A glass of steaming milky syrupy tea is best served cut. One by two or two by three, it embodies the spirit of sharing and camaraderie (and more significantly a resource crunch). Come, have a sip.
Before you proceed further reading this post, please note that this is just a quick fix solution, a jugaad, that will help you tide over a current crisis and shouldn't be treated as a long term permanent solution.
The trigger for this post was a desperate call from a friend who was working on something urgent and her left mouse stopped responding. I assumed that it would be a hardware fault and there wasn't much I could do over the phone about it (the three-tight-slaps formula didn't work).
Since the left button (the most used by right-handed computer users) wouldn't be working, also including instructions (in brackets) on using the keyboard to navigate.
- From the Start menu go to Control Panel (Press the Windows Icon - placed to the left of the Space Bar, then use the Arrow Keys to select Control Panel and press Enter).
- In the Control Panel window click on the Mouse icon (Press the Tab button until one of the icons from the Control Panel contents gets selected. Then use the Arrow buttons to reach/select the Mouse icon and press Enter)
- Under the Buttons Tab (in the Mouse Properties window that opens) check the 'Switch primary and secondary buttons' check box press OK (Use the Arrow buttons to choose between the tabs, and press the Tab button to move within the selected tab. Use Shift+Tab to move in the bottom-up direction. When the 'Switch primary and secondary buttons' is selected. Press the Space Bar, the check box will get checked, and then press Enter)
Now, for the time being, you will be able to continue with your work using the right button of the mouse as the primary button. It might be a bit cumbersome to use, but you'll get used to it in a while.
As for the functions of the right mouse button, you can either use any of the following:
- The Menu button on your keyboard (Usually located to the right of the Space Bar, next to the Alt key).
- Shift+F10 or Ctrl+Shift+F10 (whichever works for you).
The instructions/examples refer to Windows XP. The process should be similar in other Windows versions - Vista, Windows 7
This service has been on for quite a while in Delhi but seems that not too many people are aware of this.
The next time when an auto rickshaw driver or a taxi driver in Delhi overcharges or refuses (even misbehaves or harasses) you. Don't just argue and move away (as we usually do). Send an SMS to 56767 (Save the number to your phonebook. It'll come handy) and leave it to the Delhi Traffic Police to take action.
The SMS needs to be preferably sent in a specified format.
"How long will it take you to reach here?" If you are not a frequent traveller on the route, this is usually difficult answer the question.
After six-years of travelling on Delhi's roads, I've noticed a relation between the distance, the time of the day and the time it takes to reach from point A to point B. And have devised a simple formula.
Let us take the first variable, distance. If you know the distance, good. If not, there's Google Maps. Just type the "location" to "destination" on the search box and hit enter (eg. Connaught Place to Noida). It'll display the suggested routes alongwith the distance in kilometres (Google Maps also tells you the commuting time, but that doesn't seem to be in sync with Delhi's traffic conditions).
Now that you know the distance, let me explain my (not-so-magic) formula.
Heavy traffic (peak hours) (8:30 AM to 10:30 AM and 5:30 PM to 8:00 PM)
Distance in Kms x 3
(If your destination is 15 kilometres away, it'll take you approximately 45 minutes to reach there)
Medium traffic (10:30 AM to 5:30 PM; 8:00 PM to 9:30 PM)
Distance in Kms x 2
(30 minutes for 15 kilometres)
Low traffic (9:30 PM to 8:30 AM)
Distance in Kms x 1 (If you aren't one of those who zoom past at 120 kmph at 2:00 AM)
For Sundays
8:30 AM to 9:30 PM should be treated as medium traffic.
On national holidays (Republic Day, Independence Day and Holi in particular) - the whole day is low traffic.
It usually works for me with an error margin of 5-10 minutes, relative to the distance.
This is just for assuming the commuting time and in no way would provide precise formulas.
Denizens of other cities please provide similar formulas for your city in the comments.
Disclaimer: The author of this post cannot and should not be held responsible if your girlfriend/boyfriend dumps you (or for any other unpleasant reaction) for not being able to reach by the time calculated using the aforementioned formulae.
Many viruses crept into my PC via the my USB pen drives and external hard disks that I lent to friends for transferring data.
If your motive is to prevent unintentional transfer of malicious and unwanted stuff on to your portable storage devices (that do not have inbuilt write-protection), this little software is just what you want. It makes your USB storage device read only.
The USB WriteProtector will occupy only about 500 KB of space on your USB flash drive and will prevent any unauthorised files from making your pen drive their home. The good part is that it is portable, it doesn't require any installation and can simply be copied to any portable storage. It not only works on USB flash drives but also on external hard disks (I tested).
All you need to do is download the file from here [RAR 189 KB] (via Google Translate since the original site is in German).
Extract the RAR file (if you do not have an appropriate program on your PC, try 7-Zip). And copy the extracted files to your portable storage device.
Click on the UsbWriteProtect.exe file
The default language is German, choose English from the drop down menu.
Choose the 'USB write protection ON' radio button and click on the close button.
And your USB drive/external hard disk will now be read only when reconnected with any PC (note that the turn on feature gets activated only when you remove and reconnect the USB drive. Logical).
This also prevents accidental cut/paste instead of copy/paste of data, that removes the original data from your storage device.
If you want to write data on the portable drive, reopen the USB WriteProtector and choose the 'USB write protection OFF' radio button and click close (unlike the activation process the deactivating procedure is instantaneous and doesn't require the device to be disconnected and reconnected).
I've tested it only on Windows XP PCs, don't know if it'll work fine on Windows Vista or other Windows OS.
There is a small issue that I faced (don't know if it is only with me): If I have the USB WriteProtector turned on in one USB drive, it doesn't allow me to write data on any other USB storage device connected on the same PC. It's only when I turn it off and disconnect the device with the software on it, that I'm able to resume my copy/pasting activity.
Please suggest other (preferably free) software that can perform the desired task better.
I had twitted about this a few days back, but since the readers of this blog far outnumber my followers on Twitter, thought it was worth the while to post about it here.
The YouTube video player has some features that would save us the bother of moving the fingers to the mouse and then move the cursor to click the buttons/icons.
A click of a key on the keyboard while watching a YouTube video can perform some simple (and oft needed) functions.
A little list of useful YouTube keyboard shortcuts/commands:
Though Scribd seems to be the preferred place for sharing documents online, Issuu has a much better media viewer. And like Scribd it has some disadvantages (some intentional). Direct linking to a page is a bit tricky, though you can extract the URL changing the options for generating the embed code. And since the viewers are in flash downloading the images (you can easily download PDFs if it is not disabled, even if it is you can) are a bit tricky. You could get them from the browser cache, but that process is a bit tedious.
Now you might ask, why would you need an image of a magazine page or a document? For the same reason you need to download an YouTube video?
Thankfully in Issuu it isn't very difficult and I've made it a little easier. If you need to download or link to a particular page of a document hosted on Issuu, all that you need to do is insert the document ID and the page number in this form (the first two fields) and the URL of the image would automatically appear on the third field. Copy it and paste the URL wherever you want to.
Where do you find the Document ID? If you are using Firefox/Chrome, press Ctrl+U (or go to View » Page Source) to view the source code of the page (in IE you should find in the Page dropdown). Then do a Crtl+F and search for documentId. You'll find something like this:
Many readers would be aware of this, but evidently many others aren't. Therefore this post.
If you use your netbook/ultra-portable laptop only for surfing the internet and/or other less resource intensive functions and don't multi-task then you could give this a miss.
But if you, like me, try to extract the maximum of of the little thing (bachche ki jaan nahin le raha hoon), you might have experienced that the little machine often acts sluggish (expecially if you are using one with Windows XP or worse Vista) while running multiple applications simultaneously.
Not to worry, this 6-step (depending on your view settings) process might make things a little smoother. This is for netbookers who prefer performance over appearance.
Instructions for Windows XP only (don't have access to a Vista machine. All friends and colleagues have gone back to XP. But it should be similar)
If you are on Category view 1. Click on the Start menu button 2. Click on Control Panel 3. Click on the Performance and Maintainence link 4. Click on the Adjust visual effects link (under Pick a task) 5. Choose the Adjust for best performance radio button 6. Press OK
If you are on the Classic View 1. Click on the Start menu button 2. Click on the Control Panel on the menu 3. Click/double click on System 4. Click on the Advanced tab 5. Click on the Setting button under Performance 6. Choose the Adjust for best performance radio button 7. Press OK
What Windows does is that it compromises on the resources utilised to give you the looks and you back to what many of us refer to as the Windows 98 appearance, and therefore delivers a better performance with more juice left for the applications to swim in.
I have done it even for my relatively more powerful desktops (both at home and at work). And life with Windows is a little better.
How often did you blindly download a large multimedia files (video, movie, audio, music) from the internet (especially file sharing websites) and found that the quality or the content wasn't what you had expected?
And you might have kept your PC on for hours and used considerable bandwidth (especially if you have a pay-as-you-use internet connection), not to mention the time you had to waste to check the status of the download (I often happened to find my files in some undecipherable language).
Some download accelerators do have a feature to preview the multimedia files being downloaded but then many of us might have a preference for other download accelerators, that sadly don't have such a preview feature. Moreover many sites restrict downloading through download accelerators.
This simple trick will let you preview the initial portions of the file even while it is being downloaded (advanced users please excuse the elaboration). On many other sites (like archive.org) you needn't follow the process and the files tend to play easily even while they are downloading. This post is more targeted towards previewing while downloading from sites such as Rapidshare, Sharedzilla and the like.
I'm still on Windows XP, therefore am not sure whether the steps involved would be the same on other operating systems too (It is still the most used).
Browser Download
This doesn't seem to work on Internet Explorer and Google Chrome (though you may give it a try). Therefore this is Firefox specific (didn't test on other less popular browsers).
If you don't have Firefox, get it. Chrome still has some catching up to do.
Before you initiate this (ignore this step if file extensions are visible) open any folder > on the File menu go to Tools > Click on Folder Options > Select the View Tab > Under Advanced Settings deselect the 'Hide extensions of known file types' check box > Click Apply - OK.
This will help us in the steps to follow.
Now download the file you wish you using Firefox. In the folder that the file is being download you'll find two files bearing similar file names, but one will bear an additional .part extension.
Now create a new folder and copy/paste the file with the .part extension into it. If you don't want to create a new folder you can paste the file in any folder other than the one that it is being downloaded in.
Then rename the file (right click, or two left clicks but with a pause in between, or from the right click context menu) to remove the .part extension. Now your file is ready for preview.
This might involve a number of steps, but I find it better than spending hours downloading something that I'd then have to delete.
Downloads via Download Manager
If you're using a download manager/accelerator (many sites don't support download accelerators) then in the folder that the file is getting downloaded to you might similarly find another file with the same fie name but an additional extension (the extension might differ from accelerator to accelerator).
In my preferred download manager Orbit - it is .ob!.
Follow the steps mentioned above and happy previewing.
Scribd is often referred to as the YouTube for documents. But unlike YouTube, Scribd does usually offer a direct option for users to download files.
But in case you aren't registered with Scribd or the uploader has disabled the download options you might not be able to download the file for offline purposes.
I came across one such file (Best Magazine Covers of 2008) and tried to figure out how to download the PDF file from Scribd. Tried the tried and tested browser cache trick, but it gave me only a .scb file - which I think contains all the relevant data - but was unable to convert it to a friendlier format.
So what do you do? Google. I did but that didn't help. Thought for a while and then Eureka!
You will only need to install and extra bit of software, that is if you don't already have it (any way such software are usually handy to have on your PC) - a PDF creator. There are quite a number of free PDF creators available online that do a decent job. Two of my preferred choices are: PDFCreator (Open Source) and PrimoPDF (it needs .Net Framework 2.0 to work).
Once you have downloaded and installed a PDF creator, click on the dropdown arrow besides the iPaper text on the Flash Player, and click on the Print option. On the Print dialog box choose the PDF creator software instead of your default printer (in case you have one). Then click the Print button and your file in a PDF form will be ready in a while (depending on the size of the document).
This trick should always work for downloading PDF files from Scribd because there doesn't seem to be an option availabe to an uploaders to disable the print functionality. And this way you can also download files without registering with Scribd.
The mobile phone is both a boon and a bane. While it allows you to be in touch all the time, it also keeps you within the reach of people that you wouldn't like to talk to - telecallers, irritiating relatives or friends, nagging wife/husband or girlfriend/boyfriend, the boss or other colleagues (while you are busy with your wife/husband or girlfriend/boyfriend), crank callers, persistent wrong numbers... you can keep on adding to the list.
Some mobile operators provide a service to block unwanted callers, but many users prefer not do so because you can't block your boss' number. It's just that there are times you wish he/she hadn't called (because you have already overshot the deadline and are still thinking of a good enough excuse). Or that you cannot afford to offend some people even if you didn't want to talk to them. And the National Do Not Call Registry cannot rescue you from your angry girlfriend's phone call (NDNCR is not much effective anyways)
This simple trick might not actually prevent unwanted callers from calling you, but would irritate them (without offending) to stop calling for a while.
This is somewhat similar to the old ploy where you yell from one end, "I can't hear you...". But you tend to exert some energy in the lying effort. Here they cannot hear you and would do all the yelling, while you relax and continue to do whatever you were doing.
Steps:
1. Receive the call. If you can avoid not answering the call this trick isn't for you.
2. Converse for a few seconds (this is optional) to show that you aren't avoiding them.
3. Press the mute option, your end will go silent while the caller would believe this as a network problem (as it often happens in normal circumstances), will yell for a while and then hang up.
4. Follow the same steps if the caller calls again. He/she will get frustrated soon and would stop bothering you for a while.
In case your phone doesn't have the mute option, use your thumb to muffle the microphone.
And don't hold me responsible if anything goes wrong.
I had been looking for a good Olympics medal tally widget to put up on this blog. But didn't seem to find one. The thinness of this blog's side panels add to the problem. Then discovered these (on Google News). But they still can't fit in where I want them to.
With Abhinav Bindra winning the first ever individual Olympic gold for India [Pics], it becomes more appropriate for the occasion.
See whether they fulfill your needs (they aren't mine. Google property).
2008 Beijing Olympics Medal Tally Widget
The Code:
2008 Beijing Olympics Events Widget
The Code:
2008 Beijing Olympics Events/Medals Combo Widget
The Code:
You can customise the widgets before embedding them on your blog/website by making changes to the height and width parameters and change the alignment replacing the align="left" with align="right" or align="center".
Update: This process might no longer be necessary for Blogger blogs as Blogger has introduced Google gadgets for all layout blogs. And there a few Olympic medal tally gadgets listed in there.
Often you have to wait for ages to transfer files to/from your harddisk to/from a portable storage device.
This usually happens if the number of files that you are transferring is too large, even if their individual sizes may be low. Such time consuming experiences are usually experienced while transferring a large collection of photos or a software folder.
The easy way out is to zip the files and then transfer. Yes, you might have to make an additional effort of first zipping and then unzipping the files. But in my sample experiment the total time taken in the suggested process was much lesser than direct cut/copy and paste route.
Exhibit one:
Exhibit two:
Since compression isn't the objective here, use the fastest option (that results in the least compression) to zip the files (the nomenclature might be different in different compression/decompression software).
Of late I've been facing problems downloading videos from YouTube using my favourite tools - KeepVid and the MP4 download bookmarklet - though the videos were usually playing fine, the downloaded files were only a few KBs in size.
Then I zeroed in on the cause - YouTube's India sub-domain: in.youtube.com. The existing systems were possibly configured to pick stuff from YouTube's parent domain and not the one with the 'in.' prefix.
The solution, therefore was quite simple. Just remove the 'in.' part from the url and download as usual.
Don't know whether this issue exists with YouTube's version for other countries as well.
On a related note, if you come across the despised message on the YouTube player, "We're sorry, this video is no longer available," try removing the country id prefix (you can even try adding it in case it is the default top domain URL) to the URL and reload or use a different country prefix. It worked for me a number of times.
Often just refreshing the page without changing the URL also works.
Often friends ask me on how to deter people from copying or downloading stuff that they put up on the internet. My suggestion is simple - it is not worth the effort. Because anything that is displayed on the screen and emitted by the speakers can always be copied by the end users, with only a little extra effort.
While returning from home a few days ago, I ran into a school friend - now a risk manager and a budding photographer - who has put up a website via which he intends to sell his photos. "And no one can steal the photos from my site," he boasted. I tried to explain him that it is indeed very easy to circumvent the JavaScript had he had put in there. He didn't seem too convinced. I didn't have a laptop with me to give him a demo, and therefore this post.
The easiest way, when right click is disabled on a page, is to left click on the image and keep the mouse button pressed while draging and dropping it on to the desktop or to any folder shortcut on the taskbar [Source]
Another simple trick is to temporarily disable javascript on the browser, as most of this disabling is done via JavaScript, and then you can copy the images the usual way - right click > Save Image As.
To do so in Firefox, click on Tools (on the File menu) » Options » select the Content tab » deselect the Enable JavaScript checkbox » click OK.
To disable JavaScript in Internet Explorer (IE) go to Tools » Internet Options > click on the Security tab » click on the Custom Level button in the Security level for this zone section » scroll down and look for Scripting and click on the Disable radio button under Active scripting » click OK.
Just remember to revert back to your original javascript settings once you are through with your coping else you might not be able to experience the javascript powered features on some websites.
We all look for music (and other stuff) online, but it often happens that what you are looking for isn't available there. Some of the places where you are most likely to find what you are looking for (beyond the P2P networks) are CoolToad and eSnips. CoolToad (when I last checked) allows registered users to download the stuff, but eSnips has of late kept on changing their code (and the players), making it difficult for users to download from there.
Even my trusted software Orbit didn't work here (it has a nice Grab++ utility), nor did other download managers. The guys at eSnips have seem to have nullified the tricks that I found via a quick Google search. Therefore I resorted to the tried and tested cache trick (as the initiated would already know - this works in many other cases too).
This works since eSnips doesn't do Real Time Streaming (else we would have to use other tricks).
[Update: There's an even easier alternate way to do it. Go to the bottom of this post for details]
Since I recommend and use Firefox, the following instructions are Firefox specific (on Windows XP).
1. Search for the file you want to download on eSnips
2. Delete your browser's cache (press Ctrl+Shft+Del or go to Tools > Options > Advanced > Network > And click on the Clear Now button under the Cache section) - I'll explain the need later
3. Let the file play/load in totality (this involves a bit of waiting)
4. On the browser's address bar type about:cache
5. Under the Disk cache device copy the path of the Cache directory. It would be something like this: C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\6q1bkcu8.default\Cache
6. Paste the copied path on Firefox's address bar
7. Look for the file with the heaviest size (this is the one in most cases and it is why I asked to delete the cache in the first place, to avoid any confusion with a large number of files)
8. Right click on the link corresponding on the file and select Save Link As from the right click contextual menu and save it where you want to.
9. While saving give the file an .mp3 (or whatever is relevant) extension, you can also rename the file and you are done.
I suggest this trick since nothing else seemed to download files from eSnips for me. If you know of easier better tricks please share them in the comments.
Update: I later realised that the Firefox addon DownloadHelper performs the task with lesser sweat.
This post just might be redundant for registered eSnips users. eSnips seems to have added a direct download link to the media files to save users all the effort. A welcome initiative indeed. Time for YouTube to also implement this. But you need to be registered to benefit from that, in case you don't want an eSnips account, this post will still be of some help.
This is just an additional little feature that looks and feels a little better than the existing.
All you bloggers on blogspot would have surely noticed that when you upload any image to Blogger, it gives you three size options to display the image in - large, medium and small - and at the same time the original sized image is accessible to users when they click on the image displayed on a post. But then it opens in the same window and thereby navigates your reader away from your blog.
And easy way would be to use the attribute target="_blank" within the anchor tag, so that when clicked the image would open in a new window. But why not add a little frill and make the image open in a popup window.
I'm doing this on this blog, for the want of a better alternative (tried using Lightbox but the results were not satisfactory on slow connections).
Here's how:
This blob of HTML might look a little different if you're using Internet Explorer. But that doesn't make any difference to our process.
after the closing double quotes enclosing the url of the original image, but before the > tag. The result will look something like this:
Now let me explain the elements:
the target="_blank"makes the link open in a new window
width=520, height=520 defines the size of the pop-up window. Ideally you should keep this greater (by 10 to 20 pixels) than the original image dimensions so that it displays properly across browsers.
resizable=no, scrollbars=yes, menubar=no, toolbar=no, status=no are optional attributes, you can change their values to yes or no according to your needs and fancies.
For a demo click on the accompanying Blogger logo.
For others who might need yet more cusromisation, you can add the attributes top= and left= to define the position of the pop-up window.
This would make the window open with a displacement of 20 pixels from the top and left of the screen. The numerical value can be changed to suit individual requirements.
Since I'm a novice when it comes to these things and would like more able members of the blogging community to further develop the idea.
This morning as I logged onto my work PC, I found that all the extensions/add-ons that I had installed had disappeared. Even the add-ons manager was not responding, though it showed the installed extensions but the controls didn't work and the window just remained stuck there.
I first suspected the IT support guys to be behind this, they often come up with wierd ideas to restrict a hassle-free browsing environment. But then I doubted their abilities.
A little googling and the problem was solved. The reason was a recent update. And the fix is not that difficult.
First look for your Firefox profiles folder. As this folder could be hidden. To show hidden folders, open Windows Explorer and choose Organize -> Folder and Search Options -> Folder Options -> View (tab) -> Show hidden files and folders.
Delete three files from your profiles folder.
extensions.ini extensions.cache extensions.rdf
Make sure Firefox is not running when deleting these files. Firefox will regenerate these files on restart. [All the gyan is from here]
Many readers of this blog might not be interested in all the assorted rubbish that I post here; they might have a liking for only some specific kind of crap. Someone who looks forward to my comics post might not necessarily have a liking for sexy Indian ads (an unlikely likelihood though). Or why should I bother someone with a genuine interest in vintage Indian advertising with some shoddy film reviews. Therefore I decided to include feeds for categories (aka labels, tags) for choosy readers and that too in an easy drop down format.
The PurpleMoggy had quite sometime back put up a post about adding label feeds to your Blogger (then in beta) template. But since, my list of categories is a long one and following that hack will mean eating up a lot of space on the sidebars, I needed the categories feed listing to be sorted in a drop down format. But then things weren't that easy for me, a little googling didn't help much, therefore I set on the difficult terrain on my own (I understand very little of the codes) and came up with what you can see in the Subscribe section on the right panel.
Before I proceed to the hack let me give credit to another place where it is due. The great help Ramani and the first Blogger Beta hack. And do remember to keep a backup of your template, just in case things go wrong. I don't want anyone cursing me.
Log in to your Blogger account -> Go to Layout -> Add a Page Element -> Add the Label element to your blog
Edit HTML -> Click the Expand Widget Templates check box And look for this code:
You can customise your drop down list by changing the text in
<option>Category feed</option>
with
<option>Your customised text</option>
Even the width of the drop down list can be changed to suit your template. The default in this is
style='width:145px'
You may change the width specifications to say 120px or whatever or even remove this block of code altogether.
After you are done with your customisation bit, get a preview. Just to see if it is displaying right, check the functionality only on the live blog. It wouldn't work in preview given the relative nature of the paths.
You can also rename or unname the widget from the Page Elements page.
Ever since I got my new mobile phone I found a new way to keep myself entertained on the long journey to and from work - by watching movies. Though the idea of watching a 70mm film with Dolby and the works on a tiny 320x240 pixel screen may not appeal to all, I've found it to be worthwhile pastime.
But the problem was to find the right format to play on the cell. I had downloaded a few clips from the Internet, while a few played fine, the others didn't. Though the manual says that the mobile (LG KG300 Dynamite) supports MP4 and 3GP playback, not all videos in that format are necessarily playable. Higher-end mobiles face fewer of these problems as they support a much wider range.
After some permutations and combinations and thanks to the super software called Super (Simplified Universal Player Encoder & Renderer), I could convert some DVDs which would play on my tiny screen. Though the web is full of 3GP conversion software, nothing worked, while Super did a decent job for free.
Since my needs were limited to my phone model, I didn't try what was best for other phones. Though I played one of the movies on my colleague's Motorockr and it played fine (and now she wants some movies of her choice converted). The only hitch is that the best resolution that Super provides for the combination of codecs which play fine on my mobile is 176x144, therefore the videos pixelate a little while playing on a 320x240 screen, but not to a very noticeable extent (you might overcome that I bit by increasing the video bit rate). Since the audio is encoded in AMR Narrow-Band the quality is not very high and is mono. But on the positive side, a standard two-and-a-half hour long Hindi movie will fit into 150mb. Though files in RealMedia are known to be even smaller, but pity my phone doesn't support that.
The codec combination that I used to convert my videos on Super (playable on LG KG300 and other phones) was:
Output container: 3gp (Nokia/NEC/Siemens) Video codec: H.263 Audio codec: AMR Narrow-band
Other details can be found in the screenshot below:
Ideally I would've liked to know of the ideal conversion settings for the MP4 format, but still haven't been able to figure that out. If I do, you'll find that posted here.
If anyone knows of a better software or of a better way if going about doing it, please do let me know.
You might not always have DVDs or VCDs around to convert and feed your mobile phone with. But there are plenty of places online from where you can find good quality videos to download from. One of the sources that I particularly like (for the quality combined with compactness) is Stage6.DivX.com. Though DivX allows downloads from their site, but it is through the DivX player. There's no explicit direct download link.
I hunted around a little and found a shortcut to directly download DivX videos (many others would've also discovered that). Here's a 'How to Download Videos from Divx/Stage6':
1. Go to stage6.divx.com 2. Identify the video that you want to download 3. Right click on the thumbnail and 'Copy Link Location' (on Firefox) or 'Copy Shortcut' (Internet Explorer), alternatively you can left click on the thumbnail and copy the URL from the address bar 4. The URL would be something like: http://stage6.divx.com/The-Last-Stop/video/1361844/My-Favorite-Brunette 5. Copy the numerical id of the video. In our example it is 1361844 5. Insert the id into this URL (replacing the asterisks): http://video.stage6.com/*/*.divx 6. Your final URL now becomes (as per our example): http://video.stage6.com/1361844/1361844.divx 7. To download the file (in DivX format) you can paste the URL into the browser address bar and press enter or let your download manager take care of the downloading.
Occasionally there are errors while downloading multiple files simultaneously from the site, therefore it is preferable to download one at a time. To play the videos you can play it on the DivX player or the very utilitarian VLC media player (which plays multiple formats which most other popular media players don't).
Else, you can convert the downloaded videos on to your preferred format using Super (with many options) or Audio/Video To Exe (very handy and lightweight but minus the customisation options of Super). It is preferable to keep both the free media converters on your PC as often what one cannot do, the other performs seamlessly.
If your movie is split over multiple files, it is preferable that you merge them into a single file before going for the conversion process, so that you enjoy uninterrupted viewing pleasure. 123 Audio Video Merger is a nice and easy freeware utility to care of the video merging process. But it might have some issues while merging multiple vob files.
I'll try to upload more movies which are now in the public domain (I like to play it safe) in mobile compatable formats under a newly created category on this blog - Movies for Mobiles.
Why does it have to be this way, always? And illogically enough it works. Since last afternoon my keyboard was acting funny. The problem was with a combination of the Shift key (both right and left) and certain letters (I just happened to notice that they were all vowels). It just wouldn't work, and for capitalisation, I had to use the caps lock every time. And much later the idea of StickyKeys came (actually, when I was frustratingly pressing the Shift key multiple times).
To find a solution to my problem, I sought Google and read through pages and pages where people discussed their hardware and software problems. No answers anywhere. Thought of doing what the IT guys at office usually do, uninstall and then reinstall. Usually works. Then somewhere down a forum, someone fixed his problem by simply turning the keyboard upside down and giving it a few whacks. I did it and am typing this - AeIoU. Perfect.
By the way, the problem was also because of a few whacks, which I had liberally given the keyboard in the first place to dislodge all the snack that it had gorged over the months. The same principle worked with the little 14" B&W TV that I had in my room back home and also with the 'imported' Chinese music system, which played all from Dylan to Daler. Whack, whack and it's all right. Why did the grownups have unwavering faith in this principle when it came with dealing with the mischievous us?
This service has been on for quite a while in Delhi but seems that not too many people are aware of this.
"How long will it take you to reach here?" If you are not a frequent traveller on the route, this is usually difficult answer the question.
Many viruses crept into my PC via the my USB pen drives and external hard disks that I lent to friends for transferring data.
I had 
Though 
Many readers would be aware of this, but evidently many others aren't. Therefore this post.
How often did you blindly download a large multimedia files (video, movie, audio, music) from the internet (especially file sharing websites) and found that the quality or the content wasn't what you had expected?
Of late I've been facing problems downloading videos from YouTube using my favourite tools - 
