Bala-Krishna » Gmail Stuff

3 Steps to open docx file in the older Microsoft Office version

Bala Krishna — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 15:28:48 +0000

It is very difficult to open .docx files for the user who are using older version of Microsoft Office. Microsoft Office introduced new .docx file format in the ms office 2007. Users who are using ms office 2003 or older version can not open .docx document.

There are several way to open .docx and other file format associated with MS-Office 2007 like .pptx or .xlsx even without installing ms office 2007.

1) First and easiest way is to use Google docs to open your .docx file. There are several other benefit using Google docs for document. You can convert as well as store your files in Google docs and open wherever you want. Users who are using Gmail might be already familiar with google doc and know how easy it is to manage doc with Google docs.

2) Use Microsoft office compatibility pack released for backward compatibility. You need to download and install Microsoft office compatibility pack from Microsoft website. After installation you will be able to open .docx file in your microsoft office version currently installed on your system.

3) Download and Use OpenOffice to open .docx file. You can also use OpenOffice for all you Microsoft office need. OpenOffice is now widely used as Microsoft office replacement and commonly used office suite in Linux environment. This package available in many languages and available for almost all platform including Mac OSX and Linux. Download OpenOffice installer from here. You can also download and use open office portable version without installing OpenOffice whenever you need.

Google Buzz New Social Media Platform

Bala Krishna — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 07:12:54 +0000

Few days ago, Google have launched Google Buzz, a new social media platform in the industry. Google Buzz works seamlessly within your Gmail account. As all of you know, GMail is now very popular email platform in the industry. Google Buzz is rapidly growing as this is built over Gmail platform. Every gmail user now using Google Buzz because easier accessibility then other tools in the market. Google Buzz is similar product as twitter but there are many features that makes Google Buzz different then twitter. There are several benefit Google Buzz provides over twitter. As Google Buzz integrated within gmail so it is easy to use. You don’t have to login separately to Google Buzz account. There is no maximum character limit in the Google Buzz, You are free to share whatever you wish to share and many other features.

Google Buzz also allow you to import content from all the existing websites that you are using, like Picassa, Twitter and Flickr. This feature provide you full flexibility to use Google Buzz . So what you are waiting for.. Start Buzzing..

New Security Feature on Gmail

Bala Krishna — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 09:32:17 +0000

Google has recently added new security features in the world favorite email service. Google now pioneer in the email service industry. They have enable HTTPS on GMail by default. This is good for people who are not computer geeks and don’t understand usability of SSL layer. By default, Google turned on “always use HTTPS for everyone” option. HTTPS can make your Gmail experience slower then before so you alway open to disable this setting from Gmail setting tab. Your Gmail login page always use HTTPS to protect your login credentials.

Other Features

Extra Storage at Cheap Price

This is good news for people who need to more space on Gmail. You can buy 20GB storage space for only $5/year. This space can be shared with Picasa Web Albums. See detailed price structure below.

20 GB ($5.00 USD per year)
80 GB ($20.00 USD per year)
200 GB ($50.00 USD per year) includes free Eye-Fi card
400 GB ($100.00 USD per year) includes free Eye-Fi card
1 TB ($256.00 USD per year) includes free Eye-Fi card

Check Out Google Chrome Extensions Gallery

Bala Krishna — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:43:14 +0000

If you have not used Google chrome extension yet then this is time to check out Google chrome gallery. Google has now officially released chrome extension gallery that have bunch of extension to enhance chrome power. It certainly increase chrome lover and provide better browsing experience. Just search and install extension you like. Chrome do not ask you restart browser like Firefox after installation so just install without fear. Please note that chrome extension only work with developer builds 4.0+. If you are running chrome 3.0 series then you need to install 4.0 version. Chrome automatically ask you to download and install 4.0 developer build when you try to install extension in 3.0 series.

Some of the useful extension that i have installed and you may love too:

Google Mail Checker: Displays the number of unread messages in your Google Mail inbox.
Google Translate: This extension translates entire webpages into a language of your choice with one click.
RSS Subscription: Adds one-click subscription to your toolbar
Google Wave Notifier: Displays number of unread Waves
Chromed Bird: Chromed Bird is a Twitter extension that allows you to follow your timelines and interact with your Twitter account.
IE Tab: Display web pages using IE in a tab
Docs PDF/PowerPoint Viewer: Automatically previews pdfs, powerpoint presentations, and other documents in Google Docs Viewer.
Tab Menu: Select, close, rearrange, and find your tabs in a vertical, readable menu!

Chrome 4.0 Beta Download Link

Chrome Extension Gallery

Google Chrome – New Clean Web Browser

Bala Krishna — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 07:21:16 +0000

I am fan of Safari for clean and minimal design that allow faster web browsing experience then opera, firefox and IE. Just found Google Chrome browser that look like similar to safari in terms of its minimal design. The blue theme is simple stylish and clean just like GTalk. There is no Linux version is released yet, Google guy still working on Mac and Linux version. Hope, mac and Linux geeks will get these versions soon. They have used Apple’s WebKit and Mozilla’s Firefox components and the code is open source to collaborate with web commun ity.

Google Chrome Snapshot

Learn more in Google Chrome video

How to add php code to word press blog widget

Bala Krishna — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 16:11:20 +0000

Word Press default widget does not allow you to use php code. You can do this by simply editing template files but this is not overall solution. By doing this you are loosing beauty of widget drag and drop functionality. The Samsarin PHP Widget available as plug-in that allow user to create new widget and add php code inline with text.

Installation & Usage

Go to the Samsarin PHP Widget website.
Download and Extract the zip file in wordpress plugins directory.
Enable the Samsarin PHP Widget from Admin Panel.
In your admin console, go to Presentation, and then go to Sidebar Widgets
Create number of PHP Widgets you are required to add.
Drag one of the available Samsarin PHP Widgets to your sidebar.
Click on the widget button add title and php code.
All you have done..

The First Poem Written for Computers

Bala Krishna — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 16:11:55 +0000

<>!*”#
^”`$$-
!*=@$_
%*<>~4
&[]../
|{,,SYSTEM HALTED

If we use the proper cyber names then it will be translated like this

Waka waka bang splat tick tick hash,
Caret quote back-tick dollar dollar dash,
Bang splat equal at dollar under-score,
Percent splat waka waka tilde number four,
Ampersand bracket bracket dot dot slash,
Vertical-bar curly-bracket comma comma CRASH

How to extract .gz file content by gunzip utility

Bala Krishna — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 18:43:52 +0000

Like the windows, gz is common compression utility in Linux. This guide is to extract content of the .gz file by gunzip utility. Here is the command to see and extract content of the gz file.

View gz file content

gunzip -c mybackup.gz

Extract file file content in another file. you can use different file extension depend on the content of file.

gunzip -c mybackup.gz > mybackup.sql

Compress the mybackup.sql file as mybackup.gz in the current directory.

gunzip -c mybackup.sql > mybackup.gz

Here is the full details of the gzip command.

Syntax

gzip [ -acdfhlLnNrtvV19 ] [-S suffix] [ name ... ]

gunzip [ -acfhlLnNrtvV ] [-S suffix] [ name ... ]

-a–ascii	Ascii text mode: convert end-of-lines using local conventions. This option is supported only on some non-Unix systems. For MSDOS, CR LF is converted to LF when compressing, and LF is converted to CR LF when decompressing.
-c–stdout–to-stdout	Write output on standard output; keep original files unchanged. If there are several input files, the output consists of a sequence of independently compressed members. To obtain better compression, concatenate all input files before compressing them.
-d–decompress–uncompress	Decompress.
-f–force	Force compression or decompression even if the file has multiple links or the corresponding file already exists, or if the compressed data is read from or written to a terminal. If the input data is not in a format recognized by gzip, and if the option –stdout is also given, copy the input data without change to the standard ouput: let zcat behave as cat. If -f is not given, and when not running in the back ground, gzip prompts to verify whether an existing file should be overwritten.
-h–help	Display a help screen and quit.
-l–list	For each compressed file, list the following fields: compressed size: size of the compressed file uncompressed size: size of the uncompressed file ratio: compression ratio (0.0% if unknown) uncompressed_name: name of the uncompressed file The uncompressed size is given as -1 for files not in gzip format, such as compressed .Z files. To get the uncompressed size for such a file, you can use: zcat file.Z \| wc -c In combination with the –verbose option, the following fields are also displayed: method: compression method crc: the 32-bit CRC of the uncompressed data date & time: time stamp for the uncompressed file The compression methods currently supported are deflate, compress, lzh (SCO compress -H) and pack. The crc is given as ffffffff for a file not in gzip format. With –name, the uncompressed name, date and time are those stored within the compress file if present. With –verbose, the size totals and compression ratio for all files is also displayed, unless some sizes are unknown. With –quiet, the title and totals lines are not displayed.
-L–licence	Display the gzip license and quit.
-n–no-name	When compressing, do not save the original file name and time stamp by default. (The original name is always saved if the name had to be truncated.) When decompressing, do not restore the original file name if present (remove only the gzip suffix from the compressed file name) and do not restore the original time stamp if present (copy it from the compressed file). This option is the default when decompressing.
-N–name	When compressing, always save the original file name and time stamp; this is the default. When decompressing, restore the original file name and time stamp if present. This option is useful on systems which have a limit on file name length or when the time stamp has been lost after a file transfer.
-q-quiet	Suppress all warnings.
-r–recursive	Travel the directory structure recursively. If any of the file names specified on the command line are directories, gzip will descend into the directory and compress all the files it finds there (or decompress them in the case of gunzip ).
-S .suf–suffix .suf	Use suffix .suf instead of .gz. Any suffix can be given, but suffixes other than .z and .gz should be avoided to avoid confusion when files are transferred to other systems. A null suffix forces gunzip to try decompression on all given files regardless of suffix, as in:gunzip -S “” * (. for MSDOS)Previous versions of gzip used the .z suffix. This was changed to avoid a conflict with pack.
-t–test	Test. Check the compressed file integrity.
-v-verbose	Verbose. Display the name and percentage reduction for each file compressed or decompressed.
-V–version	Version. Display the version number and compilation options then quit.
-#–fast–best	Regulate the speed of compression using the specified digit #, where -1 or –fast indicates the fastest compression method (less compression) and -9 or –best indicates the slowest compression method (best compression). The default compression level is -6 (that is, biased towards high compression at expense of speed).

AIM chat now with GMail

Bala Krishna — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 09:39:11 +0000

Google just launched AIM chat with Gmail and several? new features incorporated. Now you can talk to your AIM friends using an integrated chat inside Gmail. Your AIM contact list will be automatically populated in Gmail user contact list. You need to have AIM account to sign in using Gmail. Google is using OpenAIM technology to provide this service with Gmail. Currently, only supported with Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 2.

To sign in to AIM, use “Sign into AIM” link in Option menu.? Check the picture below.

? ? ?

Here is the list of new features added in Gmail.

Introduced colored labels to organize your email in more fashionable way.
Group chat within same window. No need to open multiple window for more then one contact.
New emoticons added to send expression to your friends.
Free IMAP service to synchronize your inbox automatically.
Now view your document within Gmail without downloading them to your computer. support MSOffice,OpenOffice and .pdf files
Extended support to 20 MB file attachment size.

Improve GMAIL Performance

Bala Krishna — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 08:31:00 +0000

It is common problem for web developers who use firebug to debug JavaScript errors. Firebug may slow down Gmail by validating each XMLHttpRequests call. This problem is same for all ajax based application have make extensive XMLHttpRequest. Firebug is highly configurable. You can turn-off firebug for specific application or you can just enable when you need to debug an application. You can disable firebug for GMail and similar application or optimize it so that it will slow down application.

Disable Firebug

To open Firebug, Click the green (Right Sign) icon in status bar of the browser window.
Select ‘Disable Firebug for mail.google.com.’ See image for more details.

Optimize Firebug

To open Firebug, Click the green (Right Sign) icon in status bar of the browser window.
Click the Console tab.
Select Options.
Uncheck Show XMLHttpRequests.
Click the Net tab.
Select Options.
Check Disable Network Monitoring.
See Figure for more details