugin -> DOWNLOAD and Install it.

Thats It. Yes, Its done.

Open Youtube.com and search the video song or any video you like to download you will see a Download button just below the video. The best part is you can choose the resolution of the video you want. Better the resolution better the clarity. You can Download video in HD (720p and 1020p are known as HD videos), MP4, Flv and even MP3.

HD video are good to download because they are super clear but they are big in size. So download takes some extra time. You can watch them on High End Televisions too which supports Pendrive.

Enjoy Downloading Youtube Video although its against the youtube terms and conditions and youtube can disable such plugin supports anytime.

Now lets download youtube video on Mozilla Firefox browser.

The story is same, there is a plugin. You need to install the plugin on Mozilla Firefox browser and its done.

So here is the plugin for Mozilla Firefox to download youtube video -> DOWNLOAD

Restrict Illegal Websites access for Kids at Home PC

Sudeep Kumar Rana+ — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 10:33:44 +0000

I was getting many questions from parents who have kids and have internet facility at their home. Such common questions are:

I don’t know what my kid is doing online, I feel insecure when my 14 years son uses internet.
I know every friend of my daughter, they all are very friendly and nice but what she is doing online, I am totally unaware.
Even kids has their private life but its a fact that you can influence them easliy to do something wrong, said by a 15 years old daughter’s father. He said, I don’t like to interfere in her private life, after-all we must have a private space where we live with our emotions. But being a parent we have some basic responsibilities and if your child is not telling you the secrets then things might get worse.
Kids will do everything at their age, but the problem is they are doing it before they get mature, because of such free internet.
How can I stop my kid by watching illegal sites on internet.

There were many more questions but the above problems seems genuine, so i decided to write something on this topic.

I will write complete series on “How to track kids internet activity” and “how to stop watching kids illegal stuff online”.

Being a computer professional and this matter is also computer related, so sometimes I will be little techie but i will do my best to explain the reasons what we are doing here to save our kids from internet monster without knowing them that we are being tracked and saved.

Warning: It’s a very sensitive issue, so please be careful when you get to know something unusual about your kid. Maintain your calm and take advice from experts like psychiatrist, family doctors etc.

LET US BEGIN:

Problem number 1: Stop kids watching illegal stuff online:

This is going to be technical.

First of all make sure your kid is not using an admin account on PC, otherwise this trick will not work.

Make a separate user account for your child. Click this -> How to make separate account for your child.

If you have a separate user account for your child without admin right then read on. Its a very necessary step because kids are smart enough they will override the changes we made here.

Assuming that you have made the “standard user” account for your kid.

To make following changes you must be logged in by “Admin Rights” account. An admin account is default account you use on PC.

We are going to change DNS entries. Its for windows 7 users.

Start >> Control Panel (View by : Category) >> Network and Internet >> Network and Sharing Center

Click Connections (Here its Wireless Network Connection, You might have LAN (wired) connected)

A pop-up will come up >> (Click) Properties >> (Double Click) Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IP v4) >> (Click Button) Use the following DNS Server Addresses (If they are already filled, replace them with these new ones)

CAUTION : I advice you to note down previous entries, so that you can restore them if something goes wrong or your internet will stop working.

208.67.222.123

208.67.220.123

Click OK. Make sure you are not changing other entries here otherwise your internet might not work.

Thats it. Now open your web browser and open www.google.com and write “Porn website” and try to open any of these websites. You will see this.

Sorry, but (site-name) is blocked on this network.

This site was categorized in: Video sharing, Adult Themes, Lingerie/Bikini, Sexuality, Nudity, Pornography

Logic behind changing DNS settings (In case you like to increase your knowledge):

DNS stands for Domain Name System. Domain Name is nothing but a website name Ex. www.google.com, Here google.com is a domain and google.org is another domain.

When we open a website by typing its Domain Name on a browser, browser sends a request to DNS server (what we entered earlier in our settings) to get the IP address of the site we are going to open. DNS server is nothing but a table which contains domain name and its corresponding IP address. When browser receives this IP address then there is no role of DNS server anymore. Now your browser and server of that IP address will do the rest.

Basically what we does is we changed the DNS address in our PC. This new DNS server’s table doesn’t contain the IP addresses of Porn Website. So our browser is not able to open them. As simple as that.

That was all about blocking illegal websites. But thats not enough for kids.

Next article will be published soon.

How to do magic tricks for kids

How to Find Places on Google

Sudeep Kumar Rana+ — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 17:42:01 +0000

Searching on google is very easy but sometimes we have no clue on how to search places on google. For example if you need to know about all the restaurants in your area then you might wonder “Hey, How should i do it”.

If you type “all restaurants in New York” then now a days you will see a map on the right hand side saying “Map for all restaurants in New York” and when you click that link it will take you to google maps with all the listings there but there is a catch. Google works on string matching patterns. That means only those listings that are using all 5 words in their details will get listed and others will not. OK, so whats the solution?

Solution is simple: Simply write “restaurant new york” and bingo!! you will get thousands of listings. That’s like a New York, full of restaurants.

Ok that a was little tricky. I am going to tell you a shortcut for this.

Suppose you need to list all the schools in your area.

Open http://google.com

Then write “school” in the search bar and more precisely “school janak puri”. This will search schools in Janak Puri area. But hey, there are no school listings. It was just a search.

Look at the options bar on the left where Everything, Images, Maps, Videos is written. Hit “More”. You will see more options.

Click Places. All the school listings are here and a map too. Click on “Map for schools janak puri” and it will take you to google maps.

All major markers are for Janak Puri area schools and all small dots are other schools in other areas or unauthorized listings.

If your map is going out of focus means its not able to find the place. In that case add delhi and india too. Sometimes it happens with google maps.

Happy Searching