Go ahead and fill up the pledge form to get reminders & results of the record attempt.

Technorati Tags: mozilla, firefox, download, firefox3

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I’m not yet started on the goof up I did last Friday. Ok, so here we go. I use thunderbird as my default client for e-mail & calendar. I saw one small x on the left side of the thunderbird (above the folder’s section) window. Click on the close button & Boom goes my folder structure.

I spent the next 2-3 hours figuring out how to get the folder structure back. Preferences pane, options menu, config menu, I tried every possible option to restore the folder structure. Tried knocking on #thunderbird , searched thunderbird knowledge base, queried every search engine, but all went in vain.
After about an hours struggle I made up my mind that I would do something on my own rather than searching for answers on the net.
I ended up creating a new thunderbird profile and then imported my calendar data & other add-ons. As the thunderbird punch line says, I reclaimed my inbox. Everything is working as before but still I have no clue about what went wrong that day.

Today morning I was running through the list of add-ons I’m using on thunderbird, and there goes the culprit. I use this add-on called ‘maximize message pane‘ and the close (x) button is an option provided by this add-on. I am using this add-on (and others) ever since I’m using thunderbird, so this feeling is always there that its a default close button provided by thunderbird.
These are the add-ons I use on thunderbird

• Lightning - Calendar extension
• Maximize Message Pane - Read messages in larger area
• Remove Duplicate Messages - The name says it all
• Import/Export message filters - very useful while migrating the mailbox

I have listed the firefox extensions I use in a previous post. Some recent additions to the list are Colorzilla, Unplug, User Agent Switcher and Tamper Data.

Technorati Tags: mozilla, thunderbird, close, button, goofup, add-ons, firefox

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In Glue, the search results page has a classic search results section and a lot of visual information collected from various sites (not just Yahoo! sites) over the web. The results page has got information flowing in from everywhere (I am not listing the various Y! services here), player biography from cricinfo, google blog search results, lastfm music tracks, youtube videos, job results from monster, gaming information from various sites, information from howstuffworks.com, wikipedia & the list goes on and on. The more you search the more you will discover. I think they are fetching relevant information form all sources, be it cricinfo or for that matter google. The information displayed in search results page is highly relevant irrespective of its source. The complex search queries wont have a glue page, but the most common queries will have one.

I was amazed to see the content on the glue page for call of duty 4, there was a nice description along with the quick facts of the game from wikipedia, some youtube videos(which play inline), images (which link to various gaming sites), latest news about the game from gaming sites & this one surprised me the most, a set of images which link directly to the product page (not the lame search results page) on ebay. WOW! this is simply amazing.

Search results: The Classic search results are displayed on the left side of the page & all the rich information is in the right side of the page. The ‘related pages’ link on the top nav gives links to glue pages which are related to the search query. A tab on top of the page allows easy switching between the classic search results page & glue page.

After having a look at all the rich content on the page I was curious to know the yslow grade of the page. It scored  98 (Grade A) for the results page, I expected something like a ‘B’ for a page with so many images. Looks like a lot of effort has been put in improving the performance of the page.

They have a provision wherein you can request to put your website on the glue page. I have already submitted mine.

If given a chance to rename this product, I would call this ‘Open Search’

Technorati Tags: yahoo!, india, search, glue, social

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The blog editor puts some promotion in the footer of the page, but there is a simple way to get rid of the promotion footer.
Just do the following:
PC: Edit > Preferences > Editor tab > uncheck Insert Qumana tagline in new posts
Mac: Qumana > Preferences > Editor tab > uncheck Insert Qumana tagline in new posts

All looks good till now, Lets see if it screws up anything after hitting the ‘Publish post’ button.

[Update] Yay! All went well (tags as well) & looks like Qumana is going to be my default blogging tool from now on.

Technorati Tags: Blog, Editor, Free, Mac, OS X

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I would suggest this editor to anyone who is lookign out for a multipurpose free editor which works on Window, Mac and Linux. Go get it!

I’ve put up a small screencast explaining some useful features of komodo edit like snippets, remote editing & auto complete.

Screencast - View the screencast on full screen mode with HD on for best quality.

Technorati Tags: edit, editor, free, komodo, mozilla, php

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Yahoo! India has launched locals. I haven’t really done some serious digging, All the usual stuff like send email, send to mobile, auto complete for cities is all in place. I saw a new feature called ‘leave my footprint’, pretty interesting. They have integrated Yahoo! India maps (one of my favorites) with the listings. As of now there have listings for four major cities of India. Hope they cover the other cities along with Goa soon. Can’t wait to find some new places to eat yummy fish.
One thing which needs a mention here is, Adding new listings in Y! India locals is much much simpler compared to adding listings in Google local for India. Adding listings in Y! India locals is a one step procedure but the same process takes about 5 long steps (excluding the verification process) in Google locals India.

Here goes the url for Yahoo! India Locals - http://local.yahoo.in

That’s it for now. I have a nice topic to blog about, will post it (along with a screen-cast) in a couple of days.

Technorati Tags: Yahoo, India, Locals, Listings, Search

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• Socially connected address book - Will enable integration of the popular social networking services like Facebook, Friendster, MySpace, hi5, Bebo & more.
• Mobile messaging - IM & SMS integration of popular services like Y! Messenger, Google Talk, AIM, etc.
• Status - Get updates from your friends in real time from all the social networking sites.
• Contact card - Create customized cards and select the information like who & what will be shown in the card.
• Location sensing - Exchange information with nearby Y! oneConnect users. Proximity alerts will notify when a contact enters their vicinity.

Status update is my favorite as it allows to select the list of services & update the status on all of them at one go. See screen shot below.

oneConnect is expected to hit the market in Q2 ‘08. That’s all what I can recall from what I read.

Check for latest updates at the Y! oneConnect site.

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So what is that I use when it comes to browsing. I personally prefer using Flock. Cant recall when I really started using it, but I remember my friend blogged about it.
So its like, I use Flock for my browsing activities and Firefox for development. The only reason behind not using a common browser for development & browsing is Addons, Plugins (whatever you’d like to call it). Adding plugins slows down the browser, and its not just one plugin .. I have a bunch of them installed on my firefox browser.
Some of the must have ones are:

• Firebug (+ySlow?) - for everything to do with JavaScript
• Web Developer - A very useful one (lot of features)
• Cache Status - a much simpler way of clearing browser cache
• JS View - Lists the JS & CSS files from a page (a real neat one)
• Live HTTP headers - for some useful information
• Chatzilla - IRC ??
• FireFTP - For some FTP stuff

Note: In case you want to check them out, A simple web search should get you there.

The very reason I use flock other than any other browser is, Flock has got it all which a person would require. Its got a Photo uploader(my personal favorite), blog editor, web clips, rss reader and the latest is the Media bar and peoples bar.
Media bar and People bar have a bunch of services which work very neatly. Services supported are facebook, flickr, twitter, delicious, photobucket, youtube, and many more.
The Orange dot near the web search bar (see pic. above) tells me that I have some new activity which has happened in my active services. In this case it should be a notification for new photos added by friends in Flickr or a poke/message in facebook.
If you are a heavy user of facebook and don’t like refreshing the browser to check for recent-activity, go for flock. Did I mention that flock is very fast compared to Firefox (with addons). Its free, with active development happening.

I like just about everything about Flock (except a few things), which I will mention some other time. Keep flocking.

Technorati Tags: flock,browser,mozilla,firefox

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I’ve got some things to share about my traveling & house hunting experience in Bangalore. The first thing anyone does after coming to Bangalore (for that matter any place) is search for accommodation.

Firstly go get yourself a newspaper like AD Mag (which is available in any local book store) which will cost you Rs. 10, that should solve half the problem. What next? Go to Yahoo! Maps India and get familiar with the places around your office (or wherever you want to find a place). Once you get a hint of places surrounding the locality you are looking for, just go though the ad’s in the newspaper. Check the distance from your office to the one mentioned in the ad using the direction service of Y! maps. By the time you go through all the ad’s from the paper you will get a rough idea of real estate prices in Bangalore.
You have the distance, route, contact number. What are you waiting for? Just call up and inquire. Chances are very high that by the time you call up, the Flat/Apartment would be already occupied by a person like you (who was early to get there). Go ahead keeping in mind how you will pay the owner just in case you like the place. A friend of mine missed a couple of opportunities as he had not carried his cheque book along.

Traveling in Bangalore can be tuff at times (specially after evening) with rickshaw drivers demanding more money. Its all fine during the day. Try and get into rickshaws with a digital meter. That will surely save you some money & let you track the distance traveled. I haven’t had any bad experiences with the rickshaw drivers yet.

I know that I didn’t mention any of those sites on the web which have information about houses/apartments.
I tried a couple of sites like www.sulekha.com and www.adsbangalore.com. The former wont give the contact information of the person who posted the ad & the latter has very less options for sorting the search results as per the my convenience. In most cases people are are in shock when they receive an inquiry call about the flat/apartment. Either the ad posted is very old or the place is already sold out. A lot of stale content lays in these sites with no one really bothered to update them. Lastly, if nothing works for you, get in touch with a real estate broker. If the broker cant find a place as per your requirements ask for some contact details of other brokers & he will refer you to other brokers. They have a very good network & yes, be prepared to shell out a months’s rent or a healthy amount to pay the broker in case you find a house with their help.

Technorati Tags: Bangalore,Travel,Living,India

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Flock was experimenting on removing the ‘is’ from status updates using their People Sidebar.

Want to turn off Facebook beaconing? Click here.

Technorati Tags: facebook,status,updates,flock,social

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