TheTechArena - Technology Begins Here.

Google launched Google Plus (Google+) a new social network from it’s stable which seems to be very promising from the initial usage experience. Right now it is invitation based & i got invitation a month ago. Some features are explained below:-

Circles

Circles are an interesting way of grouping together the people in your network to form number of meaningful clusters which enables you to share only that much information which you want to share with them. Like you can have separate circles for your work place, family, friends etc and the good thing is that others can see only that you have added them to some circle but in which one, they can’t know.

Sparks

Sparks is a very good introduction which displays random content from across the web (over which google has a strong hold). The content is categorized based upon different interest areas. You can create a new spark based upon your interest area or you can see the regular sparks shown by Google. Sharing of content (blog posts, articles & videos) from sparks with your circles is very easy & happens in a flash. I personally feel they should add Google reader feature or some customization option in the sparks tab to make it more useful.

Huddle

So Google+ includes Huddle, a group messaging experience that lets everyone inside the circle know what’s going on, right this second. Group messaging was first made popular by blackberry messenger service (BBM) from RIM but bringing that to the web is a good feature although i don’t rate it as an innovation. Already this kind of chat can be done on facebook closed groups.

Hangout

Hangout is a great feature which lets you to have a video chat with up to 10 people at the same time & it has a very nice “narrative detection” element which automatically detects the active user who is speaking to the other members & thus his video is relayed to all other members in the real time.

This comes into action for the video chat with more than 2 people. The experience is smooth & there’s hardly any lag. I rate this feature as the most powerful yet on Google Plus and it certainly adds a very element to social media.

Usage Experience

Google+ is fantastic in terms of features but facebook users will find it easy to accustom themselves to it. The platform is really promising & can add a new dimension of social networking. Account creation being invitation only created a lot of buzz all around on the web.Although it will be rolled out soon to all the web users soon.

Did you get the invite? If not then send a request at my email:- vivek_master1469@yahoo.com :)

Windows Live Essentials 2011 is full grown, out of beta, and ready as a free download. The suite includes various tools like Windows Messenger, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker, Mail, Writer, Family Safety, Windows Live Mesh and Microsoft Outlook Hotmail Connector. The software only works on Windows 7 and Vista. If you have Window XP installed then upgrading will be a good choice if you want to taste the features of Windows Live Essentials 2011.

The motherboard is responsible for connecting all computer devices to the microprocessor. It supplies devices with power and allows the computer to react with them, Devices that can be used by connecting to the motherboard are: Storage devices, sound cards, graphic cards and hard disks.

Devices or components that are needed to make the computer work as it should, are inbuilt within the motherboard or can be connected to it using a socket or port. Listed below are sockets and ports that are available on the motherboard for connecting devices and , what that they are capable of doing.

PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect) slot: Supports peripherals like sound cards, DVD decoders, and graphic accelerators with 32 bits at 33Mhz capabilities. There are usually anywhere from 1 to 6 PCI slots available on the motherboard.

AGP (Accelerated Graphic Port): This provides fast bus speed connectivity along with fast access to the main memory. It is designed for video cards that demand higher bandwidth.

Chipset-North Bridge: An integrated circuit that has special duties.

CPU (Central Processing Unit) socket: A socket specifically for connecting your computer processor.

DIMM (Double Inline Memory Module) slots, SIMM (Single Inline Memory Module) and RIMM: Different types of memory (RAM) can be installed into these slots.

Motherboard Battery: A battery compartment, which stores the battery used for storing data such as system date and time, when you shut down your system.

IDE Connector: Responsible for connecting the IDE cord used for hard disks, CD drives, and DVD drives.

Firewire header (IEEE 1394): A serial bus used to exchange digital and audio data with high performance abilities.

The following listed items are parts that are built within the motherboard with specific connective uses such as keyboards, mouse, and printers.

PS/2 Connectors: Each motherboard usually has 2 PS/2 connectors for the keyboard and the mouse.

USB (Universal Serial Bus) port: There are usually a couple of these ports located on each motherboard used for connecting pen drives and external hard drives, like Ipods or Mp3 players.

Parallel or (LPT) port: The place used to connect scanners and printers.

Game Port: The port to connect all gaming devices for example, a joystick.

Sound Card Connectors: Plug in your microphone or speakers here.

Display Connector: Connecting your monitor to the motherboard.

COM (Communication) port: The port designed to connect your mouse and modem.

If you want to have a look of how motherboard looks so here's a picture which will help you to identify the parts of a computer :-

In this tutorial i am going to explain you to create hidden folders but invisible folders.
There is a very simple way of doing it as you can just go to Tools > View > Show hidden files and folders.

Follow these steps:

1. Right click in a directory and go to New Folder.
2. Right click and then go to rename.
3. Delete the name and press Alt + 255. This will make the text disappear.
4. Right click on the folder once again but this time go to properties. Click on the "Customize" tab and go to the bottom where it says "Change Icon".
5. Scroll over and choose a blank icon like in this picture:

I am back with a new trick. This trick will really help the users who watch videos a lot. I often see people using different sites and tools like www.savetubevideo.com, keepvid.com and youtubedownloader to download videos from Youtube. I often hear people who claim that this is the only way one could download videos from Youtube. Of course, I am talking about sites like savetubevideo.com, keepvid etc.

Have you ever thought that how we access the content on the Internet ?


Whenever we access any page on the internet it gets saved in the browsers' cache. In a page there are different files like images, videos, audio, flash etc. These files are displayed in proper format using HTML Tags. All these files are downloaded in our computer's hard disk which we access.

So, whenever we access any Youtube videos it gets saved in Cache Folder. It differs for various browsers. For IE, its Temporary Internet Files. For FF, its Cache Folder.

IE PATH - C:\Documents and Settings\USERNAME\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files

FF PATH - C:\Documents and Settings\Vivek\Local Settings\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles

The question is how you will determine the exact video file as the cache folder contains many files which do not have any extension.

The best way to determine the video file is to arrange the icons by size. The file with the maximum size will be a video file. You can simply copy that file, add .flv extension and play it with VLC or FLV Player.

Virus, a name which really horrifies us. One is body virus and the other is a computer virus. As we are techies so we will limit our discussion to Computer Virus.

We often come across to situation when our computer is infected with virus. Virus are of different types depending on the nature and the structure. There different types are Macro virus,Boot sector, File infector virus, File infector virus etc. We will basically discuss about the effective ways to remove virus.

I always believe that we should always be cautions so that no virus can infect our PC. Why should we allow a virus to infect our PC and cause frustration ? Often heard this famous proverb:-

"Prevention is better than Cure".

We must ensure that we must not do any such activity which will leave us with an infected PC and affect our daily routine. Here are few steps which we must follow :-

1. Never visit any illegal sites which is the most common way of spreading virus.

2. Never download applications,songs from any untrusted sites. Mp3 songs is very popular in spreading virus.

3. Never download any content from an unknown sender through E-Mail.

4. Disable autoplay for USB devices and CD/DVD's.

5. Update your antivirus regularly.



If you fail to prevent the virus from infecting your PC then there are many ways to eradicate it from the PC. Few of the viruses can be easily removed by changing the registry entries, disabling start-up items and deleting the .exe file from the stored path. Some viruses are very complicated in nature and they infect the System files so it becomes very difficult to remove them. Here are the steps which you should follow which can help eliminate almost every virus from the PC. I assume that you already have Updated Anti-Virus installed on the PC


1. Download MALWARE BYTES and SPYBOT.

2. Boot into Safe Mode. (Very effective way as it disables certain features of an OS.)

3. First Scan your PC with Antivirus , MALWARE BYTES and SPYBOT.

4. Run Registry cleaner to delete all the invalid entries.



The above method proved to be very useful. I manage many tech communities in Orkut and suggested the same method and it was successful in 80% cases.

I often wonder that why people always rely on others. It seems that it is a general tendency of people to become dependent on others which can be a person or any intangible object.

I often come across to people from different backgrounds and it seems that most people are not aware of themselves, their inner strength. They lack self-confidence and the proper aptitude towards a particular field.


People always rely on tuition, teachers without realizing that they themselves can utilize their resource(brain) to study,learn a particular topic. One day, i met with a person who got his 11th maths books a month ago. He even didn't bother to open the book as his tuition teacher was absconding. He believed that he will not be able to solve the maths questions without the help of a teacher.

The second category of people are those who opt for a course just to earn money, not to gain knowledge. People enroll for MBA Entrance Exams like CAT,MAT and other engineering entrance like IIT-JEE and AIEEE just because they get handsome salary. They want to earn money but hey don't want to do any hard work.

According to a survey, only 5% of the candidates appearing for CAT are dedicated towards it and the remaining only give the test just for the sake of it.

Movies like 3 idiots truly depicts the mentality of the Indians and the parental pressure on the students.


People always get demotivated if they get low score in board exams and other university level exams. I always believe that marks is not a measurement tool of the intellectual level of a student. There are numerous examples where the person who have scored low have become successful in their life. Mahatma Gandhi, RK Narayan, Rabindranath Tagore are just a few names that i can recall. We cannot change the past neither we can change our fate but we can work hard for a better future.


There are three essential elements in a person's life. Fate, Hard Work and Talent. Fate is something which nobody knows. Now remains two things Hard Work and Talent. If a person has the talent in a particular field and if he does continuous hard work then success will definitely come his/her way. Ups and Downs is something which cannot be avoided and is ubiquitous is nature.