The Barnes & Noble's Nook eBook-Reader designed especially for book lovers around the world can be considered as the World's Most Advanced eBook Reader that even outsmarts Amazon's Kindle and Sony Reader. With the Nook eBook-Reader you could have the knowledge of an entire library in your pocket.

Barnes & Noble Nook eBook-Reader

With the latest 3G wireless or Wi-Fi technology you can download all the content from your favorite eNewspapers, eMagazines, and e-Books in just a snap and read it on the remarkable 6-inch E-Ink screen where text appears as crisp as a printed page.

This Advanced eBook Reader from Barnes & Noble bundles some other wonderful features like:

• Free in-store browsing
• eBook loaning
• 2 GB of internal storage that can store as many as 1,500 eBooks, eNewspapers, and eMagazines
• 16-level gray scale display that offers great contrast with no glare or back-light
• 5 font sizes - Extra Small, Small, Medium, Large and Extra Large
• dual displays and touchscreen navigation etc.,

This hottest eBook Reader is priced at around Rs. 12,015/- and you can buy it directly from Barnes & Noble (or) you can buy it online from Amazon

Continue Reading >>Barnes & Noble Nook eBook-Reader Overview

Autoplay feature in Windows XP is enabled by default to simplify the use of peripheral devices such as MP3 players, memory cards, USB storage devices and other removable devices by automatically launching the appropriate application installed on your PC to access the media files or installation programs stored on these devices without requiring your intervention.

This "Autoplay" feature in Windows, is a security threat to your PC as some malicious program code hidden on a CD or other removable devices can be easily installed on your computer without your knowledge or consent if it is enabled. So, to enhance the security of your Windows PC, it is recommended that you disable this feature.

This can achieved either with a simple Registry Tweak or Editing the Group Policy settings.

Disable "Autoplay" Feature in Windows XP Using Group Policy

1. Click Start, click Run and type gpedit.msc and then click OK. This open the Group Policy Window.

gpedit.msc - Run Command

2. In the left pane of the Group Policy window, expand Computer Configuration -> expand Administrative Templates, and then click on System.

Group Policy Window

3. In the right pane under Settings, find the policy setting "Turn off Autoplay" and double click on it (or) right-click and choose Properties.

4. From the Turn off Autoplay Properties window, change the setting from 'Not Configured' or 'Disabled' to Enabled, and select All drives in the "Turn off Autoplay on:" drop down box and then click Apply -> OK.

Turn off Autoplay Properties Window

This disables the Autoplay feature on all the drives attached to your PC. Alternatively you can choose CD-ROM or other options if you want to disable Autoplay feature only on certain removable storage devices.

5. Now, close the Group Policy Window and Restart your computer for the changes to be made.

Modify the Windows System Registry Settings to disable the “Autoplay” feature on all drives

1. Go to Start > Run, and type RegEdit in the Open field and then click OK to open the Registry Editor Window.

"RegEdit" run command to open Registry Editor

2. From the left pane of the registry editor window, navigate to the following registry entry.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\Explorer

3. In the right pane find a DWORD Value named NoDriveTypeAutoRun and right-click on it and then click Modify.

Modify "NoDriveTypeAutoRun" DWORD Value in Registry

4. Now, edit DWORD Value NoDriveTypeAutoRun by changing its Value data from the default 91 to ff (hexadecimal base) and then click OK.

edit DWORD Value

5. Exit Registry Editor and reboot your PC for the changes to take effect.

Continue Reading >>How-To Disable Autoplay Feature in Windows XP

When downloading multiple files from a website using Internet Explorer, Windows normally limits the maximum number of concurrent connection that can be made per server which in-turn limits the number of files you can download at any one time. This concurrent connection limit by default is set to 2 for Windows Internet Explorer 7 and earlier versions whereas for Windows Internet Explorer 8 the maximum number of connection per server is set to 6.

With these limited default settings, when you try to download multiple files, only a certain number of downloads will be active at any one time, which considerably increases the total download time of your files. So, let's configure this connection limit and increase the maximum number of connections per server from the default values to a limit of your choice. (from 2 through 128)

Follow the steps below to set the "Maximum number of connections per server" to a number of your choice using Group Policy

1. Go to Start > Run and type gpedit.msc and then click OK.

gpedit.msc - Run Command

This opens the Group Policy Object Editor Snap-in, which is the primary management tool to edit Group Policy settings.

Group Policy Object Editor

2. From the left pane of the Group Policy Object Editor, expand User Configuration ->
expand Administrative Templates ->
expand Windows Components ->
expand Internet Explorer ->
expand Security Features ->

and then click on AJAX


3. Now, from the right pane under Settings, enable the two policy settings named Maximum number of connections per server (HTTP 1.0) and Maximum number of connections per server (HTTP 1.1)

Group Policy User Configuration settings

To enable, just double click on them with your mouse or right click to choose Properties and under setting tab select enable and increase the maximum number of connections to your desired value, and then click Apply -> OK

Maximum number of connections per server settings

4. That's it!! Close the Group Policy editor window and restart your PC for the changes to take effect.

Continue Reading >>Group Policy Settings To Download Multiple Files At Once in Windows Internet Explorer

A set is a well defined collection of objects. Here the word well defined means the object either belongs to or doesn't belongs to the set. Observe the crispness in the example definitions below:

• A = { Firefox, Internet Explorer, Chrome }
• B = { Blogger, WordPress, TypePad }

VENN DIAGRAM is the pictorial representation to denote a set.

Here,

• E is called universal set (or) universe of discourse.
• A is a set contained in the universal set E.

Universe of Discourse

It is a set which contains all possible elements with similar characteristics with reference to a particular context. With the elements of this set, any number of sets can be formed. The features of the elements in E can be discrete, countable integers or continuous valued quantities on real line.

Examples of Universal Set:

• The clock speed of computer processor
• The operating currents of an electric motor.
• The operation temperature of heat pump.
• The magnitude on Richter scale of an earthquake.

Membership of Elements

An element 'X' is said to be a member of set A if X is contained in A or in other words it belongs to A. ( X ε A )

Cardinality of a Set

The number of elements in a set is called its cardinality. Cardinality of a set A is denoted by n(A) or |A| or #A

Family of Sets

A set whose members are sets themselves is referred to as family of sets. A = { (1, 3, 5), (2, 4, 6), (5, 10, 15) } Here (1, 3, 5), (2, 4, 6), (5, 10, 15) are individual sets contained in set A.

Null Set or Empty Set

If a set 'A' has no elements in it or is empty then it called Null Set or Empty Set. The cardinality of a null set is zero. n(A) = 0

Singleton Set

Any set with a single element contained in it is called singleton set. The cardinality of such a set it 1. |A| = 1

Subset

Given two sets 'A' and 'B' defined over universal set 'E'. 'A' is said be a subset of 'B', if 'A' is fully contained in 'B'. It is represented by A⊂B. When 'A' is equivalent or subset of B, then it is represented by A⊆B.

Superset

Given two sets 'P' and 'Q' defined on 'E' universe of discourse. 'P' is said to be a superset of 'Q', if ever element in 'Q' is contained in 'P'. It is represented by P ⊃ Q.

Powerset

Powerset of 'A' is the set of all possible subsets that are derivable from set A including null set. Powerset is represented by P(A). The cardinality of P(A) is 2^|A|
For A = {2010, 2011} whose cardinality is |A| = 2
P(A)= { (2010), (2011), (2010, 2011), ( ) }

Continue Reading >>Crisp Sets Explained

Every time you or an application you are using such as a search tool accesses a file on an New Technology File System (NTFS) formatted hard-drives Windows will automatically update the "Last Accessed" timestamps data which can be seen from the file properties sheet.

File Properties Sheet showing Last Accessed Timestamp

This happens even if you or the application you are using are simply viewing a file in the directory but never actually open the file and this automatic updating of Windows has the potential to degrade the performance of your PC substantially.

So, it is recommended to disable this setting for better performance if you or an application on your PC most often views large number of files. This can be achieved either using the Windows Registry Editor or Windows Command Prompt.

Disable Last Accessed Timestamps using Command Prompt

1. Open the Command Prompt Window.

You can easily open the Command Prompt from Run dialog box (Windows+R) by typing cmd or command

Open Command Prompt from Run dialog box

2. At the command prompt, type the following command line and press Enter

FSUTIL behavior set disablelastaccess 1

FSUTIL Command to Disable Last Access Timestamps

From Now-on-wards windows doesn't update the last accessed timestamps on your NTFS formatted hard-drives which can considerably add to the performance of your PC.

If you wish to turn ON the Last Accessed attribute at a later time, simply repeat the same command line but replace the value 1 with 0.

Disable Last Accessed Timestamps using Registry Editor

1. Go to Start -> Run and type RegEdit and click OK to open the Registry Editor Window.

Run Command to Open REGistry EDITor - RegEdit

2. From the left pane of the Registry Editor Window navigate to the following registry key
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\FileSystem

3. From the right pane find a DWORD Value with a Value Name NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate. If you don't find one, then create a new DWORD Value by Right Clicking and choosing New > DWORD Value and assign a Value Name NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate to it.

Create New DWORD-Value with Value Name "NtfsDisableLastAccessUpdate"

4. Now, double click on it or Right Click to choose Modify and Edit the Value data of the DWORD value to 1 in hexadecimal mode and Click OK.

Edit DWORD Value

5. Exit Registry Editor and Reboot your PC for the changes to take effect.

That's it!! You have successfully Disabled the Windows Updating of 'Last Accessed' Timestamps on NTFS Formatted Hard-drives for Better Performance.

Hope this helps...

Continue Reading >>Disable Windows Updating of Last Accessed Timestamps on NTFS Formatted Hard-drives for Better Performance

Search Engine is basically a tool which provides the facility to search for information on the World Wide Web, based on some keywords typed. The Search Engine Result Page (SERP) will list out all the web pages where that keywords were found with the most relevant web pages first, and the rest in descending order of importance to the user.

As Search Engines work based on pre-written algorithms that allow them to rank the relevant web pages, there is no guarantee that all web pages listed will be ‘G’ rated and designed keeping children in mind. Even the 'porn filter' feature provided by the search engines isn't perfect and 100 percent successful to keep out explicit content. So, in-order to filter out sites that are inappropriate for kids, some search engines have been created that cater specifically for children and are well deserved to be called as "Kid-Safe Search Engines".

The Kid-Safe Search Engines generally exclude sites or web-pages that deal with explicit sexual content, porn, violence, hateful, harmful, gambling and drug use etc., These search engines don't search the entire Word Wide Web for results instead look into only those sites that have been reviewed and handpicked by parents, teachers or librarians and are considered to include appropriate content for children.



Yahoo! Kids (http://kids.yahoo.com/) is the major browsable, searchable directory for children wherein all the sites and web pages listed will be carefully checked and hand-picked by YAHOO! Inc. staff who are specially trained editors and ensure all the content and links included are appropriate for children.

Yahoo! Kids also include many fun features, including Yahoo! Kids Games, Sports, and News pages, Movies, Animals, Science, and Dinosaurs etc.,



Ask Kids (http://www.askkids.com/), which is formerly known as Ask Jeeves for Kids, is a kid-friendly search engine and fun destination site designed exclusively for children aged 6-12.

Each web page indexed by Ask Kids search is based on advanced filtering technology and selections made by experienced Ask.com human editorial team and are fully child-appropriate.



KidsClick! Web Search (http://www.kidsclick.org/) is designed with children in mind and is backed by librarians. It is owned and run by the School of Library and Information Science (SLIS) at Kent State University. KidsClick lists web sites in various categories and you can also search various subjects by letter.



Awesome Library (http://www.awesomelibrary.org/) provides only high quality resources mostly recommended by teachers, students, parents, or librarian that are strictly reviewed for child-safe content.



LITTLE EXPLORERS (http://www.littleexplorers.com/) is a product of EnchantedLearning.com that uses a picture-dictionary format to link to hundreds of carefully chosen child-friendly sites around the world.

Continue Reading >>Best Search Engines for Children

Whether you are signing up for a service, making a purchase online, or just filling your information in a survey form, whatever may the case be, filling the same old information is something that you never wanna go through. So, to make this process easier and fill information in a breeze with a click of a button, use InFormEnter.

Enter Personal Information easily with InformEnter

InFormEnter is a free add-on application software for Firefox that adds a clickable icon next to any input field online so you can quickly insert information - no more typing required.

Just configure the program anyway you want saving your frequently used information such first name, last name, email id, address etc., and it enables you to quickly insert your desired text in any web form.

InFormEnter Profile Management - Input Menu items

Add InFormEnter add-on to Firefox

Continue Reading >>Quickly Insert Information Online With InFormEnter

The one thing that matter you the most if you are planning to stream movies, constantly download programs, files or anything else, is to check your Internet download speed. This is where the wonderful freeware from Nirsoft - DownTester has lot to offer.

DownTester from Nirsoft

DownTester is a portable freeware application that can easily test your download speeds, and allows you to do so for multiple locations around the world.

DownTester - Download Speed Test

To start Download Speed Test with DownTester all you have to do is to 'Add Download URLs' of your choice and when you're finished with speed test, you can generate a report and save the results in a text or html or xml or csv file. To add download URLs list, go to File Menu and select the option 'Add URLs List' or alternatively you can use the keyboard shortcut 'Ctrl+U'

Add Download URLs List to DownTester

This freeware application from Nirsoft supports all Windows versions and can be used either with full install/uninstall support or directly running the executable without any installation.

Download DownTester Setup - With full install/uninstall support

Download DownTester - Without installation

Continue Reading >>Test Your Download Speeds @ DownTester

Searching the Internet for sites and resources while researching on your favorite subject is tedious task as you have to browse through massive amounts of web pages, some of them being up to the quality expected while lot others aren't worth your time. So, In-order to have more control with searching, give Fact200 a try.

Fact200 1.10

Fact200 is a simple yet powerful Internet Research Tool that allows you to filter out noise and junk and make you search multiple sources at once easily and effectively. You can then create custom search libraries if needed. Searching Internet is a lot easier with Fact200 as it supports some useful features like real-time searching, term suggestions, hover previewing, and integration with external search engines like Google, Yahoo!, MSN etc.,

Fact200 Internet Research Tool Quick Reference

And not only this, but Fact200 is also powered with news reading capabilities that allows you to add sites to your library so that you can easily access them again for newly written or updated articles.

It's a free download here : http://www.fact200.com/download.html

Hope this helps...

Continue Reading >>Have More Control With Searching @Fact200

Time Inc. is one of the largest digital content companies in the world with a rich portfolio of 21 U.S magazines and more than 25 U.S websites.

21 U.S. Magazines

American sports magazine - Sports Illustrated with over 3 million subscribers and counting, leads the sporting brand @Time Inc. and recently with the buzz of Apple's iTablet which is expected to be released in 2010, it is given the tablet makeover.

Time Inc's Sports Illustrated Tablet Magazine Demo Video

With a bunch of interactive features such as Dynamic Advertising, Comment, share, print, watching your favorite photos, videos, statistics and twitter feeds etc., it is an excellent example of how tablets will enable the creation of innovative, addictive experiences by publishers, media companies, and advertisers.

Continue Reading >>Time Inc's Sports Illustrated Digital Magazine Gets the Tablet Makeover

The Chat feature Inside Orkut not only enables you to chat with any number of your online friends at the same time but it also lets you chat with many friends at once with the help of the "Group Chat" sub-feature.

With the Group chat feature inside Orkut, you can invite and have a group chat with any number of friend online and any participant can invite others to join.

Here is how you can access and run a Group chat in Orkut:

1. Start a chat with any one of your Online Friends.

2. Click on 'Video & More' option available at the bottom left of your chat window and then select 'Group chat'

Video & more --> Group chat

3. After selecting 'Group chat' feature, you will see a field at the top of the chat window labeled 'Add people to this chat' where you can enter the name or email address of the contact(s) (comma separated) you want to add to your group chat and then click Invite.

Invite people to the group chat

4. Once your invited friends accept your Group chat request, they will be added to your Group chat.

At any point of time if you want to end your chat session, just click close(X) button at the corner of your chat window and other members participating in the group chat will get a message saying that you've left the conversation. And If you want to rejoin that same group chat, you'll need to be invited back by a contact who's still in that Group chat. The group chat will continue to exist until all participants have left the conversation.

Continue Reading >>Chat With Many Friends At Once Inside Orkut With Group Chat

Google's most popular networking website and favorite online home for millions of people in Brazil and India - "Orkut"

Brand New Orkut Intreface

has integrated the chat feature inside it which enables you to chat with your friends directly inside Orkut with no other web-based applications or separate window required.

To use this Instant Chat feature inside the brand new Orkut,

1) First, Sign-in to your Orkut account. Then set your chat status to 'available', 'busy' (or) 'invisible' depending upon your mood. You can control your chat status by choosing the appropriate colored bubble allotted for each status that appears on the top right of your user-name.

New Orkut chat status colored bubble

2) As soon as you change your chat status from 'offline' to 'available', 'busy' (or) 'invisible', a "Online friends" box appears at the bottom right of your window, listing all your Orkut friends logged into Orkut chat.

Orkut Online friends list and chat box

3) To begin chatting with any of your online friends, just click on their name as in any other chat application and a separate chat box will be opened.

4) You can chat with any number of online friends at the same time inside Orkut and can even browse other pages while chatting as the "Online friends" and Chat boxes accompanies you wherever you go browsing on Orkut. They will stay open at the bottom right of your window as long as you are online into chat.

This wonderful chat feature inside Orkut is not just limited to the brand new Version but you can also utilize it within the older version or Orkut.

Check out this video to learn how-to chat in the Older version of Orkut


Note:
I still have with me 10 more brand new Orkut invitation to share with my friends, so if you aren't using the Brand New Orkut version yet, Friend me and leave me a scrap asking for the invite.
Invitations will be sent based on first come first serve basis.

Continue Reading >>Chat With Your Friends Inside the New Orkut

Sidewiki is a browser sidebar feature recently introduced with Google Toolbar for Firefox and IE that helps you not only to read helpful information about the web pages you have visited but you can also contribute and share your own insights and comments with the entire Sidewiki community.

Google Sidewiki

Google Sidewiki also makes you sociable by enabling sharing features with which you can post your Sidewiki entries as updates directly to Twitter, Facebook, Email or you can generate a separate link to share with your friends and followers.

Sidewiki has made blogging much more easier and fun, by introducing a wonderful feature using which you can publish your Sidewiki entries as blog posts to your blogs on blogger.

Post Sidewiki Enties to Blogger

Check out this video to know more about
"How to Publish Posts to Your Blogs on Blogger with Google Sidewiki" :


For an in-depth info about this wonderful Google Sidewiki feature and others, visit Official Google Sidewiki page



Hope this helps...
Try it yourself and post in your valuable comments.
(Use the share button below to share this update with your friends on Orkut)

Continue Reading >>How To Publish Sidewiki Entries to Blogs on Blogger

According to Google's Terms of Service, sending automated queries of any sort to Google is strictly prohibited. This variants of which include:

1. Malicious software sending automated traffic to determine how a website or webpage ranks on Google for various queries


2. 'Meta-searching' Google


3. Performing 'offline' searches on Google

When Google detects your computer or network is sending these type of automated traffic to its servers, a ban is imposed on your IP address temporarily and you can no more access the Google search service. A Google 'We're Sorry' page also appears with a message - 'your computer or network may be sending automated queries...'

Google 'We're Sorry' message

The only thing needed to access the Google search service again is to stop the automated traffic flow from you computer or network and the ban on your IP address shall be automatically lifted.

To make sure that no malicious software on your computer is sending this automated traffic to Google, first check for malware on your computer using any of the well-known programs given below. These programs can efficiently detect and remove such applications if any and troubleshoots the error message.

* Lavasoft Ad-Aware
* Spybot Search and Destroy
* MacScan (for Mac users)

If you continue to receive this 'We're Sorry' error message from Google even after cleaning malware on your PC, it's very likely that some user or computer in your network is sending automated traffic to Google. So, in-order to unblock the ban on your IP or network, contact Google Support and send additional information about the problem.

Hope this helps...

Continue Reading >>Troubleshooting Google 'We're Sorry' page

AVG Anti-Virus Free 9.0 Edition is a faster, safer and easier to use protection tool available free of charge to home users and can deliver efficient protection against all viruses and spyware.

AVG - Free Antivirus

According to CNET Downlaod.com it is the most downloaded anti-virus software with 1,814,311 downloads so far and counting. As it is available free of cost, you can get rapid virus database updates directly from AVG for the lifetime of the product, providing you the top-notch virus detection capability.

AVG 9 free comes with a combined anti-virus and anti-malware engine and is bundled with some very useful features like:

• Identity Theft Recovery Unit (ITRU)
  With identity theft being one of the fastest-growing internet scams these days, Identity Theft Recovery Unit (ITRU) provides you the best solution with Identity Guard. This feature is accessible from the AVG toolbar in Firefox and Internet Explorer and is available to the users in the United States.


• LinkScanner and e-mail scanning
  The AVG LinkScanner feature protects you from third-party code exploits by scanning the Web pages you haven't even visited yet and informs you about exploits, hacked sites, phishing/fraud scams and other potential threats.


• AVG Search-Shield
  AVG Search-Shield gives safety ratings for search engine results and will let you know if the site links returned on SERP's from Google, Yahoo, Bing and others are safe to visit or not.

  AVG link safety ratings



• Anti-phishing & Anti-rootkit detection to ensure protection against sophisticated hidden threats


• Optimization Scan to Increase Scanning performance
  

  AVG Optimization Scan

Download Anti-Virus Free from CNET Download.com

After downloading the 870.36KB installer file from above page, remain online and double-click or run it to proceed with the actual download.

For AVG Professional edition, you can buy it online @ Amazon
    

Protect Yourself Online!!

Continue Reading >>AVG Anti-Virus Free 9 - New Protection Tool With More Than 1.5 Million Downloads

Tabbed browsing feature in web browsers allows you to open multiple tabs(sub-windows) within the same top-level browser window.

Tabbed browsing - open webpages in new tabs

Tabbed browsing finds very useful when you're searching the web, comparing product prices on different sites or just browsing on your favorite topic as it allows you to open links in a background tab while viewing the page you are on.

Opening new sites in tabs is also the efficient way to switch between different webpages without having to switch top-level windows. As you know, more the top-level browser windows you open, more will be the Memory Usage which ultimately leads to slowing down your PC.

Whatever may be the browser you are using, here are some of the ways to open sites in new tabs and make the most out of this tabbed browsing features.

--> Press the CTRL key while clicking links (or use the middle mouse button).

--> Right-click on any link you want to open and from the shortcut menu choose the option that says "Open in New Tab"

Open Link in New Tab

--> To open a blank new tab, use the keyboard shortcut CTRL+T and then you can type in the site url in the address bar.

--> Press ALT+ENTER from the address bar or search box to open the result in a new tab.

To close any tab just click on any tab with the middle mouse button or click the close button icon that appears on the right side of the selected tab. Alternatively you can also use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl+W to close any selected tab.

Close Tab(Ctrl+W)

Hope this helps...

Continue Reading >>Tabbed Browsing - the easiest way to switch between websites

Reading lengthy blog posts is always a tiresome and time taking task that is obsolete these days and people are giving more priority to videos and visual images that are included in the post.

RIP - Lengthy article with no visual images

Unlike a few years back, the most recent approach into blogging is to make the textual content shorter and involving more of a audio-visual approach with the help of images, podcast and embedded videos as these media stuff can speak thousands of words. These days any post without atleast one image included in it is almost dead and most unlikely to be read unless it comes from a recognized expert.

Traditional blogging is also attributed to dying these days to an extent because of the advent to micro-blogging platforms like Twitter

MicroBlogging @twitter.com with 140 characters or less

and centralized places like social networks etc., having the most important feature of "Status Update" with which the content sharing has become lot easier than ever before.

Facebook Status Updates

Facebook has this Status Update feature since long and Goolge's most popular social network Orkut has also included this feature in its brand spanking new version recently launched.

Orkut Status Updates - What are you up to?

So, in this era of finite attention and infinite alternatives if you want your blog or website to be visited most frequently, then you should make sure that you are active and visible at every social place on the internet people are spending time.

Standout at Centralized places where people spend time

Also you have to practice adopting a unique approach at each place instead of posting the same update at every place. With this kind of approach your update will cover a wide variety of keywords which in-turn brings more exposure to your website in the search engine results. Another very important aspect is to make sure that you follow the present trends and capture the attention where people are spending most of their time.

Online Footprints

Ultimately, the people that build the biggest footprints online will do well with Search and their websites & blogs will be most frequently visited.

Continue Reading >>Make Your Blog Most Frequently Visited Being Most Visible Online