Trouble installing Google chrome?

I faced a minor problem when installing Google chrome - even without any firewall running but connected to internet.Google installer failed, throwing the error no 0x80072efd- which means GoogleUpdate.exe could not connect to internet.

The solution, at least in my case, is to manually start zonealarm and then grant permission to googleupdate.exe when installing. (Earlier,I had disabled firewall from starting automatically on system startup). Without firewall, Google chrome should have installed easily,but seems to work only after firewall is started.Uh!

How to uninstall adobe flash from firefox / windows

If you are facing problems after a update for flash player and need to uninstall flash player, adobe offer a separate executable to uninstall flash.

Download here

Secure your Gmail Account

Gmail In the unfortunate event that you are unable to access your Gmail account even though you think you typed the password correctly (Yes, it can happen.Some malicious virus/hack could mess things up or you just plain forgot the password),Gmail offers to email the password to the secondary email address you have given.

If you haven't already, In Gmail go to Settings -> Account -> Change Security Question -> Secondary email:

Enter your alternate email address & Save.

You may think this is trivial, but you'll be glad you have done this if there's some problem in the future.

Day of Errors at Blogspot

Today is certainly a day of errors at blogger - 3 different errors within a few hours that left various blogspot pages inaccessible (including this one).

Of the three, " bX-vjhbsj" error is the new one that absolutely prevented loading any page from my blogspot domain just after publishing.Thankfully the people at blogger have fixed it now.

Second Life to get a Swedish Embassy?

Its hard not to have come across the term 'Second Life' (SL)on the internet of late.Its suppose to be a virtual world which mimics real world with community,places etc but its not exactly a game - there are no points,winners or levels.

This virtual world has become so prominent that many real world companies have a presence in the virtual world - recently there was even a Vista launch on party in SL.

And now,Sweden is supposedly to open a embassy in SL so that they can provide info about their country & help people in SL -

May be I should try it someday just to see what's inside!

Vista launch in Second Life

More:

What is Second Life?
Second hype or second life? (BBC)

Google's Patent Search : Some Suggestions

Patents. Another area Google is making it easy to search - over 7 million US Patents & they say they have just started off ! That's interesting as I expect patents from other willing countries to be included in the search.

Finding the patents for everyday devices we use will become so easy & fun.

Here's the one from the inventor of cell phone-Martin Cooper, for Radio Telephone System (Year 1973) with diagrams of the hexagonal base cells!

I understand this feature is in Beta so there are obviously ways to improve it.Here are some I think can be improved.

As of now the advanced search feature lets users specify the start and end date (of patents filed/issued) within which to search for the patents.However,I was surprised that a option to sort the result by date was not available.

For example, If I wanted to find the very first occurrence of the word "Internet" in patents ,the results quite predictably are according to the relevance. After playing around with the dates in the advanced for sometime,figured out that a patent for "Knife Grinding Machine" filed on September 1,1904 was the first patent in the US to have contained the word "Internet"!

A option to sort would have been helpful.

Sadly, the original patent that old was very hard to read as only the image was provided.Why shouldn't the digitized text be provided? That is the only way people will be able to read the patent if they are interested.

This service is called "Google Patent Search".But www.google.com/patent gives you a 404 Not found error!

And there is no indication of this new patent search when you do a search for "patents" on original Google website.

How to fix a broken Firefox 2.0

My problems with Firefox started from version 1.5 . Memory leaks were there before too,but got worse with 1.5. Add to that a new problem of high CPU utilization.Within a few hours from start,firefox's CPU usage would climb to 100% before eventually crashing out or freezing the system - that would require killing firefox.exe manually.

The upgrade to version 2.0 didn't solve it either.The restore session in FF 2.0 is useful in case of crash,but when it happens 4 times in 6 hours,it is not a solution.

The Fix? Disable all the extensions. I use abut 10 extensions. Some functionality has been lost,but it has fixed the crashing & CPU problem. This isn't a discovery by any means,but a well known solution.Just wanted to let it be known that it did work very well.Firefox 2.0 is not buggy,but the extensions are.(Don't bother about FF 2.0's certification on the compatibility of the extension.It certified 7 of my 10 extensions as compatible & disabled the others.But that didn't fix the problem.Disabling did.)

Or you can try running FF in safe-mode,wherein all extensions,themes are disabled.Once you have a stable FF,you can try enabling the extensions one by one until you find the one that crashed the problems. Extensions are slowly being updated by their respective developers for compliance with FF 2.0,so it may be a while before your favourite extension works once again . Until then,rather not have the extension at all instead of a unstable browser.

However,some minor bugs are there..
Like,the first time I Middle- click/Left-click a link, doesn't open it in new tab - rather jumps to the present page top. Clicking the link for the second or third time does open it in a new tab.[This bug appears randomly but often].

Related Link:
Mozilla people answer Firefox 2.0 questions.