How to Enable Windows 7 GodMode

Here’s a neat Windows 7 trick that’s been doing the rounds on the Internet. It enables “GodMode,” a term devised by the Microsoft development team, which provides a single place to access all Windows settings without needing to browse options and folders in the Control Panel.

To use it:

1. Create a new folder.
2. Rename the folder toGodMode.{ED7BA470-8E54-465E-825C-99712043E01C}
   (note that you can change the “GodMode” text, but the following period and code number are essential).
   The folder icon will change — double click it to show the GodMode window

The window shows nearly 50 sections with quick links to configuration options. Strictly speaking, it’s not a God Mode since all the options are available elsewhere. It’s more akin to an “all tasks” list — but you may find it easier than stumbling through Windows numerous screens and panels.

Big Red Warning!

The trick appears to work on both the 32 and 64-bit versions of Windows 7. Vista 32-bit and Windows Server 2008 32-bit should also work. However, it is known to crash 64-bit versions of Vista — and you may need to boot in safe mode or to the command line to delete the folder.

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Write the Indian Rupee Symbol using Common Windows Fonts

The India Rupee symbol is now part of the official Unicode standard but for you to type that new currency sign into your favorite word processor or spreadsheet using a regular keyboard, your existing fonts must be updated to the new standard as well.
There are some font families – like DejaVu fonts - that have been updated to the new Unicode standard and thus include support for the new currency symbol but the problem is that these fonts have limited adoption.
Well the good news is that Microsoft has recently updated all the common fonts the ship with Windows to include support for the new Indian Rupee symbol. That means you can open a document inside Microsoft Word (or notepad), select a popular font family like Arial or Times New Roman, and type the Rupee sign directly.
To get started, you first need to update your existing Windows fonts by installing the kb2496898 hotfix available for both Windows Vista and Windows 7. Once installed, this will update the Arial.ttf, Times.ttf, Tahoma.ttf and some of the other font files on your computer with the latest version.

How to Type the Indian Rupee Symbol using Arial
Launch Microsoft Word, change the document font to Arial or Tahoma, and type 20B9 followed by Alt-x. If the 20b9 string is converted into a Rupee symbol, as in the screenshot above, the update has been successfully applied.

The Microsoft fonts update is available as a free download to anyone who is running a genuine copy of Windows 7 or Vista. However, if you add the Rupee symbol to your document and share it with another colleague who doesn’t have the latest Windows fonts, they are likely to see some junk characters in place of the Rupee sign.
A simple solution to this problem is that you create a PDF file of your Word document with font embedding enabled and that should preserve the character even if the font is missing.

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Half A Billion Blog Posts Later, Google To Give Blogger A Revamp

Google’s blogging service Blogger has been used for over half a billion blog posts (with over half a trillion words in total) to date, writes product manager Chang Kim on the Blogger Buzz blog.
Those blog posts have been read by 400 million readers across the globe, Kim adds. And according to the video below, 75 percent of traffic comes from outside the United States (the service is available in 50 languages).
Now the product is getting an overhaul, the biggest change being a more modern user interface for both the editor and the dashboard (fi-na-lly), built with Google Web Toolkit.
Google says it will be showcasing the new design of the Blogger back-end at SXSW (our coverage of the event), as well as a new content discovery feature that lets users find new content to read based on the topics of the blog they’re visiting.
The new UI is shown extensively in the video below as well, in case you’re not in Austin.
Of note: Google says it will unveil more fresh Blogger features this year – they posit that these are only the ones they’re “allowed to talk about” at this point.
Let’s call a spade a spade: Blogger has been around for a long time, but has unequivocally been losing mindshare to the likes of Tumblr, WordPress, Posterous and even services like Facebook and Twitter for content creation purposes in the past few years.
Its audience is still enormous, though, so it’s nice to see Google hasn’t forgotten its many users around the globe.
We’re looking forward to seeing how the service evolves in the course of this year.
Some of the new snaps i've collected over buzz is 

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New Twitter Stats: 140M Tweets Sent Per Day, 460K Accounts Created Per Day

Twitter is celebrating its fifth birthday and to commemorate the occasion, is revealing a number of stats showing its growth over the past five years.
It took 3 years, 2 months and 1 day from the first Tweet to get to the billionth Tweet. In a given week, users send a billion Tweets. Users are now sending 140 million Tweets, on average, per day, up from 50 million Tweets sent per day, a year ago. The all-time high in terms of Tweets sent per day was 177 million sent on March 11, 2011.
In terms of Tweets per second, the all time high was 6,939 Tweets per second after midnight in Japan on New Year’s Day. This compares to the previous record of 456 Tweets per second when Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009.
Twitter says that 572,000 accounts were created on March 12, 2011, with 460,000 new accounts per day over the last month on average. Mobile users are up 182 percent over the past year. And Twitter currently has 400 employees, up from 8 in January 2008.

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Google Switches to Generic 404 Pages

Google previously was serving pretty useful 404 errors or pages that are displayed when someone types an incorrect URL in the address bar or when the requested page has been removed from Google’s servers.

For instance, in the previous implementation, if someone requested a non-existent page like google.com/email – it will show them links to related sites, like Gmail, instead of serving a dead-end 404 error.

That has however changed recently and Google now serves generic 404 errors that point nowhere. The new design doesn’t even have a search box. Beautiful but less-useful.

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How to Trace your Laptop

To allow law enforcement agencies access a novel method of tracking and recovering lost laptops, leading anti-virus solution provider Quick Heal has launched a service.

All that a laptop owner has to do is register with 'Quick Heal' on its website for the service through Mac-id and it keeps continuous track of where the laptop is.

If the laptop is stolen the tracker service traces it on the basis of Mac-id and IP addresses. This information can then be used by the police to track the laptop down and retrieve it, said the company press release.

The method is aimed at helping police by providing them an interface with the website, said the company managing director and CEO Kailash Katkar.

"This technology from Quick Heal will provide a tool to the society at large and to the police, thus reducing their burden," he said.

Launched as part of corporate social responsibility, the service is free of charge and can be availed by anybody, whether a 'Quick Heal' user or not, he said.

The service, already launched in Indore and Jaipur, would soon be started in other cities. Besides, the company also aims to create a database of stolen laptops for the help of users and potential buyers.

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