Say NO to cluttered windows desktops with Fences
Do you have a gazillion icons cluttered across your windows desktop? Do you wish you could organize them logically? Then Fences is for you.
Fences is a free program that helps you organize your windows desktop and can hide your icons when not in use. The app lets you group icons together in whatever fashion you like and lets you rearrange the groups anywhere on your desktop. There is also a paid pro edition which lets you do certain more stuff, but we will focus on the free version for this post.
How to Upgrade LG Optimus One to Android 2.3 Gingerbread
After a lot of delays, the much awaited Android 2.3 upgrade for the LG Optimus One has been rolled out to India too. The upgrade process is itself very simple and requires you to use LG’s phone update software.
It is so lame that LG still prefers to have a Windows PC USB upgrade when Android 2.2+ supports "Over the Air" upgrades. Other companies like HTC have adopted that right after 2.2. This is a lesson, LG has to learn to improve it’s sales.
How to extend your WiFi router’s signal coverage area
A common problem faced in households with WiFi is that the signal strength is not strong enough to cover the whole house. The problem is much more annoying when you live in a multi storied home. There are a few solutions to fix this issue:
- Place the router at the most appropriate locationIt is extremely important that you place the router at a location which is equidistant from all the places you are gonna access the WiFi from. In a typical Indian home, this can be living room or a gallery between the bedroom doors. This way, you should get signals almost everywhere. If the router is placed at a corner in your home, you can also put up some DIY parabolic signal reflectors.
- Flash your router with dd-wrtDD WRT is an open source router firmware which will unleash a lot of extra features in your otherwise “dull” router. This firmware has options to increase the signal strength. More the signal strength, more the coverage. However, this option may not apply to everyone as dd-wrt is not compatible with all the routers in the world. However, it is compatible with most famous ones. So chances are, yours is in the compatible list.
- Buy another WiFi router and configure it as a repeaterThis one needs some investment although is probably your best bet. You can configure most routers to join a WiFi network and repeat it. So, you can place the 2nd router at a location in the house up till where you are getting some signals and then configure it to repeat the WiFi network. This way, you will get signals wherever you want in the house. Although, check if the router you are buying supports this feature. My personal suggestion will be to get the Apple’s Airport Express WiFi router. Though a bit costly at $99 (INR 6510 in India), it gives you the ability of connecting a USB printer & a pair of speakers which you can use to listen to songs over AirPlay if you have any iDevices in your home or iTunes on your computer. I have been using one to eliminate the ethernet cable in my home theater setup to my Xbox 360 and it has been working wonderfully without any hassles.
There you go. If you follow any of the above steps, you should be able to boost the WiFi signals in your home. Do let us know about your experience.
The Engineering Admission Guide
Ever since I graduated, every year I receive queries regarding engineering admissions. This blog post is a sincere effort to highlight some of the key points to be considered during admissions. The suggestions are based on my personal experiences and observations.
Use iTunes Home Sharing to play music from your computer on your iOS 4.3 device
A little know feature that iOS 4.3 brought with it was the ability to play media on your computer’s iTunes library on your iOS device. This is different from the popular remote feature which lets you control iTunes within your home share & the ability to transfer files between computers via iTunes within the home share.
This iTunes home sharing feature lets you play media from any iTunes library within your home share on your iOS device. Once you enable this feature, the shared iTunes’ media library is available in the iPod app on your iOS device and you can play whatever you want as long as you are in the WiFi network’s range. So, if you have an iPhone dock, and majority of your music is on your computer, you no longer need to transfer it to the iPhone. You can directly play it off of the iTunes library on your computer if you have it in the iTunes home share.
How Not To Quit Google Chrome by Accident on Mac?
I have always had a pet peeve against Google Chrome on Mac. If I press Command + Q, it just quits without warning. In many cases this makes me lose application state or text that I typed.
If you’ve had the same problem, I have good news for you. The latest version of Google Chrome (10) includes a solution for this. It’s not enabled by default though. Here is how to do it:
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MNP in India FTW
I just got my number ported from MTNL to Airtel. The process is smoother than one can expect given the situation of customer service in mobile space in India. I must say that I am extremely happy with the process and can confidently say that this is the result of extensive thought process coupled with a great design and excellent implementation.
The process is simple and is explained in the steps below:
The Best Way To Download YouTube Videos
I rarely download YouTube videos now. I just bookmark them and hope I’ll watch them later someday. But sometimes the videos get deleted, sometime I lose the links and sometimes I just want to save the videos to my iPod so I can watch it on a flight. In these situations I start looking for plug-ins and hacks which let me do it. Some time back I found an excellent trick on TNW that lets me do this in an elegant, browser independent way. I’ve used it a couple of times and it just works perfectly.
Enable Mac Like Expose for Tabs in Google Chrome
Ever since I switched to Mac, I find it natural to use Expose for most of the Window management. It’s just faster and more convenient than Alt-Tab/Cmd-Tab when you have more than 3-4 windows open. Sadly, most browsers still primarily rely on the old way for tab-switching.
How To Use Google Maps For Facebook Places
Have you been Facebook places religiously, then you probably also hate that Facebook.com uses Bing Maps to show you the check-in(s). This article tells you how to configure your browser to show Google Maps instead of Bing Maps.
If you still don’t know what I mean, then check how boring a check-in to the Statue of Liberty looks on Facebook places using Bing Maps.
