Notepad has always been my favorite tool ever. As a developer I work with so many bulky softwares like dreamweaver, php designer which come with hell lot of features. But, I have always loved the simplicity of Microsoft’s Notepad. It’s simple, small, sweet and handy. So, here I am featuring some cool Notepad tricks and tips.

Using notepad as a log book

open notepad write .LOG in the first line, save the file and close it. Open the file again, here you will see the current date and time on it. Save again and close it. Everytime you open this file the file will have a timestamp along with text on it. This cool notepad trick can be used to make daily notes or can be used as a diary also. You can even press F5 to get the current date and time anywhere between the text.

Change header and footer

Want to get rid of default page header oand footer in notepad. To do this click on file -> page setup, remove the characters in the header and footer textboxes and write whatever you want.

Changing the font

You can change the font in the notepad by clicking Format -> Font, but all the text will be in the same font always.

Do you know any other cool notepad tricks or tips, do share with me…

Run multiple ids at the same time using this registry hack for yahoo messenger 8 version. Download and run this cool registry patch from here. So from now onwards you can be online on multiple yahoo ids at the same time. To uninstall this patch download and run this registry patch
You can also try this registry trick to run multiple instances of yahoo messenger.

Whenever you shut down your computer, it takes a lot of time in closing all the running applications.And worse, if they stop responding, then you have to click either end task or wait for windows to shut it down. Now you can apply a registry hack that automatically shuts the non-responding annoying applications instantly and without any interruption. Apply the following registry hack to speed up windows xp.

1. Open regestry editor from Start -> Run -> type regedit
2. Find HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\Desktop
on the left side of the registry editor window.
3. Double click on AutoEndTasks key from the right window and assign the value to be 1. The default value is 0.

Reverting the process is also very simple. Just change the AutoEndTasks value to 0.

You can also increase the booting/startup time for windows
xp by disabling unwanted services.

Yahoo has released a security update for yahoo messenger 8.1 version for windows. You may recieve a prompt to install this latest security update. When you are prompted to do so, click on update now button to install it

Yahoo! recently identified a security issue, commonly referred to as a buffer overflow in an ActiveX control. This control is part of the Yahoo! Messenger audio conferencing code.

You must upgrade to newer version if

1. You installed your yahoo messenger before 13th march, 2007
2. You are experiencing some problems in logging in or logging out of the messenger
3. You get involuntarily logged out of the yahoo chat or IM session.

Yahoo messenger for windows vista has some cool new features, tabbed IMing being the prominent among those. With tabbed windows you can easily switch over to different chat windows. A Yahoo blog has recently reported about some hidden hacks inside the current version of yahoo messenger. That means you can enjoy the features of windows vista version of messenger in your current version that is yahoo messenger 8.1.
You can download this Tabbed Im hack for your version 8.1 from here or you may like to read some more about this hack on wacky b forums.

- This works only in windows xp.
- It gives you Sound alerts on new messages
- Enables Tabbed IMing when this hack is turned on.
- Easy switching between various IM windows.

Happy Yahoo!  IMing.

1. Disable Indexing Services:
Indexing Services is a small little program that uses large amounts of RAM and can often make a computer endlessly loud and noisy. This system process indexes and updates lists of all the files that are on your computer. It does this so that when you do a search for something on your computer, it will search faster by scanning the index lists. If you don’t search your computer often, or even if you do search often, this system service is completely unnecessary. To disable do the following:

1. Go to Start
2. Click Settings
3. Click Control Panel
4. Double-click Add/Remove Programs
5. Click the Add/Remove Window Components
6. Uncheck the Indexing services
7. Click Next

2. Optimise Display Settings:
Windows XP can look sexy but displaying all the visual items can waste system resources. To optimise:

1.Go to Start
2. Click Settings
3. Click Control Panel
4. Click System
5. Click Advanced tab
6. In the Performance tab click Settings
7. Leave only the following ticked:
- Show shadows under menus
- Show shadows under mouse pointer
- Show translucent selection rectangle
- Use drop shadows for icons labels on the desktop
- Use visual styles on windows and buttons

3. Disable Performance Counters:
Windows XP has a performance monitor utility which monitors several areas of your PC’s performance. These utilities take up system resources so disabling is a good idea. To disable:

1. download and install the Extensible Performance Counter List
2.Then select each counter in turn in the ‘Extensible performance counters’ window and clear the ‘performance counters enabled’ checkbox at the bottom.button below.

4. Speedup Folder Browsing:
You may have noticed that everytime you open my computer to browse folders that there is a slight delay. This is because Windows XP automatically searches for network files and printers everytime you open Windows Explorer. To fix this and to increase browsing significantly:

1. Open My Computer
2. Click on Tools menu
3. Click on Folder Options
4. Click on the View tab.
5. Uncheck the Automatically search for network folders and printers check box
6. Click Apply
7. Click Ok
8. Reboot your computer

5. Improve Memory Usage:
Cacheman Improves the performance of your computer by optimizing the disk cache, memory and a number of other settings. Once Installed:

1. Go to Show Wizard and select All
2. Run all the wizards by selecting Next or Finished until you are back to the main menu. Use the defaults unless you know exactly what you are doing.
3.Exit and Save Cacheman
4.Restart Windows
6. Optimise your internet connection:
There are lots of ways to do this but by far the easiest is to run TCP/IP Optimizer.

1. Download and install
2. Click the General Settings tab and select your Connection Speed (Kbps)
3. Click Network Adapter and choose the interface you use to connect to the Internet
4. Check Optimal Settings then Apply
5. Reboot
7. Optimise Your Pagefile:
If you give your pagefile a fixed size it saves the operating system from needing to resize the page file.

1. Right click on My Computer and select Properties
2. Select the Advanced tab
3. Under Performance choose the Settings button
4. Select the Advanced tab again and under Virtual Memory select Change
5. Highlight the drive containing your page file and make the initial Size of the file the same as the Maximum Size of the file.

Windows XP sizes the page file to about 1.5X the amount of actual physical memory by default. While this is good for systems with smaller amounts of memory (under 512MB) it is unlikely that a typical XP desktop system will ever need 1.5 X 512MB or more of virtual memory. If you have less than 512MB of memory, leave the page file at its default size. If you have 512MB or more, change the ratio to 1:1 page file size to physical memory size.
8. Run BootVis - Improve Boot Times:
BootVis will significantly improve boot times

1. Download and Run
2. Select Trace
3. Select Next Boot and Driver Trace
4. A Trace Repetitions screen will appear, select Ok and Reboot
5. Upon reboot, BootVis will automatically start, analyze and log your system’s boot process. When it’s done, in the menu go to Trace and select Optimize System
6. Reboot.
7. When your machine has rebooted wait until you see the Optimizing System box appear. Be patient and wait for the process to complete.
9. Remove the Desktop Picture:
Your desktop background consumes a fair amount of memory and can slow the loading time of your system. Removing it will improve performance.

1. Right click on Desktop and select Properties
2. Select the Desktop tab
3. In the Background window select None
4. Click Ok
10. Remove Fonts for Speed:
Fonts, especially TrueType fonts, use quite a bit of system resources. For optimal performance, trim your fonts down to just those that you need to use on a daily basis and fonts that applications may require.

1. Open Control Panel
2. Open Fonts folder
3. Move fonts you don’t need to a temporary directory (e.g. C:\FONTBKUP?) just in case you need or want to bring a few of them back. The more fonts you uninstall, the more system resources you will gain.

via sizlopedia

If you remove an installed program and its files by deleting the files, it may still show up in the Add/Remove programs list through the control panel. In order to remove it from the list (so you don’t need to re-install in order to just remove it again).

1. Start the Registry Editor by clicking RUN from start menu and entering ‘regedit’ without quotes.
2. Open HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE / SOFTWARE / Microsoft / Windows / CurrentVersion / Uninstall
3. Delete any programs from the list.

This will only delete them from the list, not delete the actual programs. Only programs designed for Windows95 will show up here in the first place.

Wumpus Game : Invite wumpus.game@gmail.com from your google talk. If your invitation is accepted, you can play a text based game. It is an easter egg game.

Line Breaks : Hold down shift and press enter to give a line break in the gtalk IM window. In this way you can write your message in multiple paragraphs.

Font Size : Hold down ctrl key and move your scroll button (mouse) up or down to change the font size in the message.

Bold Text : Use asterix before and after the text to make it bold. Like *hello* will make it hello.

Italic Text : Use underscores before and after the text to make it italic. Like _hello_ will make it hello.

Invitation Tips : You don’t need to say Yes or No when someone wants to add you as a friend, you can simply ignore it, the request will go away.

Do you know ?

A message in the google talk can be as long as 32767 characters long.

I’ll add some more tips and tricks on google talk as soon as they come my way.

With every new version, Yahoo! Messenger seems to be using more and more memory than the previous versions. Following are the tips that can be helpful in reducing RAM storage of yahoo messenger which inturn will make it faster.

Uninstall Plugins : Uninstall plugins from the plugin manager. To do so goto Actions->choose a plugin and then click the ‘My Plugins’ tab. Click stop button and then click uninstall to remove that particular plugin.

Classic Skin : Switch to classic skin of Yahoo messenger, messenger working in classic skin consumes less memory and makes it faster. To do so goto ‘Messenger->Change skin’ and then select the classic skin.

Here’s how you can save flash files from websites.

• Visit the webpage (here i’m using http://www.xyz.com, just for an example)
• Select Source( View > Source )
• Now it would show up the HTML code for the site.
• Now click CTRL+F buttons together or go to the Edit menu and select Find( Edit > Find )
• In the search bar type swf and click find.
• It will take you to something similar to EMBED xsrc=”abcd.swf”
• Now select the file path. Example if it is EMBED xsrc=”/files/flash/abcd.swf” , copy the entire file path starting from the forward slash(/)
• Now goto the address bar and paste the path next to the end of the current address.
• It wouldd look like - www.xyz.com/files/flash/abcd.swf
• Now click go or hit Enter and the same flash file will load for you but without the HTML - only the file.
• Goto File > Save as and save the file in a safe place.

This may not work with some websites that has the files protected / also with some sites that use frames.

I have explained the procedure for internet explorer, this can be done in other browsers also with the same easy and with quite similar steps.

Haven’t you always wanted to save those video files on Youtube / Google videos and metacafe?
It’s truly boring/tiring to save those url’s for your favourite videos, and everytime copy-pasting it to see them.

Here’s an easy way to get out of the loop and start saving the video streams into your hard disk.

Install this small firefox extension

DOWNLOAD THE FIREFOX EXTENSION HERE

You also need a FLV player
FLV Player

:)

YahELite is a full featured Yahoo chat client written in ‘C’. It loads quickly, runs fast and is considerate of your computers resources. Because YahELite uses the minimal amount of DLLs, you get much less lag and smoother scrolling. YahELite uses very little RAM to run, and minimal system resources, typically less than 2 MB of RAM. Other chat clients based on Visual Basic, Java or HTML need more than 12 MegaBytes just to start.

You can download YahElite from http://www.yahelite.org

Yah^ELite protects you from ‘boot codes’, ‘text floods’, ‘unwanted PMs’, ’sound bombs’, ’spam’ and other mischief.

The latest version of firefox has been released and is available for public download at their ftp site:-

ftp://ftp.mozilla.org

it has a great interface (even the default theme looks good) and has an integrated spell check. though it does not support all the extensions from 1.5.0.7, they will be updated soon. The tabbing has been enhanced a bit. Mozilla firefox 2 is fast, more secured. I have experienced that it is consuming a little more RAM than its old versions. Aneways, it is okay to have great internet experience at the expense of a bit more resources.

You can check if your yahoo buddy is invisible to you or not. Just install and activate this small useful plugin

• Yahoo messenger invisible status plugin By Sahil

The plugin will be unzipped in your c:/programfiles/yahoo/ messenger/plugins/

Please unzip in different directory if your yahoo messenger’s installation directory is different, but it works in most of the cases. You can activate it by clicking “action” and then “load test plugin” in your yahoo messenger’s main window.

Yahoo Tracker - MySpyTool.com
Now you can track 12 Yahoo ids at the same time by using yahoo tracker, yahoo trakker is a web based software which tracks the online offline activity of messenger users in previous 24 hours, data gets updated automatically after every 10 minutes. Read more about Yahoo Tracker here at http://www.MySpyTool.com

If you are a user of mozilla firefox, then you must have experienced that it takes too much time in startup. Now you can make your firefox to open “instantly” by using this small peice of software which is named Firefox Preloader. It loads parts of Mozilla Firefox into main memory before it is used, it improves the speed of the startup time.

Click here to download Firefox Preloader

It is really worth a try.

Don’t you get irritated when your pc takes years in booting, if that so then this cool little trick can help you out. By using this trick you can decrease the startup time of your pc. So lets do it step by step:-

1. Click Start

2. Click Run

3. Type msconfig

4. Click Services Tab

5. Check on - Hide all Microsoft services

6. Disable all

7. Press Ok

8. Click Startup Tab

9. Disable All

10. Apply And you are done with it…!!

Comment : What this trick actually does is, it disables all the unessential programs and processes which loadup in the main memory (RAM) and make bootup quite slow.

Caution : Never disable any antivirus program from the list.

If you’ve got many Gmail accounts and don’t want to keep logging on and off them every time you switch, a simple command line parameter in the Google Talk shortcut can solve your problem.

• First, create one copy of the Google Talk shortcut on your desktop - leave the original intact.
• Right click on this shortcut and choose Properties. The Target box will show you the path of the EXE for Google Talk - something like “C:\Program Files\Google\Google Talk\googletalk.exe”
• Change this to: “C:\Program Files\Google\Google Talk\googletalk.exe” /nomutex

and click OK.

Now you can login with as many gmail accounts as you like. Hurray..!!

This is not a hack, it is just a cool simple thing. I found it accidently, when i was sending some HTML codes to my friend. He didn’t know anything about HTML, so i was giving him very basics of the code. I started with < html>…then < body>, everything was going alright until I wrote the first line after < body> tag, I wrote < b>hello< /b> world ( < b>…< /b> are used in HTML to make text bold..) when I pressed send button, I was amazed to see that it was showing hello world instead of < b>hello< /b> world. Then i understood that yahoo messenger is capable of understanding HTML tags ( although later i found that it supports only very few of these tags). It supports < i>..< /i> and < u>..< /u> also

Fun Part

Now coming to its funnier side. Can you send a blank message to your buddy?..yes you can by using spacebar. But how about sending a big blank message. If you simply press send (or enter) without writing anything in the text box, Yahoo messenger will not except that, and thus nothing will happen. But if you write something like < b>< /b> (nothing between HTML tags) your messenger would except that as a message, but that message would not have anything in it because we haven’t write anything between those tags and yahoo messenger will try to make that that text bold ( which is not there in reality ). So you can puzzle your yahoo buddies with this simple trick

Yahoo Messenger Tips

No need to close the html tags. < b>< /b> …or simply < b> alone will do the same thing.

Try this trick also

1. Open your notepad
2. Write < b> ( or any of the three tags )
3. Press enter many times
4. Write < /b>
5. Right click in notepad and then click select all
6. Copy it
7. Paste in your Yahoo messenger’s IM window
8. Send
The above steps would make things worst for your buddy. It will show a big blank space in place of messages.

More fun

This trick also works in orkut, but in orkut you have to use [b] and [/b] in place of < b> and < /b>, and you have to close your formatting tags in orkut ( unlike in yahoo messenger ) so in orkut open scrap book of your buddy write [b] press as many enters as you can, and then simply close the tags by writing [/b]. It will show a very big blank space inn your buddies scrap book. Your friend might think that he has lost all his scraps and there’s something wrong with his account. Things to do: I was too lazy to check this trick in other messengers like google talk and msn messenger. Please do it on your own and let me know if it works.

~EnJoY~