Tag: Tips And Tricks

Fix MAPI32.DLL is Corrupt or The Wrong Version In Outlook

Recently one of our readers emailed us that their Outlook installation was having a problem after installation, here is what they had to say:

I purchased MS Outlook 2003 on 12/2/2010 and installed it today 12/3/2010. When I attempted to open it I got the error message that says " Cannot start Microsoft Office Outlook. MAPI32.DLL is corrupt or the wrong version. This could have been caused by installing other messaging sorftware (sic). Please reinstall Outlook." I have tried reinstalling Outlook and I keep getting the same message. Please inform me how to fix this.

If you are facing a similar error, there is a quick fix for this. All you have to do is Open windows explorer and navigate to "C:\Windows\System32" without the quotes and double-click on the "Fixmapi.exe" file. This should fix your error and allow you to use Outlook.

Fix MAPI32 DLL Error Outlook

Alternatively you can press the Windows and R key simultaneously and then type "C:\Windows\System32\fixmapi.exe" without the quotes to fix this issue.

Note: The folder might be hidden by default, so you will have to go click on certain warnings to view the folder. You can also copy paste the path above in your Windows explorer address bar. Make sure to change the drive if it is different.

View Google AdSense Earnings for Different Geo-locations/Countries

is no doubt one of the biggest ad networks which is used by millions of websites. Google AdSense’s reports are real-time and provide a comprehensive view of the impressions and number of clicks a website generates. However, one important thing missing in Google AdSense is geo-location based reporting which will help a webmaster to know how AdSense performs in different countries.

Don’t Miss: Useful Tips and Tricks To Grow Your AdSense Income

In my experience, knowing country wise performance of advertising networks has helped me to replace certain ads in certain countries with higher performing ones, thus helping me increase my revenues. I do that using Google DFP, for which I am writing a guide, you might want to know the benefits of using Google DFP too.

Coming back to the topic, is there a way to find AdSense performance based on geo-location? Yes, there is, using Google Analytics. Before you use this trick, there are two requisites:

  1. You have to use Google Analytics for your site. If you don’t sign up here.
  2. You have to link your Google Analytics and Google AdSense accounts. If you don’t know how, read this help forum topic.

If you fulfill both of these requirements, dive straight into knowing the performance of Google AdSense based on geo-location below. If not, you will have to wait a few days before you can start seeing this data.

Google Analytics Map Overlay

To see how AdSense is performing in any country, head over to your analytics account and view the analytics for the site you want to get this data for. Click on the “Visitors” link in the right hand side and then click on the “Map Overlay” link.

Google Analytics Country Breakup

On the Map Overlay page, scroll down till you see links for the countries and click on the country you want to see the AdSense performance for. Once you do that, you will see a city/region wise breakup for that particular country.

change_google_analytics_country_dimension

In the country view, click on the “None” dimension link and select any of the dimensions from the available list. You can click on any one of them. Once you do that a new report will load based on that dimension.

On this page, you will now see an additional tab which displays the AdSense revenue for that particular geo-location or country to you. This data might be an estimate but it does provide you with a way to check on how AdSense is performing in a particular country, city or region.

Google Analytics Country AdSense Revenue

With this data in hand, you can easily replace Google AdSense units with higher performing ones in those countries. Of course, everything is trial and error so you have to make your own judgments here. However, hopefully this guide should help you target your ads better and maximize your revenues.

How To Verify If An Email Address Exists

There are times when you will receive an email from someone you were not anticipating communications from and then jump out of your seat because you received a good news. However, it could be that someone is playing a prank with you and the email address for that user might not even exist.

Of course there are ways to determine whether an email is fake or not by looking at the email headers, but what if you want to verify whether an email address exists or not? Turns out there is a way to do it, albeit a bit geeky.

Amit Agarwal has posted an interesting post where he details determining whether or not an email address exists using a clever trick with telnet. The trick requires you to connect to an email server using telnet and then pinging to see if that email address exists.

If you are interested in knowing more, go ahead and visit the post by Amit at Digital Inspiration. For a quick how-to check out the embedded video below.

Please note that this may not work always as email servers block such queries so that spammers cannot fish legitimate email addresses from their databases.

How To Turn Off/Disable Ping in iTunes

One of our readers sent in a question where he asked us on instructions to disable Ping in the new iTunes 10. Though turning off Ping is pretty simple, the settings are hidden inside your account settings.

iTunes View Account

To disable ping on iTunes, launch iTunes and then go to the Store menu and Click on the option to "View My account". Enter your username/password if prompted. You will be taken to the settings page.

Turn Off Ping

In the middle of the page you will see an option for Ping. Just click the "Turn Off" button. You will get another prompt which will disable a message, click the Turn Off button on it to disable Ping.

Complete Guide To Using Google DFP: Part I – Advantages

A few months ago, I started using Google’s Double Click for Publishers (DFP), which is an ad serving solution for website owners. Google DFP is a bit overwhelming at first and it took me few days to get around to using it. However, I have now made a successful transition to using Google DFP and serve all the ads using it.

Google DFP Logo

In my experience Google DFP is a bit complicated at start, however, it does have several advantages over traditional way of adding advertisements to your website. In this series, I will talk about the benefits of using Google DFP and also how to effectively use it on your own website with some handy tips and tricks thrown in.

Advantages of Using Google DFP

There are several advantages of using Google DFP over traditional ad insertion. I will list a few here which I have found beneficial to me and might come in handy to you too.

Less Code and Easy to Maintain

Once you start using Google DFP, you will notice that you are dealing with much lesser code while inserting or positioning advertisements. This is one thing I have found beneficial as I am able to insert ads into code with just a single click.

Create Once and Use Forever

Unlike traditional advertisement code, you can create a line item and insert it into your theme. The next time you want to display advertisements from a different network, you don’t need to create new code and that can be handled within the DFP interface itself. This makes it much more easier to experiment with different networks and quickly remove/change them if you are not satisfied with the revenue. I will talk about this in more detail in the future parts of the series.

Geo and Demographic Targeting

One of the best features of DFP is that it allows you to geo-target your ads. Using this feature you can display different ads to different locations to maximize your revenue. Another good feature is demographic targeting which allows you to target people using certain browsers or operating systems.

Demographic targeting can be very useful when you want to say advertise a certain browser; for example ; to users using , or want to pitch to someone using Linux or Mac OS X.

Serve Your Own Ads/Promotions Without Worries

With the help of Google DFP you can serve your own promotions or promote your own content without having to worry about delivery or assets. You can create custom In-house ads on Google DFP and upload images etc. to Google’s servers and directly display them on your website.

In addition to that, you can also serve ads that you have directly sold on your site and provide advertisers with detailed statistics along with tracking clicks and more.

Track and Compare Impressions

Sometimes advertising companies may not show correct impressions. With the help of Google DFP, you will be able to cross-check and verify impression counts displayed by advertising networks against your own inventory.

Target Ads To Advertisers

Google and Double Click have a huge advertiser base. When you use Google DFP, you will be able to target your ad-slots to these advertisers and sell your inventory to them.

Google AdSense Integration

Using Google DFP, you will easily be able to integrate in your ads and maximize your revenue. In the future parts we will talk about how to do this and also create Link units for Google AdSense and serve them using Google DFP.

Rotate Ads and Banners

With the help of Google DFP, you will be able to easily rotate ads and banners without having to worry about logic. I will talk about rotating ads using Google DFP in the next part of the series.

Concluding Part I

As you can see, there are several advantages of using Google DFP over traditional advertising code. In my experience, managing advertisers has become more easier. With the ease with which I can target specific users, I am able to maximize my revenue and almost fill-up the entire inventory.

In the next part of the series, we will take a dive into Google DFP and learn how to create and manage ads using the service. Do feel free to ask questions/doubts if you have any.

How To Enable/Test Instant Previews In Google Search

Earlier today, Google rolled out a new feature for search to complement , called Instant Previews. This new feature allows users to preview search results before they visit the actual page to see if the results are relevant.

Google Instant Preview

However, Instant Previews is not yet available to everyone. If you are waiting to try out this new feature or just curious about it, you can visit http://www.google.com/webhp?esrch=instantpreviews to start using them. Instant previews in Google search can be viewed by clicking on the magnifying glass icon next to the search results.

Learn How To Rotate Text With CSS | CSS Trick

I’d like to share something interesting that I learned some days back. I was going through an article on Learning jQuery and my eyes struck on the date of the post. I was quite impressed the way it was designed and presented. At first, I thought it was an image, but when I viewed the source, I realized that it was done with CSS. I was very eager to learn how it was done and I Googled for this particular trick and found Snook’s article, Text Rotation With CSS. It wasn’t that hard to learn and implement as I had thought of it. I experimented on this trick and learned quite a bit of it. I altered the coding to insert Techie-Buzz logo and here’s the end result:

Demo | Download Source

The Magical Code:

HTML Code:

<div class="logo_box">
     <span class="techie_sample">Techie</span>
     <span class="tblogo_sample"><img src="tb.png" /></span>
     <span class="buzz_sample">Buzz</span>
</div>

CSS Code:

/* Techie-Buzz.com - Text rotation exmaple */
.logo_box
{
float: left;
background-color: #fff;
border: 1px solid #000000;
color: #ffffff;
position: relative;
margin: 0 0 0 20px;
}
.logo_box .techie_sample
{
display: block;
text-align: center;
font-size: 30px;
line-height: 30px;
padding: 2px 0;
background-color: #000;
}
.logo_box .tblogo_sample
{
display: block;
padding: 2px 24px 2px 0;
}
.logo_box .buzz_sample
{
display: block;
color:#000;
writing-mode: tb-rl;
-webkit-transform: rotate(90deg);
-moz-transform: rotate(90deg);
position: absolute;
right: 0;
bottom: 9px;
font-size: 24px;
}
*:first-child+html .logo_box .buzz_sample { right: -28px; } /* IE7 positions element differently to IE6 & 8 */
.logo_box span:nth-child(3)
{
right: -16px;
bottom: 24px;
}

Pretty simple, isn’t it? Download the source code.

P.S. Though this trick is a little old, I thought it would be great sharing it with you. Hope you liked it.

Insert Video From Website Not Available In PowerPoint 2010, Workarounds

is definitely a great improvement from previous versions of Office. One of the features I have liked is the ability to insert videos and audio from websites like YouTube in a presentation (hacks for video insertion in previous office versions).

Insert Video From Website Blurred PowerPoint

However, certain versions of PowerPoint 2010 grey out the option to insert videos and only allow you to insert videos from a file. The problem is that inserting videos from websites is not available in 64-bit versions of Office 2010 or PowerPoint 2010 due to it requiring a 64-bit Adobe Flash installation.

The same feature is available on a 32-bit installation. So if you are using a 64-bit version of Office or PowerPoint 2010 you will be unable to insert videos into your presentation from sites like .

PowerPoint 2010 Insert Video From Web Site 64Bit

Is there a workaround? Yes, there are couple of workarounds. First of all you could grab yourself a 64-bit version of Adobe Flash from Adobe Labs and install it to solve your problem. The 64-bit active-x for Internet Explorer worked for me. However, you must note that the 64-bit version of Adobe Flash is in beta stage and may result in frequent browser crashes, though I haven’t seen any yet.

Another alternative will involve a lot more work than simply using the feature itself. To insert videos in your presentation. You will first have to download the videos to your desktop (resources for downloading videos from internet to your desktop) and then insert it as a file into your presentation.

Hopefully, the Adobe Flash 64-bit player will be available to public in near future, thus solving a problem with inserting web videos in PowerPoint presentations.

Fix “View In iTunes” Link Not Working In Google Chrome For Apple App Store

I have been using primarily for everything these days. However, I have had a peculiar problem with it where I could not load iTunes links in iTunes from the browser. This was causing me lot of headaches since I then had to manually open the links in another browser like or Internet Explorer to download the app or manually copy and paste the name in iTunes or the device itself to download it.

Considering that I download 30-40 apps a week, this was getting to be quite a pain for me, and for several other people too who have been complaining about this since a long time at this Google Chrome bug thread.

If you want to know whose fault this is? Well this is certainly not Google Chrome’s fault but a problem in a browser detection script from Apple. So that aside, how do you fix this? Well, I have quite a few solutions for you here, so you can pick and choose whatever you want.

Solution 1: Apple Browser Detection Fix Chrome Extension

This is the simplest fix that you can use. Just download this called iTunes Detection Fix and store it on your computer. The reason I asked you to download it to your computer is because Chrome will not directly install it. Once you have downloaded the file, either drag it and drop it on a Chrome window and install it or use the File – Open menu to open the file in Chrome.

Hint: Press "Ctrl + O" in Chrome and browse to the file you downloaded to open and install it.

apple_itunes_fix_chrome

Once you have installed the extension, don’t click on the "View in iTunes" button, instead you will see a new option above the app which will ask you to verify whether you have iTunes installed or not. Click on the "I Have iTunes" button and Chrome will prompt you to launch iTunes to open the app.

From next time onwards you will be able to open the app in iTunes by simply clicking on the "View in iTunes" button. If it stops working again, click on the "I Have iTunes" button to launch the app.

Tip: You might want to turn on iTunes Detection Fix extension to work in "incognito mode" so that you will be able to launch apps while you are in incognito mode.

Solution 2 – Changing User Agent for Chrome

If you are not comfortable with the previous solution here is the second one which works too. For this one you will have to change the user agent of Google Chrome to Firefox, Internet Explorer or something else.

To do that download the User-Agent Switch extension for Chrome. Once you have downloaded that, there are two ways in which you can fix the "View in iTunes" link not working.

User Agent Switcher iTunes Fix for Chrome

The first one is temporary and will require you to choose "Mac Safari 4" from the available user agent list whenever you are browsing iTunes. Once you do that refresh the browser and the "View in iTunes" link will work properly and prompt you to open iTunes.

Permanent User Agent for iTunes on Chrome

To make this fix permanent, just click on the "Add permanently" option under the User-Agent Switcher options and the extension will always send "Mac Safari 4" as the user-agent when you are browsing the iTunes web app store.

Tip: You might want to turn on User-Agent Switcher extension to work in "incognito mode" so that you will be able to launch apps while you are in incognito mode.

Solution 3: Use IE Tab Extension

Not satisfied with the above solutions? There is another solution for that.

As I had told you earlier iTunes properly detects the browser and works in both Internet Explorer and Firefox. So a workaround would be to use the IE tab extension and browse the iTunes store using it.

ie_tab_settings_icon

If you want to permanently fix this with the IE tab extension, open it and click on the settings icon as shown above and add http://itunes.apple.com to the Auto URLs section. This will ensure that the iTunes site always opens in IE Tab.

Conclusion

As I told you earlier, the "View in iTunes" link not launching the iTunes application is not a problem with Google Chrome. It is a problem with how Apple detects browsers. users face a similar problem and I will write a separate post detailing how to fix it for Opera. However, one of these solutions will definitely fix your problem with Google Chrome. If it does not, feel free to leave a comment about it and I will try to find another solution for you.

How To Set Image As Wallpaper in Google Chrome

If you have been using , you might come across the lack of an option to set any image as a wallpaper in Chrome. This has been an annoyance for hundreds and thousands of users and as MG from TechCrunch points out, a bug filed with Chromium about the issue has tons and tons of comments.

Set Image As Wallpaper In Google Chrome

So how do you set an image as a wallpaper in Google Chrome? Quite simple, just use a new   created by one of the Chromium developers to add this feature to Google Chrome. The extension is called, Set Image as Wallpaper and can be downloaded from here.

Once you download and install the extension you will get an option to set any image you come across in Google Chrome as a desktop wallpaper. Have fun. This only works in Windows right now with a Linux and Mac version under works.

If you are expecting this feature to be part of Google Chrome out of the box, you are in for a disappointment, it’s not going to happen. And it hardly matters anyways. Look at me, I didn’t even notice that it had been missing for past two years Smile.