How To

How To Post On Google+ And Facebook Simultaneously

August 2, 2011 by Avinash 3 Comments

With the entry of Facebook killer in the social networking globe, Google+ is getting enormous response in its initial stages. Google+ is being promoted as a friendly social network built around how human interaction is supposed to be: natural and not constrained by inefficient technology.

Going to each social networking website and updating status is a real pain. If you want to update your status on Google+ and Facebook simultaneously, following tutorial (without any browser extensions!) helps you in doing that –

Go to your Facebook account from www.facebook.com/mobile on your computer. Find “More Facebook Mobile Products” somewhere left on this page. Underneath the text, you will see your account specific email address (something like asdf@m.facebook.com). This is a secret email just for you. Don’t share with anyone.
Next, open Google+ and go to Circles. Click on add a new circle and call it something as ‘Facebook Status’. Click on add a new person and paste your unique Facebook account specific email address above and save it with your convenient name.
Now, whenever you update your status in Google+, just add this circle in your list and it will automatically post the same status to your Facebook wall as well.

Pretty cool. Isn’t it? There are lots of tips and tricks to update both Google+ and Facebook using browser extensions – but this one is unique.

How To Get Google+ Invite Right Now

July 1, 2011 by Avinash 2 Comments

So, the Facebook killer is out and everybody around the globe who got invites are playing with this new awesome product from Google. If you are too late to be invited by Google, this project Google+ now stopped sending invites on its own because of huge response!

And there are people selling these invites on eBay for money too!

This trick takes the hidden feature of Circles service, which is a part of Google+ project. This allows you to send invites to a list of email addresses. Until Google decides to catch it and make Google+ completely live, follow these simple steps.

Catch your friend who is already using Google+. Ask him/her to follow these steps –

Create a circle with name “invite” [this can be with any name]
Add people who have Gmail contacts to this circle
Create a post (you call it as stream in Google+) and address it to only the ‘invite’ circle
Make sure you not to make this post public to everyone
Those people should now get an email asking them to sign up for Google+

I’ve tested this trick and it works as of now at the time of writing this post.

To those who still wondering what Google+ is – it is the newest social networking attempt from Google, after its two failures Buzz and Wave. The new service is partly a marketing ploy and partly a combination of great ideas from other social networks (Facebook and Twitter) with Google’s twist. Google+ is being promoted as a friendly social network built around how human interaction is supposed to be: natural and not constrained by inefficient technology.

Shopping Online: Your Guide to Buying a Laptop

June 24, 2011 by Avinash 2 Comments

Buying a new laptop is often confusing for many of us if we’re not tech savvy enough to understand all the jargon or just plain don’t know the requirements we are looking for. With that in mind we’ve put together a brief guide to choosing yourself a laptop which should make it easier for you to end up with the right model for you.

Defining your usage
This is the most important step in buying a laptop as many people buy laptops that either exceed or do not meet their requirements. Buying a poor quality laptop will end up costing you more in the long run and buying too high a quality laptop is simply a waste of money. So you need to determine your usage. If you mainly use your laptop for work, email etc then you can get by with a very low end computer as you don’t require a lot of memory or performance based hardware. If you want a laptop for digital design or gaming then you will need a much higher performance, a good graphics card and a lot of memory. If you use your computer as your primary media device then you will also want a good quality sound card and a high quality screen. If you determine your usage in this way you should be able to have a much better idea of what you need.
Secondly you need to determine how mobile you want your laptop to be. If you intend to travel with it extensively for work or require something with a long battery life for extended trips away then you need to analyse these requirements. Generally this information will be clear but always minus a few hours from the battery life as this tends to be a best case figure. Sacrificing size for battery life or vice versa is worth considering depending on your needs.

Jargon busting
The biggest hurdle in understanding which laptop to buy is cutting through the jargon. The most important things to examine in this area are RAM and hard drive capacity. RAM determines the processing speed of your computer and should be at least 256MB whatever your intended usage. Your hard drive capacity determines how much storage space is available on your computer and is measured in GB or gigabytes. The amount of storage you need entirely depends on your use as a word document takes up a tiny fraction of space whilst a design program like Dreamweaver will take up considerably more. So stick to a size that will exceed your use by no more than 20%. If you want a computer for media then you will need more size, a good soundcard and most importantly a DVD player. If you intend use the computer for gaming then make sure you have lots of memory and RAM and a graphics card that can handle your games.

Research
Now that you have your usage outlined its time to research the computers themselves. The best pace to do this is online where you can look at and compare specs and read user reviews. Pay attention to battery life and look at common problems with the models you are examining so you can determine the quality of the purchase. When you find a few models that are likely candidates it’s time to do the actual shopping. If you shop online you can normally save a lot of money but make sure you check mail costs etc and the returns policy. The best places to shop for computers are price comparison sites as you can see the relative cost from a variety of stockists.

Steve writes about products within the technology industry, in addition to using shopping portals such as ShopAndEarn.com.au where you can earn rewards for items purchased online.

How To Stream Your Music Library using Google Music

June 17, 2011 by Avinash Leave a Comment

Having to sync all your music between devices is a bit annoying stuff. Few days ago, Google launched a new music service Google Music that lets you upload your personal music collection to the cloud from which you can play them from anywhere directly on computer and Android devices.

This service is now in beta mode and invitation based for the United States users only. I managed to get the invitation yesterday night and uploaded around 330 songs from my library. This article gives a sneak peak of this next generation cloud service.

The invitation looks simple briefing the outline of the whole Google Music with a single ‘Getting Started’ button:

Once you sign in with your Google account, after some license agreements, you are asked to select genres you would like to have in your music library:

Once you select the genres (you can select all), the next step asks you to download a music manager from which you can add songs on your computer to the cloud. Its just a simple desktop app:

From this music manager, you can add your entire music library, or desired folders or whatever you want. You can even skip this step and go to your online library directly.

Once installed, the desktop music manager automatically scans your local computer library and gives you a window to upload into your Google Music.

Depending on your Internet connection speed, it takes few hours to upload your songs. Once upload is finished, your Google Music page shows all songs categorized in artists, albums, genres and also new and recent. This manager will watch your iTunes or Windows Media Player library for changes, so your online library is always up-to-date

If you carefully observe above screenshot, you can different set of buttons like Previous song, Play, Next song, Shuffle songs, Repeat songs, Volume.

Pros:

You can also create new playlists and instant mixes.

One of the best desktop webapp – fast, easy to use and some cool extra features

Currently Free while in beta and you can upload up to 20,000 songs (thats more than required!)

Android app is also pretty good with some neat album art views and the ability to download songs for offline playback.

Cons:

It is currently only available on Android devices – so iPhone lovers and other mobile devices are completely left out.

Not sure whether the service will be free once out of beta

There are leading players in the market already similar to Google Music service. Some of them are Amazon Cloud Player, iCloud (very soon from Apple!), Subsonic, mSpot, Spotify, Rdio, Grooveshartk.

Gevey SIM – The Only Working Method to Unlock Any iPhone 4

June 11, 2011 by Avinash Leave a Comment

Are you one of the users who tired of waiting software based unlock to unlock your iPhone 4 ? You may already heard of this hardware based unlock method – Gevey SIM Interposer, a Turbo SIM like piggy back sim card that allows you to unlock any iPhone 4 (all basebands up to 04.11.04 including iOS 5 beta) and does not even require to jailbreak your device.

This method is still questionable in terms of its legal issues and readers are encouraged to try at their own risk.

What it contains?

Micro SIM Interposer – A circuit with the unlock exploit programmed in it

SIM Tray – Holds the micro sim card along with the sim interposer. This will replace your stock sim tray

The official site claims that it works perfectly with iOS 4.0, 4.1, 4.2.1, 4.3, 4.3.1, 4.3.2, 4.3.3 versions and modem baseband versions 1.59, 2.10, 3.10.1, 4.10, 4.10.1. We have reports that it is also working without any problems with the latest iOS 5.0 beta which upgrades your baseband to 4.11.04.

How to use Gevey SIM?

After inserting Gevey SIM into your iPhone 4, switch off your phone.

Turn it on back, accept welcome screen. It will show ‘No SIM card installed’ message with couple of instructions. Just accept.

Wait for 15 seconds and dial 112.

Once you connect to the call, disconnect it after 2 sec. 112 is an emergency number and users are recommended to make sure it does not ring at the other end.

Now, go to settings, select Airplane Mode ON. Again, turn it OFF.

You will now see a ‘SIM Failure’ message. Wait for few seconds for the network magic bar to appear!

Your iPhone 4 is now activated!

Does it work in India?

Now, the question is does it work in all other parts of the world like India? We have trusted reports from users that Gevey SIM method is working in India without any problems as of now.

Where to buy Gevey SIM?

The official distributor of Gevey SIM www.ApplenBerry.com will not ship the product to all countries but you can choose trusted resources like Amazon, Ebay.

Amazon – This link seems to be the lowest price available ($6.69) with fast shipping and quick refund policy for damaged goods.

Ebay – There are many deals floating around on ebay where there are instances in the past that fake Gevey products are delivered via eBay.

How To Create Pivot Tables in Google Docs

May 23, 2011 by Avinash Leave a Comment

Google has rolled out a new feature of creating pivot tables in Docs starting from 17th of this month to all its users. Pivot tables make it easy to process and summarize large data sets in seconds. It allows you to “pivot” or rotate data, thus looking at it from different angles and seeing a variety of patterns which may not be immediately obvious.

Read more about Pivot Table from Wikipedia here.

Official Google blogger team created a small ‘How To’ using a simple example of a list of students.

This list includes a number of students and some information about them, including gender, class level, and major.

Now, to create a pivot table, select your data and go to Data > Pivot Table Report. In the pivot table report editor, you can add fields to set your rows, columns, and values and can drag and drop the fields around within the editor. Here, they’ve used pivot tables to display the number of students in each class level by gender.

Fields in the Values section can be summarized using built-in formulas to sum, count, or otherwise calculate your data. In the example above the number of students in each class level was summarized via a simple count.

The filter section lets you specify exactly what data you want to be included in the pivot table. For example, we can choose to only count the students in certain extracurricular activities.

With each change, the pivot table is updated in real-time for both you and any collaborators. If you prefer to make changes in batches, you can switch to manual mode. In this mode, your changes won’t be saved until you select Update table.

If you want to try out this new feature, try this preconfigured template or by using your own data set. Currently, Pivot tables from Microsoft cannot be uploaded to Google docs. Google may add this feature in near future.

How to Unlock iPhone 4, 3GS with iOS 4.3.1

April 10, 2011 by Avinash 1 Comment

As expected earlier today, the Dev team released an unlock for iPhone 4, 3GS devices running 01.59.00, 04.26.08, 05.11.07, 05.12.01, 05.13.04, and 06.15.00 basebands.

If your baseband is different from any of these, there is no unlock available at this time.

Its already confirmed in the past that there will be no iOS updates, unlocks, jailbreaks for iPhone 3G and iPod touch 2G models.

Tutorial for iPhone 4 Windows users only:

Lets break the tutorial into three parts – Preserve baseband, Jailbreak, Unlock

[PART 1]

Step 1: First, you will have to jailbreak your device using TinyUmbrella on iOS 4.3.1 and preserve the baseband mentioned above [Settings > General > About > Modem Firmware].

Step 2: Download TinyUmbrella from here [v4.30.05, 1.7MB]

Step 3: Connect your iPhone 4 and launch TinyUmbrella. Click ‘Save SHSH’ button (make sure SHSH were saved, if not don’t bother continuing)

Step 4: Click ‘TSS Server’ button (If you get errors, consult Google to fix it instantly, typically it fails because you have some kind of web sharing enabled. Use the comments section for delayed help)

Step 5: While TSS server running, launch iTunes

Step 6: Now, in iTunes, click Restore. Do not click Update.

Step 7: During the restoration process, iTunes should give error code 1013. Nothing to worry. This error means your baseband has been preserved. Now, exit iTunes

Step 8: Now, turn your iPhone into DFU mode (Hold Power button and Home button for 10s, release the Power button, and continue holding Home button for another 5s. If your timing is even a little bit off, you will see the Apple logo and your phone will boot back into recovery mode. Go back to step 8 and try again!)

Step 9: In the DFU mode, click ‘Fix Recovery’ and ‘Yes’ to proceed further.

Step 10: Your device’s screen will turn white and you’ll see debug boot information. Your iPhone 4 will now be on 4.3.1 with the preserved baseband.

[PART 2]

Step 11: Now, to jailbreak your iPhone 4 on iOS 4.3.1, download RedSn0w from here [v0.9.6rc12]

Step 12: Download iPhone 4 firmware 4.3.1 from Apple here [3GS firmware location here]

Step 13: Launch RedSn0w and select the firmware you downloaded in the above step.

Step 14: While RedSn0w prepares to jailbreak, in the next step, choose ‘Install Cydia’ and click next

Step 15: Follow the on screen instructions to enter into DFU mode, once completed, you should see a pineapple!

Step 16: Your iPhone will reboot by itself and you should now have a jail broken iPhone with Cydia installed.

[PART 3]

Step 17: Once booted into the device, launch Cydia, then go to Manage > Sources > Edit > Add, and type in the following: http://repo666.ultrasn0w.com and touch ‘Add Source’

Step 18: Cydia will now automatically update your sources by following a series of automated steps. After this is completed, search for ultrasn0w 1.2.1 in Cydia and install this app. This app will automatically unlock your iPhone so that you can use it with any carrier.

Step 19: Finally, restart your device and you should have a fully unlocked iPhone 4 running iOS 4.3.1.

Use comments section below or Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/cosmoGeek) or Twitter (http://twitter.com/k_avinash) to join the discussion.

How To Type Indian Rupee (₹) Symbol in Windows

March 28, 2011 by Avinash Leave a Comment

Microsoft has released an update recently to support the new currency symbol for the Indian Symbol for Windows.

Indian government has approved a standard symbol for Indian Rupee (just like $ US dollar sign) and later Unicode Consortium assigned a Unicode to that symbol so that it can be assigned to the standard keyboards.

Paper media and advertisers have started using the above symbol already. You need to use separate fonts or keyboards to actually type this symbol.

To avoid the extra installation, now, Microsoft has released an update so that you can directly type this symbol right from your Windows.

Instructions:

1. Get the update from the download link (supports only Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2).

2. Your computer should be running a genuine copy of Windows. There is no way to by pass this.

3. Open Office Word or WordPad (not supported in Notepad).

4. Type 20b9 and press ALT + X right after that and this automatically converts to INR symbol (₹).

Download Update.