Android 4.0.3 aka Ice Cream Sandwich update is now available for Google Nexus S.

Nexus S users who have already received the update via OTA are already enjoying ICS but what about those folks who are still waiting for the update?

Thanks to XDA-Developers forum member zephiK for providing a manual way to update Nexus S to official Android 4.0.3 (ICS). Before updating please note down the warnings, and please don’t blame us if your device gets damaged or bricked during the update process. Proceed at your own risk. Here’s the method described by him.

Warning: AT&T Nexus S is NOT supported. Only T-Mobile and Retail versions of the Nexus S GSM/UMTS are supported. Please DO NOT proceed if you have the CDMA version of Nexus S.

Note: If your Nexus S is rooted, running a custom ROM, this update may not work for you. It’s advised to revert back to stock Gingerbread ROM on the device and then try with flashing the update.

Disclaimer: Please follow this guide at your own risk. Please do not hold My Technology Guide liable for any damage or bricked Nexus S devices during the manual update process.

How To Manually Update Nexus S to Android 4.0.3 (Ice Cream Sandwich)

1. First, you need to download the official ICS update for Nexus S: VQ8PQk_V.zip (128.03 MB).
2. After download is complete, rename the file to update.zip and copy it to the root of your SD card.
3. Switch off the device and then reboot into bootloader mode. (To get into the Bootloader mode, hold Volume up button and the Power button together.)
4. Use the Volume key to navigate and select Recovery from the menu to boot into recovery, press the Power button to confirm.
5. When you see the warning triangle and arrow, hold the power button and tap volume up. You’ll see a menu.
6. Select “Apply update from /sdcard” and select the update.zip file from the list.
7. Once the update is flashed, select “reboot system now” to reboot your device.
8. Enjoy the cool Ice Cream Sandwich treat by Google this holiday!

Watch the video below by qbking77 to know how to flash the latest Android 4.0.3 on your T-Mobile Nexus S device.

[via xda-developers]

Google is full of surprising fun “Easter eggs” and “Hoaxes“, hidden within search queries and other services. Google ‘s latest Easter egg discovered just in right time for the holiday season is very cool.

If you type “let it snow” into Google.com, the Mountain View-based search giant will return the normal search results. The Easter egg now starts to unfold in front of you with falling snowflakes. After a few moments the search page is completely obscured by a digital blizzard. Once the page is full of snow, you can literally ”draw” on the screen with your mouse. If you want to clear the screen, click on the “Defrost” button, but snowflakes will continue to fall in the background.

Earlier, in November, Google came up with another Easter egg popularly known as the ”barrel roll” trick. The trick still works and if you search for the phrase “do a barrel roll” you will see the search page doing a 360-degree flip before settling down.

Another cool trick is “askew” or “tilt“. Upon searching for anyone of them, Google search results page looks little tilted and out-of-place. To enjoy this easter egg, simply search for either “askew” or “tilt” in Google.

Other Google Search Easter eggs are as follows. If you type “anagram,” Google displays “Did you mean: nag a ram” and if you search for “recursion“, you will get search result along with a question “Did you mean: recursion“, which recursively runs searches for “recursion.”

If you search for ”christmas”, “christmas tree” or “santa”, Christmas lights will appear at the top of the screen. (Thanks to our reader niklas for sharing)

Enjoy these cool “Easter Eggs” and if we missed any, do share with us below. We will be happy to include them in the list.

Google has debuted a new search tool “Verbatim” that enables you to get results for your query exactly as you wrote it.

Google Search does a lot of work behind the scene to offer you relevant search results. Normally, when you use Google Search, Google intelligently provides a lot of results which are close to your search query. Improvements like automated spelling corrections, search for synonyms and similar or omit terms that may be redundant or irrelevant from your query, search for words with the same stem, like “running” when you actually searched for run helps you find what you wanted even if it’s not exactly what you type in.

But, sometimes even these intelligent changes do not yield good results. Sometimes you may have meant to search for the exact words you have typed and not the Google “corrected” version. For this reason, Google came up with their new Verbatim search tool. When you use Verbatim, Google returns results that matches the exact keywords you type in and drops all tweaks, personalizations and advanced search enhancements.

How to turn on Verbatim Feature?

1. Click More search tools on the left side of the search results page.
2. Click Verbatim.
3. Type your search terms into the search box and type Enter.

Even though this new search tool is a good addition but the way Google has implemented it has let us wondered if they actually want a lot of users to use it? Since, the new “Verbatim” search tool is hidden under “More search tools,” it takes longer for a user to use. You have to first type your query, then go to “More search tools,” then you click “Verbatim,” after which your query will be run again.

Google could have come up with a better way to implement it instead of hiding it and making it a pain to use. What are your thoughts on the new search tool? Are you satisfied by the results it is generating?

Image credits: Google

Microsoft is offering an online help utility to Office 2010 users having issues with the product key for their copy of the productivity suite to help them resolve their problems.

Earlier, we have posted many articles aiming to help out Microsoft Office users. Some articles related to Product Key problems. If you are having any issue with Office 2010 product key, you can refer to those articles. See this article to reset your Office Product Key using a small program. Or do you want to change Microsoft Office product key easily without the help of any other program? Wondering how to check the activation type and check the license status of Office? Want to use Office trial version for more than 30/60 days, up to 180 days?

Coming back, the special online help utility is aptly titled Office 2010 Product Key Solution. The online helps provided by the Redmond company is available free of charge to all Microsoft Office users as reported by Softpedia. Through the site, users will find simple step by step solution to: find their product keys, enter the product key to activate Office, troubleshoot various issues related to their product key and Office licensing, and get a replacement product key if they misplaced theirs.

As seen in the screenshot above, basically the online help and troubleshooter divided among four most common issues.

For example, if a user has lost his Office product key, than he has to select the last option, “Can I get a replacement Microsoft Office 2010 product key if I lost it?” The troubleshooter than asks a few more questions to find the exact solution for the user.

If the user is not satisfied with the troubleshooter in resolving the issue themselves, they can opt to contact a Microsoft Customer Service representative.

This is a good service for Office 2010 users, but what about those who are using the older versions of the productivity suite, such as Office 2007 and Office 2003? The Redmond company has only provided links to two websites for helping them enter product key.

• Enter the Product Key for Microsoft Office 2007
• Enter the Product Key for Microsoft Office 2003

Well, they can get some help when it comes to troubleshooting product key errors through a Knowledge Base article, KB 2549291.

Users can download Office 2010 60 days trial versions using the links posted in this article. Microsoft Office 2010 Service Pack 1 can be downloaded using the links provided in this article.

Google is testing a new homepage design for YouTube (not the Cosmic Panda test). Even though there is no official announcement, you can get a taste of it using a simple cookie trick. If you don’t like it or want to get back to the old YouTube interface, simply delete the cookie.

YouTube visitors can enable the new test homepage layout by following the steps below:

• First, visit http://www.youtube.com using Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox.
• Now, in Chrome, press Ctrl + Shift and J to open the Developer Tools. Alternatively, you can click on the spanner icon, go to Tools and select Developer Tools.
• Firefox users need to press Ctrl + Shift and K.
• Now, click on the “Console” Tab and type the following text and press Enter to confirm.
  document.cookie="VISITOR_INFO1_LIVE=ST1Ti53r4fU";
• Reload YouTube and Google will greet you to the new layout.

The new YouTube homepage layout is divided into three columns (as explained later) and looks like the screenshot below after a reload.

After logging in, you will notice neat Google+ and Facebook integration along with very well laid out subscribed channel information prominently displayed on the left side. Below it, under From YouTube, you can now easily access Trending or Popular videos. Further below, you will find suggested channels for you to subscribe to. The middle column is filled with updates from subscriptions, or if you click on From YouTube link, it displays the trending/popular videos. In the third (right) column, YouTube displays recommended videos based on your activities on YouTube and videos you have watched in the past.

Do you like the new test homepage layout of YouTube or like the old one? Share your thoughts with us.

Note: Google is testing this new layout and there is no official announcement if Google will finalize this as the new YouTube homepage in the future.

Thanks to Moritz Tolxdorff on Google+ for sharing the cookie trick.

DevManView is a very good free alternative to the standard Device Manager of Windows.

The standard Windows Device Manager is a simple and handy tool when troubleshooting Windows problems related to device drivers. It basically lets you browse through all the devices to check for device properties and driver conflicts or driver errors. But in terms of user experience, it doesn’t offer much of a good experience. Sometimes while using it, we here have also felt how cumbersome it is to use sometimes.

DevManView is a freeware program from the popular NirSoft developers. The program takes a different approach in displaying all devices and their properties. Instead of displaying the devices in a tree viewer like in the standard Windows Device Manager, it displays them in a flat table view. In addition to displaying the devices of your local computer, DevManView is an advanced device troubleshooting program that also allows you to view the devices list of another computer on your network, as long as you have administrator access rights to this computer. The program is also capable of loading the devices list from external instance of Windows and lets you disable unwanted devices. This feature is very useful if you have a Windows operating system which is not booting, and you want to disable the problematic device to boot into the operating system.

DevManView is completely portable and doesn’t need any installation process or additional dll files. In order to start using it, simply download and run the executable file, “DevManView.exe”. After running DevManView, the main window displays the list of all devices found in your system. By default, the program doesn’t display non-plug and play drivers (LegacyDriver) are not displayed. If you want to show them, you can select the “Show Non-Plug And Play Drivers” in the Options menu. One of the advantages the program offers upon the standard Windows Device Manager is, you can select one or more devices from the list, and then save their details into text/html/xml/csv file (Ctrl+S) or copy them to the clipboard (Ctrl+C) and then paste the data to Excel or other spreadsheet application. Which you can use later for advanced troubleshooting.

DevManView allows you to easily disable, enable, and uninstall the selected devices. However, always be cautioned while using these system utilities. You must be very careful when using the disable/uninstall options, because disabling or uninstalling an essential device might cause troubles to your operating system.

As mentioned earlier, DevManView allows you to connect another computer on your LAN, and view the devices list in the remote computer. But, to successfully connect the remote computer, you must have full administrator access to this computer. The program allows you to view the devices list stored in the Registry of another instance of Windows operating system. In order to use this feature, simply go to Advanced Options (or Press F9 key), choose “External Windows Directory,” and then type or choose the right Windows directory.

Using this feature, you can disable/enable the selected devices. The program will write the disabled/enabled information into the SYSTEM Registry file of the selected Windows operating system. The next time when you start this Windows, the device will be disabled/enabled according to what you’ve set.

Warning: Use this feature only in emergency cases (for instance, when a system cannot boot properly). You should also backup the SYSTEM registry file before making any change on the external Windows system.

Another advanced feature offered by DevManView, the program by default loads the devices from the default ControlSet, which is loaded by Windows. However, through “Advanced Options” window of the program, you can choose to view the devices of “Last Known Good” ControlSet or any other ControlSet by its number. When you use non-default ControlSet, disabling/enabling a device, and save the changes in the Registry. The next time that Windows is loaded with the selected ControlSet.

DevManView works on any version of Windows, starting from Windows 2000 and up to Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008. It is compatible with both x86 (32-bit) and x64 (64-bit) version of Windows. You should download the x64 version of DevManView for 64-bit Windows, because the 32-bit version of DevManView cannot disable/enable devices on x64 operating system.

Download DevManView for x86 systems (32-bit) | Download DevManView for x64 systems (64-bit)

10 best Google Chrome Extensions for all the Google+ users out there! Try them all to enhance your Google+ experience.

Google+ (Google Plus), now in field trial and is an invite-only social network project by Google. Within weeks after its first launch, it has attracted over 10 million users and 1 billion items being shared per day. Though Google is yet to release an API for Google+ but many developers have already developed extensions for enhancing the user-interface of the social network project. The list of extensions, plugins and userscripts are not limited to Google Chrome only. This article is a summary of the best 10 Google+ extensions available for Google+ users. These best Google+ Chrome extensions improves overall interaction, navigation, sharing and social interactions for a richer experience.

How to add these Google Chrome extensions?

Just click on the names of the extensions we have covered here. You will be taken to their respective Chrome web store page. Click on the big blue Install button to install them. To manage the extensions, simply click on the spanner icon (Tools) than under Tools, click on Extensions. You can directly visit the extensions page by typing chrome://extensions in the address bar and pressing Enter.

Best 10 Google Chrome Extensions for Google+ (Google Plus) users.

G+me for Google Plus

Google+ Stream displays all the messages from people in your Circles (if it is shared with you). But sometimes, you may not be able to cope up with the information overload, caused by the real-time updates of comments under the message. G+me for Google Plus solves this problem by collapsing the messages. It is great enhancement to work with real-time large stream of messages and comments. Other notable enhancements it brings to Google+ are:

• Notification status visible at all times: Browser icon shows badge with number of new notifications.
• Collapsible comments: Always-visible button makes 100s of comments easy to hide.
• Collapsible posts: An alternative to muting, this is great if you’re not interested in seeing a post but still want to get back to it later and/or still want to get notifications.
• Real-time comment count on collapsed items: Track the number of seen or unseen comments, whether you like to collapse posts and comments.
• Mark comments as read: Collapsing posts/comments automatically keeps track of comments you’ve seen; the extension remembers.
• List-mode option keeps at most one post displayed: This turns the stream into a dashboard.
• Mouse-over instant preview: In list mode, hover the mouse over a collapsed post to get a fully functional preview on the side.

Usability Boost for Google Plus

Usability Boost for Google+ is a Chrome extension that makes small CSS changes to the user interface. These changes help you put your focus on the content, separating visually posts and comments. It keeps the Google Notification bar at a fixed place on top. So, even when you’re scrolling down the page, you’ll never miss a notification again. For more convenience, it displays a direct link to mute post. The extension makes the following changes that are visible right away:

• A grey background that substitute the white one and create a nice contrast between the post and the background
• A little spacing between post to clearly difference them
• A blue background in comments, like Facebook
• The likes are highlighted with a white background and red letters
• A direct link to Mute posts

It also offer three options that you can disable/enable from the extension option’s menu: Fixed Top Bar, Grey background and Direct access to mute link.

Native GMail for Google Plus

Native GMail for Google Plus is a Google Plus extension for Google Chrome browser that adds email notifications next to your Google username on the Google navigation bar. It shows total number of new emails received, when you click on the notification, a drop down list appears with details about the email(s) received. The email notifications only appears on your Google+ page and not on any other Google service page. Using the extension’s option you can set how soon it should check for new emails and if it should keep checking even when you aren’t on your Google+ page.

Google Plus Bar Minus

Google Plus Bar Minus extension is useful for those Google+ users who wants to disable or hide the black Google navigation bar on their Google+ page. Using a single click on the extension you can turn on or off the Google navigation bar. Just turn off the black Google+ nav bar to get more real estate on the screen. This extension will be useful for everyone who are using the various notification extensions featured on this article.

+Comment Toggle

+Comment Toggle is a good and useful Google Plus extension for Google Chrome browser. It helps you hide comments to posts within your Stream and when you actually want to see them you can toggle the option. Like G+me (which we have covered above), this plugin automatically hides all comments on a post.

Helper for Google+

This extension tweaks Chrome search and lets you share on Twitter. Helper gives you desktop notifications for new Google+ posts as pop-up window or an audio alert. The extension offers the following enhancements to Google Plus:

• Share Google+ Posts with people on twitter.
• Translate posts with Google Translate to language specified by you.
• Notifier – Get desktop notifications on new posts, also with sound. (mouse over notification to freeze it).
• Bookmark Google+ posts for reading them later.
• Bookmark posts on Delicious.
• Linked hashtags in posts for better search.
• Search in Google+ posts and profiles directly from your omnibox (address box), just type the search keyword “plus” (excluding the quotes) and type your search query.

+Photo Zoom

+Photo Zoom is another very handy Google Plus extension for Chrome which enables image zooming on mouse over. +Photo Zoom provides fast and simple zooming for photos within your Google+ Stream. Just hover over the image you wish to zoom and +Photo Zoom will load the enlarged version of the picture saving you extra clicks to view them.

Search Extension for Google Plus

This extension enables you to search Google Plus public contents online. The extension can filter profiles, posts, posts from Buzz and posts from Google Reader. The results page is neatly arranged into tabs featuring all results, results from Google+ posts, profiles, Google Buzz and Google Reader.

GTools+

GTools+ is a Chrome extension that adds many useful features to Google Plus. Using this extension you can: stick the Google bar fixed at the top when you scroll down, translate foreign language posts, customize the notification color, change Google Chat place, add notification for Gmail and Reader and more. In all, the extension provides the following Google+ enhancements:

• Unified Google bar, your personalized menu is possible on all Google services.
• Stick the Google+ bar always on top when you scrolling.
• Prevent open in new tab or window when you click on link inside the Google+ bar.
• Change the position of the chat for put in the Google+ Bar.
• Change the color of the notification bubble in the Google+ Bar.
• Right click on the extension icon for go to the options page fastest.
• Add a translation link in the context menu (auto detect the post language).
• Add notification for Gmail and Reader in the Google Bar.
• Edit the color of any notification bubble.

Surplus

Surplus extension allows you to easily access all your notifications, create new posts from any website. The best thing is you can do all these actions without even switching to Google site. Just click on the extension’s icon present beside the address bar of Chrome to get access to all these features. The enhancements offered by the Surplus extension are:

• Post or respond from within the pop-up of the extension.
• Desktop Notifications with notification sounds.
• Switch between multiple Google accounts.

We hope you found our compilation as useful as we have ourselves. Do you use any other extension or userscript? Share it with us, we will love to test it.

You can follow me on Google+

YouTube “Cosmic Panda” is the latest Google experiment, which promises to offer an entirely new videos, playlists, channels experience.

YouTube is one of the most visited website for watching and sharing videos. According to the stats of Google, the website registers 3 billion hits a day and users uploads around 8 years of video everyday. Google does a lot of experiments with the way user interacts with its services. This experiments most of the time brings in great concepts and provides better user interactions.

After the launch of Google+ (the now dubbed “Facebook killer“), Google has brought forward an array of changes to almost all its products including Google Search and Gmail. Now, its time for YouTube. The latest experiment promises to give an entirely new experience to its users. It is not only a cosmetic change but its functional too. With the few minutes of tinkering with it, we must add that we got impressed. We suggest you to take part in the new experiment yourself and get the new watching experience.

Below are some screen shots of the new experimental experience to give you an overview.

Playlist viewing experience

Browsing a channel

How to enable YouTube Cosmic Panda?

It’s very easy. You can easily opt in to test the new experiment by visiting http://www.youtube.com/cosmicpanda and clicking on the “Try it out!” button.

How to disable YouTube Cosmic Panda?

If for some reason, you want to get back to the old default interface, simply visit http://www.youtube.com/cosmicpanda again. This time you will find a link that says “older version”, click on it and you will be back.

If you want to test some other experiments which enables some pretty cool features, simply visit TestTube at http://www.youtube.com/testtube and try them yourself. Some of the notable experiments available at the TestTube are YouTube 3D, YouTube HTML5, Video Editor, etc.

Facebook’s photo tagging feature called Tag Suggestion is a face recognition feature. Using Tag Suggestions, Facebook tries to automatically find faces in the uploaded photos and intelligently identify the person. This is a great feature for organizing photos and saves time spent on manual tagging.

Every day, people add more than 100 million tags to photos on Facebook. They do it because it’s an easy way to share photos and memories. Unlike photos that get forgotten in a camera or an unshared album, tagged photos help you and your friends relive everything from that life-altering skydiving trip to a birthday dinner where the laughter never stopped. Tags make photos one of the most popular features on Facebook.

Because photos are such an important part of Facebook, we want to be sure you know exactly how tag suggestions work: When you or a friend upload new photos, we use face recognition software–similar to that found in many photo editing tools–to match your new photos to other photos you’re tagged in. We group similar photos together and, whenever possible, suggest the name of the friend in the photos.

Like earlier roll out of new features, Tag Suggestion is also enabled by default for all Facebook users. For some reason, if you don’t want to be automatically tagged, here are the steps for you to disable the Tag Suggestion feature.

1. First, login to your Facebook account.
2. Now, from the “Account” drop-down menu present at the top right corner, select “Account Settings”.

   

3. Click on the “Manage” link under the “Privacy” section.

   

4. Now, click on the “Customize Settings” link present in the Privacy Settings page.

   

5. Click “Edit Settings” button from the “Suggest photos of me to friends” under the “Things others share” section.

   

6. Select “Disabled” from the drop down menu from the popped up window.

   

7. Now, click on the “OK” button.

What is your take about this new feature? Is it a boon for you or another tool to invade privacy?

The Data Liberation Front team has launched a new service called Google Takeout, allowing users to liberate their data and create backup of all Google products.

Takeout service basically makes it easy for the end-user to back up all their data stored in their Google Account. This way they can later use the backed up data into a new account or at a different service provider.

Using the Takeout service, users can now download all the information related to Google Buzz, Contacts and Circles, Picasa Web Albums, Profile and Stream. “These are just the beginning: we will be adding more Google products as time goes on, so stay tuned” said Brian Fitzpatrick, The Data Liberation Front.

With the click on a button, back up of all the data starts and wrapped into a single zip file for download. You can see a quick overview of the total number of files it is backing up and the estimate size of those files.

How to use Takeout to Liberate Your data?

For using Takeout service, first you need to login to your Google Account. After logging in, visit google.com/takeout.

For liberating all the data, simple click on the Create Archive button.

If you want to take backup of each service individually, click on the Choose services tab and select the services that you want to back up.

You are than shown the estimated number of files and file size. Click on Create Archive button to continue.

You will see a statistics of the files which are getting archived. If everything is going good, than the progress bar will be green. If its red, than try again.

After the backup is complete, you will see the Download button, click on it to get back your data.

Facebook has a similar backup option which lets users download all their photos, videos and other data related to their Facebook account. Facebook compiles all the information on the back-end and then emails the user when the file is ready instead of displaying the backup process in real-time.

“We believe that if we make it easy for you to leave Google, we’ll have to work just that much harder to make sure you don’t,” the Data Liberation Front said in the video unveiling the service.

What are your thoughts about this new service? Will you be able to trust more in “Don’t be evil” motto because of Takeout?

With the release of Google+ (Google Plus), Google’s attempt to take on Facebook, Google has bought in a minimalist and refreshing new look across many of its services. The combination of black navigation bar with the blue search buttons or orange buttons looks nice to the eyes. First it was Google search, now its time for Gmail. This new refreshing look is now available to all Gmail users from today.

The new Gmail look as of yet is available as Gmail Theme and is thus optional to all. Two new themes: “Preview” and “Preview (Dense)” are now available for users to test out the new look. You can easily switch to the new look by accessing the Themes feature of Gmail.

First, Log in to your Gmail account and click on the gear icon present on the top right corner of the page, select “Settings” from the drop-down.

Click on the Themes tab, scroll down and select the theme named Preview or Preview (Dense), whichever you like. The new theme will be applied.

If you don’t like the new look, you can always go back to the old Classic look or whichever theme you were using.

Here’s what the thread list looks like:

And in conversation view:

Here’s what Chris Wiggins, Creative Director, Google has to say about the Google design and experience:

The new Google experience that we’ve begun working toward is founded on three key design principles: focus, elasticity and effortlessness.
Focus: Whether you’re searching, emailing or looking for a map, the only thing you should be concerned about is getting what you want. Our job is to provide the tools and features that will get you there quickly and easily. With the design changes in the coming weeks and months, we’re bringing forward the stuff that matters to you and getting all the other clutter out of your way. Even simple changes, like using bolder colors for actionable buttons or hiding navigation buttons until they’re actually needed, can help you better focus on only what you need at the moment.
Elasticity: In the early days, there was pretty much just one way to use Google: on a desktop computer with an average-sized monitor. Over a decade later, all it takes is a look around one’s home or office at the various mobile devices, tablets, high-resolution monitors and TVs to see a plethora of ways to access the web. The new design will soon allow you to seamlessly transition from one device to another and have a consistent visual experience. We aim to bring you this flexibility without sacrificing style or usefulness.
Effortlessness: Our design philosophy is to combine power with simplicity. We want to keep our look simple and clean, but behind the seemingly simple design, use new technologies like HTML5, WebGL and the latest, fastest browsers to make sure you have all the power of the web behind you.

What is your opinion about all these changes? Do you like the new look?

Google has launched a number of changes including a black nav-bar with gray font color, the navigation bar present at the top, which links to many Google services. But for many users this contrasting change is unacceptable unlike many who loved it. They want to get back good old white navigation bar. For those users who wants to get back the old interface, here’s a very quick tip (actually a userscript).

Google Light Navbar userscript restores back the original white nav-bar and blue font color on all Google pages. The userscript works in the Firefox, Chrome and Opera web browser. Here’s how to get the userscript working on your favorite browser.

New black nav-bar

Old white nav-bar back after using the script

Simply download Google Light Navbar userscript from http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/105735 and install it.

Firefox users will first need to install Greasemonkey or Scriptish add-on before they can install and use the script.

Chrome users can directly visit the userscript page and install it to instantly use it.

Opera users will need to specify a directory on their computer where they put userscript in, if they haven’t done so already.

You can do so by clicking on the Opera button, than on Settings, Preferences, Advanced, Content, JavaScript Options. Now browse to specify the directory. Download the script and put it into the directory specified for use.

The userscript works without restarting the browser. If you are having the page open already, you may need to reload the page to see the changes in effect.

The author of the script also mentions that the user is free to customize the nav-bar color to any color of their choice.

For changing the color, click on the spanner icon on the far right of the bar and click on the colors to change the hex values of the colors. [via]

If you notice Internet Explorer issues like cannot IE cannot open any website, or browsing through IE is consistently slower than normal even when Internet connection is good, or a recent malware infection has messed up your Internet Explorer settings.

Does IE often stops responding, or stops working? Do you receive error messages that show that Internet Explorer has “encountered a problem and needs to close“? Or that a Visual C++ “runtime error” has occurred in Iexplore.exe? It’s time to reset your Internet Explorer to its default settings.

After the release of Internet Explorer 7, Microsoft has introduced a single-button reset function for IE which can still be found in IE 9. If that reset button is clicked, it resets IE to Windows or manufacturer’s defaults.

Warning: Resetting Internet Explorer is not reversible. After a reset, all previous settings are lost and cannot be recovered. Rather than resetting everything, you might first want to reset specific settings (steps described in the second part of this article).

What happens to Internet Explorer 9 when we reset it?

What stuff are deleted? Browser history, stored passwords, temporary internet files, cookies, saved form data, typed URL history, websites added to different security zones under Privacy tab and allowed websites in Pop-up blocker.

What stuff are reset to defaults? Home page, Security tab settings, Advanced tab settings, Privacy tab settings, Search providers, tabbed browsing settings, colors, fonts, languages and accessibility settings under the Advanced tab, toolbar and text size, phishing filter, auto-complete and pop-up blocker.

Note: Third-party ActiveX controls, Toolbars, Browser Helper Objects (BHOs) and other IE extensions are disabled.

What are kept unchanged? Internet connection, proxy, VPN settings, default browser setting, Favorites, Feeds, Pre-approved ActiveX controls, Content Advisor settings, temporary internet file path setting, stored certificates information and Group Policy settings.

How To Reset Internet Explorer 9?

The steps below is valid for resetting Internet Explorer 7 and 8.

Warning: This action deletes the trusted sites that you have added and resets the parental control settings, so keep a note of these sites before you use this feature.

1. First, exit all the programs that are running, including Internet Explorer (if it is running). Better, you can simply restart your PC.

2. Click on Start, type the following command in the Start Search box, and then press Enter:

inetcpl.cpl

Windows XP users for resetting IE 7/IE 8, click Start, then click Run. Type the following command in the Open box, and then press Enter: inetcpl.cpl

3. Wait for the Internet Options dialog box to appear.

4. Now in the Internet Options dialog box, click on the Advanced tab, click Reset in the Reset Internet Explorer settings section. Click Reset again in the information dialog box.

5. When Internet Explorer finishes resetting, click Close in the confirmation dialogue box and then click OK.

6. Close and open Internet Explorer again.

If you don’t want to do all these steps, you can use Microsoft Fix it 50195, which automates the process for you.

How To Reset Specific Internet Explorer 9 Settings Only?

1. Reset Security Tab Settings only: IE 7, IE 8 and IE 9 allows you to reset security settings for all the zones or for a specific zone.

Open Internet Options dialog box by following Steps 1 and 2 described in the previous section.

Now, click on the Security tab. Click the Internet zone icon. On the Security level for this zone section, click on the Default Level button. Click Apply and OK. Follow this procedure for all the other zones.

You may also choose to revert all zones to their default levels at one go by clicking on Reset all zones to default level.

2. Reset Advanced Settings: You can reset only the advanced settings by clicking on Restore advanced settings button in the Advanced tab of the Internet Options window.

Hopefully these steps should be enough for you to handle general IE woes.

Google Instant is a new type of search enhancement provided by Google that shows results as you type. Instant will help you get better search results, faster and can save 2-5 seconds per search. It predicts the most likely completion and streams results in real-time for those predictions – yielding a smarter and faster search that is interactive, predictive and powerful.

Google Instant is available to signed-in users in over 50 countries and for signed-out users in select regions who use the following browsers: Chrome v5 or higher, Firefox v3/4, Safari v5 for Mac and Internet Explorer v8/9. In this article, we will show you, how you can get Google Instant search results right in the Chrome’s omnibox (the address bar).

Features

Faster Searches: By predicting your search and showing results before you finish typing, Google Instant can save 2-5 seconds per search.

Smarter Predictions: Even when you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, predictions help guide your search. The top prediction shown in gray text directly in the search box, so you can stop typing as soon as you see what you need.

Instant Results: Start typing and results appear right before your eyes. Until now, you had to type a full search term, hit return, and hope for the right results. Now results appear instantly as you type, helping you see where you’re headed, every step of the way.

Enable Google Instant in Chrome web browser

1. Click on the spanner icon to get access to Tools menu, select Options/Preferences.
2. Under Basic, look for “Enable Instant for faster searching and browsing” check box in the Search section.

   

3. Select the check box to enable Google Instant.
4. You don’t have to do anything else, simply start typing in the omnibox. If Google is set as the default search engine, you will start getting suggestions by Google.

Disable Google Instant in Chrome web browser

To disable Google Instant in Chrome, simply follow the above first 2 steps. For the third step, simply deselect the check box and Instant will be disabled.

Earlier, we have shown you how to disable Flash completely in Google Chrome without using any plugin. But that method had a disadvantage. What if you want to have flash enabled for certain pages or websites like YouTube?

For this reason, we have come up with another useful tip for you. This method again doesn’t need you to download any third-party extension for Google Chrome. Instead it will show you how to use in-built Chrome feature intelligently to disable flash in your browser.

We will use Google Chrome’s in-built Click to Play feature for this tutorial. Using this method, you will be able to block flash contents including flash ads, while having the freedom to enable flash with just a click on the flash content.

How to use Chrome’s Click to Play feature to disable Flash?

1. First, open Google Chrome window if you haven’t done so yet.

2. Next, open a new tab in the browser, type about:flags and press Enter.

3. Now, in the about:flags page, scroll down until you find “Click to Play.”

   

4. Click on the link that says “Enable” to enable Click to Play in Google Chrome.

5. Now, scroll all the way to then end of this page. Click on the Relaunch Now button to restart Google Chrome and apply settings.

   

6. After Google Chrome reopens, click on the spanner icon to get access to Tools menu, select Options/Preferences.

7. Under Preferences, click on “Under the Hood.”

   

8. Now, select “Content Settings” button present in the Privacy section.

   

9. Select the Click to Play option under Plug-ins.

10. Everything is configured now! Enjoy flash free browsing and only enable flash when you need to.

    

11. To enable flash for a particular content, simply click on it.

Do you have any good tips to share about Google Chrome? Share them below, we will love to know about them. We may also include them in one of our next article, including your name.

Living in an Internet age has its own set of headaches. Problems related to the Internet not working properly, connection issues, high pings, slow connections, or complete drop in pings for no reason whatsoever. All these problems leaves the users confused and in trying to get them fixed asap, they spend a lot of time and money.

Here’s a freeware portable application for Windows, called “Complete Internet Repair,” which will save you from having to go through lengthy troubleshooting sessions. It will instead try to fix the Internet or networking issues in Windows with the click of a button. The best thing is that it will also repair Internet Explorer 9 along with others.

The free portable application will help you reset, restore, clear or repair a variety of Internet related settings on your Windows computer system.

Particularly, Complete Internet Repair will do the following:

• Reset Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)
• Repair Winsock (Reset Catalog)
• Renew Internet connections
• Flush DNS Resolver Cache
• Repair Internet Explorer 9
• Clear Windows Update History
• Repair Windows / Automatic Updates
• Repair SSL / HTTPS / Cryptography
• Reset Windows Firewall configuration
• Restore the default hosts file
• Repair Workgroup Computers view

It will come handy for users facing the following problems:

• Internet or network problem after removing adware, spyware, virus, worm, Trojan horse, etc.
• Loss network connection after installing/uninstalling adware, spyware, antispam, vpn, firewall or other networking programs.
• Unable to access any webpage or can only access some webpages.
• Pop-up error window with network related problem description.
• No network connectivity due to registry errors.
• DNS lookup problem.
• Fail to renew the network adapter’s IP address or other DHCP errors.
• Network connectivity issue with limited or no connections message.
• Windows update does not work
• You are having problems connecting to secured websites (ex. Banking).
• Internet Explorer stopped working or crashes all the time.
• Other networking problems.

Rizone3, developer of the application

How to repair network issues using Complete Internet Repair?

The freeware application is very easy to use and the developer has designed it keeping the novice users in mind.

1. Simply select the check boxes that appears before the items that you want to repair.
2. Now, click on the really big Go! button.
3. The status of the repair is displayed in a log.

Note: Some repairs may need a restart of the computer to complete.

Complete Internet Repair is a handy program for users who are experiencing Internet connectivity issues, or just want to repair Internet Explorer as it is a good Internet Explorer repair tool too.

The freeware portable program for Windows users is available for download at Rizone3, the website of the developer. If the developer’s site is not working, download the app from Softpedia.

In one of our earlier articles, we shared a good news for Ubuntu 10.10 “Maverick” users who wants to get Unity 2D without upgrading to the latest Ubuntu 11.04 version.

Unity 2D is basically a desktop shell developed for hardware platforms that don’t support Unity’s OpenGL requirements. In other words, it’s developed for Ubuntu systems having less hardware resources.

2D’s architecture is very close to that of the original Unity desktop shell since it shares the same backend components, except that it replaces the user interface elements. The user interface elements which gets replaced in this strip down version of the desktop shell are the panel, launcher and places components. Moreover, it uses a tweaked version of Metacity instead of Compiz as its window manager.

You can follow any one of the two ways described below to install Unity 2D on your Ubuntu 10.10 “Maverick” build.

1. Install using Adi Roban’s PPA (more information about this PPA is available here):

Open a new terminal window and type the following commands, pressing Enter after each command. You will be once asked to give your sudo password, which is nothing but your Ubuntu’s login password for your account.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:adiroiban/unity-2d-maverick
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install unity-2d

2. Install using Ubuntu’s own PPA:

Open a new terminal window and type the following commands, pressing Enter after each command. You will be asked once to give your sudo password, which is nothing but your Ubuntu’s login password for your account.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:unity-2d-team/unity-2d-daily
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install unity-2d

Note: Use any one of the above method, do not use both of them.

One last step before activating Unity 2D as your default desktop shell:

After Unity 2D installation is completed, follow the steps below to activate Unity 2D as the default desktop shell for your Ubuntu account.

1. First, log out of your Ubuntu account
2. Now, during logging back in again, don’t forget to choose “Unity 2D” session in the drop-down menu, present at the bottom center of the login screen
3. Congratulations, if you have performed the above steps carefully, your Ubuntu account should be running Unity 2D.

If you need any kind of help about the installation procedure, comment below, we will help you out.

After the first release of Mozilla’s “developer’s” build of Firefox, Firefox Aurora, Mozilla debuted Channel Switcher that lets users switch on the fly among Aurora, Beta, and Release versions of the web browser.

The benefit of the built-in channel changer is that users who want to see what’s coming in future versions of Firefox can now do so without having to download a separate installer (Google was also having something similar for Chrome web browser called Google Chrome Channel Changer, which is now deprecated and not recommended by Google).

Here’s how to change Firefox Release Channels:

1. To change Firefox channels, you must first be running the Firefox Aurora version.
2. Go to the menu button (the big orange button on the left-hand corner of the web browser’s window), then Help, and choose About Aurora.
3. The first sentence below the version information reads, “You are currently on the Aurora update channel. Change.“
4. Click Change, and the window shows the change channel drop-down.

   

5. Choose the new channel you want to use, then select the Apply and Update button below.
6. When the updates are done downloading, click Apply Update and Firefox will restart.

After the web browser restarts, it should be running the new channel you’ve chosen. You can confirm this by going back to Help menu, then choosing About.

Mozilla has explained more about how the channel changer works in an article on its site.

The channel changer does not affect your profile, so your tabs and other settings should all remain the same.

Windows, Mac, and Linux users can download Firefox Aurora here. You will be able to can now download the Firefox beta version when they are made available by Mozilla. If you’re looking for the Firefox Nightly channel, you’ll have to download it here, as it’s not offered by the channel changer.

Just like Google’s 2-step verification, Facebook has added two-factor authentication called “Login Approvals” to help its hundreds of millions of users prevent unauthorized access to their accounts. Facebook has kept Login Approvals as an optional verification step to its log-in process.

If a user enables Login Approvals and attempts to login to their account from devices that aren’t saved as approved ones, Facebook will send them an one-time numeric code for verification. Facebook sends the numeric code as SMS message to the mobile phone the user has linked to the account, the company said Thursday in a blog post.

In this way, an account would be protected against any unauthorized access. The next time an unauthorized access occurs, the legitimate user would be notified that someone had tried to get access to the account and would be asked to change the compromised password.

Unlike Google which offers users backup methods for accessing their accounts through its two-factor verification, a Facebook user on the other hand will be locked out of his account until he logs in from an approved device, if he attempts to get access to the account from an unrecognized device and doesn’t have the authorized cell phone at hand.

Andrew Song, a Facebook engineering intern, in the blog post, wrote:

One challenge in building login approvals was balancing security and usability.  Similar features on other websites require you to download authentication apps or purchase physical tokens to act as your second factor.  These are good approaches, and we’re considering incorporating them in the future, but they require a lot from the user before being able to turn on the feature.  To have the biggest impact and provide this added security to the most people, we decided on SMS as the best choice for a second factor.  That’s a big part of the culture here at Facebook, whether you’re an intern or an old hand: focus on impact.

Everyday technology is advancing, it is becoming easier for unauthorized persons to steal usernames and passwords through variety of ways, including phishing scams, intercepting unsecured Wi-Fi communications and with keyloggers or malware. This is a good move by Facebook to protect their users through the implementation of a two-factor authentication mechanism which is becoming the de-facto in protecting users.

How to enable Facebook Login Approvals two-factor authentication?

The Login Approvals feature can be turned on by going to the Account Security section of the Facebook account settings page, the company said.

1. After login in your Facebook account, click on the Account drop down menu present in the upper right-hand corner of the screen.
2. From this drop-down menu, select Account Settings.
3. Under Account Security, click on the change link.
   
4. Now, under Login Approvals, select the check box before “Require me to enter a security code sent to my phone” to start the wizard which will walk you through the process of enabling the two-factor authentication in your Facebook account.

In our earlier post, we covered the news about the release of the popular game Angry Birds HTML5 version that’s designed to run in Chrome (or Chromium) on any operating system. The game is very addictive and is already very popular on mobile phones and tablets.

The survival of the Angry Birds is at stake. Dish out revenge on the green pigs who stole the Birds’ eggs. Use the unique destructive powers of the Angry Birds to lay waste to the pigs’ fortified castles. Angry Birds features hours of gameplay, challenging physics-based castle demolition, and lots of replay value. Each of the 70 levels requires logic, skill, and brute force to crush the enemy.

Now, some of the levels of Angry Birds might be very tricky. You may tear your hair apart to solve them just because you won’t be able to advance to the next level. Here’s a simple trick that will save your hair and agony!

Thanks to Wesbos who found this hack that will give you access to all Angry Bird levels, even the special Chrome levels!

To get access to all levels in Chrome Angry Birds, just copy and paste the following line into your browser’s address bar.

javascript: var i = 0; while (i<=69) { localStorage.setItem('level_star_'+i,'3'); i++; } window.location.reload();

Note: You have to do the copy-paste job in the tab in which you have opened the game.

If you want to set all levels back to locked (virtually resetting Angry Birds), simply copy and paste this into your address bar:

javascript: var i = 1; while (i<=69) { localStorage.setItem('level_star_'+i,'-1'); i++; } window.location.reload();

Wesbos has also explained in his post, how and why this hack works.

In the talk Rovio did at Google IO, they mentioned they were using HTML5′s LocalStorage. If you open up Web Inspector in chrome, you’ll see they are keeping track of your score and stars with localstorage. Lucky for us, that means we can use setItem() set all 70 levels to 3 and get access to them all.