February 10th, 2010
Got a Tata Photon+? Happy about the 3.1mbps connection? Well it sure works like charm – and I would confess here that all vidoes we uploaded to youtube during the IIT Techfest coverage this year was using a Tata Photon+. So after being impressed by this product that I borrowed from my Dad for a week, I decided to buy one. And here began a 48 hour mad chase hunting for the Windows 7 drivers to get this working.
Incidentally the Photon+ I used was an older model by Huawei and the newer models shipped are the EpiValley modems. For some reason the one I took last week didn’t work on Windows 7. bummer! Search for Epi Valley SEC-8089 drivers on Google and you would come across fake sites using the keywords to give you nothing at all 
. Search for Tata Indicom / Photon Windows 7 drivers didn’t help either (thanks to the wonderful website they have built from a SEO perspective). So if you are one of those who are looking for the Tata Photon+ Windows 7 drivers (and believe me there are plenty of us out there), here are the links.
>> Windows7_dialer_for_SEC8089.zip (more…)
Categories: Tips n Tricks, USB gadgets |
Tags: datacard, epivalley, epivalley windows 7, tata datacard driver, tata photon dailer, tata photon dialer, tata photon drivers, windows 7, windows 7 drivers | 2 Comments
December 17th, 2009
Now thats a puzzle Steve Jobs had us for a long time. With no support for video recording on the iPhone 1st & 2nd generation, the one major reason for upgrading to the 3GS was video recording and edition. However now you can get video recording on your (more…)
Categories: Tips n Tricks, iphone, mobile app |
Tags: apple app, appstore, iphone video, iphone video recording, ivideocamera, paid app | 4 Comments
November 30th, 2009
After months of planning and speculation India has banned illegal GSM devices that sport a fake, invalid or no IMEI number. Telecom operators have been directed to disable all such phones. This can lead to panic amongst many china phone users who are not sure about the IMEI of their devices. But here we have a solution. There are 2 ways to validate the IMEI number of your handset and incase your have a bad IMEI; you just need to register one for your handset which would cost Rs 199. Simple, Sweet 
(more…)
Categories: Tech Industry News, Tips n Tricks |
Tags: check imei, china handsets blockec in india, fake imei, imei, imei transplant, india imei, register imei of china mobile | 19 Comments
November 23rd, 2009
Apple loves to tease the PC users with killer Mac accessories and leave us without the coolest gadgets out there. But if you are one of those drooling over the latest buttonless and touch powered Magic Mouse from Apple? Here is how you can get this working on your Windows machine. The drivers are hacked out of an Bluetooth update for Mac users running Windows with BootCamp. Grab the 32 Bit version of the drivers or the 64 bit; whichever you are running! (Magic Mouse demo below) (more…)
Categories: Accessories, Apple, Tips n Tricks, microsoft |
Tags: apple windows, hack magic mouse, hacks, magic mouse, magic mouse on windows, microsoft magic mouse, mighty mouse on windows | 14 Comments
November 7th, 2009
The most popular feature of Twitter is interestingly something that was not invented by Twitter. We are talking about the RT – or the “Retweet” – option. We do not know how exactly the Retweet function started, but we surely know that it got Twitter interested. Twitter has been working on the Retweet function (of its own) for a long time now, and has finally made it live – at least in beta form.
Twitter has launched a limited edition of the official Retweet feature. This is available to (more…)
Categories: First look, Future WIP, Tips n Tricks |
Tags: limited retweet rollout, official twitter retweet, retweet, rt, RT beta, twitter, twitter official retweet, twitter retweet beta | 16 Comments
September 5th, 2009
Yahoo, once a giant in the online world, is now having to compete with new startups and is even trying to copy them. Taking on the latest trend of the younger generation, Yahoo has launched a microblogging website called “Yahoo MeMe”.
The Twitter-like service is a multilingual microblog. Currently the service is only available on an invitation basis. Interested users just need to submit their e-mail id at the Yahoo MeMe website and wait for their invitations to be delivered to their inboxes.
The site was initially (more…)
Categories: First look, Tips n Tricks |
Tags: meme, micro blog, microblog, microblogging, social mojo, yahoo, yahoo meme | 2 Comments
September 2nd, 2009
This article was originally written in March 2008, updated with a few more things.
2 Hidden ways to get more from your Gmail
Now who hasn’t faced spam? It’s become a part of our lives dealing with Spam amongst genuine mails. Over the past few years I have heard various ideas as to how to deal with spam. Some suggested having multiple ids, say one for office one for personal use. Others suggest me to keep a separate id to giveaway to banks and other registrations over the internet. However with increasing number of online registrations and user accounts, say for me I have 2x Netbanking, 1x Facebook, 1x ISP Home, 1x ISP Office, 1x Digg, 1x StumbleUpon, 1x Cellular service, 1x eBay … the list is endless! So however my problem is that I now have over 18 email ids and it’s a mess practicing this method. So how about a single email id that lets you change itself every time you give it to someone? Oh yes its here in your very own Gmail!
Gmail has 2 unique (and hidden) features that lets you deal with this situation.
- Put any amount of dots (.) / ‘full stops’ between your email id, the mail will still get forwarded to the same account! For example: johnnycry@gmail.com is the same as johnny.cry@gmail.com / j.o.h.n.n.ycry@gmail.com or johnnycr.y@gmail.com.
- Add any suffix to your user id using a plus sign (+), and the mail will still land at the same email id. For example: johnnycry@gmail.com is the same as johnnycry+xyz@gmail.com / johnnycry+bank@gmail.com or johnnycry+isp@gmail.com
Now that’s really cool, isn’t it? But how do I use it?
Categories: Tips n Tricks |
Tags: gmail, gmail features, Google, smart user | 3 Comments
August 25th, 2009
Bing is the all new search engine from Microsoft that is making news. As the popularity spreads more people are starting to use Bing as their default search engine. Thus, with increased numbers of people using Bing, webmasters will want to optimize their site to rank better with Bing. While creating a good site and basics of SEO remain the same, you should read what Bing says officially. (more…)
Categories: Tips n Tricks |
Tags: bing seo, bing webmasters, google seo, microsoft bing, search engine optimization, seo | 4 Comments
August 25th, 2009
Pidgin is a popular open source multi-protocol IM Client. Leaving out the technical talk, pidgin is a all in one software which lets you connect to multiple Instant Messaging protocols like yahoo, msn, gtalk, facebook chat and more (see the complete list at pidgin.im).
Besides this, it has lots of other nifty features like checking if someone has blocked you on gtalk, support for lots of languages, doodle for yahoo messenger, poke for facebook. There are various plugins for encryption, notification, now playing, notifications, psychic mode. See complete list on the wiki.
For a long time pidgin has been criticized for lack of audio/video chat facilities on the supported protocols. A first step showing improvement in this area is support for audio/video chat in xmpp protocol, the underlying protocol for gtalk. With release 2.6.0, it is possible to have audio/video chat on GTalk using pidgin. This feature is not supported on Windows as of release 2.6.1 but is expected to be available soon.
Let’s have a look at how has this been made possible. The code used to enable audio/video chat has been a google code project called libjingle. Libjingle allows developers to build the following:- (more…)
Categories: Softwares, Tips n Tricks |
Tags: audio chat, gtalk, im, instant messenger, libjingle, pidgin, video chat, xmpp | No Comments
August 7th, 2009
Yes the rainy season is here, and here I hear these words every now and then – “Annkur, I got wet in the rain …My cellphone is dead”. Well people do all kinds of crazy things with their gadgets, while some fail to protect it from the rains, others end up spilling some or the other fluid over it. So in case you are one of those who went swimming with your cellphone, or enjoyed the rain dance while speaking on your mobile, or forgot to remove your iPod shuffle (Mp3 player) from your jeans before a wash or
whtever, then here are the options you are left with:
(more…)
Categories: Tips n Tricks |
3 Comments
July 3rd, 2009
The 19 year old young boy who made big news by being the first to unlock the original iPhone two years ago, is again hitting the headlines with his jailbreak software for the iPhone 3G S. George Hotz, named his jailbreaking softare “purplera1n”.
Hotz has made his software available to the public for download through (more…)
Categories: Apple, Tips n Tricks, iphone |
Tags: iphone 3gs, iphone 3gs jailbreaking, jailbreaking, purplera1n | 18 Comments
May 28th, 2009
Auto play Audio and Video Ads on websites can be really annoying. Apart from the distraction that it causes, it also consumes your internet bandwidth unnecessarily (for some parts of the world this bandwidth is a real concern, me included!). So here is a simple FireFox addon that lets you disable any such Flash content such that it will load only when you decide to… FlashBlock!
FlashBlock: Will place the Flash icon in place of any such Flash content. You simply need to click on the F icon to play that content if its relevant to you. This also blogs YouTube videos and that’s a real bandwidth saver for me at least 
. However if you are one of those who contribute extensively to the 7% global traffic that YouTube sucks, FlashBlock may not be for you.
Via How To Geek
Categories: Tips n Tricks |
Tags: disable ads, firefox addon, flash, flashblock | No Comments
May 17th, 2009
Guest Post by Aashish Bobade of TechChase
Disposable email service is for people who want to protect their online identity. It is a tool that allows users to create an on-the-spot email identity that provides anonymity and fights web inertia in one easy step.
If you give Web sites and new contacts a disposable email address instead of your real one, you can selectively disable a disposable address as soon as you get spam through it, but continue using all other aliases. Disposable email address services provide this basic functionality, but some have other neat features that make life with email less spam and more fun.
Although disposable addresses protect users from unwanted emails, fake identities can also pollute the user base of web publishers. Due to this concern, the option of employing a public disposable email address blacklist is available, as a means to prevent users from easily obtaining fake identities.
Some of the disposable Email service providers:
www.mailinator.com
www.guerrillamail.com
www.yopmail.com/en/
Also look at Hidden Gmail Features that help your fight spam
Categories: Concept / Educative, Tips n Tricks |
Tags: disposable email, fight spam, spam, temporary emails | No Comments
May 6th, 2009
I ended up pulling my hairs, trying to figure out how to subscribe to Google Groups without a Gmail email Id / Google ID. It was a shock to see that I cannot join a Google group straight forward with my Google Apps Id. Though I did manage to subscribe using my Google Apps email ID, but the process was way too long. I had to signup for a Google Account using my company email id and then as the same was added as a secondary email id for one of my Gmail Ids, I was able to use my company email to receive the Group emails. Phew… long and tiring process!
(more…)
Categories: Tips n Tricks |
Tags: google groups subscribe without gmail id, hotmail id to subscribe to google groups, subscribe google groups with yahoo id, subscribe to google groups | 12 Comments
April 2nd, 2009
Its a known and common feature but am still surprised that many people still dont know this. Whenever you forward an email to multiple people each and everyone receiving that email can see who the receipents were. But incase you want to send an email to undisclosed receipents, such that no one sees how many / who all received this mail; you should use the BCC feature.
All email providers like Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail have this BCC (blind carbon copy) option to enter the receipents email id. When forwarding a mail to your entire address book or a group its adviced to use BCC to avoid leaking all your contact email ids.
Categories: Concept / Educative, Tips n Tricks |
Tags: bcc, blind carbon copy, blind mail | 2 Comments
March 20th, 2009
Clicked the sent button too early? Ended up sending embarrassing replies to the wrong person? Forgot to attach that attachment? Well worry not; here comes the UNDO button for sent mails.
UNDO = cancel, annul, or reverse an action or its effect; “I wish I could undo my actions”
Personally this has happened to me many times; the threaded emails in Gmail can end up confusing you when you are discussing the same thing with multiple people (say a client and a partner). And just as you click that send button you realise that the mail has been shot to the wrong person.
However this new Labs feature allows you to UNDO a sent mail. Hitting the UnDo button will push you back into the compose mail mode. The feature works by holding all your sent mails by 5 seconds after you click the send button (this happens in background; so you wont be distracted); allowing you to UnDo your actions.
(more…)
Categories: Tips n Tricks |
Tags: gmail, gmail labs, labs | 1 Comment
March 17th, 2009
Following is a Guest post by Binit Thapa, Chief Software Architect, InRev Systems
In today’s age, technology has moved so far that it is difficult to keep pace with it. We may not even be aware that very simple and useful tools can be built out of nothing. I am going to demonstrate you one such very useful technique: Screen scraping.
By screen scraping, I mean navigating a website, parse its contents and then do an interesting work. Most of the MMORPG games available on the net (sorry, no examples here ) are vulnerable to this. And one such clever tool running is equivalent to you staying awake 24 hours and playing it, which is exactly what those games want you to do. Its use cases are plenty. If you use social networking sites like twitter, orkut or facebook very much and want to give the impression to “the world” that you’re always active, just have a tool running in your place. Saves time. But the best part of this technique is downloading any specialized web content or media from music sites.
(more…)
Categories: Tips n Tricks |
Tags: flickr, in-rev, tips and tricks | No Comments
March 12th, 2009
Facebook is the biggest hub for friends and colleagues to interact. With all your friends uploading event pictures in their albums, it becomes frustrating at times to downloading them one at a time (to save a personal copy on your HDD).
So here comes a really cool FireFox extension that lets you download an entire Facebook album with a single click!
(more…)
Categories: Tips n Tricks |
Tags: facebook, facebook album, how to, tool | No Comments
March 2nd, 2009
Optical drives are the heart of our system. And this heart often gives us a heart attack when the CD / DVD gets jammed inside the drive.
Also many times I realise after switching off the system that the DVD I borrowed from a friend is still inside. So how do we quickly get the disc out without much pain? Here is a simple and a less known trick…
(more…)
Categories: Tips n Tricks |
Tags: cd drive, cd jammed, open cd, optical drive, tips, trick | 3 Comments
January 22nd, 2009
If you are one of those (like me) who is trying to settle in with Google Chrome as his regular browser, you would certainly like a few tweaks for your new favorite. Here are some cool hacks for the Google Chrome:
(more…)
Categories: Tips n Tricks |
Tags: browser, chrome, google chrome, hack, hacks, tips | No Comments
