Google Chrome: quickly search your history, and other customisations

I'm a Chrome fan, but this is one thing Firefox, and only Firefox (so far), does really well - the FF Awesome Bar is pretty awesome when it comes to searching. When you type something into the address bar, it searches the net, your history, your bookmarks etc, all at once.

Chrome is not so good at this, especially the stuff in your history. I really have to open up the history and get down to some dirty searching sometimes.

Here's a quick way to get around this if you have the same problem.

Right click the Chrome address bar and choose 'Edit Search Engines'. Add a new entry there with the values..

Name: chrome history (or whatever you want to call it)
Keyword: h
URL: chrome://history/#q=%s

Done!

Now all you gotta do is type an 'h' in the address bar, before you type what you're looking for, and Chrome will search your history for you.

A couple of search strings I came across:

If you want to customize your search string to auto-include keywords you always include:
(Example using Google search)

http://www.google.com/search?q=%s&q=yourkeywordgoeshere
You can chain more keywords by adding '&q='

Downloading mioTV Singtel BPL Highlights on your iPhone

If you happen to be subscribed to Singtel mio Stadium on your
mobile phone (a great service for its postpaid customers at $5 a
month) then here's a handy tip for you. This is extremely handy if you
wish to watch the clips again, or in places with low reception (such as the subway) or simply show them to your friends later!

You will need a few things before you get started:

• a jailbroken iPhone
• subscription (and therefore access) to Singtel BPL on mobile
• Safari Download Manager (available on Cydia)
• iFile (available on Cydia)
• VLC (available on iTunes)
  

Navigate to Singtel BPL (on your phone)

Click on a highlight link to download it

Safari Download Manager should give you the following options:


Select Download


The download.do file itself is not a recognisable media file and will
not be playable. As such you will need to rename it appropriately.

With iFile navigate to the correct folder (/var/mobile/Media/Downloads by default) and click on
the arrow next to the file to view its properties.


Delete the .do (JAVA servlet file) extension and add .m4v (MPEG-4 Video File) instead.

Click Done and you're good to go!

You can either view the files with iFile's native player or use VLC!

If you wish to easily access the files from VLC for later viewing
simply cut the file (using iFile) and paste it in

/var/mobile/Applications/VLC/Documents

You might have to turn on Application Names in iFile's settings if you
have trouble finding the VLC folder.

NB: I've not tried this with the Safari Download Plugin but it might
still work.

You just might not notice the monkeys

I almost missed this YouTube error page myself.

.NET 3.5 causing problems in software installations

I've been trying to install ArcGIS 10 on Windows 7 and I kept getting this error. All day long! Frustrating stuff.

Some searching showed that people trying to install iTunes and other applications have also had similar issues.

So what I gathered is, it's a .NET problem. The error message can vary but what you need to look out for is "an error occurred during the installation of assembly..". This article gave me the required clues. The fixes in it are slightly back-dated, so I had to figure something out myself.

For some reason the .NET 3.5 or 3.5 SP1 standalone installer does not run, at all. (I tried running as Administrator etc too). Windows 7 comes with .NET 3.5 which you can remove and re-add (Control Panel > Programs and Features). This seemed to be the only way I could 'reinstall' .NET 3.5, which is required by ArcGIS.

I also installed .NET 4. I'm not sure if this had any effect or not, but after these last two steps, the installations finally completed!

Windows 7 Firewall blocks Windows Update by default?

So this seems to happen on some installations! It didn't happen at home, but it happened on my work PC. Weird.

Here's how to fix it:

Control panel -> Network and Sharing Center. Click "Change adaptor settings" (on the left hand side). Right click "Local area connection" and select "properties"

In the "This connection uses the following items" pane click on "Internet Protocol Version 4 (TCP/IPv4) Don't untick it....just click on the line so it's highlighted Click "Properties"

Check the box "Use the following DNS server addresses" and input:

Preferred DNS server: 4.2.2.1
Alternate DNS server: 4.2.2.2

New Homepage test design by Google is a #Fail

Well in the above screenshot you can see that Google is testing a new homepage design. Personally I prefer the current minimalist fade in homepage. And I am not liking this design very much. Cause not only this new design has way too many words for my liking but also the words are repeated. The words "Privacy" and "Copyright 2010" are repeated twice. I see no reason for those words to be that important to be repeated twice. Whereas I cant find the link to perform "Advanced Search" and the link for "Language Tools".

On another note, I am not sure if anyone else is getting the same view. Feel free to leave a comment if you have anything to say on this new design.

Firefox Apostrophe Find As You Type Search Link Bug Solution

I had a problem with Firefox where every time I typed a ' it would open the search box, even when typing emails! If you have the same problem here's how you fix it.
Firefox Apostrophe Find As You Type Search Link Bug Solution

Upload JPG files to Google Docs

I actually came across this accidentally. I was actually trying to upload 2 PDF files into my Google Docs. But by mistake I chose the JPG version of them to upload. Well, GDocs doesn't allow uploading of JPG files. So technically I should have got an error message saying something along the lines of "File type not supported" (which I did get later when I tried to upload a PNG file).

But instead I got an error message saying something along the lines of "The file size is more than 500KB". Seeing this message I assumed that when you upload a JPG file of size <= 500KB, GDocs would create a new document and add the JPG file as an image in the document file. The mentioned size 500KB caused me to make such an assumption. Another option I hoped for was it would let me store JPG files of size <= 500KB. I really wanted it store the JPG files as I have been wanting this feature for quite some time now especially with all the news/rumors of Google Drive.

So I actually found an image file (a PNG file this time round) of size <= 500KB in my computer and tried uploading to GDocs. As mentioned above the attempt failed with an error message along the lines of "File type not supported".

Hence I decided to hunt my computer for a JPG file of size <= 500KB. After finding one, I tried uploading it. And voilà it worked as I had assumed (Added the JPG file as an image in a new document). Here is the screenshot of uploaded JPG file.

I haven't got the chance to test other image file formats such as BMP, GIF, etc. If any of you do, feel free to post the results in comments.

The Wonky Facebook

Below are two screenshots of the many Facebook error messages I've been getting recently.

I am still trying to comprehend the logic of the error message in the screenshot below. (Images edited to protect identity of certain people).

This one you can't even try to start comprehending!

Watching Singtel MobileTV (mio TV) on your PC

I recently received an SMS from Singtel saying that I would get to watch the Football Frenzy channel (shows UEFA Champions League Matches live) for free until October 31st. Excited, I contacted Singtel's customer service to check if it affected my data usage or if I would get charged unknowingly. Once satisfied, I navigated to Singtel IDEAS on my 3GS and found a few options, including one for Entertainment & TV (mio), which then took me to the various options available including Channel News Asia (free), Bloomberg (free), Channel 8 (free) and Football Frenzy (paid).

Since at this point in time Football Frenzy wasn't ready yet (I suspect it will be in a few days for the Champions League kickoff), I tried out the other channels on my iPhone and realised the stream quality was extremely good with minimal lag.

I then wanted to check if the quality was better with WiFi and got this error message when I tried to reload the page:

This site is only available when you use your iPhone3G with SingTel's unrivalled 3G network. It is not available to SingTel Prepaid customers, when using WiFi or the public internet.

This suggested to me that the website requires 2 things to work:

1. Using Singtel 3G network
2. Using an iPhone

Indeed, tethering my iPhone to my PC and navigating to the website gave me the same error as obviously the second check failed. Indeed, if the website could be tricked into thinking an iPhone was accessing the site, this should (at least in theory) work.

From previous knowledge, most websites make use of a user-agent string to detect what application, OS and version the client accessing the site is using. Indeed, if you ever wondered how a website knew what version of Firefox, IE or Safari you were running, this is most likely the check implemented on it. Due to the evolution of the WWW and IE's dominance, several browsers allowed you to fake the user-agent string of another browser. You could therefore fool the website into thinking you were running IE 7 when in fact you were running Firefox 3, and therefore then receive content originally intended for IE 7 users.

Posted below is a workaround I discovered that works and allows you to then play mio on your computer. Note: QuickTime is required as the streams are .mov format

1. Tether your iPhone to your PC via USB or Bluetooth

2. Use Firefox (or any other browser that allows you to switch user-agents)

3. Download the User Agent Switcher add-on for Firefox (or an equivalent if it exists for your browser). This add-on allows you to easily switch between user-agents and already has a profile for iPhone 3G included, although others can easily be added.

4. Navigate to Singtel IDEAS and click on Entertainment & TV

5. You're now watching mio TV on your PC!

If you want to watch the channel in full screen (as the resolution of the content is for the iPhone), run QuickTime and open the URL that is being displayed on your browser.

I'm not quite sure what sort of check Singtel has for the 3G usage, but if it is simply being on Singtel's 3G network (postpaid), then this MIGHT work even for people with any other phone. I am yet to confirm whether this works or not.