Source: SlateFlash (http://slateflash.blogspot.com/2009/06/chat-with-your-yahoo-buddy-from-msn.html)

I use MSN IM at work. The other day a colleague approached me and asked me to add him in my buddy list. And he gave me his Yahoo mail id. I told him I use only MSN. But he gently smiled and educated me that MSN/Live messenger can add Yahoo contacts and vice versa. I couldn't believe that but when tried, it worked magically!

 Then I visited yahoo messenger page and confirmed that it officially works:

The mouse was invented by Dr Douglas Engelbart while working for the Stanford Research Institute. He never received any royalties for the invention partly because his patent ran out in 1987 before the PC revolution made the mouse indispensible.

A Gartner analyst predicts the demise of the computer mouse in the next three to five years. Taking over will be so called gestural computer mechanisms like touch screens and facial recognition devices. "The mouse works fine in the desktop environment but for home entertainment or working on a notebook it's over," declared analyst Steve Prentice. He told BBC News that his prediction is driven by the efforts of consumer electronics firm which are making products with new interactive interfaces inspired by the world of gaming .

"Sony and Canon and other video and photographic manufacturers are using face recognition that recognises your face in real time," he said. "And it recognises even when you smile." "You even have emotive systems where you can wear a headset and control a computer by simply thinking and that's a device set to hit the market in September." "This" Mr Prentice said, "is all about using computer power to do things smarter."

-Ram

The other day, I had to convert a microsoft word (.doc) format file to adobe acrobat reader (.pdf) file. In ideal world, we should be able to do it easily.. but I had terrible experience. Neither Microsoft nor Adobe provide easy ways to acheive this. I had to download number of software applications (inculding some viruses), also downloaded some driver-plugins for word to print it to pdf. Tried so manythings but nothing seems to work. Some converted the file, but had their ads on it.. I got frustrated and tired with this.. just then I landed on www.zamzar.com.. which was a life saver for me.

As you could guess by now, this website offers a tool to convert files from nearly any format to nearly any format. For example, you could convert a .rm (real media) file to 3gp, 3g3, ac3, aac, avi, flac, flv, gif, iphone, mov, mp3, mp4, mpg, wmv, ogg and wav formats. As you explore their service, it gets more exciting, you could even convert a You Tube video to wmv and store it on your PC! Amazing Idea!!

The best thing is you don't need to install any softwrare. You just upload your file.. zamzar does its job and e-mails you when the conversion is done with a link to the converted file. With this free service, you could conert files upto 100MB size and zamzar holds your converted file for 24 hours. If you need to convert a file over 100 MB or looking for perminant online storage, they provide those services for a fee. By signing up, you could convert files as big as 1 GB and have upto 100GB online storage.

And if you are thinking what all things you can convert.. You could convert documents (html - Hypertext Markup Language, odt - OpenDocument Text Document, pcx - Paintbrush Bitmap Image, pdf - Portable Document Format, png - Portable Network Graphic, ps - Postscript document, txt - Text document mdb - Microsoft Access Database, ods - OpenDocument spreadsheet, rtf - Rich text format, ppt,pptx - Power Point, doc, docx - Word Document, xls,xlsx - Excel Spread Sheet, swf, flv - Macromedia Flash files, etc.), you could convert images (gif - Compuserve graphics interchange, ico - Windows Icon, jpg - JPEG compliant image, pcx - PC Paintbrush Bitmap Graphic, ps - Postscript document, png - Portable Network Graphic, tga - Truevision Targa Graphic, thumbnail - Thumbnail image, tiff - Tagged image file format, wbmp - Wireless Bitmap File Format, etc. ), you can convert  music formats (as mentioned above), video formats (3g2 - 3GPP2 Multimedia File, 3gp - 3GPP Multimedia File, aac - Advanced Audio Coding File, ac3 - AC3 Audio File, avi - Windows video file, flac - Free Lossless Audio Codec, flv - Flash Video, ipod - MPEG-4 Video File, mov - Apple QuickTime Movie, mp3 - Compressed audio file, mp4 - MPEG-4 Video File, mpg - Moving Picture Experts Group File, ogg - Ogg Vorbis Compressed Audio File, wav - Windows audio file, wmv - Windows Media File, etc.), and even the compressed formats (7z - 7-Zip Compressed File, tar.bz2 - Bzip 2 UNIX, Compressed File, cab - Cabinet File, lzh - Compressed Archive File, tar - Tape Archive File, tar.gzh - Gzip Compressed Archive, yz1 - DeepFreezer Compressed Archive, zip - Compressed Archive File).

For a complete list of supported formats, you could visit this link. I used it few times to convert simple files and it worked well for me. If you use this tool, do post your experience here for people to understand zamzar service.

-Rakesh

I guess, we all faced this some time or the other. A dailog pops up with the message "Do you want to restart your computer now?". And there are only two options - 'Restart Now' and 'Restart Later'. I am in the middle of my work and click 'Restart Later' button. After sometime, the pop up comes again asking the same thing.. I am tired of clicking 'Restart Later' button. What happens if I ignore the popup? Well, I tried it once, and lost all my work.. the computer restarts without your permission...

Microsoft boasts so much about usability in their products.. but this really, drives people mad. This annoying popup comes again and again until you restart. Even after you restart, you never know when you would get it again. The other day, I was downloading some real big files and doing some background work. I left my computer un attended for some time as those tasks don't need my presence. When I returned, to my shock, I could see the windows getting restarted.. so many hours of work just vanished.. 

I finally decided to fight the annoying dailog box, and successfully got rid of it. You could do change the reminder time interval by doing the following:

Change the Setting to 'Enabled' at Start / Run / gpedit.msc / Local Computer Policy / Computer Configuration / Administrative Templates / Windows Components / Windows Update / Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations. And give the time interval (minimum 10 minutes and maximum 1440 minutes, i.e., 24 hours).

If you rather want to turn it off completely for that session, you could do so by Start > Run > services.msc > Automatic Updates > Click "Stop".

If you want to do some geeky stuff, try the following:
1.Run regedit
2.In [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU]
3.Edit > New > DWORD: "RebootRelaunchTimeoutEnabled" with a value of "1"
4. Edit > New > DWORD: "RebootRelaunchTimeout" with a value of the time in minutes until the next prompt. "1440" (24 hours) looks like the max. If you input "0" for this DWORD or the former, it will default to 10.

Well, this was not working on Win XP home edition, check this link if you are running on XP Home.. http://computer-vet.com/weblog/2005/05/20/windows_automatic_reboots.html

Regards,
Surya