Google cooks recipes

   Google will now cook recipes into its search menu in a way that lets people easily find instructions for whipping up dishes in the kitchen.

   A "Recipe View" feature that Google is rolling out in the United States and Japan turns the search engine into an online cook book of sorts.

   "My parents follow the art of cooking by intuition, where the right amount of each spice is measured out by gut feel, but that's never worked very well for me," Google product manager Kavi Goel said while introducing Recipe View.

   "As a math geek and computer engineer, I prefer to work with concrete numbers and instructions, including when cooking."

   The feature narrows search results to only recipes along with ratings for each option.

   Recipe search terms can range from names of dishes to favoured foods, such as strawberries, or holidays. Searches can be filtered by calorie count, cooking time, or ingredients.

   "We like to 'eat our own dog food' at Google, meaning we like to test our own products and features ourselves before releasing them for public consumption," Goel said.

   "With Recipe View, we've taken this more literally than usual."

   The feature is to be rolled out to other countries after it becomes more seasoned.

Gingerbread + Honeycomb = Ice Cream Biscuit ?

   Eric Schmidt the CEO/Chairman of Google addressed the company s keynote at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona. Schmidt had a few surprises in store for us.

   Schmidt started the keynote by expressing his disappointment about the Nokia and Microsoft deal.

   He said, "We would've loved if they chose Android. They chose Windows. The offer to adopt later is still open. "We certainly tried."

   Schmidt also clearly outlined that Google did not see Facebook as a threat but Microsoft was a more direct threat with Bing improving by leaps and bounds.

   He stated, They have scale, brand, and reach to do good things. Facebook today appears to be additive. Facebook users use Google more, no evidence Facebook advertising is hurting Google's in any way. Right now, Facebook is zero to net positive, and Microsoft is a core competitor and will likely remain so for a long time.

   Schmidt took the time clarify all the confusion related to the different versions of Android. An also stated the expected version of Android will combine features of Honeycomb and Gingerbread.

   Schmidt said, "Today I'll use the commonly used names. We have OS called Gingerbread for phones; we have an OS being previewed now for tablets called Honeycomb. The two of them... you can imagine the follow up will start with an I, be named after dessert, and will combine these two."

   Schmidt also clarified that Google had launched the Chrome OS specifically for keyboard devices while Android was meant for touch-based devices. But he hinted a convergence of both the operating systems could take place in the future once the technology was more mature.

   Schmidt also announced a new app called Android Movie Studio which would allow creation of media. This app reminded us of the iMovie app Apple launched last year with the iPhone.Google faced some embarrassment as they were facing network issues and they could not complete the demo of the app.

Google to Add 2-Step Verification

   Passwords are a pain sometimes. Use the same one at too many places and you risk losing everything, use too many different ones and they’re too difficult to remember. Google are now trying to avert these problems by adding another layer of security to Google Accounts– two-step verification. 

   Google will first ask for your password, then a verification code that you can obtain using your phone. This is similar to the system introduced for Google Apps customers a while ago. This will added in the next few days, with a new link poised to appear on your Account settings page.

   If you’re absolutely sure no one else will be using your computer, you can even set the account up to remember your verification code for a 30-day period, following which you’ll have regenerate and enter it again.

Secret Items in Send To Menu

      When you right-click on a file you will find only few default items in Send To Menu. In Windows 7 there is a simple trick to see the secret items in Send To Menu.

To View the Secret Items:

•  Hold down the Shift key while right-clicking on the file, and see the Send To menu. You can find all sorts of extra options.

• If you want any of those to show up normally without holding down the Shift key, you can create shortcuts in the Send To folder.Just type the following into the Address bar, shell:sendto

• And then drag shortcuts to your preferred folders into this folder.

Gmail Notifier

    Gmail notifier is a tool to check Gmail messages without opening the browser. It alerts when you have new Gmail messages. It displays an icon in your system tray to let you know if you have unread Gmail messages, and shows you their subjects, senders and snippets, all without your having to open a web browser.

   Click to download Gmail Notifier.

Some Windows Tips

Your Name on Taskbar

• Right click Taskbar > Toolbars > New Toolbar
• Make a new Folder and name it with your name
•  Now you have your name in the Taskbar
• You can also hide that folder by going to properties and check hidden.

Notepad

• Open Notepad
• Type ''.LOG" without quotes
• Save and close the document
• Open the document again... You will see current date and time...!!!

Google Multiple Account Sign-In

   Till now only single Google Account login was possible at a time in a browser. 
   Google has now enabled the option of Signing in to multiple Google accounts simultaneously from the same browser.This option can be enabled by going to the Google Accounts page and enabling the 'Multiple sign-in' option. 
  When multiple sign-in is enabled, a drop-down is displayed next to your email address at the top of the page, so you can quickly switch to a new account.
  If you use multiple sign-in, the first account you sign in to will be your default account. If you visit other Google products that don’t support multiple accounts after you’ve signed in, you will automatically sign in to your default account for that product. If you sign out of any Google product, you will be signed out of all your Google Accounts at once.

Windows 7 Tips

Window Management

Win+Left Arrow and Win+Right Arrow dock;

Win+Up Arrow and Win+Down Arrow maximizes and restores / minimizes.

Globalization

There are several sets of themed wallpapers installed based on the language you choose, but the others are in a hidden directory. Simply browse to C:\Windows\Globalization\MCT and you’ll see a series of pictures under the Wallpaper directory for each country. Just double-click on the theme file in the Theme directory to display a rotation through all the pictures for that country.

Rearranging the Furniture

The icons in the new taskbar aren’t fixed in-place. You can reorder them to suit your needs, whether they’re pinned shortcuts or running applications. What’s particularly nice is that once they’re reordered, you can start a new instance of any of the first five icons by pressing Win+1, Win+2, Win+3 etc.

Quick Launch Toolbar

Right-click the taskbar, choose Toolbars / New Toolbar

In the folder selection dialog, enter the following string and hit OK: %userprofile%\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Quick Launch

Turn off the “lock the taskbar” setting, and right-click on the divider. Make sure that “Show text” and “Show title” are disabled and the view is set to “small icons”.

Use the dividers to rearrange the toolbar ordering to choice, and then lock the taskbar again.

Peeking at the Desktop

Just press Win+Space

Specialized Windows Switching

 Another feature that power users will love is the ability to do a kind of “Alt+Tab” switching across windows that belong to just one application.

Focus to Taskbar

Press Win+T to move the focus to the taskbar. Once you’re there, you can use the arrow keys to select a particular window or group and then hit Enter to launch or activate it.

Explorer from “My Computer”

 To change the default starting directory for Windows Explorer so that it opens at the Computer node, navigate to Windows Explorer in the Start Menu (it’s in the Accessories folder). Then edit the properties and change the target to read:
 %SystemRoot%\explorer.exe /root,::{20D04FE0-3AEA-1069-A2D8-08002B30309D} 

If you want the change to affect the icon on the taskbar, you’ll need to unpin and repin it to the taskbar so that the new shortcut takes affect. It’s worth noting that Win+E will continue to display the documents library as the default view.

Top Hidden Features in Windows 7

 Windows 7 has its own hidden treasures. And you can access all of those listed here without downloading anything extra. Read on for handy and largely undocumented items in Windows 7 that you probably weren’t aware of..

Ø   God Mode

   Windows 7’s God Mode is indeed omnipresent. It conveniently puts hundreds of settings from all around the operating system all in

one place. 

     To turn on God Mode, create a new folder on your desktop, or anywhere you’d like, and name it: GodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}

     The resulting folder will contain 270 items, representing virtually every configurable option in Windows 7.

Ø   Enhanced Calculator

  Windows 7’s calculator has a few extra tricks up its sleeve, which you’ll find under the View menu. It can do myriad unit conversions (temperature, weight, area), and even mortgage

payment or car mileage calculations. It maintains a history of your previous calculations as long as the program is open.

Ø   WordPad's File Support

  The built-in WordPad word processor in Vista is of limited usefulness because it only supports RTF (Rich Text Format) and plain text (TXT) files. In Windows 7, on the other hand,  WordPad isn’t quite as restricted. Although Windows 7’s WordPad still doesn’t work with .doc files from Microsoft Word 2003 and earlier versions, it can open and save ODT (Open Document Text) files used by the free OpenOffice.org word processor as well as .docx files created in Microsoft Word 2007 or 2010. Although WordPad can’t understand all the complex formatting (it will warn you of this upon opening or saving a file), it will still let you read the documents without having the native programs installed.

Ø   Reliability Monitor

  When your system is acting flaky and you’re trying to figure out what’s going on, the Reliability Monitor may help. Search for “reliability” from the Start menu, and run View Reliability History. You’ll get a graph of your system’s “stability index” over a period of days and weeks (rated on a scale of 1 to 10). 

  It displays which programs, Windows components, or miscellaneous items crashed on a given day, helping you identify problem items.

Ø   Problem Steps Recorder

When you need outside PC help, it’s much better to let them see for themselves what’s happening on your system. But if remote access isn’t an option, the Problem Steps Recorder may be the next best thing.

Search for and run psr from the Start menu. Click Start Record, and the utility will record your activities through a series of screen shots, automatically including captions that show exactly where you clicked. You can also use the Add Comment button to highlight specific areas of the screen and insert custom annotations. When you stop recording, everything will be stitched together and saved as a Web browser-compatible MHTML (MIME HTML) file, conveniently pre-ZIPped and ready for e-mailing to your geek of choice.

Ø   Power Efficiency Report

  If your Windows 7 laptop isn’t getting the battery life you expect, or it experiences power-related issues, such as the inability to go into standby or hibernate mode, the problem usually lies with incorrectly configured power-management settings. Windows 7’s Power Efficiency Report can help you sniff out potential problems. 

  Type search for CMD from the Start menu, run it as an administrator (right-click cmd.exe on the menu and choose Run as administrator).

  From the command prompt, type powercfg -ENERGY (include the space) to scan your system, and after about a minute, you’ll find a file called energy-report.html in your \windows\system32 folder.

  Copy the report to another location and open it (you’ll get a file-not-found error if you try to open it from the system32 folder) for detailed information about what system devices or settings are throwing a monkey wrench into your power management.

Ø   Pin Folders To Taskbar

  You can right-click your favorite programs and pin them to the Windows 7 Taskbar for easy access. There’s no such option for folders, but you can still keep them close at hand on the Taskbar. Rightclick any folder, drag it to an empty space on the Taskbar (or to the Windows Explorer button), and let go when Pin to Windows Explorer appears. Now when you right-click the Windows Explorer button, your folders will be accessible via the Jump List.

Ø   Wipe Free Disk Space

  When you delete files or folders in Windows, they’re not actually erased; the space they took up is simply marked as “available for use,” which allows the files to be recoverable until they’re overwritten with new data. There is a utility built into Windows (even XP Pro and vista) that will overwrite all the free space on a hard drive, insuring any files you’ve deleted stay dead. 

  Launch a command prompt and type cipher /w:X (X is the letter of the drive or partition you want to wipe). be patient; the process can take a long time if you have a lot of free space.

Google launches Instant

Internet giant Google launches Google Instant for fast searching. 

Google Instant is a new search enhancement that shows results as you type.The most obvious change is that you get to the right content much faster than before because you don’t have to finish typing your full search term, or even press “search.” Another shift is that seeing results as you type helps you formulate a better search term by providing instant feedback. You can now adapt your search on the fly until the results match exactly what you want. In time, we may wonder how search ever worked in any other way.

Benefits

•  By predicting search and showing results before you finish typing, Google Instant can save 2-5 seconds per search.
•  Even when you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, predictions help guide your search. The top prediction is shown in grey text directly in the search box, so you can stop typing as soon as you see what you need.
•  Start typing and results appear right before your eyes. Until now, you had to type a full search term, hit return, and hope for the right results. Now results appear instantly as you type, helping you see where you’re headed, every step of the way.

Google says:

• Before Google Instant, the typical searcher took more than 9 seconds to enter a search term, and we saw many examples of searches that took 30-90 seconds to type.
• Using Google Instant can save 2-5 seconds per search.
• If everyone uses Google Instant globally, we estimate this will save more than 3.5 billion seconds a day. That’s 11 hours saved every second.
• 15 new technologies contribute to Google Instant functionality

Google Instant is starting to roll-out to users on Google domains in the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Russia who use the following browsers: Chrome v5/6, Firefox v3, Safari v5 for Mac and Internet Explorer v8. Users on domains other than Google.com can only access Google Instant if they are signed in to Google. New domains will be added in next several months.