Skype Adds new emoticons & Skype - Outlook Integration

 

Skype is getting more fun to use. They still have their boring old user interface in blue, but they are adding more new emoticons just for the fun of it. First they added the characters of the Pixar movie 'Inside Out' when the movie came out.

But now they have gone ahead and added a tonne of Indian themed emoticons along with Halloween charachters.

There's the dancing punjabi  bangara, 80's style disco dancer, and even chicken tandoori and chai !  They don't convey any emotions, just for fun.

Oh, did you know that skype can integrate to your outlook connection ? Just add your official email address to your skype profile, and skype will start showing you all the profiles of your official contacts.

So you will start seeing green squares next to your outlook contacts, showing their availability on skype !

How to get Windows 7 Weather Gadget to work again

 

The weather here in Bangalore, India is acting funny again. Rain destroyed the city for the last three days, and just when the met department predicted more rain for two more weeks, it stopped raining. It is now bright and sunny (and dusty).  You have to depend on Google weather to find out the predictions for the coming days. When Windows 7 shipped, they had this cool new thing called Windows Live, and the sidebar, which had gadgets. And the weather gadget was my favourite, it would just stay there un-intruding your  work but tell you the weather outside. About two years ago, Microsoft killed the weather gadget's service, because they wanted to focus on stupid Windows 8 and 10…and this meant killing the ecosystem of 7. The weather gadget stopped workings, and simply showed the error : "Service not Available".

Here is how you can get it working again.

Step 1. You have to replace the cache file for the weather gadget with an older one. Download this file.

Step 2. On your Windows 7 machine, go to [\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Live\Services\Cache]. Delete/Backup the  Config.xml file present there with the one in the downloaded zip file.

Step 3. Now go to the desktop and drag the Weather gadget back into the desktop

Thats it !

Now the default location will be New York. And changing the location from the gadget wont work. To change the location to your own, you will need these additional steps.

Step 4. Open up your task manager ( Ctrl + Shift + Esc) , and kill the sidebar.exe app.

Step 5. On your Windows 7 machine, go to [AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows Sidebar]. Delete/Backup the Settings.ini file there

Step 6. Open up the Settings.ini file in a text editor and change the code of WeatherLocationCode to the code of the place you want to see.

Step 7. You can get the code from Weather.com. Just to there and search for the place, and take the code from the generated URL.

For instance, the code for Bangalore is INXX0012.

Step 8. Save the Settings.ini file.

Step 9. Open task manager again. And go to File -> New Task -> and run sidebar.exe.

Voila !

 

Have fun !

The Mr Robot effect, now every TV show features the Dark Web

 

Mr Robot , the hit 2015 summer hit on US television, brought focus onto hi-technology, hacking, 90s culture, and .. the dark web. The very first episode of Mr Robot had talks about Tor and dark web. Well, the effect of that Pilot episode is now visible across US Tv programming. In the past two weeks, I have counted three episodes from three different TV shows which talk about the dark web now.

The Blacklist: S3E5, the fifth episode talks about an online bounty being placed on Elizabeth Keen on the dark web, and the FBI is not able to bring down the servers due to its anonymity. Reddington has to stage Liz's death to take down the bounty.

Quantico: S1E5, the third episode of Quantico details how Alex does an online interview which is broadcast on the dark web, and again, the FBI cannot bring it down. All they can do it trace it, which takes them 5 minutes.

Blindspot: S1E6, Blindspots 6th episode features  the darkweb, they have made  an app which can track government agents. Again, due to the anonymous nature, the FBI is helpless, and have to burn down the servers to bring down the services.

The Man from Uncle

 

The Man from Uncle is a fun cold war era spy movie. Its a shame it did not get the publicity and recognition it deserves. Armie Hamers hilarious Russian accent is well, hilarious ! I think modern spy thrillers with huge bomb explosions and guns has spoiled audiences.

Good Watch !

Smartphone Generation