Sankaranand Balaradjou

Author: Sankaranand

  • Happy 60th Independence Day of India

    Dear Friends,

    It’s Independence day today ! i want to wish you all a very happy 60th Independence day . Lets celebrate the Spirit of our nation and rejoice our freedom which our great leaders and fighters left us.

    On this event i want you to share your pride and proudness of India. Ok it doesnt matter if you are in abroad or in India, just comment what you feel about being an Indian..

    Useful Links for Independence day:

    [update] We are now entering 60th Independence day so dont confuse yourself with birthday calculations

  • Block unwanted websites and ads without any software.

    This is a simple step by editing a host file. Although many of them know this trick yet its not popular among public. Ok Lets come to the main part, you can ask me how do one block a website without any software.

    The mappings of IP address is contained in Host file. Generally Host file is located in %SystemRoot%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts in windows xp where %Systemroot% is the default root directy that will usually be c: etc. To know more about host file and its location visit Wikepedia. Ok lets talk about how it works .

    You can use a host file not only to block website but also to block unwanted ads, banners,etc. Generally a host file contains like this

    127.0.0.1 localhost

    To block a site just enter the webaddress name after the localserver in the host file located in windows/system 32/drivers/etc, see example below

    127.0.0.1 localhost

    127.0.0.1 badwebsite1.com

    127.0.0.1 badwebsite2.com

    Make sure you type the above code without living any line after localhost. Before editing the host file make a backup of it.

  • Another Bug in Orkut’s Message Box

    It was since one week that Orkut has changed its interface and i discovered a new bug. Although the interface is optimized, which covers the room space perfectly but still Orkut have some bugs in it. Over the last few days my inbox in orkut is following with messages. Generally i get more than 20 mails in orkut a day but now i was unable to delete all the messages.

    orkuterrororkuterror Hosted on Zooomr

    The delete selected message(s) function is not working properly, currently one has to select each mail individually and the batch process seems to have some bug and functions void, so mails are just overflowing… Even the From check box doesnt work at all. Hope Orkut will soon fix it or i have no other option but to close orkut account.

    [update sep 22 ’06] Atlast Orkut updated the message box and finally i could delete all my messages in inbox…

  • Celebrate World Coconut Day on September 2

    Today with an intention to spend my brother’s Sodexho vouchers, i went to Spencer’s Daily. After purchasing some eatables and successfully clearing all the vouchers i was coming out of the plex. Just to my side in the parking lounge i found a bulletin notice mentioning “Buy two coconuts and Get one Free”. With a cheapish smile to that ad i found the header saying Celebrate World Coconut day September 2.With the competition of celebrating world days for many events now its chance to celebrate coconut day.

    A report from The Hindu says that

    Endowed with 48.5 per cent lauric acid, equivalent to mother’s milk, the coconut oil with medium chain fatty acids, will have to play a greater role in developing resistance to children and to all human beings to safeguard against HIV/AIDS virus, SARS and viral, fungal, bacterial, protozoal diseases, which is faced by mankind. Because of its unique property by providing food, nutrition, drink, health, aesthetic sense, building material and other useful household material, coconut is described as “Tree of Life”, “Heavenly Tree,” and “Tree of abundance.”

    Lets buy coconuts and feel its importance on September 2…Lol

  • Microsoft Issues 9 Critical updates for Windows

    Microsoft yesterday issued 9 critical patches for windows. These security patches are issued under the Microsoft Security Bulletin summary for August, 2006 reports Beta News. This is an Advisory update released for patching newly discovered vulnerabilites. The nine updates whose Knowledge Base number are KB921883, KB917422, KB920683, KB921398, KB920670, KB922616, KB920214, KB890830 and KB918899.
    So to manually update your Windows XP System Open Internet Explorer, Go to Tools menu, Select Windows Update. You can even download the patch by searching with thier KB number which we listed for you. For other optional updates visit Microsoft TechNet. I strongly suggest you to use Automatic Updates which you can set in your computer by right-clicking the My computer icon and selecting Automatic Updates tab. Click the Automatic (recommended) radio button.

    To learn more about protecting your computer and automatic updates go to Windows Update Site.You need to Validate your windows to download the patches manually.

  • Get more space in your gmail account

    Ok this post may seem like a little wierd because Gmail gives you more than 2Gb storage and i am giving you tips to still make it wider. Although you have much satisfied space, you cannot let your mailbox fill up with unwanted mails or junks, because the rate of your incoming mails grows larger than the increasing free space that Gmail provides. So its better to sort out this problem instead of messing up in future. i got some tips that will help you enhance and optimize your mailbox easily. First of all i use 26Mb(1%) of my 2752 Mb and i get more than 150 mails a day. At this rate, i could have filled half of my inbox but its because of some optimisation and i have used 26Mb(1%).

    Ok lets come to the main part… Just keep in mind these simple ideas and steps so that you can save little more space in Gmail. Before optmizing create 5 labels in your gmail account, like sorting the blog posts in categories we must sort the mails in labels under different categories. For example create 5 labels say Friends, Family, Personal, Offical, Misc. Now the next part is labelling each and everymail you got from first. Why do you want to label each and every mail ? Thats because archiving of mails in a specfic categories will even power your search and you get narrow results. I know its harder to label each and every mail but do it as batch process and the main reason i suggest you to do so is that you will surely come across some unwanted mails which you can delete. Unwanted mails in Sent Mail, Chats,etc can be deleted to even get more space. After labelling each mails, archive it so that it stays safe and you could retrive it whenever you want. This process is like filtering the unwanted mails and archiving the important ones.

    Clear the Trash and Spam box occasionally to free up more space if you are in an emergency to clean up the gmail. After sorting, your mailbox will look quite cool and smart as mine. Its kinda keeping your mails in fingertips. The Optimization of your mailbox depends on how you use the features of Gmail. Upto my knowledge i think gmail is the best Email Service provider that no other email service can offer. Hope this post might be useful.

  • Free Storage to upload and share your photos,files and video.

    Sometimes things gonna mess up in our computer, generally everyone backs up important files as CD / DVD or even store them in Computer, but i dont believe in this tatics. My only backup is Internet and i regurarly backup all my files in internet. You can ask me whats the benefit in doing so .. yes some of the benefits in online file storage are

    • Retrive it whenever you want
    • No loss or maintainence of Data
    • Recover it wherever you want
    • Share the data with others

    The above are some of the resons why i store my data online, ok now come to the part you can ask me where you can store your data and i assure you that i will help you to allocate a maximum of 1Gb Space for storing your Valuable Data. Yeah and they are free. Some of the sites which i recommend gives you 1Gb Free Storage to save your valuable files, photos, movies, videos etc.

    MOZY:

    Mozy is a free remote backup utility that will automatically backsup all the files you represent and allows you to store upto 2GB of files. You need to install a tool from thier site which will occasionally backsup your computer and if your computer messes up it recovers your important files from their server.

    BOX:

    Box is a free online storage site by which you can access important files in any computer, share photos and big files, Sync and Backup folders. They give you 1Gb Free space to store your files.

    E-snips:

    E-snips also gives a storage limit of 1Gb and lets you upload and share anything you want. You can even control who shares it and how they use it.

  • Use Wikepedia to know Expansions…

    It was on thursday when i was in bangalore, i had a fight with my friend sagar regrading an argument on expansion of a brand named KFC which we saw in Bangalore Forum. I am a Peta member and i know KFC is Kentucky Fried Chicken but my friend argued its Kennedy Fried Chicken since he is a Bangalore Native and a regular vistor of the forum.

    He added postive tags to his argument with reasons like native of bangalore and also told me that his friends too said him once that KFC is kennedy fried chicken, but in my inner thought i seem like correct because i remember having a free promotional sticker from peta on KFC. But since the Arguement is favouring him, atlast we decided to find the answer by refering Internet. I navigated to Wikepedia website and entered KFC. The First Result appeared is Kentucky Fried Chicken and i won.. Wikepedia is the best encyclopedia i experienced ever. By using Wikepedia you can find the company logo, founder, expansions easily and clearly.

    below are the some of the Expansions i found using Wikepedia

    • FCUK – French Connection in United Kingdom
    • JVC – Victor Company of Japan
    • BMW – Bayerische Motoren Werke
    • CII – Confederation of Indian Industry
    • HSBC – Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation

  • Download Web Designs for Free

    OSWD (Open Source WebDesign) is a website that has collection of web designs submitted by Open Source Designers and the best part is you can download the designs for free. Thier goal is to provide open source community with quality designs and to promote people to build up thier websites. Francis J.Skettino founder of this site is servering people since 5 years. Currently they have 1688 free web-designs that you can use for your website. You can find designs from personal blogs to content management systems.

    Even my main site’s design is one of the best work of Open Source community, if you want to use any of thier designs you can pleasurely use it and in return of thanksgiving you can atleast add a link back to their site. Now you don’t need to pay anymore for your webdesign.