WebSiteSniffer is a freeware portable packet sniffer tool developed by NirSoft. The application captures all files downloaded by your web browser while you browse the Internet. After capturing the files, it stores them on your hard drive under the folder “Website Files” in the folder where the program resides.

WebSiteSniffer allows you to filter the files types which are captured and saved. It offers the following choices: HTML Files, Text Files, XML Files, CSS Files, Video/Audio Files, Images, Scripts, and Flash (.swf) files. By default all supported file types are selected but you can customize it from Options dialog box. While the packet sniffer is capturing the website files, the main window displays general statistics about the downloaded files for every website or host name. The statistic includes the total size of all files (compressed and uncompressed) and the total number of files for every file type (HTML, Text, Images, etc).

For effectively capturing, you will need WinPcap packet capture driver. Other options for capturing are Raw Sockets which work in some systems and Network Monitor Driver. You can download WinPcap driver from here. Except the capture driver needed for capturing network packets, WebSiteSniffer doesn’t need any installation process or additional dll files. To start using WebSiteSniffer, simply download it from the developer’s website and extract the archive to a folder of your choice. Now, simply run the executable file “WebSiteSniffer.exe“.

When you run WebSiteSniffer for the first time, the “Capture Options” window appears on the screen. Here you can choose the folder where you want to download and extract all Web site files, filter the file types that you want to capture, the capture method (if you have installed WinPcap, keep it selected), and the desired network adapter. This options screen is presented to you only once, when you first run the application. If you want to change any settings later, simply click on Options menu and select Capture Options or Press F9 key on your keyboard. After changing the options press OK and you will see all the files getting saved automatically to your hard drive as you surf the Internet.

You can also select the desired Web site item and press F8 (Open Website Folder) to open the folder of the selected website in Windows Explorer, and easily view all files captured from this Web site. For every website or host name, WebSiteSniffer creates a separated sub folder under the main download folder. For example, if you browse into www.mytechguide.org, all files downloaded from www.mytechguide.org are stored under www.mytechguide.org sub folder.

WebSiteSniffer is a very powerful packet sniffer tool which is very easy to use. WebSiteSniffer works on any version of Windows, starting from Windows 2000 and up to Windows 7, including 64-bit systems. It is available for download from the developer’s website.

PicResize is a free online picture resize, shrink, and crop service. Since, it is an online tool, you don’t need to download any special program to run it. You just need to start your favorite browser and visit Pic Resize website to use the free service. For all your simple picture editing requirements, you will not need advanced programs like Photoshop or GIMP, you just need to upload your pictures and do the manipulations online through the free service.

PicResize is very easy to use. It provides option to do a quick resize; resize, crop and shrink a single picture; or batch resize multiple pictures online. When you’re all done, you can save your picture as a GIF, JPG, PNG, or BMP and download it or save it to the web. For privacy, PicResize keeps your pictures for 20 minutes for you to download and save it on your hard drive. After 20 minutes the picture(s) are automatically deleted from the server, so you don’t need to worry about your personal stuff being saved on some remote server.

How To Use PicResize To Resize, Shrink and Crop Your Pictures?

Before performing any of the steps below, you need to visit the PicResize website at www.picresize.com.

Single Picture Mode

In Single Picture mode, you can actually crop pictures along with resize or shrink them. You can see the screenshots below for an overview on how it works.

After selecting the picture using the Browse button, click on continue.

Now,you can crop the picture, resize it, apply special effects. After that select the file format of the picture to save as. Click on the big “I’m Done, Resize My picture” button to save your pictures.

Quick Resize Mode

1. Click on the down arrow next to the “or Quick Resize” link.
2. Now, browse to upload the picture you want to resize.
3. Choose from the various resize options available.
4. If you want to give your picture some special effects, select any one of the special effects available.
5. Choose the file format to save the newly created picture.
6. Finally, press the “Resize Pic” button and PicResize will in seconds complete the task.
7. The browser reloads and PicResize will show you both the original picture size and the newly created one.
8. From here, you can either see a preview of the resized picture, save it to your hard disk, save to the web or do advanced picture editing using their DrPic.com service (more on that later in another article).

Multi Picture Mode

In this mode you can batch upload many pictures and resize them. Simply add the pictures that you want to resize, select the size for all pictures, select the file format and click on “Batch Resize” button.

After a few moments, PicResize will offer you a zip archive containing all the resized pictures for downloading.

PicResize is a simple to use free online picture manipulator service which is worth trying out. If you use some other online service for the same work, share it with us. We will love to hear back.

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.

Rovio Mobile, the makers of smash hit mobile game Angry Birds, have unleashed a HTML5 version of the popular game that’s designed to run in Chrome (or Chromium) on any operating system. This release came after an announcement by the makers of the game at Google I/O event. This made Angry Birds, one of the most popular games already available on mobile phones and tablets, available for almost all platforms.

The new release was built using WebGL and uses local-caching so players can continue to cause mayhem even when not connected to the internet.

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.

If you use Google Chrome web browser, you may be delighted to know that Angry Birds is available for free as a Chrome app. The game features all-new Google Chrome inspired levels. The Mighty Eagle add-on will be available via the new Google Payments in-app purchasing feature at a later date.

You can however play the game online using any browser at chrome.angrybirds.com.

Rovio now have native support for Angry Birds on a number of mobile and desktop platforms such as iOS, Android, Windows Mobile, Amazon Kindle, Mac OS X and Windows, but have never supported Linux natively. With the launch of the HTML5 version of the popular game, Linux users can now enjoy the game on their desktops!

Angry Birds is now so much popular that now a Hollywood movie is in production. You can watch its official movie trailer below:

Microsoft is planning to push Internet Explorer 9 as an Important Windows Update to existing beta and RC users on March 21. The update will also be offered as Important to normal Windows users. Microsoft revealed that Internet Explorer 9 RTW has been downloaded 2.35 million times in the first 24 hours of availability. Internet Explorer 9 was released to the web on Monday March 14 and has clocked up 27 downloads per second, over 250 downloads every 10 seconds. Microsoft revealed earlier this month that users have downloaded 36 million copies of Internet Explorer 9 since its beta release in September.

It was already confirmed earlier by Microsoft’s head of Internet Explorer, Dean Hachamovitch, that Microsoft will upgrade RC users to the final build. “We will automatically update IE9 beta users to the IE9 RC. After the final release, we will automatically update IE9 RC users to the final build,” said Hachamovitch.

Internet Explorer 9 includes an enhanced minimalistic user interface with HTML5 support, hardware accelerated browsing and some great security improvements. Tracking Protection is included in IE 9. The new privacy feature allows consumers to address their concerns about being tracked on the web. Internet Explorer 9 offers users a new opt-in mechanism to identify and block many forms of undesired tracking such as cookies, web beacons, advertisements and trackers. Tracking protection involves lists that can be published online. Another security enhancement is the ability to block ActiveX controls. IE 9 includes an “ActiveX filter” option that allows users to switch off ActiveX elements within their session. Other improvement includes improved tabbing and site pinning.

We have covered some handy IE 9 keyboard shortcuts published by Microsoft earlier. These keyboard shortcuts will help users use IE9 faster. We also covered the release of IE9 product guide (manual) by Microsoft in the same article. The guide gives detailed information about the new features in IE9, will help you in getting started and easily understand most of the useful features in IE9.

Internet Explorer 9 (IE9) has finally been officially released by Microsoft as scheduled beforehand. The RTW (Release to Web) version of IE9 is the final and stable RTM version, build 9.00.8112.16421.110308-0330. The build number indicates that IE9 is compiled, finalized and signed off on March 8, 2011.

You can download final stable version of IE9 from the official IE site, BeautyOfTheWeb.com.

Internet Explorer 9 adds many major features and includes many enhancements. These features are primarily divided into three major categories, viz., Fast, Clean and Trusted.

• Fast
  • Hardware acceleration to speed up graphics-heavy tasks like video streaming or online gaming.
• Clean
  • Streamlined design with compact user interface.
  • Pinned Sites for accessing frequently visited web pages directly from the taskbar on Windows 7 desktop.
  • Enhanced tabs browsing with ability to tear-off tabs out of Internet Explorer to open the tab’s webpage in a new window, and snap tabs for side-by-side viewing.
  • New Tab page with listing of most often and frequently visited webpages.
  • Search in the address bar with search suggestions support.
  • Notification Bar appears at the bottom of Internet Explorer.
• Trusted
  • Download Manager with ability to pause and restart a download.
  • Add-on Performance Advisor
  • Tracking Protection to limit the browser’s communication with certain websites to help keep information private.
  • ActiveX Filtering.

IE9 is not supported on Windows XP. Installing IE9 will automatically replace and remove the existing installation of Internet Explorer. Uninstalling IE9 should automatically rollback to the earlier version that was installed. IE9 is available for Windows Vista SP2, Windows 7 (SP1 optional), Windows Server 2008 SP2 and Windows Server 2008 R2 (SP1 optional).

You can also directly download Internet Explorer 9 from the links given below.

Direct Download Internet Explorer 9 (32-bit and 64-bit IE9) Offline Setup Installers

Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2: IE9-Windows7-x86-enu.exe (x86 English Full Installer)
Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2: IE9-Windows7-x64-enu.exe (x64 English Full Installer)

Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008: IE9-WindowsVista-x86-enu.exe (x86 English Full Installer)
Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008: IE9-WindowsVista-x64-enu.exe (x64 English Full Installer)

Grooveshark lets you listen to music online for free. It has one of the best collection of music. You can also subscribe for paid account that comes with more features. For accessing the free music streaming service, till now you need to open web browser and then open their website. But now you can bypass the website and enjoy free music using the official Grooveshark Desktop App. The application is based on Adobe AIR. It provides you with the same set of features without you having to open any browser.

The user interface is similar to the web interface. You can login to your account, play music from your playlist, set playback and other settings, etc. If you have saved your playlists in your account online, you can easily retrieve it using the desktop app. The desktop app is useful tool for all Grooveshark users.

Nearly all the music on Grooveshark has been uploaded by users. All music users uploaded is transcoded into an MP3 file with a maximum bit rate of 192 kbps. Grooveshark Radio is a great way to discover new music. You can select a song (or multiple), then click the Radio button on the lower right side of the screen, and Grooveshark will continuously add similar songs based on the song/songs already in your queue. If you don’t like a song the radio chooses for you, simply hit the button in the corner of the song box and you won’t hear that artist again in this radio session. If you really like a song, hit the button to hear more of that artist and artists like them

Even though you will not find any announcements about the app, but a lot of discussion about the app and bugs related to it is going on at the Forum.

Download Grooveshark Desktop App [Official]

Microsoft has released Internet Explorer 9 RC (Release Candidate) which you can download using the offline direct download links given at the end of this article. The Release Candidate of Internet Explorer 9 is available now at www.BeautyOfTheWeb.com in 40 languages. There does not seem to be a need to uninstall a beta version before installing the release candidate.

Below, you can see what’s new in the RC since Beta:

Microsoft’s main change in Internet Explorer 9 RC is the addition of Tracking Protection. The new privacy feature that allows consumers to address their concerns about being tracked on the web. Internet Explorer 9 RC offers users a new opt-in mechanism to identify and block many forms of undesired tracking such as cookies, web beacons, advertisements and trackers. Tracking protection works by allowing users to create lists of sites that are protected from being tracked by other sites via cookies and other means. The first set of Tracking Protection Lists created by trusted organizations are now available on the Web. The ability for a site to determine that the user has expressed a wish to not be tracked (by turning the feature on) is inherent in the design of Tracking Protection.

Microsoft’s second security enhancement is the ability to block ActiveX controls. Internet Explorer 9 RC includes an opt-in “ActiveX filter” option. Microsoft has made it easy to “turn off ActiveX” for all sites and then re-enable it, site by site, as you see fit, furthering Microsoft’s commitment to security within its browser. The filter in RC is basic and doesn’t appear to allow for a per-site setting, just on or off.

Microsoft is expected to reveal the final version of Internet Explorer 9 at MIX 11 in April.

The official release notes are available, you can also read more about Internet Explorer 9 RC release here.

It’s available for Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 and supports both 32-bit and 64-bit versions.

Offline Direct Download Links of Internet Explorer 9 RC

• For Windows 7 (x86):

  http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/A/5/2A50895F-4BF1-4A68-837B-506AE8301E9D/IE9-Windows7-x86-enu.exe

• For Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 (x64):

  http://download.microsoft.com/download/C/1/5/C154F0CF-4BC8-454D-A4E8-314682963937/IE9-Windows7-x64-enu.exe

• For Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 (x86):

  http://download.microsoft.com/download/C/1/7/C1754A31-1B2B-44F6-A51F-E7B2BB2E750E/IE9-WindowsVista-x86-enu.exe

• For Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 (x64):

  http://download.microsoft.com/download/3/7/7/377E5AD2-756A-4FFF-982F-78D5B411EC74/IE9-WindowsVista-x64-enu.exe

Change the language code, for instance from enu to esn for Spanish, ptb for Portuguese or deu for German, to download the browser in a different language or you can also download IE9 RC in other languages using following link:

Download IE9 RC in other languages

Opera Software has released Opera 11.01 final version, which is an update of Opera 11. The latest updates fixes many security issues and improves overall stability of Opera, one of the popular web browser. This final version of Opera has come up after many snapshot releases and two RC (release candidates) updates. Opera 11.01 is a highly recommended update for every Opera 11 user.

The full change logs for Windows, Mac and Linux and FreeBSD are linked from the blog post announcing about the new version release.

The security issues fixed in Opera 11.01:

• Removed support for “javascript:” URLs in CSS -o-link values, to make it easier for sites to filter untrusted CSS.
• Fixed an issue where large form inputs could allow execution of arbitrary code.
• Fixed an issue which made it possible to carry out clickjacking attacks against internal opera: URLs.
• Fixed issues which allowed web pages to gain limited access to files on the user’s computer.
• Fixed an issue where email passwords were not immediately deleted when deleting private data.
• Fixed an issue which could cause the wrong executable to be used to display a downloaded file in its folder.

Users can update to the latest version of Opera web browser directly by clicking on Help > Menu > Check for Updates.

Users can also download the latest version of Opera directly from Opera Software.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has given HTML5 it’s very own logo, designed by the firm Ocupop.

Introducing the logo, the W3C said, “It stands strong and true, resilient and universal as the markup you write. It shines as bright and as bold as the forward-thinking, dedicated web developers you are. It’s the standard’s standard, a pennant for progress. And it certainly doesn’t use tables for layout.“

The W3C has asked early adopters of HTML5 to adopt the badge and display it on their websites. The W3C is now offering free stickers and selling t-shirts with the logo. The HTML5 logo is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence.

There’s also a badge builder allowing you to create a customized logo for your site using the “Badge Builder 5000″. Below is an example, which shows the logo along with a range of icons denoting what you use HTML5 for:

The icon choices include the following categories:

• Offline & Storage
• Connectivity/Realtime
• Multimedia
• Graphics, 3D & Effects
• Device Access
• Performance & Integration
• Semantics
• CSS3/Styling

You can get more info about the new logo at W3C HTML5 logo website.

We like the logo very much. We feel that HTML5 deserves a logo of its own and W3C has taken care of that very well! What do you say about this new logo? Share with us your thoughts below.

Mozilla has just released the latest beta version of Firefox 4, beta 9, bringing them closer to a release candidate and final version release in February 2011. There’s still one more beta to pump out, though. In this new beta release, there aren’t any new features but just some tweaks and bug fixes.

Mozilla Firefox 4 Beta is based on the Gecko 2.0 Web platform. In this release, Mozilla has overhauled the bookmarks and history code, enabling faster bookmarking and startup performance. Per-compartment garbage collection is now enabled, reducing work done during complex animations.

Mozilla has also added support for 7 new languages for Firefox 4 taking the total supported languages to 76. The Firefox Sync setup experience has been greatly improved across desktop and mobile devices. Firefox 4 beta now uses the JägerMonkey JavaScript engine, which is supposedly fast. Firefox button has a new look for Windows Vista and Windows 7 users.

Tabs are now on top by default on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. You can turn any tab into an “App Tab” by right-clicking on it and selecting “Make into App Tab” from the context menu. The stop and reload buttons have been merged into a single button on Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. Crash protection for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X when there is a crash in the Adobe Flash, Apple Quicktime or Microsoft Silverlight plugins. Firefox 4 beta now comes with native support for the HD HTML5 WebM video format.

To view the complete list of changes, visit this page. You can download Firefox 4 Beta 9 from here orvisit this post to learn what has changed in this beta.

This Firefox 4 Beta is considered to be stable and safe to use for daily web browsing, though the features and content may change before the final product release.

Google Chrome web browser stable has been updated to 8.0.552.237 for all platforms. The latest stable release fixes several security vulnerabilities, making it a mandatory update for all Chrome stable users.

The Google Chrome Releases blog lists 16 different vulnerabilities that have been fixed in the new version of which one received the highest rating critical and 13 of high. Sergey Glazunov, the researcher who discovered the critical vulnerability has received the first “elite” Chromium Security Reward, $1337 reward and several other rewards at the same time.

The releases contain the security fixes listed below.

• [58053] Medium Browser crash in extensions notification handling. Credit to Eric Roman of the Chromium development community.
• [$1337] [65764] High Bad pointer handling in node iteration. Credit to Sergey Glazunov.
• [66334] High Crashes when printing multi-page PDFs. Credit to Google Chrome Security Team (Chris Evans).
• [$1000] [66560] High Stale pointer with CSS + canvas. Credit to Sergey Glazunov.
• [$500] [66748] High Stale pointer with CSS + cursors. Credit to Jan ToÅ¡ovský.
• [67100] High Use after free in PDF page handling. Credit to Google Chrome Security Team (Chris Evans).
• [$1000] [67208] High Stack corruption after PDF out-of-memory condition. Credit to Jared Allar of CERT.
• [$1000] [67303] High Bad memory access with mismatched video frame sizes. Credit to Aki Helin of OUSPG; plus independent discovery by Google Chrome Security Team (SkyLined) and David Warren of CERT.
• [$500] [67363] High Stale pointer with SVG use element. Credited anonymously; plus indepdent discovery by miaubiz.
• [$1000] [67393] Medium Uninitialized pointer in the browser triggered by rogue extension. Credit to kuzzcc.
• [$1000] [68115] High Vorbis decoder buffer overflows. Credit to David Warren of CERT.
• [$1000] [68170] High Buffer overflow in PDF shading. Credit to Aki Helin of OUSPG.
• [$1000] [68178] High Bad cast in anchor handling. Credit to Sergey Glazunov.
• [$1000] [68181] High Bad cast in video handling. Credit to Sergey Glazunov.
• [$1000] [68439] High Stale rendering node after DOM node removal. Credit to Martin Barbella; plus independent discovery by Google Chrome Security Team (SkyLined).
• [$3133.7] [68666] Critical Stale pointer in speech handling. Credit to Sergey Glazunov.

Interested users can find full details about the Chrome changes in the SVN revision log.

As Google Chrome gets updated automatically, most of the users are already running the latest version of Chrome. You can check which version you are running by clicking on the wrench icon and clicking on About Google Chrome. If you want you can visit the official download page to download the latest Google Chrome version. You can also download an offline version of Google Chrome from the links that we have shared in one of our earlier posts.

Google Docs now lets you upload any kind of files, though not many of them can be previewed in Google Docs. You can open Microsoft Office, StarOffice, OpenOffice documents, spreadsheets and presentations, PDF files and some images, Windows Metafile (.wmf) and, upload, share and play videos.

After uploading a video to Google Docs, you’ll have to wait until it’s processed. Then just click on the processed video file present in your Documents List, and the video opens in a new page that includes a video player (YouTube video player). You will need to have Flash installed for the video player to work. On the page that opens, you can also find more information about the video file, including the owner, whether the file is shared or not, and when the file was uploaded. It also lets you view the version history of the file. You can also download earlier versions of the video file.

Uploaded video files can be up to 1 GB. These are the most common video formats that you can upload and play:

• WebM files (Vp8 video codec and Vorbis Audio codec)
• .MPEG4, 3GPP and MOV files – (h264 and mpeg4 video codecs and AAC audio codec)
• .AVI (many cameras use this format – typically the video codec is MJPEG and audio is PCM)
• .MPEGPS (MPEG2 video codec and MP2 audio)
• .WMV
• .FLV (Adobe – FLV1 video codec, MP3 audio)

How to Share Private Videos Using Google Docs?

Simply follow the steps below to share private videos using Google Docs:

• Login to Google Docs using your Google Account.
• Click on the “Upload” button to upload the video file.
• You will see two types of upload options: Drag and Drop and Select files to upload.
  Note: If you want to batch upload multiple files, Simply select the multiple files in Explorer and drop them into “Drag and drop” area.
• You can change the Share settings before uploading or you can change the settings later on too. Click on the “Start Upload” button to transfer the selected videos to Google Docs.
• Now, visit https://docs.google.com/#videos to find all your uploaded videos. You can now click on the uploaded video from the Documents List in Google Docs to configure the sharing.
• A new tab will open that will show the uploaded video. Click on the “Share” link at the top left corner and select “Sharing settings” from the menu.
• You can share the uploaded video with your friends by specifying their email address or selecting them from the contacts. You can also set the visibility option of the video file to Public on the web, thus anyone (no Google Account sign-in required) with the link to the uploaded video can watch it or set it to Private (only people with explicitly granted permission can view the video). You can also sent an email notification to tell your friends about the newly shared items through Google Docs. The invited friends can then playback the shared video from Google Docs.

Enjoy sharing videos with only your friends and family privately. Now, I am waiting for Google to add more free storage to Google Docs so that I can share more of my stuffs privately.

Mozilla has released another beta of Firefox 4. This beta release is mostly a bug fix release as evident by the number of bug fixes. Actually, more than 1000 bugs are fixed by Firefox 4 developers in this release. Mozilla has also simplified the process for setting up syncing between desktop browsers and mobile browsers.

Users who are testing Firefox 4 beta versions should definitely update to this latest stable version. Users can download Firefox 4 beta 8 for Windows, Mac and Linux, and other languages from Mozilla Firefox 4 home page for the beta. Users will also soon get notified through the automatic updates built-in the browser or they can manually “Check for updates.”

Do tell us what you feel about this new beta after testing it!

[ Download Mozilla Firefox 4 Beta 8 ]

Is it too much if one is asking for one’s own privacy on the Internet these days? First, we had normal browser cookies, then we had more persistent Flash cookies and now the Evercookie that can provide everyone from advertisers to malware authors with useful information about the sites you have visited and more. Evercookie, an open source JavaScript API developed by security researcher Samy Kamkar, when implemented by any website stores a user ID and cookie data in eight different places. This makes evercookie a more persistent cookie form than Flash cookies or normal browser cookies.

Its goal is to identify a client even after they’ve removed standard cookies, removed Flash cookies (Local Shared Objects or LSOs), and others. This allows websites to track user behavior even when users have enabled private browsing because an Evercookie stores data in locations outside of where standard cookies are stored, an Evercookie can rebuild itself unless users go through a number of steps to completely clear and reset their local storage.

Generally, the Evercookie JavaScript API will make use of the following storage mechanisms if supported by the web browser.

• Standard HTTP Cookies
• Local Shared Objects (Flash Cookies)
• Silverlight Isolated Storage
• Storing cookies in RGB values of auto-generated, force-cached
• PNGs using HTML5 Canvas tag to read pixels (cookies) back out
• Storing cookies in Web History
• Storing cookies in HTTP ETags
• Storing cookies in Web cache
• window.name caching
• Internet Explorer userData storage
• HTML5 Session Storage
• HTML5 Local Storage
• HTML5 Global Storage
• HTML5 Database Storage via SQLite

“Simply think of it as cookies that just won’t go away,” reads the evercookie FAQ.

ArsTechnica has posted an article “It is possible to kill the evercookie,” that shows different ways to protect yourself from evercookie but Firefox users can protect themselves by just using a simple add-on named “Anonymizer Nevercookie.”

Anonymizer Nevercookie eliminates the manual steps required to completely remove Evercookies. It does so without removing all the necessary cookies that you may actually want to keep, such as those for browsing history and remembered logins. When Anonymizer Nevercookie is engaged along with Firefox’s private browsing mode, it quarantines an Evercookie and removes it after the browsing session.

Quick Start Guide to use Anonymizer Nevercookie add-on:

1. After installing the add-on, launch Firefox browser again, go to Tools > Start Private Browsing
2. A new browser window will open. It will be branded with a blue Navigation Menu bar.
3. Use this window for your private browsing session.
4. To leave private browsing mode, close the private browsing window and in the parent Firefox window go to Tools > Stop Private Browsing.

Note: Leaving private browsing mode will release Flash and Silverlight cookies from quarantine and make you trackable again, so don’t end private browsing mode until you are finished your private session.

Important: If you haven’t used Firefox profiles before, you will probably notice a Profile selection prompt when starting Firefox after installing the extension. This is because the extension creates a temporary profile for each browsing session. If you don’t wish to see this prompt, select the default profile and check the box marked “Don’t ask at startup”.

Yahoo has recently released the first beta version of the upcoming Yahoo Messenger 11. It now offers more ways than ever before to connect and have fun with friends and family. Yahoo Messenger is one of the most popular instant messenger, and with the release of the new beta version that comes loaded with new features, popularity of the instant messenger is going to increase. One of the most buzzed feature in Yahoo Messenger 11 is that users will now be able play games created by Zynga, the same company behind who has created some of the most popular Facebook games such as Mafia Wars or Farmville, and games by other companies.

Another new feature useful for all Facebook users, is the ability to chat with all your Facebook friends right from within Yahoo Messenger. This new Facebook integration also allows users to share and update the status, post comments and keep up with conversations across Facebook and Yahoo.

Other Features

• Easily find or invite friends from other services to come chat with you
• Now you can chat with high quality full-screen video.
• Make free PC-to-PC calls and PC-to-phone calls for as low as 1¢ a minute (plus free voicemail!)
• Send text messages (SMS) to friends’ mobile phones for free*
• Instant message with one friend, or conference in a bunch
• Show your style with emoticons, Avatars, audible and IMVironments
• Use the built-in media player to watch web videos and view photos with friends

Note: If you want to install Yahoo Messenger 11 beta, you should do a Custom Install.

Yahoo! Messenger 11 in a typical install, installs Yahoo! Toolbar and Yahoo! BrowserPlus. Yahoo Messenger 11 will also change your default browser homepage to yahoo.com and install Yahoo! Search Protection which alerts the user when anyone tries to change the browser’s default search engine. Make sure you do a custom install and remove those features which you do not want.

You can view the official announcement about the beta release here.

You can download the new Yahoo! Messenger Beta web installer using following link:

Download Yahoo! Messenger 11 beta

If you want an offline installer, you can download it using following link:

Download Yahoo! Messenger 11 beta offline installer

AVG LinkScanner is a free standalone product that protects home users against random, invisible cyber threats. These threats can steal or damage data simply by users visiting infected web pages. Regular anti-virus software cannot protect users against this type of threat due to their transient nature. LinkScanner gives users an extra real-time layer of protection on top of their existing security software.

AVG LinkScanner technology is a part of AVG’s products, including AVG Free. The free standalone version of AVG LinkScanner is available to all and can also be used alongside other antivirus security solutions.

The way the AVG LinkScanner works is it analyses web links in real-time. This enables AVG to deliver far more accurate and relevant protection than other, usually database-driven, safe-surfing solutions. These standard solutions may visit websites only occasionally and they deliver a verdict on a website based on only one or two pages. The standard solutions also uses databases which are refreshed only occasionally.

AVG correlates this with Exploit Intelligence, LinkScanner’s Reputation Filter, and LinkScanner’s Community Intelligence:

• Exploit Intelligence is an extended network of human researchers, automated probes, honeypots, “hunting pots and search bot focused on discovering new vulnerabilities and exploit examples.
• The Reputation Filter creates an intelligence filter for known and suspected exploit distribution sites.
• Community Intelligence is the community of AVG LinkScanner users who allow information about attempted exploitation of the computers to be collected. This data collection process allows LinkScanner users to serve as an extension of internal research efforts. This provides a virtual Neighborhood Watch for the Web to report new malicious web sites back to the internal researches.  Participation in the Community Intelligence program by AVG LinkScanner users ultimately improves protection for all users.
• AVG LinkScanner runs alongside most home security solutions, performs analysis and delivers current protection that AVG competitors cannot offer.

AVG LinkScanner is available for free for Windows and Mac. If you don’t want to install AVG LinkScanner, you can check a website using AVG Threat Labs.

See the video below for an overview of AVG LinkScanner.

The day at last came, when one of the world’s fastest browser, Opera gets the much wanted feature, support for extensions. Even though Opera is one of the most customizable browser, yet its lack of support for extensions till Opera 10 was like the missing puzzle piece for Opera users. Now, Opera with the release of Opera 11 alpha has added this missing piece. Opera browser is unique in many ways and has its own fan base. Many of the modern features, like tabs, speed dial, integrated web search, data synchronize, etc that are now defacto for almost all browsers today were first seen in Opera.

Opera has Widgets feature that is still unique feature. Now, Opera extensions allows you to easily add new functionality to your Opera browser. These extensions are created using familiar open standards: HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript, along with supported APIs. Opera has also launched Opera Extensions website: https://addons.labs.opera.com/addons/extensions/. Opera 11 alpha is available directly from Opera software for all supported operating systems and only available in English. Only the windows version is directly available for download on Opera Next, the Mac OS X and Linux versions can be downloaded from Opera’s Snapshot server.

As of now, Opera has 17 extensions available for testers of the Opera 11 alpha version. Opera extensions are installed by clicking on the Install button, available from the extensions website, then by clicking OK in the prompt that is displayed. Opera 11 extensions does not need any browser restart after installation, they are immediately available and functional.

Once installed, managing extensions is very easy. Simply clicking on Menu > Extensions > Manage Extensions opens up a list of all installed extensions, with options to disable or uninstall them. This process does not need a restart either, which is very comfortable and similar to how Google Chrome handles extensions. Soon, Opera will add support for auto-updating extensions. Also, the extensions do not seem to have any options to configure them at this point. It is however likely that this will be changed in upcoming versions.

One of the unique feature of Opera 11 alpha which I like the most is including an option to enable plug-ins only on demand. This feature is especially useful when you want to have plug-ins such as Flash content load only when clicked on and helps speeding up browsing on computers that have difficulty handling lots of plug-in content. Opera keeps this feature disabled by default, but you can activate it from Menu > Options > Advanced > Content > Enable plug-ins only on demand.

Below is the list of extensions available at the time of writing:

• Bit.ly Extension – Shorten URLs using the Bit.ly URL shortening service
• Delicious Extension – Save on delicious
• Edit the Page – Edit the page like a WYSIWYG editor
• External Scripts – noscript, noscript, script, external, bs-harou
• FaceChat – Facebook Chat from your browser
• FastestTube – YouTube Video Downloader, download any video from YouTube
• Mouse trail – This extension show red tail behind cursor in mouse gestures
• Opera Configurator – Full control of your opera settings just 1 click away
• Opera to Phone – Adds a button to Opera that lets you seamlessly push links, maps, YouTube videos, phone numbers and text to copy to the clipboard directly to your Android device
• Reddited – Has this page been on Reddit?
• Slashdotty – Hide Slashdot side blocks you don’t need
• StumbleUpon – Discover the best of the Web
• Translate – Automagically translate foreign web pages into English
• VideoFullscreen – View HTML5 videos in full-screen
• YR.no forecast – No bells and whistles, just your forecast, right in your browser. Simple. Clean. Efficient
• miniFeed – Facebook feed in a click
• Яндекс.Погода – Погода в десятках городов мира (available only in Russian Language)

With extensions available, it is only a matter of time until all popular Firefox add-ons and Google Chrome extensions get ported to Opera. It will be great when LastPass gets ported to Opera. At this moment Google Chrome (Canary build) is my personal favorite browser. Opera 11 alpha looks very promising and when the final is released I may shift to Opera!

As you can see in the extensions list above and how Opera handles extensions, Opera Software did a good job, although most of these features are available in Google Chrome. In Opera not having to restart the browser when installing or uninstalling extensions, just like Google Chrome is a big plus point. Mozilla Firefox also wants to do the same but that may take a while, till then I am happy with Chrome and now with Opera.

Other new notable new features of Opera 11 are:

Opera leaped ahead in recent versions with a new JavaScript engine, and our developers have been hard at work fine-tuning our browser to put Opera even further ahead of the pack in a number of benchmarks with further improvements in browser performance.

A new mail panel gives you control over the order in which your accounts and mail items show up. You can just drag items where you want them. You can also now create folders for organizing your mail and news feeds. A smart behavior is now implemented that can show the mail panel when you are using it, and hide it when you leave a mail tab.

A new bookmarks bar can be enabled that has replaced the personal bar. This conveniently located toolbar allows quick access to your favorite bookmarks.

To offer the latest support for rich, dynamic web applications, Opera 11 alpha supports HTML5 server-sent events and websockets. Server-sent events allow a server to push notifications and new content to the browser in real-time, while websockets allow for sophisticated communication within web applications that can allow for rich next-generation web applications and multiplayer games.

Have you tried Opera 11 alpha yet? What are your thoughts after using it? Let me know through the comments below.

Out of the many Facebook’s features, one of the most useful feature that Facebook has rolled out is the one that allows you to download your complete profile as a backup. This backup includes all your messages, Wall posts, photos, status updates and profile information. At this moment not all Facebook accounts activated with this feature but once the feature rolls out to your account, all you need to do is follow the guide below to get your complete Facebook profile backup.

How To Backup All Your Facebook Data And Download It?

First, login to your Facebook account. After logging in, go to Account > Account Settings using the top right menu.

On the Account Settings page, scroll down to find the option that says, Download your information. Click on the learn more button and then click on the Download button on next page.

After clicking on the download button, Facebook will send you the download link on the email address associated with your Facebook account after the backup is ready. Click on the link sent to your email, enter your Facebook password and click on the Download button to download the backup zip file that has all your Facebook profile data.

Below is the official video tutorial that explains the above procedure:

Microsoft released the final version of Windows Live Essentials 2011, now available free download. But if you try to download it from the website then you will get a web installer that when you run downloads and installs the program for you. If you want to have more control or wondering “How do I install Windows Live Essentials 2011 without an internet Connection?,” below you will find a list of links to the offline installers of all available languages.

Supported languages includes Arabic, Bulgarian, Catalan, Czech, Danish, German, Greek, English, etc. Indian languages like Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil and Telugu are also available for download. Simply download the localized version of Windows Live Essentials 2011 offline installer from the corresponding link below.

Thanks to Windows Live Help Center for the offline installer links.