Why does Notepad open when I type www.google.com in IE ?

CNet describes a simple trick to run program files or open any local document from the Internet Explorer address bar by typing a valid web address like gmail.com or even wwww.google.com

Microsoft calls this IE shortcut a feature but it's just a matter of time before clever hackers exploit this "feature" and Microsoft will end up issuing a patch.

Here's the trick [harmless version] that you can even try on your own Windows XP computer.

• Right click on the Desktop and create a new Shortcut

• Type notepad.exe or calc.exe

• When you are asked to name the shortcut, say www.microsoft.com or www.google.com

Now start Internet Explorer, goto the address bar and type whatever web address you assigned to the desktop shortcut. Press Enter.

If the shortcut is then deleted--or the characters "http://" are added before the "www" in the browser address bar--then IE will once again connect to the Internet as expected.

Source: Microsoft: Shortcut 'trick' is legitimate feature

Ray Ozzie Effect: Microsoft takes a U-Turn on OpenDoc Support in Office 2007

Microsoft was never ready to include ODF Support in Office 2007 [or 2008].

So a group of software companies initiated the OpenOpenOffice Project to build an external add-in that will bring OpenDocument support in Microsoft Office suite.

Today, Microsoft reversed it's stand on OpenDoc support and they are launching an Open XML Translator project on SourceForge.net that will let users convert Microsoft Office documents to OpenDocument. Because Open Office XML is backward-compatible, the translator will work with older versions of Office.

Update: Microsoft has officially confirmed that is sponsoring open source project for Open XML-ODF file translation. The prototype is already available on Soureforge.net.

Brian Jones, program manager for Microsoft Office, says that ODF support for Office was built following requests [or, pressure] from Governments - there's no strong demand for ODF support from corporate or consumer customers.

What caused Microsoft to change their decision ? It's either the O3 project or the Ray Ozzie effect. I think it's the latter.

Search for Google on Yahoo, you'll see a special search box

Yahoo hates sending traffic to the Google search website.

When you make a search for Google or Google.com on Yahoo search, rather than showing the organic search results directly, Yahoo will draw another search box on top of the results that says "Want to search the Web?" (see screenshot)



What's even more interesting - Yahoo employs this evil trick only for Google. Try searching MSN or Ask.com on Yahoo and you won't that special search box.

McAfee Database has 200,000 Virus Definitions

While the number of virus attacks have reduced in the recent years, the virus growth hasn't slowed down.

McAfee has added the 200,000th definition to its threat database today and they expect to see 400,000 virus definitions by 2008.

After a lull in their efforts, virus writers have spent the past few years creating more of this software than ever before, said Jimmy Kuo, a research fellow with McAfee's Avert Labs.

Between 1999 and 2002, McAfee's database held steady at around 50,000 definitions, but since then, the number of different worms and viruses created has jumped, he said.

Read full story @ Computerworld Security

How to Leech Pictures from Flickr or Google Images

Looking to download all the images that you see on Google Image results or Flickr pages ? Here's some help.



There are basically two ways to hack these photo services. The traditional and more painful approach is to make a search on Google [or Flickr or Yahoo], wait for the results page to load and then click the individual photos to open them full size and finally save them to your hard drive. Not recommened.

Don't get turned away, there are some very easy-to-use options that let you create an entire catalogue of images from Google or Flickr for offline viewing. Let's look at some of them:

» Google Image Ripper - This online service extracts the full size images [no thumbnails] from Google index and displays them in one page. You can then save the full page with attachments to build your offline gallery of Google Images.

» Flickr Leech - Type in the Flick tag, username or just a short description and this web based free leeching service will extract hundreds of images from Flick on just one page. This service make Flickr browsing a breeze.

» Google Grab - Unlike the previous two services, Googlegrab is a desktop software that leeches full scale images and download them to your local hard disk automatically. Works for PC and Mac. [via Philipp]

Tip for Webmasters and bloggers:

If you like to prevent Google Images from indexing hosted on your website or blog, place the following robots.txt file in your server root:
User-agent: Googlebot-Image
Disallow: /

To remove all files of a specific file type (for example, to include .jpg but not .gif images), you'd use the following robots.txt entry:
User-agent: Googlebot-Image
Disallow: /*.gif$

Related: Download PostSecret Photos | Higher rankings in Google Images

Google included in Oxford English Dictionary as a Verb

Did you Google her name or pictures on the web ?

Just like Xerox means Photocopying and FedEx refers to shipping something, the term Google has become synonymous to searching for information on the web.

Now even the widely respected Oxford English Dictionary have also put their stamp of approval on the tremendous popularity of the term Google.

Google [a trademark] has been officially included as a verb in the Oxford Dictionary of English during their recent quarterly update.

Google hates when people use their company name as a verb, they even sent a Cease & Dessist notice to WordSpy for promoting the term Google as a verb. I am waiting to see how the Googleplex residents react to this inclusion by the Oxford.

On the funny side, Google is added to the dictionary along with the F word. Look the screenshot above.

Dear Amanda, Will you work for me ?

Amanda Congdon has stepped out [or maybe, forced to step out] of RocketBoom Studios.

While producer Andrew Baron is still searching for a "better than Amanda" replacement, Amanda has already received some exciting "public offers"

» Jason Calacanis has an open invitation for Amanda to join Netscape - Jason has excellent cloning skills, he did that for Digg and now he may be planning a Rocketboom clone.

» Noah, producer of 88Slide, has also opened the doors for Amanda. "I don't have Calacanis level deep pockets, yet, but I'm confident I could crack this production puzzle too. "

» Om Malik suggests that Podtech must hire Amanda. Is Scoble already thinking on those lines ?

Rocketboom may never be the same again without Amanda. I think someone like CNet or Yahoo or Digg should hire both Amanda and Andrew and make them work together.

Personally, I am no big fan of Rocketboom but I do subscribe to a couple of video podcasts on iTunes. Here's a list of my favorite shows:

GeekBrief.TV
Hosted by Cali Lewis [Neal Campbell and Luria Petrucci], Geek Brief has all the right ingredients to keep you entertained. They even got Andrew on the show just hours after his breakup news got public.

commandN TV
Hosted by Amber Mac of G4TechTV, this is clearly my favorite technology video podcast. Alongwith Leo Laporte, she also does Inside the Net for TWIT.tv.

88Slide
I never heard of this excellent daily entertainment vodcast until the producer, Noah Bonnett, emailed me about it. Unlike other podcast, 88slide is not about news or opinions but it's kind of a game show. Rachel Smith, the host, asks a new question, viewers send in their replies via email or SMS and the lucky one gets a prize like an iPod Nano. Each episode is shot on a different location across the country. Great fun.

Butt Out Loud
Molly Wood is the face of CNet TV and Buzz Out Loud. Her informal video podcasts are superb with the right blend of humor but you really don't know when the next episode is gonna arrive. Molly, great stuff but can you make the video Buzz Report more regular ?

Microsoft Utility Reduces Windows Shut Down Time

Please wait while Windows shuts down. If your Windows XP computer takes more than few seconds to Log-Off and Shut Down, you may be facing Windows Profile Unloading issues which can be easily fixed with a free software.

This story about speeding up Windows shut-down time has two parts - one for mom and other one for the geek.



If you hate technical details (like your mom), just download this tiny UPHClean installer (User Profile Hive Cleanup Service) from the Microsoft Download Center and execute the UPHClean-Setup.msi file.

Once you install, don't worry if you don't find the program link in the XP Start Menu. UPHClean installs as a service that runs in the background and automaticallys start with Windows. To check if the service is running, type services.msc in the Run box and search for the service (see screenshot)

Now for the geek - what does User Profile Hive Cleanup Service actually do ?

When you run programs and open files on your computer, they create connections to the Windows Registry. If the application closes without releasing the open registry handle, it leads to problems when you are logging off the computer or even rebooting.

The problem becomes more severe if your roaming profile is stored on a server and not on the local computer. Until all the open registry connections are closed, the roaming profie won't be copied to the remote server and your system won't shut down.

Agree you can press the Power button but that may corrupt the registry and you could face profile syncronization issues if you work across multiple computers.

This UPHClean service checks for leaked connections to the registry and releases them accordingly. So your computer will shut down faster.

By default UPHClean takes action to allow profiles to unload. You can
choose to have UPHClean only report what processes it finds preventing profiles
from unloading.

Download Link [no verification required]. More Technical Details about UPHCleaner here. Found via IntelliAdmin.

How to Solve Sudoku Puzzles

Sudoku puzzle is most frequently a 9×9 grid, made up of 3×3 subgrids. The goal is to fill in the empty cells, one numeral in each, so that each column, row, and region contains the numerals 1-9 exactly once.

Sudoku was originally very popular in Japan and later spread to other countries. Now most national newspapers publish atleast one Sudoku puzzle each day. Sky One even hosted a live TV Sudoku show on TV.

While the rules of Sudoku are pretty simple, it may need a lot of patience and logical thinking to solve a Sudoku puzzle.

The two main approaches to solving Sudoku problems are "candidate elimination" and "what-if". Wikipedia article on Sudoku is probably a good starting point to learn more about Sudoku.

Wendy Boswell found an interactive guide where you can learn techniques for solving Sudoku using interactive graphics. Good for beginners and advanced users alike.

I think Sudoku is a good way to simulate your brain muscles but it can also be addictive.

Angel Kitty Keyboards for French Maids

Warning: This post may offend some readers.

Angel Kitty, a ladies dress design company in Japan, have designed a waitress costume fitted with a USB keyboard.

The keyboard is flexible enough and bends according to the shape of the body. It has silicone padding underneath the keys to prevent hurting the person who is wearing the keyboard dress.

The Angel Kitty USB keyboard is only available in Japan and you'll have to supply the bust size before placing the order.



News Source: New Launches | Akihabara | Guardian

Sunil Gavaskar - Indian Cricket Legend is Podcasting

Little Master Sunil Gavaskar, the Indian cricket legend, has started a Cricket Podcast show on Yahoo! India. The podcast is produced whenever there is a cricket match with India playing at one side.

Update: The cricket podcast by Sunil has been discontinued.

Subscribe to Sunil Gavaskar Podcast - Expert comments by Sunil Gavaskar on Yahoo! India Cricket

Cricket is probably the best way to reach masses in India and even Google
tried to cash during the recently concluded India-West Indies series.

Related Cricket content:

• Get Live IPL Cricket Scores
  
• Watch IPL Cricket Matches Live Online
  
• Timetable for IPL T20 Cricket

Student Cheats Rejoice: This ballpoint pen is more than a Writing Instrument

The innovative students of China continue to discover new ways to cheat in the school examination halls.

Blaming the academic pressure, these students slip small microscopic earphones into their aural canal while some hide the earphones in vests, wallets and waistbands.

Students in Thailand get cellphones taped to their body or hidden in underwear while in South Korea, exam taking students get answers by cellphone as SMS Text message.

So here's a writing device for these high-tech sneaks that can help them write as well as do lot of other things.

This USB MP3 pen can play MP3 audio files or FM radio, record voice using the built-in microphone and even store documents on the USB drive. Oops, it can also write like a normal pen.

Blog Networks: Time for a Reality Check !

"The barrier to entry in Internet media is low, the barrier to success is high."

Nick Denton of Gawker is doing a massive restructuring of Gawker network - the underperforming blogs will be sold and several high-profile bloggers including Jesse Oxfeld will be given the pink slip.

The domain names, archives and graphics of Sploid and Screenhead, which attract pageviews a month of 900k and growing and 500k respectively, are for sale.

While layoffs and reorgs are a common practice across all industries, it has touched the blog community for the first time.

In the past, companies have fired staff for sharing secrets on blogs but there were no cases reported where a person is fired because his blog doesn't meet the level of expections (or pageviews, incoming links, advertising revenue, etc).

Gawker has hit the trigger and don't be surprised if other blog networks like WeblogsInc, b5media and the Indian InstaBlogs follow the Gawker path. Get the page views and the advertisers else you'll be shown the door.

About.com: Turn off this frame permanently

New York Times owned About.com is a good web resource for finding human advice and practical tips on almost every topic. Whether you planning a trip to Brussels or need advice on painting your house or mowing grass in the backyard or finding mp3 on the internet, you are likely to find it on About.com.

But there are a couple of things which I don't like about about.com:

Problem 1: About.com has an amazing army of editors (called About.com Guides) who are the best in their respective fields. However, the problem comes when some About.com guide copies content without giving credit to the original resource. It then becomes very difficult or almost impossible to remove the copy-pasted page content from About.com. There's no email or contact form (or I can't find one) to complain about an About.com Guide.



Problem 2: A lot of articles link to stories and resources hosted on external webpages. While this is great for the site which is being linked by About.com as it will certainly boost the site traffic, About.com loads the external site in an two pane frame that has rotating ad banners on the top frame and the actual site in the bottom frame. ( see screenshot)

While there's an option that allows visitor to "Turn Off This Frame" to view the external site in full view, most people won't be able to read that since it's in a very tiny font.

This issue is not just with about.com but a lot of other sites like web directories do this to prevent loosing site visitors or make them click the ads by placing it in a very prominent location.

If you are the content owner and hate such kind of "virtual hijacks", just add the following Javascript snippet in the HEAD section of your HTML.

<script language="JavaScript">
 <!--
   if (window != top) top.location.href = location.href;
 // -->
</script>

This will always open your site in the full browser window and not inside a frame. If the linking site is trying to load your page inside a frame, the code will override that setting.

Search Engine Index Sizes: Google vs Yahoo vs MSN

When we do a search on Google or any other web search engine, the total number of results are generally listed in the top right corner. This count can help us determine the actual size of the search engine.

Just perform a simple search for common words (words that are probably found in every text document like "the", "a", "is", "of", "or") and you can roughly compute the size of the entire search index.

We did the above experiment with the three most popular search engines - Google, Yahoo and Microsoft owned MSN. Here are some very interesting stats about their index sizes:

» MSN looks like a new born baby. It indexes just 10% of content when compared with Google.

» Google indexes the largest number of web pages for any of the common words. Yahoo comes second but not close enough.



» For overlapping queries ["the" OR "is" OR "of" OR "in" OR "are" OR "a"], Google finds 25 Billion documents while Yahoo shows just 25 Million results. See screenshots below.





Related: Which is the most Honest Search Engine ?

Limitation: The above results are only for text documents like PDF, Word Files, XLS or HTML files. No images or audi-video content is included.

Yongping Duan pays $620,100 for a date with Warren Buffett

eBay bidder fastisslow has won the Warren Buffett Power Lunch auction that gives him a chance to dine with investment tycoon Warren Buffett.

According to Bloomberg, the real name of fastisslow is Yongping Duan, a California based investor. Duan was a proxy' bidder, meaning EBay automatically topped the highest offer by $100 on his behalf.

Read more about this gentlemen here.

Now what would Duan and Buffett discuss over the lunch in New York ? While they are sure to talk about Buffett's latest philanthropy effort, Forbes forum members too share their thought.

Export 3D Models from AutoCAD to Google Earth

Taking the Sketchup threat very seriously, Autodesk today unveiled free AutoCAD 2007 plug-ins for Google Earth.

With these plugins, AutoCAD users will be able to publish 3D DWG drawings to Google Earth KML files directly inside the AutoCAD interface using Wizards.

Download Google Earth Plugin for AutoCAD 2007

The Google Earth Extension work with AutoCAD 2007, Architectural Desktop 2007, Autodesk® Civil 3D 2007, and Autodesk Map 3D 2007. Earlier, Autodesk released similar plug-ins for Autodesk Civil 3D 2007.

WriteRoom for Windows: Write Without Any Distractions

When you run WriteRoom text editor, it occupies the entire computer screen and shows just the text that you are typing (no toolbars, icons or scroll bars). Since every other program like the web browser or email client is hidden from you, the distractions of incoming e-mail, web, new RSS items and your thousand desktop icons are gone and you focus on writing.

WriteRoom software is only available on the Mac platform but Windows users need not be disappointed as what follows is a simple illustrated guide to build your own WriteRoom clone on Windows using Microsoft Word.

Step 1: Start Microsoft Office Word (any version will work)



Step 2: Choose Format Menu -> Background and Select the Black color (see screenshot)

Step 3: Choose Format Menu -> Font and select Bright Green in the Font Color. If you like to work with large font sizes, you can increase the size in this step.

Step 4: Choose Format Menu -> Paragraph and Set left and right intendation to 1" (this step is option)

Step 5: Click View -> File Screen. Start Typing. (see screenshot)

With the above hack, you get all the "non-distracting" features of WriteRoom plus all the advanced editing features of Microsoft Word.

If you are distracted by the Windows Task bar, just choose "Auto Hide the Task Bar" in Task bar and Start Menu properties.

Digg vs New York Times: ZDNet Blasts TechCrunch over Digg 3.0 Promotion

At a recent Gnomedex session, Mike Arrington of TechCrunch remarked that Digg is getting to the size of the New York Times.

Donna Bogatin of ZDNet is questioning Mike's analysis.

What is the basis for Arrington's assertion that a 15 person start-up that asks for "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" on headlines from stories created by other sites, sites such as nytimes.com, is on track to displace the 1200 person strong newsroom of the 155 year old New York Times "newspaper of record" with its $200 million worldwide news gathering budget?

Earlier, Mike used alexaholic data to support his claim. [alexaholic is not related to Amazon owned Alexa.com]

Stay tuned for for a TechCrunch reply to ZDNet very soon.

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