When ever you are browsing the internet, you come across some forums that only allow you to access information if you sign up to their forum. Even though you just want one document off their database, you will have to register and endure their “weekly” or “daily” updates (read spam). For this irritating problem, there is one simple solution, Disposable Email or Temporary Email address.

How does it work?

Its easy, you enter your email ID and choose the time for which you require this service (say 1 hour). Now you give the secondary generated email ID to which ever site you are trying to register. All the mails coming to that address will be re-directed to your original email ID. That much time will be enough for email verification and then after 1 hour, the generated email ID will we gone thereby protecting you from any further onslaught of emails. The chatter on web suggests that this is a legit site which will not sell your ID to spammers, also there is not much info to sell anyway (considering people sign up to unknown forums all the time)

There are tons of sites which will provide this service. Spambox is one such service where you will not need to register to get the service. Also, it has a Mozilla Firefox addon that is highly convenient and easy to use. And of course, it is free of charge. I mean, thats what our ultimate aim is on this blog to make sure the readers get the good stuff for free . There are many other such services on the web that you guys can try out. There is GuerrillaMail which is very widely used across the world. Then there is Mail expire which will do the same thing as the other two.

Then there is Mailinator which is very different and might be attractive to many. Here you dont have to disclose anything, not even your mail ID. All you need to do is just think on a unique mail ID (say cognoscis) and when any forum asks for your email for verification just type “cognoscis@mailinator.com”. To check your mails, just go to Mailinator and type in “cognoscis@mailinator.com” in the left hand side field saying “Check your inbox” and press ok. You will be directed to your inbox where your mails can be read. The drawback of this is that anyone can read your mails. Hence, use it ONLY for email verifications and not in places where your personal info is available.

You can google for many other such sites. Spams cannot be cut out 100 %. All we can do is keep them at bay by using such techniques and being careful.

Note : Suggestions are welcome and please report broken links

HOW MANY times it has happened that you have listened to a song at a party, store or on radio which really caught your ears but you don’t know what is it’s name? This can be a real problem for you to get that song to put it in your PC, iPod, mobile or something.

I have faced a similar problem quite a many times. Sometimes, less popular songs are named as unreleased versions of super hit artists by people to promote their website. For ex. The accordingly “unreleased” song “Pool of Death-Linkin Park” is actually “Lie to Me” by a young artist named Jonny Lang. So there are 2 sites that I know of to find the name of the song.

1. Lyric Rat- Type your lyrics you know of the song here and find the name of the song. There are 2 problems associated. First is that you have to put the lyrics of the chorus of the song or it will tell you a new song’s name altogether. Second, sometimes the name of the song told by lyric rat is different and the preview is of a different sponsored song. So be careful. Lyric Rat is also functional on twitter through tweets.

2. Midomi- Search for music by singing or humming. Based on voice recognition, this can be really helpful. You can also browse the site for songs and videos. Midomi also has an app. for iPhone.

Do you know any other such sites which are really great? Be sure to tell us.

Are you looking for a particular file on the net? Try Find That File. Now this is an online search engine where you can find all types of files like Audio, Video, Bittorrent, Compressed, Documents, Fonts, Installable Software (Linux, Mac, Windows) and System Components.

All you have to do is just type in the keyword of the file you are looking for. Just like normal search engines. There is option for advanced search and browsing recent files too. This is a very good website. It’s advanced search is pretty convenient too. It is really useful. Be sure to try it. Because I am going to use this now only to find files.

P.S.- There’s a Firefox add-on available too.

Do you have a cool email you want to share with everyone on your Facebook or Twitter or on your blog/website? Moomeo is there to help.

All you have to do it forward the email you want to share to post@moomeo.com and soon you’ll get a reply from Moomeo with the link of your email to share on Facebook, Twitter or somewhere else.

I have a great joke sent by a friend which i wanted to share with everyone (including you). So I forwarded it to post@moomeo.com and within a minute I had the link from Moomeo.

Here is a mail preview on Moomeo. See it below (And click on the pic below and read the full joke too. It’s great )

I saw an environmental website which tells you about the amount of cellphone radiation you’re exposed to. Excess of exposure to such radiation can result in brain and salivary gland tumor. Now I’d heard of this but it IS serious. So this site covers more than 1000 cell phones and gives safety tips and guidance to buy your next cell phone. I checked radiations of my N73 and wasn’t happy.

It gives 8 safety tips to curb the radiation you’re exposed to. For eg. Use headset to talk over the phone. Don’t use phone in low signal, opt for texting rather than calling, etc.

So have a safe talk everyone.

Google is one of the best search engines that keeps surprising us constantly with all its new features. The most recent one is of course the near realtime search that one can perform using Google. Evenn though its not completely out there yet, it can be tried out by just adding a letter to modify the time parameter that you give. All you need to do first is go to google search and type in your query. Then on the left side (circled in red below) is a “show options” button, click it.

Click to enlarge

Once you click it, you will get a set of options on the left hand side of your browser. There, click on the one that says “Past 24 hours“. After you do this, the URL will look someting like this

“http://www.google.co.in/#q=google&hl=en&sa=G&output=search&tbs=qdr:d&tbo=1&fp=8ae7ca738c1cb608”

click to enlarge

Now, instead of the “qdr:d” in the URL, you can give any other time parameter you want. They go like this,

qdr:y for past year

qdr:m for past month

qdr:w for past week

qdr:d for past day (24 hours)

qdr:n for past minute

qdr:s for past second

So, change the time parameter and hit enter and you will get the results accordingly. Below are two results for minute and second

Past minute (click to enlarge)

Past second (click to enlarge)

See what you can make of this new feature

Do you have picture which you want to fix but you don’t know how? If you have Picasa, you can do it quite easily. You can get it on Picasa.com. So here is a REALLY BAD picture of me. Like VERY BAD. Why did I even keep it for so long? But I am glad now that I did. I opened it in Picasa, and clicked on “Edit in Picasa”.

You can see there are options like auto correct, auto colour, I’m feeling Lucky, which DO work for many pictures but I mentioned that this one is really bad and nothing worked on this. So I cliked on the tuning tab.

Here I see 4 options. Fill Light, Highlights, Shadows, and Color Tmperature. Now I “Filled Light” in my photo. Too much of anything is bad, so don’t overdo it. I filled light a little less than the half mark. Similarly, I adjusted all the four. “Fill Light” and “Color temperature” are the most useful over here. Work to get perfect combination of all four. And the result would be extraordinary. Finally, I cropped it, and it’s now ready to go to my Facebook account .

You can also use effects like Sepia, Black and White, etc. by clicking on the effects tab.  I think it went quite well. Here’s another one I fixed.

Login2.me is a great web service where you can get login ID and passwords for accounts on sites you want to try or use only once and hence, don’t want to subscribe on. Just type in the URL of the site you want to log into and if it has any registered accounts for that site, it will show you.

It is FREE. There are no limits to the number of accounts you can get (if they are available, that is). There is a drag and drop bookmark which you can click when there’s a site which needs to be logged into. It includes nearly all famous sites like facebook.com, eminem.com, mobile9.com etc. and even those which do not require a login .

Yeah, that’s quite a problem. You get loads of fake accounts and accounts for fake websites and websites which do not require a login.  But you can report the non-working ones and get another. I have tried accounts for rapidHARE.com and blah.com and guess what? MULTIPLE results showed up. But don’t worry, there are loads of working accounts too.

1. Go to Start Menu
2. Click on RUN
3. Type “notepad”
4. Press enter.
5. Notepad will appear.
6. Copy and Paste the code given below. Replace the highlighted “TYPE YOUR PASSWORD HERE” With your Password (like: monkeyhead)
7. Save as “locker.bat” (without quotes)
8. Close the notepad and run the file. Type the password, A folder will appear. Store anything you want. Open locker.bat AGAIN and type “y” (without quotes)
9. VOILA! Folder Disappears.
10. Below is the code.

—- START OF CODE—-

cls

@ECHO OFF
title Folder Locker
if EXIST “Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}” goto UNLOCK
if NOT EXIST Locker goto MDLOCKER
:CONFIRM
echo Are you sure u want to Lock the folder(Y/N)
set/p “cho=>”
if %cho%==Y goto LOCK
if %cho%==y goto LOCK
if %cho%==n goto END
if %cho%==N goto END
echo Invalid choice.
goto CONFIRM
:LOCK
ren Locker “Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}”
attrib +h +s “Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}”
echo Folder locked
goto End
:UNLOCK
echo Enter password to Unlock folder
set/p “pass=>”
if NOT %pass%==type your password here goto FAIL
attrib -h -s “Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}”
ren “Control Panel.{21EC2020-3AEA-1069-A2DD-08002B30309D}” Locker
echo Folder Unlocked successfully
goto End
:FAIL
echo Invalid password
goto end
:MDLOCKER
md Locker
echo Locker created successfully
goto End
:End

—-END OF CODE—-

FAQ

Q1. What to do if someone deletes my .bat file?

Ans. Fortunately, I found a solution for it. Make another .bat file like this using this code. Run that file and the folder will again appear with all your files intact.

Q2. What to do if I FORGET my password?

Ans. Once again i found a soln. Delete the old .bat file. Make new file with a new password. Run that. Your folder will appear again with your files intact. AND, for this reason alone, you should choose your “locked folder” destination wisely. Because if your younger brother happens to make a locked folder by same procedure at the same destination, your files are no longer safe.

TIP: Delete your .bat file after locking your folder again. This way, the person from which you want to hide the files will not see the locker.bat. And he will have no reason to suspect. It will just like a locked invisible folder. Make a .bat file using the code above evrytime you want to access your files. Lengthy procedure, but SAFE.

If you have any problems understanding this folder lock’s working, email me at abhijit@delhirocks.com.

You can create a completely invisible folder (not a hidden folder). COMPLETELY INVISIBLE. So invisible that if you don’t know where it is, you will never be able to find it (If you don’t make the mistake of putting it between two folders).

Follow these steps:

Go onto your desktop

Right click->Create a new folder->Rename it as:

ALT + 0160 (i.e. pressing the ALT key type 0160 from your NUMBER PAD)

The name of folder NOW would seem a space. Now press enter & then right click-> Properties->customize->change icon->next look for a blank icon and select it. Look Carefully.

DONE!!! You have successfully created an invisible folder. No one can find it (because it is not hidden) if they don’t know exactly where it is.

Note: Don’t use this to hide sensitive information. I found some hitches in it. If somebody arranges icons by name on your PC, people will see emptiness at the first slot. If you are using thumbnails view, they will see a grey empty box where the folder is. And if you refresh the location, you see the folder flashing for a few miliseconds. ONLY USE THIS FOR FUN.