Skip to content

Posts from the ‘How to’ Category

29
Oct

How to disinfect your computer keyboard

Disinfecting the computer keyboards is required to keep you and your computer healthy.Keyboards generally get dust from air,hands,surroundings( if something spills off ).

disinfect-keyboard To disinfect your keyboard, first turn off the computer. Later spray disinfectant on a cloth. Make sure that you use only disinfectant and not just any type of cleaner because not all cleaners can act as disinfectants. Also do not spray the disinfectant directly on the keys of your keyboard. Spray it on a plain cloth. then wipe down the top and sides of the keys. Wait for few minutes to the keys to dry off before turning the computer back on.It is strongly recommended that you should make it a regular practice to disinfect your keyboard.It not only keep you healthy but also gives you a refreshing feeling while using your computer.

If some liquid kind of spills on your keyboard, The first thing you must to do is immediately unplug the keyboard from computer and turn the keyboard over so that its keys are down( if it is a laptop do is as quickly as possible so that the liquid doesn’t descend into the hardware).This will allow the liquid to drain out.

While the keyboard is upside down use a cloth to remove as much as liquid possible. If you have a compressed can air or a vacuum one, while the keyboard is upside down blow or vacuum it out. Then let the keyboard set upside down for at least a night so that it can dry out.Later you can use the disinfectant method to keep clean it.

Keyboards are quite resilient and so it should work when you turn it on again. Hope this helps you, but the best thing to do is to avoid having any liquids near keyboard.

10
Apr

How to Insert Images in Gmail – A Gmail Labs feature

Google finally made easy to keep images while sending an email.Till now a HTML work-around was used to do the job. Google today rolled out a new feature called inserting images.The new feature called ‘Inserting Images’ in Gmail labs that lets you add images in message body. However, this is still in labs only.To enable this feature go to Settings > Gmail Labs and enable it from there. Once enabled, you will find an Insert Image option while composing a message as shown in the screenshot below.(Make sure you’re in rich formatting mode, or it won’t show up)

insert image in gmail

After Clicking Insert Image option, It will ask whether to add an image from computer or a web URL.Just give the location of the image.Once your image is uploaded, you can resize the image and position it by dragging it across your email.Since this is a labs edition feature, it is not enabled by default, you have to manually enable it by going to Gmail labs.

Note:

To protect you from spammers, Gmail doesn’t show URL-based images in messages by default.So if you are sending mail to other Gmail users, they will still have to click “Display images below” or “Always display images from …” to see images you embed.

14
Mar

Download Facebook Photo Albums with FacePAD firefox extension

FacePAD is a Facebook Photo Album Downloader extension for Firefox that makes the process of downloading Facebook album easy with a single right click.

First, Install the FacePAD Facebook Photo Album Downloader to download photos from Facebook.

After installation of this Firefox extension, just right ‘ View Album link’ and click facebook-photo-album-downloadoption ‘Download Album With FacePAD’. Full album will be downloaded in Firefox downloads folder. If there is more than one page of photos, then you will be get prompt for successive pages with photo download like:

Alert 1: Downloading 20 Photos from page 1
Alert 2: Downloading 20 Photos from page 2
Alert 3: Downloading 15 Photos from page 3

Happy downloading :)

10
Mar

Backup Posts Plugins and Settings in Windows Live Writer

Windows Live Writer is best the best know desktop blogging editor.Many people use it for blogging.Did you even think of having a backup of it ? Here is the solution

WLW Backup is a backup application for Windows Live Writer.It will backup all Windows Live Writer’s posts, settings and plugins with a single click.This is a very simple utility to backup and restore Windows Live Writer.

How to Backup WLW Backup:

Open Windows Live Writer Backup Program.Choose what you want to backup (like posts, settings, plugins, etc), and then click the Backup buttonmain window WLW Backup

After setting the backup name, the program does restbacking up with WLW Backup

Now the Backup completed.

How to restore:

To restore, you must have to run WLW Backup as administrator

This will take you to the main window as with backing up, select restore and choose the WLW backup file you wish to restore, it will then prompt you to check that you’re sure

resto requestion WLW Backup

This will then restore the settings

restore completed WLW Backup

There you are the windows live Backup and restore completes.

The only downside of the program is that it is still in Release Candidate 1(RC1)

But this still works good without any bugs.IF you encounter any problem contact them at codeplex.

http://wlwbackup.codeplex.com/

8
Mar

How to make a GIF from a Video file (Movie to GIF)

Gif(Graphics Interchange Format) images are widely used due to their support and portability.This format support animation.Many of you might have seen few popular scenes in movies as GIF images.Here is an easy way to design them.All you need is the movie containing the scene and and movie to gif converter.

Download Movie to gif converter from Evan’s website,

http://www.evanolds.com/movtogifsimple.html

Extract the file, No installation required, Now Run itMovie to Gif

Now open the video file in which you want to create a GIF file, here i am creating a GIF from the trailer of Movie “The Dark knight “

Create Movie to GIF

Locate the starting frame and the end frame through the flower brackets.Now from the export tab, Select Export to animated GIF . You can even save the image as PNG,JEPG (But no animation comes) Movie 2 GIF generation

Finally before exporting it will ask about the output file resize.Select an option and click ok.

Movie to Gif Converter

You can now see the GIF output file in the source folder.

Here is mine :) Looks cool

The dark knight GIF

4
Mar

Update Facebook Status from Twitter Tweets:Twitter Facebook application

The best way to socialize and stay connected with everyone is to use Twitter and Facebook.Twitter is the most popular micro blogging tool and Facebook is the best social networking site.If you are using both services, you must be knowing how pain it is to update your status on both web services manually.But everyone always love to update what they are doing.If you find it difficult updating the status message, then this one is for you. Twitter Facebook application makes your job easier.

twitter-facebook-accounts-update

You need to enter your Twitter login details, agree to terms of use for using it.After that, you can update your Facebook account as and when you update your Twitter account. Besides saving lot of time, it will keep both your Twitter and Facebook friends happy with constant flow updates – Twitter Facebook application.

1
Mar

How to Add Picture Watermark in Microsoft Word 2007

Sometimes adding watermark in Microsoft word document is necessary, If you are sending a confidential report, or a Draft etc. This will stress the purpose of the document.This watermarking  process is simple but varies based on which version of Microsoft Word you use.While Microsoft Word 2007 is the easiest to use for this task.

See here is an example of image watermarking,

Picture Watermark MS Word 2007Adding Picture Watermark in Microsoft word 2007

See “Confidential” in the image.This tells the reader to keep the report confidential(more effective).Let us see how to do this.

Creating a watermark using Microsoft Word 2007

  • Select Page Layout after opening a word document (it will be in office ribbon)
  • Click Watermark from the Page Background group
  • A dialog will appear with options like “Picture Watermark” “Text Watermark”.
  • Select Picture Watermark option
  • Load the watermark image you’d like to use. (The image i used is here confidential )
  • Now Your watermark will now appear on every page.

Well i even want to extend this to Microsoft Word 2000, 2002 & 2003

Creating a watermark using Microsoft Word 2002 & 2003

  • Open the word document
  • From the Format menu, select Background and then Printed Watermark
  • In the Printed Watermark dialog, select the radio button for Picture watermark.
  • Load the watermark image you’d like to use.
  • Now Your watermark will now appear on every page.

Creating a watermark using Microsoft Word 2000

I am not sure of creating a watermark in Microsoft Word 2000, As i never used it.Please check this tutorial if you are using Microsoft Word 2000.

Add Watermark in Microsoft Word 2000

He presented an excellent tutorial with images.

27
Feb

Convert Word to PDF for Free – 5 Different Ways

Some times we want to convert a Word file into a PDF document. There might be many reasons But how to convert a word document into a PDF? There are many softwares over internet but most of them are paid version. Let us see few different ways of converting a Word file into a PDF.

 

Convert Word to PDF     Convert Word to PDF    Convert Word to PDF  

Convert From Microsoft Word to PDF Document

 

  • Using Open Office to Convert Word Document to PDFOpenOffice_logo-50px

Install OpenOffice on your computer.Open the Word document you want to convert.Select File > Export as PDF from the main menu.Finally choose a filename for your PDF.Select the options you want, or just save the file, you are ready with a a PDF file now :)

Download Open office from Openoffice.org

  • Using Google Docs to Convert Word Document to PDF

google_docs

Go to http://docs.google.com, Select upload and click browse, Select the word file you want to convert and upload it.

After uploading, Under the file menu select Download As –> PDF, you can see a download box with PDF file.Just save it. You are done :)

  • Using Online Converters to Convert Word Document to PDF

1) ExpressPDF (http://www.expresspdf.com/)

Browse the Word file and select the option to convert is as PDF document

They will convert and send it to your email

2) PrintPDF (http://www.printpdf.com )

Same as ExpressPDF

3) Doc2PDF (http://www.doc2pdf.net)

Same as ExpressPDF

4 )Media-convert (http://www.media-convert.com)

Select the file and leave the input field as auto detect and output field as PDF file.

After conversion, just download the file

Note : I recommend ExpressPDF as it is fast and also supports upto 20MB.

  • Use Save As PDF Plugin for Microsoft Office 2007

If you are using Microsoft Office 2007, there is a a plugin called Save as PDF Download it and install. Open the word document you want to convert, go to File –> Save as, Select PDF file. Output of PDF file is created.

  • Using an utility like PDF995

efs

You need to download and install two small files, a printer driver and the converter.You can get them at http://pdf995.com/download.html .Install it on your computer, To use it, open any document you want to convert, and choose PDF995 as the printer.So, if you are converting a word document, go to File> Print. then change the printer to PDF995.This will now print to a file, so choose the save location and  save the file.

Hope this guide is useful in converting a word file into a PDF document.Use anyone of the above method next time without googling for a converter software :)

27
Feb

How to Change Mac Address in Linux (Ubuntu/Kubuntu)

Ubuntu/Kubuntu Tutorial.

Some times we require to change MAC address (Physical Address of network card).This can be temporarily or permanently. Here is a tutorial which illustrates changing  of MAC address in linux/ubuntu/kubuntu

To change the MAC address temporarily

Open terminal and type

ifconfig eth0 down

This command brings the network down 

Later type the following command.

ifconfig eth0 hw ether Your Mac Address

For example, it will be like

ifconfig eth0 hw ether 001B2F1359C3

Later bring the network up by the following command.

ifconfig eth0 up

Now type

dhclient

This DHCP protocol allows your computer to contact a central server which main- tains a list of IP addresses which will be assigned to you.

Now your connection should be up with a new MAC address

If you still find a problem with connection, Just repeat the process after taking the LAN wire connection

If you want to access internet with the new mac address all the time, it would be difficult to repeat the process every time after starting the system

So we need to edit /etc/init.d/bootmisc.sh

Anything in the file loads after the regular boot process.So we can repeat the temporary process here.

Open terminal and type

sudo gedit /etc/init.d/bootmisc.sh

On the bottom of the page, insert the following piece of code

killall dhclient
killall dhclient3
ifconfig eth0 down
ifconfig eth0 hw ether 001B2F1359C3
ifconfig eth0 up
/sbin/dhclient
/sbin/dhclient3

So putting this in the file will change the MAC address everytime the system starts.