Hack hotmail and increase the size of your hotmail account!

When Hotmail announced that they will increase the account size for all users, I was very happy. I didn't want to lose my hotmail id just because it was always full! So, I waited eagerly but nothing happened. Then an idea struck me and I went and changed my profile to indicate that I was living in the US. Still nothing! Then after about a month, all of a sudden, my account size jumped to 250MB! I was very thrilled to say the least.

This happened a couple of months ago, but yesterday I came across this site which suggests something similar, but with immediate results!

1. First, log in to hotmail, and then go to Manage Folders. Here, create a folder titled Tempinbox.


2. Then, go to your Inbox and move all your mails to Tempinbox. You can do this in the Mail view, and selecting all mails - click on the checkbox next to From right on top of all your mails. Once all the mails are selected click on Put in Folder and select Tempinbox to move all your mails. Note: If your inbox spans across multiple pages, you'll have to repeat this until everything is moved over.


3. Next, go to Options, which appears on the top right side of your page. From here go to Personal (the first item on the left) and in My Profile, update the Country to USA, State to New York, Zip Code to 10028 and Language to English. Click on the Update button at the bottom.


4. This is IMPORTANT - Before you sign out, copy the following line into your address bar and press 'Enter' -
   
   http://by17fd.bay17.hotmail.msn.com/cgi-bin/Accountclose



5. This will deactivate your account. To prevent your email id from getting reassigned to somebody else, log back in immediately into hotmail and login with your usual id and password. You will be given a message showing 'Activate Your Account'. So go ahead and do it and don't select any of the Newsletter options which you are given.


6. Now, go to your mailbox, and enjoy the bigger size of your account!!

Note: I tried this with my wife's account, and although the size didn't go up to 250 MB, it did increase to 25 MB. Well, that's better than 2 MB at least! Maybe, the account size will increase in a month's size like it happened to me!

Update: Paul V, a friend of mine I had posted this hack to, got his account increased as well, but being a much more diligent guy than I am, also read the 'Welcome Message' which hotmail sends when you reactivate your account. And this is what it says, regarding the 250 MB account size -

"You may notice that your storage meter for your e-mail inbox only says 25 MB instead of 250 MB. Please allow us at least 30 days for us to bump up your storage to the complete 250 MB. It is important to check your inbox regularly during this time."

Microsoft Word as a System Backup Utility!

Can you imagine? Using a behemoth like Microsoft Word for something serious like backing up your system?

When I came across the article, I had to think twice before I could take it seriously! But it works!



The download is here.

via The Red Ferret Journal

Many uses of Microsoft Word

We all know how big this software is. I mean, you keep Microsoft Word open and it seems to take your entire system resources. I always used to crib about this but recently I came across some redeeming articles.

• Word Image Cataloger
  

  Download it, unzip it, and place the resulting, unzipped DOT file in a handy location. When you need to locate image files, double click it to open it in Word, point it to any directory on your hard drive and let 'er rip. It'll insert any graphic (jpg & gif) images it finds in that directory, into a Word document. It'll then save the file as an HTML page so you can easily view all the graphics from that directory in your browser. Great for viewing those animated gifs!

  Download it here



• Word Font List Generator!
  Well, I didn't know I could use Word for that! And it certainly helps to get everything nicely formatted into a Word document, ready for printing!
  Of course, since it is written in Visual Basic, you have to open Word and then open it's Visual Basic editor. Here are the steps:
  

  Download the FontSampleGenerator.zip file. Pay attention to where you download it!
  
  Unzip the file. The resulting file will be called FontSampleGenerator.bas. This is a VBA code module. Open Word. Hit Alt/F11 to enter the Visual Basic Editor. Click on your Normal template project to select it. Then click File/Import and ferret around your hard drive to find this .bas file. Select it to add this code module to your Normal.dot template to make it available.
  
  Note that you can also add it to a new template and then add that template to your ../Word/Startup directory to make it available, but not have it added as extra weight to your Normal.dot template.
  
  Once the code is available to you in Word, through either method above, you can click Tools/Macro/Macro, locate the Font Sample Generator macro and click Run to get your sample.

  Download it here
  



• Word Program Lister
  This is great as well! This will list all programs which you have added and are listed in your Start->Programs! Sure helps to know what all is loaded!
  
  Download this here



• Word File Cataloger
  Great for having a list of all your files in a particular directory in a handy Word document. And this programs lists all those files as links, so clicking on them opens them directly! Convenient as hell, I say!
  
  Download it here

Please Note: All these programs are copyrighted with MouseTrax

Firefox and Internet Explorer compared

A very, very insightful comparison between the two browsers.

And the winner is...... (Well, you've got to read the article for yourself!)

via The Office Weblog

IT Conversations - downloads of presentations, interviews and discussions in MP3

IT Conversations is a new discovery through one of my ever favourite blogs - Cool Tools.

IT Conversations lists many presentations, interviews and discussions of the movers and shakers of the IT industry. Very, very interesting hearing!

If you have'nt bought an MP3 player yet, this might be the best reason to get one!

Some of the people listed are - Tim O'Reilly, Steve Wozniak, Malcolm Gladwell, Lawrence Lessig among many, many others.

Some Quick Excel Formula Tips

While you enter a formula in a cell, press CTRL+SHIFT+A to see the arguments in a formula. If you type =RATE, and then press CTRL+SHIFT+A, you can see all the arguments for that function–for example, =RATE(nper,pmt,pv,fv,type,guess). If you want more details, type =RATE, and then press CTRL+A to display the Function Wizard.

If you want to quickly enter the same text or the same formula in a range of cells, follow these steps:
1. Select the range of cells that you want to fill.
2. Type the text or formula but do not press ENTER. Instead, press CTRL+ENTER.
The data appears in the range that you selected.

Thanks to Daily Dose of Excel

A Musicplasma for Blogs - TouchGraph

Well, I didn't know where to post this - whether I should post this in my other blog of Virtual Tools and Computer Tweaks (pctweaks.blogspot.com) or here, so in the end I decided to post it in both the places!

Just like Musicplasma is for music and helps in discovering new artists, new music, similarly, TouchGraph has created a visual browser for blogs and websites!

You key in a URL of one of the sites you visit the most often and like and it throws up other sites which are similar in nature!

Quite interesting really. I think slowly visual searching of the web is going to get smarter like this and browsing will be more of a visual experience than a textual one.





via BoingBoing

Free Backup Software!

Yes, I know, it sounds crazy, but all the same there is this great software available for free! Well, considering that most of us don't bother to take backups, getting a software to do something as routine and important as that for free should certainly help!

And it is extremely, extremely easy to use!

Here's the main screenshot -



via The Red Ferret Journal

Musicplasma

Musicplasma has been a favourite of mine ever since it came out. I've discovered numerous new artists through it. I key in one of my current favourite artists and then follow the threads across to many other musicians who's music is similar. The links are sometimes logical, sometimes musical, always enjoyable!



Besides just being a great service, it's has one of the best Graphical User Interfaces I've ever seen!

Desktop List View

After a long time I came across a really wonderful piece of freeware. This one turns the view on your desktop to a 'List View' instead of the usual 'Icon View' (see image).

Needless to say, this increases your desktop real estate tremendously!

Go to the download site by clicking on the picture.



Thanks to theofficeweblog

Tech support for your parents

If your parents use computers and you want to help them out, this is a must read.

Besides the usual advice, the ones I liked were on the last page -

• Do no harm. You might be tempted to help them by tweaking their computer to work the way yours does. Don't. Your parents might have a reason for their different way of doing things, and even if they don't, they might just be used to it. To really help, adapt yourself to their computers and don't force them to work like you do.
• Listen and learn. Your parents may do the same things with the computer or the Internet that you do but in a different way. And they may call it different things. Yahoo may be "the Web." Microsoft Word might just be called "Microsoft." This isn't the time to correct them. Learn their lingo and explain things in terms they already use.
• Don't think you know more than they do. Age is not a handicap when dealing with computers. You may be surprised how adept an octogenarian is with instant messaging, Quicken, photo sharing, or even Doom 3. Experience and wisdom can breed stubbornness, and it can also breed flexibility. Just try to understand the issue from the other perspective.

Very important to remember! Especially useful for Indian techie chaps! The IT gap is way larger between generations!

And thanks to Rafe Needleman, a long time favourite, who writes Rafe's Radar, who posted the ZDNet Article

How to take 3D Photos with an ordinary Digital Camera

Engadget again comes up with an excellent article about how to create 3D photos with a regular digial camera and some free software.

They not only do a great job explaining the how-to but also the theory behind 3D photography. Of course, you will need 3D glasses!

The 3D software used is called Callipygian 3D Photo Editing Software. It's free!

The complete how-to is here




Thanks to Engadget

I guess you can call me a nerd!

Try this test to check (click on the image!)

Hey RIAA, here's a P2P program in 15 lines!

Slashdot mentions the New Scientist article pointing to the World's smallest file sharing program!



The program is written by Edward Felten, Computer Science professor at Princeton and is called TinyP2P. He did it to show the futility of trying to stop P2P applications cropping up!! Wow!

What price security? (Google unsecured network cameras!)

Can you imagine? Just go to the Google page and enter the following search query -

inurl:"ViewerFrame?Mode="

You'll get a list of unsecured network cameras from all over the world!



Just click on any of the results to get a view!! And get this - you can even control the camera! Wow!

And to think that these were put in there as a security measure in the first place!!

via BoingBoing