Tips

How to reduce file size of an image in 10 seconds

Photos shot with digital camera usually have a huge file size – anywhere from 6MB to 12MB. If you use these images on a webpage it’ll take a lot of time for the page to load. This creates a lot of problems: user has to wait till the page loads, consumption of server bandwidth, more consumption of users internet data, and it’s not good from SEO angle too!

No Photoshoping
You need not be a photoshop expert to do this. Infact, you need not even install any complicated software.

ms-paint
If you’re on Windows, then you already have the software installed in your system by default.

How to reduce file size of an image and resize(image dimension) the image
Open the image in ms-paint.
Click Ctrl + w and resize the image.
Now save the image and check the file size.

This way you don’t even lose the quality of the image.

Fake your Location in Google Chrome

There are so many websites which require user permission to access their location – so that they can serve information relevant to their location. Previously browser use to depend just on the computers IP address, but with HTML5 geolocation API, browsers have become smart enough to get the users location information via various sources like GPS, IP address, WiFi networks, cell towers etc.

How To Fake your Location in Google Chrome

Watch on: YouTube

Go to Google Chrome’s Developer Tools – Right Click and select Inspect Element or press Ctrl + Shift + I (in Windows).
Switch to Emulation Tab.
Select Sensors option.
Check emulate geolocation coordinates.
Now input a different lat and lon values.

There are some websites which take your default location information and give you information relevant to that area, by using above trick you might be able to change it and access the information related to a different location!

HTML5 Geolocation API Tool: http://technotip.com/demo/GoogleMaps/

5 Things You Should Know About Waterproof Digital Cameras

This is a guest post by Iskandar. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out the guest post guidelines.

Summer is here again. Some people pack their bags to the beach, others take a dip in their local pools, while those with deeper pockets fly to exotic locations like Bali. Whichever category you’re in, if you’re a gadget conscious person, such trip would be incomplete without a waterproof camera to record the excitement.
But before you dig your purse, here are 5 things you should know about waterproof digital cameras:

waterproofing

Picture Credit: VisualPanic

1. They Are Made For Outdoor Use.
Yeah, you say – no big deal.
Actually, it is a big deal if it is your only camera. Because most waterproof cameras are designed for outdoor use, they work great if light is plenty. But if you want to use the same camera for indoor shots of your son’s birthday party or taking the shots of golden sunset by the beach, you’ll find the results disappointing. Except for the Sony waterproof cameras, almost all rugged cameras have this low light weakness.
Cameras released in 2011 perform better indoor than cameras released in the previous years. But their low light performances are certainly not at par with your normal point and shoot cameras yet.

2. Heat Could Ruin It
If you happen to have a high end waterproof camera, you’ll notice that it could handle extreme cold (-10 degrees Celsius). But the label extreme temperature stated on the products’ brochures could be a little misleading. While your rugged waterproof camera could handle extreme cold, they will not be able to tolerate extreme heat.
Because of this, leaving your camera directly on the sand during a hot summer day is strictly a no, no affair. You could easily ruin the inner parts of your camera because sand temperature goes up quickly during the day.

3. Follow the Rated Depth
Most manufacturers test their waterproof camera’s tolerable water temperature in an ideal environment. This means the camera is not moving and water pressure is static.
But underwater, you are moving along the object you’re trying to shoot. Because of this, water pressure varies and it gets higher as you go deeper. As water push more and more into your camera, some will simply break.
So, remember your rated depth and don’t even think of going beyond it.

4. They Sink
Have you ever wondered why many waterproof cameras are housed in colorful and bright casings? One of the reasons is because the cameras will sink if dropped underwater. If the color is as bland as your normal cameras, there’s no way you’ll find them should you lose one underwater.
The fact that they sink is good because you do not need to get sinkers to shoot underwater. But it is bad if you dropped one in the ocean while kayaking.
To solve this problem, just get a floating strap.

5. Battery Life is Lower Than Expected
If you check the CIPA’s website (this is an independent body that tests cameras), you’ll notice that the test to determine the number of pictures you could shoot using your waterproof camera is done in a controlled environment where the temperature is 32 to 35 degrees.
When underwater, the temperature is normally lower than that. Because cold temperature reduces the effectiveness of your battery, you won’t get the maximum number of shots as stated by your manufacturer. Because of this, make sure you load a fully charged battery in your camera and carry a backup battery if you plan to shoot lots of pictures during your snorkeling trip.
There you are — the 5 things you should know about a waterproof camera. They are fun to use and will take you to more places and more shooting conditions than a normal camera. Like many people, you will probably spend more time with a rugged, waterproof camera than your powerful DSLR because it is so tough and versatile. But before you get used to its strength, it is handy to know its weaknesses.
Enjoy your camera and enjoy your summer!

Author Bio:
Iskandar writes for the Waterproof-Camera.org website. He is a father of two, an avid outdoor guy and a toy shop owner.

Problem With ComLuv Plugin ?

It’s a good strategy to show commentators latest blog post at the end of his/her comment. This would drive more people to comment on your blog regularly. With this great idea came a WordPress plugin called ComLuv plugin.

The Problem
Some people are experiencing a problem, where the plugin reports that there are no latest posts to retrieve 🙁
It’s heart breaking to receive such message when you blogged all day night and have published articles every day without fail!

Does this screenshot seem familiar to you? It will not be any more, read on..

Research Phase!
After using all online tools to check the blog’s feed health, blog’s header coding for proper feed address etc, found a solution So I’m here sharing this small tip, hoping to save you some time.

Root Cause of the Problem
It is to be noted that http://technotip.org and http://www.technotip.org will be treated as two different locations by online automated tools. So, you need to redirect the http requests to any one of the above mentioned form. Choose one or the other form, and don’t get obsessed with it. www is considered as a sub-domain. Now the problem is, ComLuv plugin may be looking at any one of the above mentioned form. If your blog URL is in the other form, then it obviously tells that “there are no latest posts on your blog” or “No last blog posts to show”.

The Solution
1. You can goto your hosting company and tell them to force redirect the http request to any one of the above mentioned form.

OR

2. You can simply start using the way which works with ComLuv plugin! i.e., if you use http://www.technotip.org while commenting and ComLuv didn’t show your latest post. Then change the URL to http://technotip.org and in most cases the plugin starts working.

If this worked, then congrats. Bookmark this post and share it with your Twitter and Facebook friends 🙂

Getting CRC Error While Extracting Files?

Have you ever experienced the pain and frustration because you spent literally days to download some software, songs or a documentary movie and to your disappointment got a lot of CRC errors while extracting?

Well I am not sure about what’s the cause for CRC Errors, but there is a solution which works most of the times. You better give it a try before trying to re-download the beast and get the same CRC Errors!

Possible Solution
If you are using winrar, then right click on the file to be extracted and then select Extract files.. option. Once you select this option, you will be presented with a window with whole lot of options. Most of the times people don’t have time to look at all these optional options, so they hit Ok. This process is fast and fine if your files don’t have CRC Errors.

If you do have CRC Errors, then, as shown in below image; check the Keep Broken Files option and then hit Ok. Now don’t be surprised when you get the same errors which you got previously. Be patient and look at the extracted files. Most of the times it shows the errors but it successfully extracts all the files.

Now the trick is: if its some sort of video files, then it may not play in your regular player. Some players might strip the audio because of small errors in the extracted file. With out breaking your heart, just play these files in different media players and you will get the video and audio in one or the other media player. Try VLC player, Media Player Classic or there are many other commercial media players which have the capacity for error detection and correction(if its minor).

Same technique works with WinZip software. In the options select Keep Broken Files and then extract.

This simple process will save hours and hours of your precious time and bandwidth. There are some rar or zip file repair software, but will talk about it in another blog post. For now, keep this simple technique in mind and save yourself from repeated downloads.

Tip: In winrar, if you are extracting files which has a long file name, it starts giving errors. To solve this problem, you can simply rename the .rar file and give some short name before trying to extract it or use 7zip software. 7zip is open source and is highly efficient.

Is your a/c used to SPAM Twitter?

Have you ever noticed a Tweet from your Twitter account, which you did not tweet!

When people come across such situation they straight away think that their account has been hacked. But its not the case always.

There are many services built around Twitter and most of them use Twitter API for log in or authentication purpose. While using such services, be careful while you share your Twitter ID and Password. Read the policy properly. Recently I saw a service which required my Twitter ID and Password, to let me use their service. With curiosity I read their policy page. There they had clearly mentioned that, they will periodically use our Twitter account to Tweet about their service, for promotional purpose!

After reading this policy, I started searching for the policy page of “Instantly Increase your Twitter Followers” kind of services. And found that many of them had the same policy. After reading this policy, I started noticing those automated, promotional tweets from some peoples or tweeples account. Most of them never know that their Twitter account is being used by others.

If the service you are using is intentionally evil, then they will not let you remove yourself from that service. In such case, use your Twitter account settings > Connections tab page to disallow any of these services from using your account. And change your password, for more security.

The above image is just an example and it doesn’t showcase any fraud or scam companies that are trying to misuse your Twitter a/c.
Of course, not all services that use Twitter API for authentication are bad. Most of these services respect users privacy, but some services are misusing this facility. So do not hesitate to kick them off, from accessing your account.

Even worst cases, have you shared your Twitter username and password with any service, which do not use Twitter API for authentication? If yes, then first change your password without fail and never give your username and password again.

Twitter allows only trusted parties to use their API, but still no system is 100% perfect, so no exception to Twitter.

Simple tweak, to maximize the chances of getting Re-Tweet

This is a small tip, but worth a separate post! So here is the small tip for this Sunday, hope you find it useful.

Always use less characters in the tweet that you want people to re-tweet. Do not expect people to rephrase the sentence and tweet it for you. If you are using a long URL in your tweet, then it will get shortened and the number of characters will get reduced automatically. But when you are tweeting the shortened URL or when you are tweeting only the plain text, always make sure that you use less words, interesting and conveying words. If you cover the whole 140 characters then how will your followers or others re-tweet your tweet? [ Here I am talking about only those tweets, to which you expect or ask a Re-Tweet ]

Recently Darren Rowse released his e-book and offered it for 25% less price, for some time. And announced it on twitter. He had used almost all the 140 characters. I found that the offer was very valuable, so wanted to re-tweet it, only to find that I was exceeding the word limit!

I could have shortened it myself, but still wanted to inform Darren that, his other followers might be willing to re-tweet it and that he should rephrase it with less number of words. Darren immediately rectified it and sent another tweet, with less and effective words. This also reminds me of “The Power of Less” ( Choosing only the essential ). Removing the unwanted things or less useful thing and using only the most wanted things.

After seeing Darren indirectly agreeing to the fact that “Tweets which are originally less than 140 characters tend to receive more re-tweets”, I started experimenting with it. We know that it’s a mere common sense, but twitter is a new phenomenon and we need to experiment before coming to any conclusion. (Experiment atleast before publishing the post on the blog 🙂 )

So I started asking for re-tweets once in a week or once in two week. I use to phrase the tweet with full 140 characters and would receive re-tweets only by friends with whom I chat most of the time in twitter. They never mind taking the pain of re-phrasing the sentence for me and retweeting it. But when I asked for the re-tweet on some other days, which had 100 or less characters, many people re-tweeted it. I had never seen those guys on twitter till then. I started following them after getting those re-tweet!

Remember, it may not make much of a difference for people with less number of followers, but for people with lot of followers, following this one simple technique will drastically increase the number of re-tweets.

Some other things to keep in mind are:
1. You need to give before you ask: Retweet interesting things of others, before asking for a re-tweet. If you give before asking, people will be glad to help you.
2. Ask for retweet only when you have really good piece of thing to share. Because many people wouldn’t like to recommend anything which they think will not bring value to their followers as well as to their recommendation.
3. And remember, twitter is not just about sharing links and marketing. Ofcourse it’s a very good marketing tool. But use it wisely. Provide great value to all your followers. Do not just try to sell them some thing. If you do so, one day you will end up with no followers (or just some boots following you), who will not provide value to your links or anything that you tweet.
Be genuine, be real, help people, involve in the discussion. Tweet the links or retweet only when you find the links interesting or when you think that it might interest your followers.

If you have any other small or big tips, that you have observed or experimented with twitter, then please share it with all of us..

You can follow me @technotip

CSS(style.css) not loading in FireFox – Try this

If you are using FireFox, some times you may find that some of the websites does not seem to be using any style sheet(CSS) or the styling seem to be dropping!, while it was looking good when you previously visited.
The possible reason may be, your browser already has cached the style sheet and loads the same cached css, when you try to access the same website each time. And if the cached style sheet classes gets altered then it won’t be working in normal way and hence the dropping and cluttered look of the website(in your browser).
But the same website seem to be working perfectly when you access it using some other browser. And all your twitter followers also say that the .css is loading perfectly at their end.

Then its almost clear that the problem is from your end. Some people prefer not to delete cache, history and cookies from their browser, for various reasons.
In such a case, open the website which is looking cluttered and make use of these keys [Shift+R] or Shift + your browsers refresh button. This will reload all the elements of the website and will discard all the previously cached files in your local computer.
Remember, with this method you need to visit each website(which is not showing properly at your end – .css problem) and then press the shift+refresh button individually.

You can use ctrl + F5 to clear even the browser cache.

If you are ready to delete all the cache, history and cookies then you can simply goto Tools menu –> Options –> Privacy –> click on clear now button, now select cache and then hit on clear Private Data now button. This should solve the problem.
Other things to try, if the above tips doesn’t work.
1. Try to reinstall the browser software.
2. Upgrade the software.
3. Check for any other 3rd party plugin’s which may be conflicting with the .css file.
4. See the browser settings and set it to default settings, when nothing else works.
5. At last, if nothing works, report it to the FireFox team.

And make sure, you also comment below this article 🙂