One of our regular readers emailed us to ask this very simple question When Should I Choose to Remember Password on websites and on my PC?. Looking at the question I remembered a big mistake I had made in the past, so let me tell you about that before I give you the solution.

Must Read: 4 Unique Tools to Generate Strong Passwords

This is a real situation I have faced in life, and my work colleagues can vouch for it.

The Unwanted Situation of Remembering Passwords in Public Locations

I once had to stay home, and had the convenience of internet access. The problem arose when my internet provider suddenly went offline, and I had urgent work to do.

I went across to a local internet cafe and logged onto Yahoo Messenger to follow up with my colleagues, and let them know that my home internet connection was down.

Unfortunately for me the electricity at that internet cafe went off. Now I moved to another cafe to continue discussing with my colleagues.

After about 15 minutes of chatting with my colleagues my Yahoo chat session started acting very weird. It kept on logging off, and when I did login eventually it kept logging me out.

This kept on happening for 20-30 minutes till one of my colleagues called me and said, Why the heck are you sending weird messages to us?.

I was practically bamboozled. I tried logging into to Yahoo over and over again but every time I was logged out. That is when I actually looked at the message. It said, You have been signed out because you signed in on a different computer or device.

I was puzzled as I usually use very strong passwords, and there was no chance that someone could easily access it.

What was my mistake?

Little did I realize that while I logged onto Yahoo Messenger in both the internet cafes, I had selected both Sign in automatically and Remember my ID & password. I always did that on my home PC for convenience and followed that trend all over.

Later on I came to know that the electricity in the other internet cafe came up, and someone else who started using the same PC got access to my account, since I had chosen the Remember my password option.

I quickly went ahead and changed my password to resolve the issue and then apologized to all my colleagues, explaining about the problem that had occurred.

When Should You Use Remember My Password?

The feature of remembering passwords offered by websites and applications including web browsers is extremely useful. However, never use that option in a public place or you might end up in much worse situation than me.

In addition to that, buy a portable flash drive and dump a portable browser, and a whole host of other useful portable software that will allow you to continue working privately without having to store anything on the public computer you are accessing.

What else? How do you securely and privately access internet in public places? Do share your thoughts and horror stories in the comments.

Image Credit: Unknown Flickr User

It’s been more than 3 years since this blog was started and we have been writing lots of articles out here, many of them answer user questions, which we try to answer to the best of our ability, either through a blog post or directly responding through email.

More than a year ago we also held a user recommendation marathon where we wrote several user recommended posts based on your suggestions, and we are back with the second edition of the user recommendation series.

Once again we want to take a backseat and let our readers tell us what they want us to write about, so go ahead and tell us, BTW here is some background about this series.

What is User Recommendation Marathon?

User Recommendation Marathon is a series where we will write posts based on what readers want us to write about, we take their suggestions, ideas and questions and convert them into posts and publish it on the blog.

This is a no holds barred recommendation series, however we may skip certain things that may not be appropriate to publish on the blog.

How Can You Be Part of the User Recommendation Marathon?

User Recommendation Marathon is all about you as a reader, you choose what we should write about and tell us about it, by either using the contact us form or dropping us a email at tips [at] techie-buzz.com.

Your recommendation could be anything, a question, a suggestion or something else you want us to write about. You just tell us about it and we will do the hard work and write about it.

However while contacting please make sure to tell us it is a user recommendation as we get lots of emails everyday, if you choose to use the contact us form, please make sure to select User Recommendation from the drop down list of reasons for contacting us.

I am a Blogger. How Can I take part in User Recommendation Marathon?

If you are a blogger and want to recommend something to our readers, you can do it with by writing a guest post for us, we will publish the guest post and include links to your blog.

You can send us more than one guest post if you want, no holds barred, however we may edit it to fit our guidelines.

If you want to send us a blog post for the user recommendation, you can directly email it to us at tips [at] techie-buzz.com, please add that it is a user recommendation guest post.

We will run the user recommendation series for a month and write at-least one post a day based on user recommendations, however we expect that to be more than one a day, so go ahead what are you waiting for, tell us what you want us to write about right away.

Image Credit

In the past we have tried out several different recommendation methods including using an option for users to rate the content among other things. However most of those recommendation methods added a bit of extra load to the database, and we eventually took them off.

However thanks to Amit, we came across a extremely simple and robust recommendation engine that is powered by Google Friend Connect.

The recommendation engine provided by Google Friend Connect is fairly simple and easy to use, for both the website owners and readers themselves.

There are basically two components that make up the recommendation engine, one of which will allow your readers to recommend content, and another which will show a aggregated list of all the user recommended content, both of the components are customizable from your Friend Connect dashboard.

Recommendation Gadget

The Recommendation Gadget can be easily customized you can either use a compact button or a modular gadget.

Once you have created the gadget copy the Html code provided and paste it to your website, users can now start recommending content to others.

Recommended Stories List Gadget

The Recommended Stories List Gadget will allow you to show the top user recommended content on any part of your site, configure the recommendation list and copy paste the Html code to your webpage.

This gadget will list out the user recommended stories for other readers to read.

Note: The recommendation gadget and recommended stories list gadget will only work for the site that you created the gadget for, placing it on a different site will not work.

Summarizing

Over all this gadget works pretty nicely and would definitely increase user interaction and pageviews, give it a try at Google Friend Connect.

We have already started using the recommendations gadgets on the site, if you think any content is worth recommending, don’t forget to press that Recommend It button.

On another note we have also added a new gadget where we will interact with our readers by asking questions and answering those that you ask to us, do feel free to ask your questions & answer the one’s we have, we look forward to your support to build a better community.

This post is part of our user recommendation marathon, where we answer questions recommended by the users to us.

Reader Jeremy asks us, I changed the property of a folder to hidden by mistake and I can’t find it now when I am using explorer, is it deleted? How can I get the folder back to be viewable?

Well Jeremy, first of the all the folder has not been deleted. Once you follow this simple trick, you will be able to view the folder as well as change its properties so that it is not hidden.

By default Windows is setup to not show hidden files and folder, in order to view those files you will need to change the settings to display the hidden files and folders. To do that open Windows Explorer and click on Folder options under the Tools menu.

In the folder options window, select the view tab and check the option that says Show hidden files and foldersand click on Ok.

You will now be able to view the hidden files and folders and change their properties so that they are not hidden anymore. We also have a video that shows you how you can do this graphically.

Hope this answers your questions Jeremy. If you want to recommend us a question feel free to contact us.

This post is part of our user recommendation marathon where users ask recommend questions to us.

Abhishek from TechnixUpdate asks us, Can you give tips on increasing productivity

Well Abhishek, thanks for asking this question and I would be glad to impart few tips and tools that I use to make my PC life more productive, leaving me with lots of time to do other things.

A Clean Desktop

The first thing I see when I boot up my PC is the desktop, I believe it’s like a living room of a house. If I keep it cluttered I may always walk into a mess, making it more tough for me to keep the rest of the house clean.

So I like to keep my desktop as clean as possible, only keeping information that may be useful to me on it, like a single folder to dump files (P1) into, a to-do list, a calendar and a post-it note. Keeping my desktop this way allows me to also stay productive with tasks and appointments.

I also use a quick launcher to keep all the applications handy, so that I can keep my desktop de-cluttered and also have access to things that I want. Take a look at my desktop below (Click to enlarge it).

Tools I Use For My Desktop

• RocketDock
• Google Desktop
• Pin Notes

Related: 11 Useful and Free Pin Note Applications

Organized Files and Folders

I usually organize all the files and folders into a neat structure, so that I can find something that I want easily, without having to break my head. It is a simple structure clubbing softwares that are for media into a folder named media softwares and so on. I follow the same rules for my documents, images I use for posting and almost every other file. I organize it this way, so that it is much more easier to find something the next time I want to.

A simple formula I use for files and folders is derived from how music is organized into artists, genres, albums and so on.

I tend to install softwares into directories they make sense, so that I can find them whenever I want. For example I use Daily Use Utilities to keep all the utilities I use daily.

Tools I Use to Enhance File Organization

• xPlorere2 Lite
• TeraCopy
• Piky Basket
• SourceGear DiffMerge

Keyboard Shortcuts

The first thing I do when I download a new software is, learn about the keyboard shortcuts, yes I am very particular about not wasting my time, doing things I can do with keyboard shortcuts. I also use keyboard shortcuts for making use of inbuilt functionalities that are built in into Windows.

There are two keyboard shortcuts I love in Windows Vista, one which allows you to launch your quick launch applications and another one which allows you to control the system tray with the Windows key, you can read more about it in our earlier post about utilizing the Windows button as a useful hotkey.

Other than that I use Launchy to load applications faster than ever, without wasting any time.

Make File Navigation a Piece of Cake

The one thing I always despised while saving and uploading files was the need for me to browse to the right folders, and to be quite frank that was the most time wasting exercise I did, since I save several files and images regularly, and to top it the number of attachments I have to send across on a day to day basis.

To make my life easier, I use several softwares that allow me to navigate folders easily, so that I do not to browse through, to get to the right folder. The one I love and use religiously is Direct Folders.

Related: Add New Locations to the Places Bar | How to edit Custom locations in file open/save dialogs | Adding Breadcrumbs to address bar in Windows XP | Jump to your Favorite folder in File open/save dialogs

Well there are quite a few more things that increase productivity, but that would be in the next episode. Hopefully these tips and tools will help you become more productive.

Abhishek, hope you found these tips useful, there are several more to come. So keep tuned.

This post is part of the user recommendation series where users recommend question to us.

Our reader Jerome asks us Hey Techie, I have been reading you for quite some time and wanted to ask this question. I love Windows Media Player but it does not play all the files I download saying that some codec is being downloaded, some of the videos only have sounds but no video at all. I did try VLC player but do not like the interface and would like to play all the files in Windows Media Player, can you tell me know I can do it?

Well Jerome, like you we too have been using Windows Media player for quite some time, in the past we have also shown how to play real media files in Windows Media Player, but there are several other files which do not play in Windows Media Player, even though they are supposedto play in Windows Media player.

The core problem for not being able to play a supported file in Windows Media Player lies in the fact that several manufacturers use different codecs for the same file format, so even though .AVI files may be supported by Windows Media Player it may not play the file because of the encoding used while creating it. You can get over the problem by downloading the required codec from the manufacturer.

A codec is a device or program capable of encoding and/or decoding a digital data stream or signal. The word codec may be a combination of any of the following: ‘compressor-decompressor’, ‘coder-decoder’, or ‘compression/decompression algorithm’. Wikipedia

Finding and downloading missing codecs can be hard if not a waste of time. And with the amount of codecs actively used in producing videos, you may require several of them.

To solve the problem of playing any file in Windows Media Player, you can download K-Lite Codec Pack, which is like a collection of almost every codec available today. Once you have installed K-Lite Codec pack you can play almost any file types in Windows Media Player including real media, 3GP files, Quick time movies, Mp4 files, DivX files, HDTV files and more.

K-Lite codec pack has a option to only install components you want, so you can still keep playing the media you want  in your favorite player.

There are three versions of the K-Lite Codec Pack: Basic, Standard and Full.

• K-Lite Codec Pack Basic contains only the most essential things. It contains everything you need to be able to play the most popular and widespread formats. It is small enough to fit on a single floppy. Also great for including on your movie CDs.
• K-Lite Codec Pack Standard contains everything you need to play all the commonly used formats. This package should be enough for the average user.
• K-Lite Codec Pack Full contains even more codecs. It also has encoding support for the various formats. This package is for power users and people who do their own encodings.

Download K-Lite Codec Pack

Hope this solves your problem Jerome. If our readers want to ask us questions or recommend something to us, feel free to contact us.

This post is part of the user recommendation marathon where users recommend their questions to us.

Our regular reader Vishnu asks us, I have heard about Index.dat files and that they can store lots of information about the sites I browse, is there a way I can get rid of the files so that no one can know which sites I have browsed

Hi Vishnu, thanks for taking the time to ask us this question. We will detail in this post, how you can delete index.dat files to get rid of your Internet activities and history.

Index.dat files are basically data files that can contain information about the sites you visited using Internet Explorer. The file acts as a database of information about your browsing habits and includes URLs you visited, cookies, search queries and files you opened using the browser.

That said privacy has always been a concern with index.dat files, since they cannot be deleted easily using the regular methods. The best and easiest way to delete index.dat file is by using CCleaner, a free software that helps you clear unwanted information from your PC.

Once you have downloaded and installed CCleaner, run the software and choose the option to delete index.dat file by selecting it from the options under Internet Explorer, once you have selected or de-selected the other options click on the button to run the cleaner.

After the cleaner has completed, the index.dat file will not hold any information from your previous browsing solving your privacy concerns.

There are several softwares which charge you for doing the same thing, but like always we find a better solution. So the next time you have a query or a question, you know the best way to figure it out, contact us with your queries and we will try our best to find the best solution for it.

Hope this answered your question Vishnu, feel free to send us your queries anytime.

Download CCleaner

This post is a part of the user recommendation marathon where users asked us about several tips and tricks which could help them, in this post regular reader Nancy recommends a question to us.

Nancy asks us Gmail shows me that I have 700 emails in my Inbox, due to several things I have not been able to respond to emails from last week and would like to mark all those emails that have been sent last week as read without marking everything as read, in addition to that I would also like to see unread emails that were sent to me between certain days

Thanks for the question Nancy, in this post we will answer the as to how you can find unread emails past a certain date, and also tell you about the advanced search term you will require to search emails between certain dates.

Searching Unread Emails based on Date

Gmail has extensive options to search emails and date based search is one of them. In order to display only unread emails in Gmail that are prior to a week bring up the advanced search options by clicking on the Show search options link, next to the Search box.

In the search options that are shown to you, select Unread mail from search options. Select 1 week as the option from the date within selection and type in the date from where the mails should be compared to, if you want to search for mails that are one week old type in today as Gmail understands lay terms for dates. You can also type in the actual date you want to base the search on.

In lay language this would translate to Show me unread mails that are a within a week from today. Once you have inputted the options, clicking on the search mail button will display the emails that are unread and more than a week old.

Using this option will however not limit the emails to only a week ago, this will also include emails that are a week after the date you specify. In order to get better results we would have to use the advanced search options, which we will look at in the next section.

Searching for Unread Emails between dates

Google has several advanced search terms using which you can search emails, we will be making use of few of them in order to search emails between specific days.

is:unread after:2008/05/02 before:2008/05/17

In the above search term, we specified the state of the email using the is operator and the date range using before and after operators, you can also limit the emails to only those that are in specific labels by using label operator with the search term.

To search for unread emails that are only in the inbox currently and between certain dates the search term would be;

is:unread after:2008/05/02 before:2008/05/17 label:inbox

You can find a complete list of operators which can help you to search your emails faster by visiting the help page for advanced search in Gmail provided by Google.

Nancy, we hope this answers your question about searching emails based on dates. If our readers want to ask us questions don’t hesitate to contact us with your queries.

This is part of the user recommendation marathon where we write articles based on recommendations users have sent to us. In this post we are going to answer a question David recommended to us.

David asks I have been curious about the Windows key that is included with the keyboards and would like to know what uses it has and how I can make it work for me.

David this is quite a interesting question and several readers like you may not be aware of how useful the Windows key can be for increasing productivity. Before we can go ahead in telling about the usefulness of the key, you may want to know that the Windows key is basically a shortcut for triggering several features and windows applications, you may otherwise spend time doing.

Let us look at the things you can accomplish using the Windows key.

Hotkeys That Work With Latest Versions of Windows

Start Menu Trigger – The first and most important shortcut the Windows key provides, is a access to the Start menu.

Opening Window Explorer To open Windows explorer, you will need to use the hotkey Windows + E, this is probably the most neglected hotkey users have never used even though they have been using Windows for several years.

Locking your Computer The Windows + L hotkey is probably the fastest way to lock your computer. Many users still use the start menu to do this.

Windows Run Prompt Pressing Windows + R will popup the run box, using which you can launch any application. For more information on applications you can launch, read our earlier post which talked about several applications you can launch using the run prompt.

Minimizing and Maximizing Applications You can easily minimize and maximize all application windows using the Windows + D hotkey. You can also minimize or maximize application by using the Windows + M hotkey along with the Windows + Shift + M to maximize it again.

View System Properties The Windows + Break hotkey (also Pause / Break in several keyboards) is the fastest way to view your system properties, we have used this several times to change system configurations instead of using the longer way of clicking on my computer and going to properties.

Open Windows Search To open windows search you can use the hotkey Windows + F.

Toggle Applications in Taskbar To toggle open applications use the Windows + Tab hotkey. In Windows Vista you will be able to cycle through all open application windows.

Open User Accessibility Windows + U hotkey opens the user accessibility menu for disabled people.

Windows Vista Only Shortcuts

Open Quick Launch Applications One of the best things we like about Vista is the way it allows us to launch our favorite applications. Using the windows key along with numbers you can launch the applications that are placed in your quick launch bar. So to open the first application use the hotkey, Windows + 1, for the second Windows + 2 and so on (Note: you can only launch applications in position from 1 – 9).

Toggle and Open / Manage System Tray Applications Pressing the hotkey Windows + B will take you to the system tray from where you can toggle and open applications which are minimized to the tray with your mouse keys and enter button. You can also use the right click hotkey to manage or close the application without bothering to use your mouse.

Toggle Taskbar   Applications – Windows + T will let you toggle the application windows in the taskbar in Vista much like Windows + Tab in Windows XP. You can focus on the selected tab by clicking on the enter key.

Well the focus of this article was only on hotkeys in combination with Windows key, but if you are looking for other shortcuts, you can check out the related how you can quickly launch a website in any browser, find useful command prompt shortcuts or learn how to quickly access the address bar and history in browsers.

David, hope this solves your query about using the Windows Key to get the best out of it, and makes you more productive while using it. Our readers can still get their questions answered anytime using the contact us form.

This is part of the user recommendation marathon where we write articles based on recommendations users have given us. In this we are going to answer a question Ashley recommended to us.

Ashley asks I have a company email account which is regular webmail provided by our hosting provider, I can access all the mails using POP, the problem is that I have to sort out several spam emails as most of it is not caught by Outlook. Is there any spam filter or work around you can tell me about.

Spam has become quite a issue with non-exchange (simple webmail) based email services that many offices use for emails. The problem is with tons and tons of emails get through to your Inbox, you can either sit and keep on segregating through those emails in Outlook or any other desktop client you use, or simply follow this trick we are about to tell you and cut down your spam by more than 95%.

Gmail, as many of you may already be aware of, has a pretty good spam filter which catches atleast 99% of spam emails coming your way. As wonderful as the service is Gmail’s inbuilt feature of allowing you to pull email from external servers can really work wonders for the amount of spam you deal with on a day to day basis.

We have been using this trick for our professional emails for quite some time and believe us that you will be dealing with practically no spam at all after you reroute your emails through a Gmail account.

To make use of this trick you will need to create a new Gmail account first, we say new because you may not want to mix your personal and professional emails.

Tip: Do not share this account with anyone and only use it to re-route your office emails to keep it simple.

Once you have created a new account head to setting for the Gmail account. Select the accounts tab and click on the link Add another mail account.

Follow the series of steps presented in the new window to setup Gmail to download emails from your office email address.

Once you have setup your email account you will need to setup a POP account for the newly created Gmail account in your favorite email client. Before you do that Gmail has a peculiar request that you should enable POP before you can use it. To do that go to Forwarding and POP/IMAP tab and enable pop access, you can also use the IMAP feature to access and keep your email synchronized all the time.

We prefer IMAP since it gives us access to all the folders within Gmail and also lets us keep a eye if any legitimate email has been caught as spam.

Ashley, hope this answers your question and cuts down the amount of spam you have to deal with each day, keep tuned for the other user recommendations which will be posted in the coming days.