Having used GMail since quite some time now, I have come to rely on Gmail for my day to day communication. No wonder then that time to time I myself feel that a feature or two, if added can help boost my productivity, save time or money. Today an idea struck me, which i feel accomplishes all those three points.
There are times when we need to send people certain documents again and again for some time. best example being that of a resume. During the time you are applying for a new job, you might need to send the same resume document to multiple people for days at an end.
Problem: Attaching a document again and again on multiple email uses up valuable bandwidth and uses up time, specially on slower internet connections.
Solution: Once a document has been attached and sent in an email, the document is already there on the Gmail server. So, when the next time I compose a new message, I should be presented with a list of recently attached documents so that I can save the time and bandwidth of uploading it again.
I know that I can forward the old mail with the attachment, but this solution, if implemented will be sleeker.
What do you say?
Wednesday, September 02, 2009
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
SOLUTION: High CPU usage (even) in Firefox 3.5 b4
I installed Mozilla Firefox 3.5 beta 4 latest nightly build from the Mozilla FTP site wanting to test the bleeding edge of the browser. I was hoping that with this release, Mozilla would have made a giant leap with a lot of previous bug fixes in place, specially the resource hogging one. On install, Firefox automatically imported my plugins, settings etc. from my previous 3.1 version to give me a smooth usage experience. All was good, or so I thought.
After a while I started seeing Firefox using a LOT of CPU.
I tested this again by closing almost all my Firefox tabs, except about 2-3. I now had just GMail, Google news, Google search, and a one article open, but still I could see Firefox using upto 20% CPU. A pattern I noticed was that the CPU usage was going up and down every few seconds. So the CPU hogging was happening intermittently.
Not loosing faith on Firefox yet, I searched the net for any possible solutions. I tried Flashblock, I changed the urlclassifier.updatecachemax setting, but all in vein.
Then, on an intuition, I disabled by WOT plugin.
The high CPU usage vanished! WOT, or the Web of Trust plugin has a community of fellow users who rate websites. As we visit any site, it's WOT rating gets displayed. Also, when we visit a site such as Google search or any other site, WOT scans the page for any links, and shows the link's WOT rating. Perhaps this algorithm is causing the excessive CPU usage. Maybe this is happening to me only. What I know is, this was the cause of problem in my case.
Here is a screenshot of the CPU usage now
Now that I think of it, maybe installing plugins which rate/check every link on a website is not really that good for performance(duh). Even plugins like StumbleUpon do it, so maybe there is a performance penalty too. All's well that ends well, is all I'd say.
Do leave a comment on what you think, and if this article helped you too.
After a while I started seeing Firefox using a LOT of CPU.
I tested this again by closing almost all my Firefox tabs, except about 2-3. I now had just GMail, Google news, Google search, and a one article open, but still I could see Firefox using upto 20% CPU. A pattern I noticed was that the CPU usage was going up and down every few seconds. So the CPU hogging was happening intermittently.
Not loosing faith on Firefox yet, I searched the net for any possible solutions. I tried Flashblock, I changed the urlclassifier.updatecachemax setting, but all in vein.
Then, on an intuition, I disabled by WOT plugin.
The high CPU usage vanished! WOT, or the Web of Trust plugin has a community of fellow users who rate websites. As we visit any site, it's WOT rating gets displayed. Also, when we visit a site such as Google search or any other site, WOT scans the page for any links, and shows the link's WOT rating. Perhaps this algorithm is causing the excessive CPU usage. Maybe this is happening to me only. What I know is, this was the cause of problem in my case.
Here is a screenshot of the CPU usage now
Now that I think of it, maybe installing plugins which rate/check every link on a website is not really that good for performance(duh). Even plugins like StumbleUpon do it, so maybe there is a performance penalty too. All's well that ends well, is all I'd say.
Do leave a comment on what you think, and if this article helped you too.
Tuesday, March 03, 2009
Feedburner firewall problem with Digg feeds
I use Google reader to subscribe to Digg feeds, but all the Digg RSS/Atom links are in feedburner format. Unfortunately my internet network blocks requests to feed/rss/atom URLs. This was a problem as I could no longer launch Digg articles directly from the Google reader.
My response was to create Greasymonkey script. This script will silently ensure that when you click on any Digg link from the Google reader, instead o the rss url, you are taken to the Digg site with the article link shown there. With one more click on that article link you will reach the article you wanted.
Install the script from here
Sorry for the hack Google and Digg, but I hope I didn’t violate any code. Please let me know if this is a problem. Thanks again Greasemonkey!
People, let me know if this script helped you too.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Map from Indirapuram to Airport
This is a off topic post, but I am staying at the upcoming Indirapuram, region of Ghaziabad. It comes under NCR and its close vicinity to the Indira Gandhi International Airport of Delhi is why a number of times people ask me for directions to reach there. I myself was not clear of the route until recently. So I decided to plot it on Google map for the benefit of myself and others.
So, this is the route I take to reach the Airport from Indirapuram, or near Sector 62/Sector 63 Noida:
View Larger Map
Remember that from Indirapuram, you have to go towards Maharani Bagh, Moolchand hospital, South Ex, AIIMS, Moti Bagh respectively. AIIMS should be the landmark to target.
Hope you reach there on time! :) Do comment if this map helped you, or there is a better route.
So, this is the route I take to reach the Airport from Indirapuram, or near Sector 62/Sector 63 Noida:
View Larger Map
Remember that from Indirapuram, you have to go towards Maharani Bagh, Moolchand hospital, South Ex, AIIMS, Moti Bagh respectively. AIIMS should be the landmark to target.
Hope you reach there on time! :) Do comment if this map helped you, or there is a better route.
Friday, February 06, 2009
Joining the Windows 7 party
I downloaded the much touted Windows 7 beta just in time, later realizing that the download offer ends on February 10th! The good thing is that the Beta installation would last till August 2009, giving me enough time to test the build.
I have a new Dell Studio 15 with 3 GB RAM, all with the integrated webcam and the new LED WXGA+ LCD screen with Vista Home installed. I should tell you that I am one of those who are not in love with what Dell bundles our laptops with software wise. I am not in love with the number of hidden partitions and I do not like the freebies they bloat our installation with. So, my reaction is to wipe out the extra Dell partitions, and reinstall a clean OS copy on the machine. So on this new laptop of mine, the reinstall was eminent and due, which is when I decided to go for Windows 7 Beta. Thanks to the geek inside me, I was in for a fresh install and not a upgrade or even a dual boot configuration. I am not much of a vote for upgrades as I feel a fresh install should not have to deal with excess baggage of the old installation.
The Windows site to download the Beta required a passport login. I had one, so that was not a friction point. I was then presented with my own Windows Key, and then an ActiveX installed which provided the Microsoft downloaded. I have used this downloaded before in MSDN areas, and am sure impressed with it. It is the only online download managers which I use, otherwise I always skip the flimsy online download managers if possible. It's good is in the fact that first, it can resume no matter what. Meaning, it can resume if your Internet connection gets broken, or even if you have to reboot. The next time u start the download, it will start from where it stopped. Second and more importantly, it downloads using multiple connections. I think up to 4, hence boosting up the download speed. I think I got a speed up to about 220 KBps on my BSNL broadband connection. All this is useful when the download size of the beta is 2 to 3 GB. By the way I could have gone for the 64 bit instead of 32 bit, but 64 bit can be useful only if you have more than 4 GB RAM, which I didnt.
After burning the download ISO to a DVD(In Windows 7, you can burn an ISO natively!), I chose to boot off from that DVD to initiate the installation. The installation was very smooth with a minimum of user input required, and in just a few clicks the setup started, and completed in exactly half an hour. Then, it asked for the Windows Key and even asked me if it could use any of the available wifi signals for Internet connectivity, which is though full. On a reboot, I was greeted with a new ultra cool animated Windows logo on the login screen. I was not aware of this change and it took me by a nice surprise and a had wow effect :)
Before starting the Windows 7 setup, I had emptied by drive C (15 GB), and had dumped all my data in drive D (about 170 GB). I also have a hidden partition at the end of Drive D which i use as Acronis backup partition. So when I booted my first time in Windows 7, my wow quickly changed into shock when I saw no drive D. Further investigation revealed that Windows had failed to assign a drive letter to it. I should tell you that my configuration was a bit topsy turvy to begin with. Inititially, my Vista was installed on drive D(2nd partition), and drive C(first partition) had some data. So to mend it and to make things logical, I installed Windows 7 on the first partition and put my data on second partition. This I think confused Windows 7 because it assigned my first partition correctly as drive C, but set my DVD drive as drive D and the second partition was unassigned. I manually assigned my partition as drive E, but to my dismay now Windows thinks its some removable drive. It has an Autoplay option, and can only open if i select "Open in new window" option. It might be partly my fault due to the initial mess, but on a clean install Windows 7 should have fixed it, specially when I don't even have a dual boot environment.
Anyway, the experience since then has been great. All my software till now are working on Windows 7 which includes Eset security center(which integrated well and turned off the notification Win7 was giving me of a missing antivirus), Defraggler and uTorrent. Visual Studio 2008 and Office 2007 all seem to be working perfectly. It also detected by web-cam, though I haven't used it yet, but my sound, video etc. all seems to be working already. I would say keep about 20 GB for your Windows 7 partition.
I told you about my drive letter problem earlier, so to try and fix that I found that my current erroneous drive E had some boot files in the root. I thought these were leftover from Vista, so I deleted them all. On reboot i was greeted by a 'Boot record not found, press ctrl+alt+del" message. Yikes! But no Yikes, as I had my Windows 7 beta DVD handy. I booted off the DVD and chose the repair my start-up options. Within a few seconds I was was able to successfully boot back into Windows.
Windows 7 seems much responsive than Vista. On booting up you are greeted with a desktop wallpaper of a fish. That, by the way is a Siamese fighting fish, also known as 'betta'. I am now with Windows 7 to use it for my daily needs such as development, video rendering, image editing and general day to day tasks.
Hurray to Windows 7!
In the end, I would want to give credit to the Bumper list of Windows 7 secrets and the Windows 7 Supersite for making me finally convert to Windows 7.
What do you feel different better or worst using Windows 7? Put in the comments.
I have a new Dell Studio 15 with 3 GB RAM, all with the integrated webcam and the new LED WXGA+ LCD screen with Vista Home installed. I should tell you that I am one of those who are not in love with what Dell bundles our laptops with software wise. I am not in love with the number of hidden partitions and I do not like the freebies they bloat our installation with. So, my reaction is to wipe out the extra Dell partitions, and reinstall a clean OS copy on the machine. So on this new laptop of mine, the reinstall was eminent and due, which is when I decided to go for Windows 7 Beta. Thanks to the geek inside me, I was in for a fresh install and not a upgrade or even a dual boot configuration. I am not much of a vote for upgrades as I feel a fresh install should not have to deal with excess baggage of the old installation.
The Windows site to download the Beta required a passport login. I had one, so that was not a friction point. I was then presented with my own Windows Key, and then an ActiveX installed which provided the Microsoft downloaded. I have used this downloaded before in MSDN areas, and am sure impressed with it. It is the only online download managers which I use, otherwise I always skip the flimsy online download managers if possible. It's good is in the fact that first, it can resume no matter what. Meaning, it can resume if your Internet connection gets broken, or even if you have to reboot. The next time u start the download, it will start from where it stopped. Second and more importantly, it downloads using multiple connections. I think up to 4, hence boosting up the download speed. I think I got a speed up to about 220 KBps on my BSNL broadband connection. All this is useful when the download size of the beta is 2 to 3 GB. By the way I could have gone for the 64 bit instead of 32 bit, but 64 bit can be useful only if you have more than 4 GB RAM, which I didnt.
After burning the download ISO to a DVD(In Windows 7, you can burn an ISO natively!), I chose to boot off from that DVD to initiate the installation. The installation was very smooth with a minimum of user input required, and in just a few clicks the setup started, and completed in exactly half an hour. Then, it asked for the Windows Key and even asked me if it could use any of the available wifi signals for Internet connectivity, which is though full. On a reboot, I was greeted with a new ultra cool animated Windows logo on the login screen. I was not aware of this change and it took me by a nice surprise and a had wow effect :)
Before starting the Windows 7 setup, I had emptied by drive C (15 GB), and had dumped all my data in drive D (about 170 GB). I also have a hidden partition at the end of Drive D which i use as Acronis backup partition. So when I booted my first time in Windows 7, my wow quickly changed into shock when I saw no drive D. Further investigation revealed that Windows had failed to assign a drive letter to it. I should tell you that my configuration was a bit topsy turvy to begin with. Inititially, my Vista was installed on drive D(2nd partition), and drive C(first partition) had some data. So to mend it and to make things logical, I installed Windows 7 on the first partition and put my data on second partition. This I think confused Windows 7 because it assigned my first partition correctly as drive C, but set my DVD drive as drive D and the second partition was unassigned. I manually assigned my partition as drive E, but to my dismay now Windows thinks its some removable drive. It has an Autoplay option, and can only open if i select "Open in new window" option. It might be partly my fault due to the initial mess, but on a clean install Windows 7 should have fixed it, specially when I don't even have a dual boot environment.
Anyway, the experience since then has been great. All my software till now are working on Windows 7 which includes Eset security center(which integrated well and turned off the notification Win7 was giving me of a missing antivirus), Defraggler and uTorrent. Visual Studio 2008 and Office 2007 all seem to be working perfectly. It also detected by web-cam, though I haven't used it yet, but my sound, video etc. all seems to be working already. I would say keep about 20 GB for your Windows 7 partition.
I told you about my drive letter problem earlier, so to try and fix that I found that my current erroneous drive E had some boot files in the root. I thought these were leftover from Vista, so I deleted them all. On reboot i was greeted by a 'Boot record not found, press ctrl+alt+del" message. Yikes! But no Yikes, as I had my Windows 7 beta DVD handy. I booted off the DVD and chose the repair my start-up options. Within a few seconds I was was able to successfully boot back into Windows.
Windows 7 seems much responsive than Vista. On booting up you are greeted with a desktop wallpaper of a fish. That, by the way is a Siamese fighting fish, also known as 'betta'. I am now with Windows 7 to use it for my daily needs such as development, video rendering, image editing and general day to day tasks.
Hurray to Windows 7!
In the end, I would want to give credit to the Bumper list of Windows 7 secrets and the Windows 7 Supersite for making me finally convert to Windows 7.
What do you feel different better or worst using Windows 7? Put in the comments.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
EMI calculation formula for spreadsheet
Nowadays everyone seems to be taking loans for varying needs such as home, automobile, education etc. We start paying the EMIs per month to pay back the loan as per the bank mandate. Some of us, are tech savvy or nerdy enough to want to keep track of the loan payment by wanting to create an excel sheet for the same. Some time we may want to create an Excel for our monthly EMIs maybe just to calculate how much are we paying in interest and principle per month.
I had to fumble with the EMI formula to make it work in Excel, so here I am sharing the Excel/Google spreadsheet formula so you may use it in your own loan amortization sheet right away!
Use the formula shown below to calculate the EMI for your Loan. The table below shows dummy values, which should result in an EMI of 9983.80
I hope this comes handy to you. Do let me know by commenting if yuo have anything to add or you used this article. Wishing you a Happy New Year!
I had to fumble with the EMI formula to make it work in Excel, so here I am sharing the Excel/Google spreadsheet formula so you may use it in your own loan amortization sheet right away!
Use the formula shown below to calculate the EMI for your Loan. The table below shows dummy values, which should result in an EMI of 9983.80
| A | B | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Loan Amount | 1000000 |
| 2 | Loan Interest Rate | 10.5% |
| 3 | Loan Tenure(Months) | 240 |
| 4 | EMI | =$B$1*(B2/12)*(((1+(B2/12))^$B$3)/(((1+(B2/12))^$B$3)-1)) |
I hope this comes handy to you. Do let me know by commenting if yuo have anything to add or you used this article. Wishing you a Happy New Year!
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
India - Now serving DVDs online!
Thanks to the Indian Railways, it is proved that a successfully implemented online venture is very much possible in our dear India too! Ofcource well planned logistics and financial muscle would be required but more and more people in India seem to be willing to tread online for their convenience.
After the grand success of Online DVD renting(think Blockbuster, Netflix) in America, the Indian markets could not have been much behind. And lo and behold, we have our very own offering for the Indian masses. I had heard of companies such as SeventyMM renting DVDs online, but I really never checked it out, untill recently I saw a BigFlix store sprung up in the market near my house. Time to take stock of things.
Yeah, the local DVD walla might offer cheaper rates, but do you really want to use your LCD screen to see a hall print, which you rented at the rate of a DVD? So perhaps it is time to check out these services and enjoy the true DVD quality movies in the convenience and luxury of our homes. Hopefully the customer would end up again being the king with the services competing amongst themselves and offering us the best value of money.
Here I offer a small comparision matrix of the services, though not a review of the same. So without much ado, here is a small compilation I made of some of the services in market:
You may also check out a nice article I came across at Webyantra titled SeventyMM - national footprint eagerly awaited.
After the grand success of Online DVD renting(think Blockbuster, Netflix) in America, the Indian markets could not have been much behind. And lo and behold, we have our very own offering for the Indian masses. I had heard of companies such as SeventyMM renting DVDs online, but I really never checked it out, untill recently I saw a BigFlix store sprung up in the market near my house. Time to take stock of things.
Yeah, the local DVD walla might offer cheaper rates, but do you really want to use your LCD screen to see a hall print, which you rented at the rate of a DVD? So perhaps it is time to check out these services and enjoy the true DVD quality movies in the convenience and luxury of our homes. Hopefully the customer would end up again being the king with the services competing amongst themselves and offering us the best value of money.
Here I offer a small comparision matrix of the services, though not a review of the same. So without much ado, here is a small compilation I made of some of the services in market:
| BigFlix | SeventyMM | Movie Mart | Clixflix | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Membership fee | Rs. 299 | Rs. 250 | Rs. 279 | Rs. 399 |
| Refundable fee | Rs. 400 | Rs. 349 | Rs. 1998 | |
| Registration fee | Rs. 0 | Rs. 199 | ||
| Disks at a time | 1 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
| Stores in India | NA | None | NA | In and around Mumbai only |
| Late fee after days | None | 4 | None | 3 |
| Max movies in a month | Once a day | 6 | Once a day | 6 |
| Movies in store | > 18000 | > 18000 | ||
| Membership pause facility | Yes | NA | NA | NA |
You may also check out a nice article I came across at Webyantra titled SeventyMM - national footprint eagerly awaited.
If you have used these services, or prefer any other, do share your say in the comments.
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