I am a die hard fan of Winamp and using it for more than 5 years. What I like about this music tool is its light and easy to use features. When you compare other media players like iTunes and Jet Audio, Winamp uses a very light and easy to use playlist organizer. If you just want to hear mp3 songs then you can go with Winamp lite version which is not filled with bloats and add-ons.

Coming to the point, we know very well about the famous Google talk’s “show my current music status” and might be using it without any problem in Winamp although WMP needs an in activation. But after installing the latest version of Winamp 5.5, I had a few problems with the Google talk Integration.

Whenever you select the Show my current music track, Google talk either freezes or stops responding. This is actually a technical issue with Google talk or Winamp which is yet to be discovered but many users who have upgraded to Winamp 5.5 are facing this problem, so one of a guy has posted a simple resolution for fixing this bug.

The solution is:

Step 1: Go to the root directory of Winamp which is usually in C:\Program Files\Winamp\

Step 2: Select Tools->Folder Options->View (Tab) and uncheck the hide extensions for known file types and click Ok.

Step 3: Now create an empty file (Right click the mouse -> New -> Text document), so the default file would be like “New Text Document.txt”.

Step4: Rename the above file to “winamp.m3u” and save.

Step5: Close Winamp and Google Talk. Now open again and Your Show Current music track status should work like a charm 

Tip: Google Talk Help Group .

Making your Gtalk as an online FM streaming device is not a complicated task but a simple 3 step process as 123. With the help of a third party service called Gtalk 2 Voip we could attain this functionality.

What is Gtalk 2 Voip ?
GTalk2VoIP is a free and publicly open voice gateway for major Instant Messenger clients. It makes possible voice interoperability between Google Talk, MSN/Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger and SIP phones without any additional software installation.

How can I hear FM in Gtalk?
Teen Taal 110 a hindi Fm station which aims at delivering new hindi songs can now be heard right away from your google talk.

All you have to do is to follow the steps below:

• Open your Google talk and Sign in
• After Signing In, click the add button and add this id service@gtalk2voip.com
• After adding, add the second Id 110@radio.gtalk2voip.com
• After completion of the steps above, make a call to the second id i.e call to 110@radio.gtalk2voip.com
• Now you will directly be connected to Teen Taal Fm Station. (voice quality is average)

The first step of adding id would make you register the gtalk2voip service!

Other features of Gtalk2Voip:

• Make calls from Google Talk, Yahoo or MSN to any mobile or landline phone (PSTN)
• Make calls to other Google Talk, Yahoo! and MSN/Live Messenger users or SIP phones (SIP URI)
• Create voice conferences with other Google Talk, Yahoo! or MSN/Live Messenger users
• Send or receive voicemail from/to Google Talk, Yahoo! or MSN/Live Messenger users
• Receive calls to your Google Talk, Yahoo! or MSN/Live Messenger from mobile or landline phones (PSTN) by using DIDs or via SIP Broker service
• Receive calls from SIP phones, including Gizmo Project, InPhonex, SJPhone and others
• Send SIP/SIMPLE instant messages to SIP phones

How it works?
Some of the services I mentioned above may be chargeable while they offer free incoming calls from sip phones to your gtalk, incoming call from PSTN to your gtalk, making calls to other IMs etc.

So now you get a free incoming SIP number, PSTN access number for Gtalk etc which you can add on to build your business widely.

Gtalk 2 voip also provides support for mobile platform with their specially designed application called Talkonaut which helps them to access and enjoy their voip services from their handheld.

Register now: Gtalk2Voip |

Today when i was Organizing one of a Google Group called Hyderabad Masti i found this funny bug while browsing their member lists.

The list showed like in the below screen shot, all the members of the group has been joined on Dec 31, 1969. Doesn’t that sound wired ? Internet during 1969 ? He He nice bug.

This bug might have been an effect of the recent Google Groups transformation from its earlier version to the new version. This group actually contains 4k+ members maybe Google should be lazy enough to update their membership info.

What really makes me laugh is that the Group Owner Amby whose list shows that he has joined in the year 2004 but other members joined in 1969. Members join before group owner create group ? I know its a silly question but i was just kidding with.. Myself, i am the Group moderator and my list shows up that i joined in 2006.

Aware of any other bugs in Google Groups ? Share your comments about it !
Do you think Google Groups should still be Beta ?

[Update] Ken Neville in Googlified has explained this problem. Click here to read.

There are many reasons why Gtalk is still in Beta because it doesn’t satisfy the Basic Etiquette of Instant messengers. Although Google keeps rolling out new features like Orkut Integration, Voice mail, File Transfer, Off line messaging etc but someone needs to draw Google’s Attention on fixing some bugs users experience with it.

Its not a matter of how many features you have, but how they actually work. Lets have an overview of major problems and dislikes that some of users facing with Google Talk.

• After the Integration of Google Talk with Orkut, sometimes it disables features like GMail Notifications, File Transfer, Voice mail and hides the mail icon absolutely. You won’t find settings for Orkut and Notifications
• Window Focusing and Pop Window Conversation is an annoying feature in Gtalk which works even when you disable all notifications in settings. There should be an option to disable it completely and make it stay like idle.
• Automatic Integration of Gtalk Music Integration with Windows Media Player,currently you need to set the plug in WMP settings but most of them actually think that Gtalk cannot actually show tracks from WMP.
• Unintuitive sorting and showing them as online status, many users have experienced this problem actually.

Hope the Google Team will make Google Talk more better with consideration.

Ok this post may seem like a little wierd because Gmail gives you more than 2Gb storage and i am giving you tips to still make it wider. Although you have much satisfied space, you cannot let your mailbox fill up with unwanted mails or junks, because the rate of your incoming mails grows larger than the increasing free space that Gmail provides. So its better to sort out this problem instead of messing up in future. i got some tips that will help you enhance and optimize your mailbox easily. First of all i use 26Mb(1%) of my 2752 Mb and i get more than 150 mails a day. At this rate, i could have filled half of my inbox but its because of some optimisation and i have used 26Mb(1%).

Ok lets come to the main part… Just keep in mind these simple ideas and steps so that you can save little more space in Gmail. Before optmizing create 5 labels in your gmail account, like sorting the blog posts in categories we must sort the mails in labels under different categories. For example create 5 labels say Friends, Family, Personal, Offical, Misc. Now the next part is labelling each and everymail you got from first. Why do you want to label each and every mail ? Thats because archiving of mails in a specfic categories will even power your search and you get narrow results. I know its harder to label each and every mail but do it as batch process and the main reason i suggest you to do so is that you will surely come across some unwanted mails which you can delete. Unwanted mails in Sent Mail, Chats,etc can be deleted to even get more space. After labelling each mails, archive it so that it stays safe and you could retrive it whenever you want. This process is like filtering the unwanted mails and archiving the important ones.

Clear the Trash and Spam box occasionally to free up more space if you are in an emergency to clean up the gmail. After sorting, your mailbox will look quite cool and smart as mine. Its kinda keeping your mails in fingertips. The Optimization of your mailbox depends on how you use the features of Gmail. Upto my knowledge i think gmail is the best Email Service provider that no other email service can offer. Hope this post might be useful.

Today when i was browsing in the Sci/Tech Category of Google news, i found a wired Title that said “Posted by David Berlind @ 5:41 am”. It was Google’s mistake that it sometimes indexes the poster name instead of the actual title. The actual news page is from ZDnet and title should be “Disappointment over virtualization techs mounts. This time, Oracle takes its shots” but instead google bot has wrongly indexed the poster name. Maybe the problem will be in the Submission page of ZDnet news or with the Google.

Lets sneakout other new problems with google news but dont forgot that Google News is not in Beta or Labs.

Google talk has an auto sorting feature of buddy list which we might have not realised or ignored. The main part of it is that google talk automatically sorts the buddy list based on the status of user and thier activity.

Whenever a buddy list is displayed in gtalk they are sorted based on thier alphabetical order as second category and status as first category. For example check the screenshot on the left.

In the screenshot the top list of buddies is naveed, since his status is available he is displayed in top and in the second list it is thakur who uses a busy status and so he is sorted next to available status. And the last status is anandh who is simple idle and so he is listed at the last of the buddy list.

We might have never noticed that google talk has this interesting feature, that automatically sorts the list. Soon more features will be discovered keep updated with my blog if you like my posts…

When i opened a mail which seem like spam, i was just wired looking at the mailbox. Check the below screenshot, actually the test was wrapped out of container

and the sender information and more options are displayed at the bottom of the mail. Gmail is yet not ready to come out of beta and it should work out bugs.. This bug appeard both in regular gmail and gmail for your domain. There are still other bugs to report.

Does that mail look wired without any sender information or more options at the top ?