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Saturday, July 14, 2012

How to prevent Indexing of Archive pages in Google



We all know that Google Panda is hitting all those websites which publish copy content. There are many things which we must take care to prevent our blog from being hit by Panda. We must no index search, labels and index pages from search engine indexing. This is a must have step for those who use blogger platform because archive pages can cause duplicate content issue. Content will be available on the post page as well as on Archive page.


Few days back, i noticed some traffic fall. Then i started finding the reasons for this. Then i saw that problem was archive pages which are still indexed in the search engine and causing duplicate content. 
See Archive page of TricksNDTricks
This was really a bad moment when i saw and realized that change in template lost my last changes. So Archive pages started being indexed. I again did few changes to make sure blog is now Panda and Penguin friendly.


You can stop search engines to index archive pages by using no index robots meta tag for archive page.
To perform this, Follow these steps:

  1. Login to your Blogger Account
  2. Go to dashboard and then select blog.
  3. Now go to Template and then click on Edit HTML.
  4. Now you will be able to edit html code.
  5. Add following code in the <head> section of the code.

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == &quot;archive&quot;'>
<meta content='noindex,noarchive' name='robots'/>
</b:if> 


Now save the template and wait for few days. If you want instant removal of archive pages, you can use webmaster tools to request for removal of archive pages from Google search.

If you are a blogger want few more tips regarding SEO and Wordpress, you can browse my website Webtips.in. This website contains many tips for SEO, Blogging and web design.

How to Surf Web Without Mouse, Open Links By Typing


For proper internet surfing, we need to have mouse in our system. If you think that you can switch between tabs and open a new URL by keyboard, you should remember that to open a link on a page, you must have keyboard. So users need to use a mouse while surfing the web. But there are some users who prefer keyboards. I also think that some works can be done faster with keyboard than mouse.

For those, keyboard power users, there is a nice Google Chrome Extension called Dead Mouse. This nice extension helps users to surf the web without using mouse.

To open a new tab in the browser and switching among tabs you can use browser shortcuts. I am not going to discuss shortcuts here. Refer to my older posts. Next problem is how to click on the links of the pages. Here this extension helps a lot. To open a link of the page, you only need to type anchor text and the first matching tag will start wiggle (See second link in the snapshot). To open the link, press enter. If you want to open the link in the next page, press shift+Enter.


If there are multiple links with matching anchor text, use Tab key to cycle through all matching links. To cycle through links in reverse order press Shift+tab.

To cancel search mode, you only need to press Esc key.

If you are looking for the link on the page, press space to move down the page. You can also hit Backspace to reset a search, in addition to Escape. When there are no more matches, the search is automatically reset so you can start a new one.

This extension is really nice, but it is not going to help you while using Gmail and Twitter as they have their own key board shortcuts. If you do not have mouse, or do not want to use mouse, this extension will help you a lot.


Add Dead Mouse to Google Chrome
Friday, July 13, 2012

How to Disable Close Friends Notifications On Facebook



As you have seen, Facebook has options to create lists of friends. This helps to manage friends and news feed. In friend lists, Facebook has a list called "Close Friends" which comes by default. It is a special kind of list and Facebook gives importance to people added in this list. If you have added someone to Close friend list, you will get notification extra notifications about them. You will be notify when he has updated status, shared something.
Facebook has done this to keep you closer to your close friends. Some people also complaint that friends added in their close friends list are not their close friends and they are added by Facebook randomly. If you also think same, you can simply remove those friend from the list.
Some people thinks that they do not need these kind of special notifications and want to turn off this new feature. For those, I am writing an easy way to turn off close friends notification onn Facebook.

Follow these steps to disable Close Friends Notification

Login to your Facebook account and search for “Friends” in the left side bar. Now click on "Close Friends" list and go to the close friends list. Here, You will see news feeds only from the people added in your Close Friends list.

On this page, find Notification at the top right of the page. Click on this and then select Off.
Now you will not receive extra notification from Special Friends page.

If you do not want to Turn off these special notifications, but want to get only some special updates such as see only new photos, status updates or anything you wish. You can do this from Manage List option. It can be found at the top right of the page.

Click on manage list, and select choose update type. Then deselect all those update types for which you do not want to receive notifications.
You can also easily manage friends in the list. Add or remove friends in the list to personalize your close friends list.
Thursday, July 12, 2012

How to Detect and Prevent Phishing Attack [Safety Tip]




Phishing is a dangerous attack which is used by cyber criminals to steal the login credentials of users. This attack is widely used for Gmail, Facebook, Yahoo and bank account hacking. If we take a look on recent cyber attacks, this has most share in the graph.
Daily thousands of users fall in Phishing attack and loose their account. Although, all popular websites have given easy ways to recover account, still being prepared before is good thing.

What is Phishing?
Phishing is a kind of attack, in which attacker tries to steal login details of innocent users with the help of fake login page. Most of the simple phishing involves duplicate login page of original website. But complicated phishing attacks are hard to identify.

These are few things which you should do to detect and prevent your self from Phishing 
  • This is the most important thing to note that never give your password anywhere except the login page of the website. If any page is asking for the password, you should not enter your password. No service or third party website is allowed to use your password. For Ex: A webpage is claiming to show Facebook profile visitors but reqiores your email and password for this, it is the phishing attack and leave this page now.
  • Always check the URL of login page and be sure you are at the right place. For most of the website, direct type URL in the address bar instead of clicking on links. If the URL is looking strange, then leave the webpage. Some attacker use similar URL  to fool the victims. Ex: they use www.facebo0k.com, www.fatebook.com or www.facebook.co.nr which looks similar but is not original.
  • Never believe on the links text. Sometimes link malicious links shows something else but go to somewhere else. Click on the link given in example and see the website. 
    You will see some other website while you have clicked on hackingtricks.in
  • Never click on links, open or download files in the emails sent from unknown sender. Only click on links in the email from trusted sender.
  • Never buy software or digital goods from unknown website. If you came on a new website with good offers, first of all try to know about the website and see the review on the web. If the website is stranger for everyone, avoid it.
  • If you are paying online, always check the URL before entering your credit card details. If the payment gateway is unknown then leave the website at once. 
  • Use latest antivirus program which also provide internet security. Most of the internet security blocks the websites that have malicious behavior or phishing.
These are some tips which you can follow to prevent your account from phishers. Internet is not secure so you need to take care of your accounts. Your online accounts' hacking can cause a big trouble for you. So try to be safe and follow the security guidelines. 

Chrome Beta Brings Video Calling Without Plugin



Google has announced a new version of Google Chrome beta for desktop. This new version of chromes comes with some important new features. Now Google Chrome has built-in support for webcam and microphone. It also improved cloud based printing and added gamepad support from connected devices.

Now web application can access camera and microphone of users' system with with user request. For this feature, Google Chrome uses getUserMedia API which allows high-quality video and audio communication on the web. Now users will not have to install any third party plugin for webcam features.

Google Chrome blog announced about this feature, "In today’s Chrome Beta release, it’s now possible for you to grant web apps access to your camera and microphone right within the browser, without a plug-in. This is thanks to the getUserMedia API, which is the first big step for WebRTC, a new real-time communications standard that aims to allow high-quality video and audio communication on the web."

Other important feature of this Google Chrome is support for cloud based printing. Now integrated printer will be shown into the print dialog. Users will also be able to save web pages as PDF format directly to their Google Docs account. But they need to be login first.

If we could remember, Google Chrome is not the first web browser with built-in camera support to browser. In mid june, Opera 12 also came with built-in camera support. 

Saturday, July 7, 2012

How To Block Websites in FireFox



I have already discussed many ways to block a website in windows system. It is a nice way to prevent users of your system from accessing some specific website. Most of the times we want to block Facebook, YouTube in our system for other users. But most of the traditional ways are known to all. So blocking website with those computer tricks is not a good way. 

In this post, i am going to describe a new way of blocking website in FireFox. This is a browser specific way and will work best if you have only FireFox in your system. Otherwise User can try on other browser. I know windows system has Internet Explorer by default. But believe me, very few people consider it. I will describe the similar kind of Trick for Google Chrome in my next post. So you will be able to block website in Google Chrome and FireFox both.

To block website in FireFox, you will have to download and install an extension. For this, go to Tools and then Add-ons. Here in Get Add-ons tab, search "blocksite" and see the search results. The first result will be BlockSite add-on. Install it in your FireFox web browser.

Now again go to extensions. Simply click on Tools and then Add-ons. Here go to second tab called Extensions. Here you will see all installed add-ons in your browser. Select, Blocksite extension and click on the option button in front of it.

Here you will see all the options related to it. At right top corner you will see checkbox for Blacklist and Whitelist. If you have selected Whilelist, all the added website will be blocked. If you have selected Whitelist, you will only be able to open website added in the whitelist. Select Blacklist or whitelist according to your wish and click on Add button to add a new website in the list.

If "Enable link removal" is selected, all incoming links on websites coming to blocked website will not be shown as links on web pages.

If you have selected "Enable warning messages," FireFox will show a warning message for blocked website. If you do not want users to know about this, you can deselect this to hide message.
You can also password protect your blocklist. For this, simply add the password. If you lost your password: go to about:config (type about:config in the location bar and press enter) and reset the BlockSite.authenticate entry or clear the BlockSite.password entry.
You can also add this add-on from here


Tell us your experience with this nice add-on. What do you think about this?
Friday, July 6, 2012

How to Disable System Tray On Windows



System Tray is a special feature on Windows System. It can be found at the bottom right corner of the windows. System Tray has few icons of programs which are running in background. Many times, these icons also allow users to change few settings of that program. But very less people use it. If you are one of those persons who want to remove it from system, a simple registry tweak can help you.


This tweak will work on all version of windows including Windows XP, Windows vista and Windows 7. 


Open regedit.exe in your system and follow the following path.
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer
Here create a new 32-bit DWORD value in the right side with the value
Name: NoTrayItemsDisplay
Value: 1


Now restart your system to see the effect.


If you want to get your system try back, you can either remove this registry key or change its value to 0.
Note: By removing System try, you are only hiding system tray. All system try apps will continue run in the background. If you do not need any application running in the system  try, you can disble manually
Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Google To Shut Down iGoogle, Google Video and Some Other Services



Google Has again used its Axe and announced Summer clean up. We have seen that Google has been shutting down many of its products which are outdated now. In this series, Now Google is shutting down iGoogle, Google Video, Google Mini, Symbian search app and Google Talk Chatback.
iGoogle is a lesser known Google Product which is almost invisible on the interent. So it is a right step at right time. iGoogle is a portal which provide a personal home page with most of gadgets. This portal will no longer be available after November 2013. 
“We originally launched iGoogle in 2005 before anyone could fully imagine the ways that today’s Web and mobile apps would put personalized, real-time information at your fingertips,” Google’s Matt Eichner said in a blog post.
Google Video will also be no longer available after August 20. Google video is also not in use and people prefer YouTube for video uploading. Users are advised to download their videos from the account.
Symbian users will also not be available to use Google searc app. They are advised to bookmark Google.com. Other services which Google is shutting down are Google Talk chatback and Google Mini. Google Talk chatback is an embedded chat service like Meebo. I think Google will now focus on Meebo. 
 Google Mini (an Enterprise Search offering) will be substituted by other Google products like Google Search Appliance, Google Site Search and Google Commerce Search.
“Closing products always involves tough choices, but we do think very hard about each decision and its implications for our users,” Eichner said. 
Monday, July 2, 2012

How to Set Up Google Docs Offline




Now Google is making its Google Drive more than online storage service . Google has added offline feature to its Google Docs service which allow users to edit documents stored in Google Drive while they are not connected to internet. When they will go online, offile changes will be there in the documents. In this post, i will write how to setup and use Google Docs offline.
Before going to write anything, i want to tell you that this feature is only available for Google Chrome. If you ar mozilla or intrnet explorer user, download and install Google Chrome browser.


Now go to Google Drive package and click on gear icon ar the top right corner of the page. 


Here, click on Set up Google Docs offline. Now you will see a popup window for setup process. Click on Enable Offline Docs and then install Drive Web app on Google Chrome.


After installion, go to Google Drive home. It will start synchronizing your documents with offline app. To see which documents are available offline, click the gear icon and choose "view offline Docs." Bookmark this page to access all your documents offline without internet connection.


Few things to Know about this new update:

  • You can not create new documents offline.
  • You can only see Documents and Spreadsheets offline. Presentations, Drawings, and Forms are not available offline.
Let us know how you feel after this update. Comment below your experience.


Sunday, July 1, 2012

Popular tech Blog Labnol.org hacked and deleted


Labnol.org or Digital Inspiritaion is a popular and award winning technology blog. This blog is owned by Most popular Indian blogger Amit Agarwal. Amit was an IIT Graduate and left his job to be the first professional blogger of India. He is also a premium Adsense publisher and his blog gets millions of page views per month.


Early morning when i tried to access his blogs (labnol.org and ctrlq.org) i saw 404 not found error. I was surprised to see that. later i saw a tweet by amit that his blogs have been hacked and deleted by hackers.


As i am a follower of his blogs for years, i know that this is not the first hacking attempt against him. Few months back, his gmail account was also hacked.He also mentioned about his Facebook account hacking in one of his post. This shows that he was always in the target of hackers. But this time hackers have given him a big loss.
I wish to see all his blogs soon..