Instant Fundas

If you are looking to change a particular setting on Windows but you are unsure whether such a setting even exist or where to find it, Group Policy Search will come to your help. This online solution made available by Microsoft allows you to easily find existing Group Policies and registry keys for different settings under Windows. You can either browse through the tree structure to find the settings you are looking for or use the search box to find them.

Mozilla Labs is experimenting with a new browser UI for Firefox 4 called Home Dash . Essentially it removes all of the Firefox interface, I mean all - location bar, search bar, bookmarks bar and tabs. What is left behind is a tiny semi-transparent Firefox logo clicking on which brings up a dashboard. The dashboard has a search box on the top left, and the rest of the screen is filled with thumbnails of the 24 most visited website.

I know Google has an astonishing number of products but I wasn’t sure exactly how many until I stumbled upon this table . Arranged in an all familiar and over used layout of the Periodic Table of Elements , this particular table offers a quick glance to all Google products and APIs available for developers in one place.

About two years ago, with the release of Google Earth version 5.0, Google introduced historical imagery that allowed users to traverse back in time and study earlier stages of any place. This feature was added as a layer, like so many other features, and needed to be enabled on Google Earth’s interface in order to see. But this article is not about Google Earth. It’s about a website that allows you to view historic aerial photographs just like the way you do on Google Earth, but online and without having to install Google Earth.

Minimalist Gmail is an extension for Chrome that allows you to personalize your Gmail inbox by hiding items, adding row highlights, removing buttons, advertisements, and changing the default links that appear at the top of the page, among other things. The Minimalist Gmail Chrome extension gives you control over 40+ individual elements of the Gmail interface, from the bar at the top of the page to the footer and everything in between.

If you use Chrome as your browser, you can now receive notification about new emails and chat messages right on your desktop. You don’t have to use a separate notifier . This is awesome because not only you have to run one program less, the Chrome integrated desktop notifier also notifies you about new chat messages which other desktop notifiers doesn’t, and browsers other than Chrome totally miss them if the Gmail window is not in focus.

How many times have you struggled with your USB key trying to force it into the USB port the wrong way up? Almost every single time, in my case. Now designer Ma Yi Xuan has showcased a new concept design for a USB plug that can be inserted either way.

LibreOffice , the fork of OpenOffice, announced by the Document Foundation almost four months ago has been released. The Document Foundation was formed when a group of employees broke away from their employer Oracle, the owner of OpenOffice, following a spat with the organization over licensing and copyright. The first stable release, LibreOffice 3.3, is now ready to download.

Aomei Partition Assistant Professional Edition allows you to manage your disk partition. It can perform complicated partition operations on your disk, such as Resize and Move Partition, Extend System Drive, Repartition, Merge, Split Partition etc, and it can work well on Windows 2000, XP, Vista and Windows 7 (both 32bit and 64bit).

Movie-Censorship.com is a fascinating website that provides amazingly detailed comparisons between different versions of movie releases – theatrical release, DVD release, Director’s Cut, Unrated edition and releases in different languages. You can learn what extra has been added into the director’s cut, and find out about scenes which has been deleted from the movie. It explains, in great length, the original script of the movies and how it was modified and why. If you are movie fan, Movie-Censorship.com can be a goddamn productivity killer.

The earth’s surface is rattled by thousands of earthquakes each day. According to one conservative estimate about 1000 earthquakes occur every day, while another estimate puts the figure at around 3500, which amounts to more than 1.3 million jolts each year. Fortunately, a major percentage of these quakes are imperceptible to human beings and pose no threat to lives and property.

Hostizzle is a new VPN service provider that gives you free OpenVPN service with enormous amount of bandwidth each month. The free service offers 100 GB monthly data transfer, which should be enough for most users, on a 1 Gbps port and US based IP addresses. For just $2.35 extra (at the time of this writing), users can upgrade to 350 GB of bandwidth and at $5 a month, users are entitled to unlimited data transfer. Compared to other free and paid VPN services, this is the best one on offer. My only concern is that it survives the abuse.

Google’s programmers often hide jokes and Easter eggs into their products to be later discovered by users. These jokes often show up at unexpected places . One that has been spotted in Google Maps involves the ‘Get direction’ feature. When you request direction between locations separated by enormous expanses of water, such as the Pacific Ocean between New York and Tokyo, Google Maps suggests that you kayak across it.

Google Maps has added a fuel cost calculator to driving directions on Google Maps in Europe. When a user asks for driving direction between two places on the map, it shows an estimate of how much cash your have to spend in order to procure fuel for the journey.

Preparing for a debate at school? Head over to Debatepedia . It is a wiki encyclopedia of debates, arguments, and supporting quotations presented in an easy to read table structure. It is essentially "the Wikipedia of pros and cons," centralizing scattered arguments from editorials, and books into comprehensive pro/con articles. This dramatically enhances decision-making allowing readers to read both sides of the argument and make informed decision and opinion.

So here is the announcement you have been waiting for – the Aimersoft Video Converter Ultimate giveaway winners. From among the 39 odd participants the list randomizer at Random.org has picked out 10 names who will receive a license key each of the $69.95 software. These 10 lucky winners are:

If you are jaibreaking an iPhone or a PS3 you might get bullied by Sony and Apple with lawsuits, but it seems that Windows Phone 7 jailbreakers are in for much sweeter deal. The ChevronWP7 team responsible for bringing us the first jailbreak of Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 were invited to meet the Windows Phone 7 developers team at Microsoft to have a frank discussion on the future and security of Windows Phone 7.

If It Were My Home is a new website that lets you see in what ways your life might be different if you lived in another country. Essentially, it’s a tool that lets you compare between two countries different aspects such as standards of living, cost of living, life expectancy and so on. The website does a quick comparison of different statistics of the two countries you choose and then tells how different your life would have been.

Here is a quick heads-up: PDFZilla – the PDF to Word, Text, HTML, Images etc. converter is currently up for grabs. This software can quickly and accurately convert PDF files into editable MS Word Documents, Rich Text Documents, Plain Text Files, Images, HTML Files, and Shockwave Flash SWF Files. PDFZilla supports most of popular formats: DOC, RTF, TXT, BMP, JPG, GIF, PNG, TIF, HTML, SWF formats. It also supports batch convert mode and Page Selection.

Google Project Hosting is a great place to host and share open source projects, and files for your websites and other web projects. Now Google has added a new feature that lets you edit files from your browser rather than upload a new version of it.

PretonSaver Home is an easy-to-use application that will optimizes printer ink and toner consumption without compromising on quality. The program achieves this by identifying and deleting pixels that are not necessary to maintain a good quality level of printing, thus dramatically reducing toner and ink usage. Preton claims that their software can save as much as 70% on your printing costs.

Just like the Android marketplace and the Windows Mobile marketplace, Nokia too has an apps store for users of Nokia devices – Nokia Ovi Store . The Ovi Store has a large number of Symbian applications and a significant number of them are free. But the annoying part is that you can’t download apps from the store to your computer or PC and later transfer to your cell phone. Users who do not have an active Internet connection, are hence unable to use the store. This article will show you how you can download apps from the Nokia Ovi Store using a common browser to your computer.

Microsoft has released a new free security application for developers and users alike, designed to catalog changes introduced to the Windows platform by installation of new software. The Attack Surface Analyzer is the same tool used by Microsoft's internal product teams to monitor changes made to the operating system by new software.

Google Adwords is a touch nut to crack when it comes to getting low bids and ensuring a good position at the same time. Then there are keywords to target, the actual ad and landing page to consider. New entrants to the Adwords program has to typically shell out a good amount of cash before they can get their parameters right.

Microsoft Mathematics 4.0 , formerly called Microsoft Math, is an educational program that allows users to solve problems in math, algebra, trigonometry, calculus and different branches of science such as physics and chemistry. Previous version of Microsoft Math had to be purchased and required product activation. With the latest release, Microsoft has made one of the most beloved math software free of charge.

Kaspersky is giving away free license codes of Kaspersky Internet Security 2011 for Latin American countries, but you don’t really have to reside in those regions to take advantage of the offer. Simply visit the promotional page and enter the Promo code c35e00be266f along with your other details. The license code will be sent to your email.

Gmail has a wonderful Labs Feature that lets you add iGoogle gadgets or any gadgets by third party to your Gmail inbox. This allows you to add all sorts of features and web apps such as Google Docs, Twitter, sticky notes, to-do list and so on to your Gmail account. One such gadget is for Facebook created by iBuno.

Aimersoft Video Converter Ultimate is a full-featured program that combines up to 7+ independent functions like Video Converter, DVD Ripper, DRM Removal, DVD Burner, Device Transfer, YouTube Downloader, and Screen Recorder on a single board. With Aimersoft Video Converter Ultimate you can:

Online file storage service Dropbox has announced a contest that allows Dropbox users to gain additional free space in their Dropbox account, and win a number of other prizes.

Despite the strong outrage from a significant section of users against the new Facebook profile page, the company is making the new layout compulsory and will be rolling it out to all users in coming days. If you hate the new layout you can continue voicing your opinion at the dozen or so “hate” groups over at Facebook, but soon you will have to reconcile with the new layout. The best you can do is to take advantage of the changes to spice up your profile page.

HandBrake is arguably one of the best video converter and DVD ripping program. DropFolders enhances it by adding the automation part, allowing it to watch a folder and convert whatever files that has been dropped into it.

Microsoft is toying with a few changes to the user interface of Internet Explorer 9 RC. A new video that has been spotted in the wild shows that it might be possible to re-position the tabs below the address bar. Previous versions of IE9, including the current public beta, places tabs to the right side of the address bar with no option to change it otherwise. The internal builds that Microsoft is testing includes this capability and Microsoft is expected to build this into the Release Candidate.

Here is the announcement - the winners of last week’s giveaway contest for Picture Collage Maker Pro . We had promised to gift 20 licenses of the $40 software that allows you to create decorative collages from your photos using pre-built templates. If you have taken part in the giveaway, checkout below to see if you are among the twenty lucky winners.

It is hard not to waste time online. With so many distractions on the Internet, if you don’t have a strong will or some kind of time management strategy, your productivity takes a serious hit. One way to improve your productivity and cut the time spent on time-wasting sites is to monitor how you spend time on the Internet, analyze your online habit and make adjustments accordingly.

Google Goggles, the image recognition application for mobile devices, has received an update. The new version of Google Goggles is not only faster but smarter than ever before. The new Goggles 1.3 client for Android can scan barcodes and read QR codes, and recognize print ads in popular magazines and newspapers. And hey, it can also help you solve Sudoku puzzles.

In case you haven’t looked under the hood, Windows 7 comes with 14 different sound schemes. Several of these schemes are associated with different themes that are built into Windows, so that when you change a theme the sound scheme change as well. The Microsoft Windows Team Blog recently published some additional information about the various sound schemes.

Google Reader can count only up to 1000, after which it basically goes lazy and just adds a plus (+) sign after the unread message count. Anything over 1000, whether that be 1500, 3500 or 5000, is shown as 1000+ unread messages. If you subscribe to many feeds it doesn’t take really long to hit the one thousand mark, after which you can quickly lose track of how many unread articles you actually have in your reader.

The 2011 edition of the annual Consumer Electronics Show saw an overload of tablet PCs, along with the usual collection of smart phones, laptops and others gadgets. Nearly every major original equipment manufacturer (OEM) either launched or introduced or displayed a tablet at CES. A large number of those tablets were based on Android; a smaller portion of these were also Windows based. Let us look at those tablets that stole the show at the recently concluded CES 2011.

Quick Config is a free program that allows people to quickly change their computer’s settings from one profile to another depending on which computing environment they are working in. Most people who take their laptop to work, or bring their office laptop to home need to readjust various settings on their computer to make it function with the network or printers they are connected to at that moment. Quick Config is useful for such people as it enables not only changing network and printer profiles but a host of others like startup applications, browsers, running services, etc.

Picture Collage Maker is an advanced photo collage generator that allows you to turn your photos into elaborate collages, scrapbook, calendars and greetings cards. You can choose from a variety of template layouts or create your own design from scratch, apply image frames, masks, drop shadows and other effects. The images can be cropped and resized to fit, and freely arranged within the collage. The program supports drag and drop image placements, resizing and multiple layers of images and clipart decorations.

If you use both the mouse and your laptop’s touchpad in tandem you must have realized that a universal sensitivity for both doesn’t work well. This is where you need application like AutoSensitivity.

If you suffer from poor graphics, choppy frame rates and lag while gaming, you don’t need a faster computer or newer graphics card. You just need to shutdown all unnecessary services and processes running in the background – the browser, instant messenger, email program and iTunes maybe. All these programs consume memory and resources that could have gone for speeding up your game and improving performance.

Tired of logging in and out of Google Analytics from the browser every day? Try these two free desktop software.

Among Zoho’s ridiculously large number of online applications is a nifty tool called Viewer , that allows you to quickly upload and view your documents online without requiring any software to be installed. After uploading the document, you can also share it with your colleagues and friends. Zoho Viewer supports all major document formats including Microsoft Office formats, OpenOffice formats, OpenDocument formats, PDF, CSV and a few more.

What happens if you take a calendar software such as Google Calendar or Outlook Calendar and mash it with a file browser? You get Nemo Documents . This intuitive file browser allows you to view your files in a calendar-styled interface, based on the time they were created or edited. Nemo Documents is not a calendar; it is not even a full featured file browser. It’s a bit of both.

Metro Home is a weather-cum-clock widget for Windows 7 and Windows Vista designed to resemble Windows Phone 7's Metro UI gadget. It comes from the same developers who provided us with HTC styled widget for Windows.

When a person passes away, what happens to his email account and all the messages and sensitive information that reside in it? Unlike the shoebox in the attic that any living family member can get their hands on, online accounts are password protected and hence present a problem. Web email services owned by internet giants such as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo have different view on this issue. The question to be considered is: is it honorable to scour through the belongings of a dead person and read his personal emails or messages? Google and Microsoft say ‘Yes’, Yahoo says ‘No’.

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES), one of the biggest electronics and trade show in the world, begins two days from now in Las Vegas from January 6th to January 9th, 2011. This year’s CES is expected to be dominated by Tablet PCs running on Google’s mobile OS Android. Some are also expecting more news on iPad 2 which is likely to be released this year.

Often when we are filling a web form, we click on the input field and start typing. After a few key strokes we notice that the mouse cursor is blocking the view to the field, because we just clicked on it and didn’t move the mouse cursor away. Then we have to pause typing, jerk the mouse away and then resume at our keyboard. A minor irritation, but can easily get exasperating if you commit it over and over again.

TaskDaddy is a fantastic, yet amazingly simple, Outlook Task creating program that allows you to create simple reminders in Outlook using single line commands. All you have to do is remember some very basic command syntaxes or formulas, which are easy to learn, and you will be creating reminders in a jiffy.

Jotti's malware scan is a free online service that enables you to scan suspicious files with several anti-virus programs. At the time of this writing, every uploaded file to Jotti is scanned by 19 different anti-virus scanners including Kaspersky, Avast, AntiVir, AVG, Nod32, BitDefender, Panda, F-Secure and more.