Categories
Tips

How To Use Keyboard Numpad to Control Mouse

I recently came to know of about this. Well, I had to because when I was in college. I hate using the touch-pad of my laptop. So I use the numpad instead to control my mouse pointer rather than a mouse or the touch-pad.

Follow the given steps to activate the Keyboard Mouse:

To edit this feature, first you should be logged in your Windows account with administrative rights.

To activate this feature, Press Alt+Shift+NumLock keys. Then you will receive a small MouseKey box.

To keep MouseKeys on, click on Ok button.

Click on Settings button, if you want to adjust the mouse cursor settings.

Here a new dialog box will appear with the title Settings for MouseKeys, now you can manage all mouse settings for example mouse cursor speed, acceleration and some other features.

Now using Numeric keypad, you can move your mouse pointer.

The Controls are :

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  • 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8 and 9 keys are used to move the mouse cursor into 8-different directions.
  • Key 5 is used as mouse click button.
  • Insert[zero] key used to hold down mouse button.
  • + Sign used to double click on any object.
  • Delete button used to release the mouse.

Click on NumLock button to disable this keyboard mouse feature.

In Fact when the Keyboard Mouse is On, an icon will show in the taskbar in right corner near system clock.

Advantage :

  • It is a great alternative to your actual mouse or your laptop touch-pad.
  • It works better & faster than your laptop’s touch-pad.
  • Since 8 keys can control its movement, the mouse pointer gets high precision.
  • If you are a laptop user, you don’t have to carry a mouse with you.
  • Now, you don’t have to worry in case your mouse or touch-pad gets damaged.

Disadvantage :

  • This feature can’t be used inside fullscreen PC Games.
  • Most laptops (unlike mine) don’t have separate numeric keypad.
  • Its not known by many, so most people will laugh at you if you tell them that you control you mouse with your keyboard.(trust me, they do laugh at the first time).
Categories
News

Orkut Improved Upcoming Birthday Reminder

Just noticed on my Orkut homepage, upcoming birthday reminder feature of Orkut received a facelift too. Yesterday we posted about Orkut’s new email notification in action.

They anticipated one really good thing time, and that is, if its your friends birthday today you would like to scrap them to convey your wishes. So to make it easy, on upcoming birthday page, for your friends who have birthday today, Orkut added direct link to their scrapbook with title “leave a scrap”. Also one step ahead, date itself get replaced by text “Today”. This is really like great for me as I always have trouble remembering current dates.

There is still room for two small things:

  1. Clicking on “leave a scrap” opens that person’s scrapbook. It would have been better if they just put inline scrap box. One we use in our scrapbook to reply to scraps sent by other.
  2. Also like “Today”, they could also highlight birthdays coming “Tomorrow”. As one would like to plan in advance if the person is special. Again to differentiate them, “Today” can be shown in bold while “Tomorrow” can be shown in normal font.

Well above are very small things, considering the overall improvement. So this time, I think Orkut team deserves 10/10. 🙂

Categories
News

New Look For Orkut Email Notifications is Here

As posted by InsideOrkut and re-posted by official Orkut blog, new look for email notifications are here.

Well it looks pretty without any doubt, but it would have been better if Orkut team have spent energy making Orkut itself better.

On the other hand, if they really wanted to improve email notifications, they could do it better by adding more information in notifications like:

  • In scrap notification, actual content of scrap could be sent
  • Same thing can be done for testimonials
  • If somebody post a comment on a pic, that comment itself could be conveyed in email.
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One reason, many social networking do not send actual information in notifications is, it will decreases total number of pageviews for their website.

Its strange to see a service like Orkut, which is run by Google, avoiding this for traffic ranking when it will significantly improve user experience. Also it will slightly decrease load on Orkut server, which means more donuts for Orkut users who really spend lots of time on it.

If you have any second thought on this, please let us know. 🙂

Categories
Reviews

GreaseMetal: GreaseMonkey for Google Chrome

Despite a lot of buzz about Google Chrome, one thing which is preventing many Firefox users from making a switch is, no support for third-party addons/plugins in Google Chrome.

If all you want is one firefox plugin, GreaseMonkey, then there is a software called GreaseMetal out there, which can for time being make most userscripts developed for GreaseMonkey work in Google Chrome.

GreaseMonkey is small exe file. Just download it and install it. If your are installing it from Google Chrome itself, then it will ask you to restart your browser.

Once installed, it will create a directory named userjs in your My Document folder, as highlighted below.

All you need to do now, copy all userscripts you want to use in Google Chrome to userjs folder.

Please note that some GreaseMonkey scripts may not work in Google Chrome even after using above hack. Notably scripts which are using GreaseMonkey API functions.

It would have been better if Kazuho, GreaseMetal’s developer, provided option to use Firefox’s userscripts folder.

Google already hinted that future versions of Google Chrome will have support for addons, so it you are eager to make a switch, GreaseMetal is here to help!

Link: GreaseMetal (via OrkutPlus)

Related: Google Chrome – Features and alternative Firefox Plugins

Categories
News

New Orkut bug asks to create new account!

Have you been asked to create a new account, whenever you try to log into Orkut?

And you are like what the hell I have an account in orkut, my friends can see my profile. But I can’t log-in WHATS GOING ON!!!

Don’t worry guys you are not the only one who is facing this issue, there are many other Orkut user’s who are facing the same issue. This is a new bug in Orkut and is confirmed by folks at official Orkut Help center.

The only things it does: Asks you to create a new account, even if you have an existing Orkut account! Strange thing is, this bug exactly force you to violate Orkut ToS, which prohibits creating multiple accounts on Orkut. Its different story that Orkut Buyukkokten, creator of Orkut, himself have multiple profiles on Orkut! 😉

But the good news is:
This issue has been taken up for fix by the Orkut team and lets hope for solution soon. They have solved most of multiple profile issues.

(Source: orkut help)

Comments are closed on this post! Try out our Support Forums.

Categories
Reviews

Orkut Theme Generator

One of most frequently asked question by Orkut users to me, is how to generate/create own custom orkut theme. By custom theme, they do not mean anything serious but just want to put their favorite actress’ wallpaper as background on orkut!

Thanks to Gaurav Dua, now any person can create such theme for orkut without any technical knowledge. Just head over to Orkut theme generator page and paste link to your favorite online pic. I linked to my favorite Devils workshop wallpaper created by Johnson. Next select a theme name and hit “Create Theme” button.

On next screen you will see link to your ready and hosted orkut theme.

This is basically a Greasemonkey script so you will need Firefox as well Greasemonkey extension to use this theme. Below is preview of Devils Workshop theme.

Please note one thing that theme created like this can be seen only by you. These are unofficial themes and can not be seen by your friends. If you want to “show” you style to your friends, you have to limit your choice to official Orkut themes only.

Link: Orkut Theme Generator

Categories
Tips

Orkut AutoScrap Reply Tool aka Vacation Responder

Gaurav Dua launched a new tool for Orkut users which allows you to send automatic replies to scraps. This can be used on lines of vacation responder feature found in popular mail services.

How it Works?

  • First signup for AutoScrap Reply. (Its free)
  • At the time of signing up, you need to give your orkut login information and also write scrap text once. Reply scrap text can be anything. As an example you can write, “Hey I am out on vacation, will revert back to you on Monday”.
  • Next you will get a code which you need to embed in your scrapbook.
  • Now, whenever anyone send you a scrap, they will get set reply message automatically.
  • Next you can  and his scrap is either kept or deleted from your scrapbook depending on the option you choose at the time of singing up.

You can change settings/scrap deletion option from control panel you will get at Orkut Plus. Your received scraps are also stored in your scraps page there.

This is really good, easy to use service for Orkut users who are not yet addicted to Orkut.

Link: Signup for AutoScrap Reply

Related: Orkutfeeds – Get RSS Feed for Scraps, Communities and  Topics on Orkut

Categories
Tips

Saving Photos from Any Orkut Album

You must have noticed that Orkut disabled Right-Clicking on photos in others albums recently. I guess their motive was to disallow people from saving personal photos from others albums. I feel what they have done now is quite unnecessary, considering the fact that Orkut is already giving every user the option of locking albums and restricting the access to a particular set of friends only.
There will be a lot more people who will upload photos of parties and get together on their Orkut Albums and ask their friends to take a copy from there. But now that they have disabled Right-Clicking, let’s check out what are the other possible ways to save photos from albums:
1)The first method any Internet User will think of is taking screenshots and cropping using simple software like IrfanView. It’s a convenient method if you want to save only a couple of photos.
2)But, if you want to save the photos from an entire album, it’s becomes a tedious job to take screenshots and crop it every single time. The best alternative is to:

  • Click on the Photo.
  • Drag the Photo to the URL of your browser and Drop.
  • Bingo! The link location is displayed and the photo is displayed in full length in the body which Right-Click Enabled!
  • Now, you can Right-Click and click Save Image As” to save it to your drive.

(click on following image to enlarge it)

Our author Sauravjit Singh listed few more ways to save display picture of any orkut profile. All techniques listed in his article also apply here.
Firefox user can also try Background Image Saver Firefox Addon for one-click direct links to all such images.

[Editor’s Note: Praveen Kumar blogs at Praveen’s Magic Quill. This is his first guest post on Devils Workshop. If you like to write for Devils Workshop, please read this. We have transaprent revenue sharing program.]

Categories
News

Orkuts New Event Feature. Google Calendar Coming to Orkut?

Just noticed half-baked events feature on Orkut in left sidebar as highlighted in screenshot below.

Technically this feature is completely useless as of now. I tried adding events to it but failed to find option to do that in the first place. It looks like this event feature will act like a To-Do manager application. Whatever Google is upto, lets hope this time we will see some nice integration with Google’s already existing calendar service.

It took forever for Google to poorly integrate Picasa with Orkut. Yes, if you don’t know, then you can insert Picasa images into Orkut scrap. Details are here.

Categories
News

New Orkut Mobile Site for Symbian Smartphones

Few months back in April, Orkut launched mobile version of their social network at http://m.orkut.com.

Now they have upgraded their mobile site with some nice features like photo uploading, click-to-call, better friend search, etc.

Good thing is, to use this new site you no need to download nay special mobile software or remember new address. Just go to old mobile site at http://m.orkut.com from your Symbian Series 60 (3rd Edition) handsets browser and you will be served with this new feature rich version.

You can check here, which handsets are Symbian Series 60 (3rd Edition).

Hopefully orkut will expand this to other handsets. I think they could do better by creating a java client as it exists for Gmail. That way they could have cover wider user-base.

Enjoy new orkut… 🙂