Trivia: Smiley & "Frowny" Emoticons

In its Events That Shaped The Wired World section, Wired magazine credits Scott Fahlman with first using the Smiley :-) & "Frowny" :-( emoticons in electronic messages.On Sept. 19th, 1982, he had proposed on the computer-science department bulletin board at Carnegie Mellon University that...

Read More

HOW TO block images/image ads originating from a specific domain in Firefox 4 & above

Firefox 3.x used to have an option to block pesky images that were not part of the context of page that you were viewing - like image ads. You just had to right click on the image, & select "Block images from {domain serving the image}" to never see any images from that domain again. That context...

Read More

Trends & Reference Tables that every Web Developer should track

A web developer's education is never finished. Here is a list of trends & reference tables that, in my opinion, every web developer should track -HTTP Archive - Trends in web technology, interesting stats, repository of web performance informationBrowser Security Handbook - Key security...

Read More

Find Windows System info with Windows key + Pause/Break shortcut

If you need to find hardware details of your Windows PC, like any of the following -Version including Service Pack usedWindow Experience IndexProcessorRAMSystem type (32-bit or 64-bit OS)Computer name, domain & workgroup settingsWindows Product Id & whether Windows is activated... there is a...

Read More

Interesting USB accessories

I follow the Personal Technology page of "Economic Times" with interest for their India-centric coverage of gadgets & IT topics.This week ET listed 10 useful USB accessories. Among them, although a USB-based Hub & Mug Warmer, Cooler, paper shredder, Vaccum Cleaner have some novelty, they didn't...

Read More

Website to track weather in Indian cities - imd.gov.in

Weather isn't a hot topic in India (as it is in the US) & forecasts aren't taken seriously.Possibly to promote awareness, the Indian Meteorological Department has put out an ad in today's Times of India (with a glaring typo -Meteorological is misspelt as Meteorogical right at the beginning)...

Read More

Compare ASP.NET Hosting Providers

Microsoft's Web Hosting Gallery has a neat tool to let you search for hosting providers based on parameters like type of server (shared, dedicated, virtual server) cost, technologies supported (Frameworks, Databases, Publishing protocols), storage, number of SQL Databases, number of e-mail accounts,...

Read More