For some really strange reason, Google Instant (and the interactive Google Doodles) are not available on the Opera browser. The Google Instant search simply doesn’t happen while you’re on any version of Opera. So, if you are an Opera user and have been wondering how to get it working, maybe we can help:

1) While you are on Google’s homepage, ‘Right click’ > ‘Edit site preferences…’.

2) In the window that appears, choose ‘Network’ tab and then in ‘Browser identification’, select ‘Identify as Firefox’. Click OK.

That’s it. You’re done. Google Instant will work as beautifully as in other browsers. Just to make it clear, this is just a temporary fix from our side because the actual problem lies with Google. After Google stops discriminating Opera you can change the setting back to ‘Identify as Opera’.

Chrome 6 has been released with some great new features like form autofill, Extension Sync, support for WebM videos and (bet you didn’t know this) a built-in PDF viewer! Yes, it does mean a lot to serious professionals. But it’s not enabled by default. So here’s how you get it working:

In the address-bar, type ‘chrome://plugins/‘ and press ‘Enter’.

Here, simply click ‘Enable’ link in the Chrome PDF Viewer entry.

With the new default PDF viewer, it’s now irrelevant to have an Adobe Reader installed on your computer for viewing PDF files online.

Opera was probably the first to embrace (and innovate) the ‘speed dial’ feature that we now see in Google Chrome and Safari, giving you 1-click access to your favorite/most-visited sites. Now there are plenty of ways in which your can spice up  Opera ‘Speed Dial’. One such is to add a quick local weather report in one of the speed dial boxes. My.Opera.com user BS-Harau shows a how to do it.

1) Copy this URL below and replace YOURCITY with your preferred city.

http://speeddial.operacesky.net/weather.php?lang=en&area=YOURCITY&top=100&redirect=http://my.opera.com/

2) On the Speed Dial Page, right click on any empty boxes, choose ‘Edit’ and then paste the URL in the text-box. Click OK.

3) To receive updated weather report every 15 minutes, just right-click the speed-dial box again and choose ‘Reload Every‘ > ‘15 minutes‘.

For more tips and tricks, click here.

Google and privacy issues go hand in hand. Even Google admits it. And people like you and me are getting increasingly cautious about our privacies online. And we should be. Internet privacy tools have become the talk of the day and if you are using Firefox or Google Chrome, here’s something new to keep you notified when you are being watched by Google’s corporate evil eye.

Google Alarm, is a tiny add-on for Firefox and Chrome that shows an alert message (with an optional alarm ring) as and when you stumble on a site where Google lurks in the form of scripts. Obviously, it includes all Google sites as well. The add-on does nothing fancy and will never come in your way but it’s more like James Patterson saying “you’ve-been-warned”.

I kind of liked this add-on as it specifically tells me what scripts are monitoring my actions. There are 4 versions of Google Alarm, two for each browser, one with alarm ringer and one without it. Check it out.

Download Google Alarm for Firefox and Chrome

Please note: The method shown involves making small changes to the BIOS. If you don’t know what BIOS is or not comfortable changing its settings, you should not perform this trick.

How about running the immensely popular mobile OS, Android on a larger screen, on your PC or a laptop? Sounds cool, isn’t it? Well, the cool guys at How-to-Geek have shown a two step method by which you can be running Android OS on your PC with the help of a flash drive.

» First download the Android ISO from here and a utility called UNetBootin.

» Insert flash drive into the computer and run the UNetBootin utility. Use the ISO disc image to make the USB flash drive bootable.

» Once done, restart your PC, enter the BIOS and set the precedence of the USB device to the highest. Keeping the flash drive connected, re-start again. You should be able to boot into the USB flash drive.

» Select “Live CD” to run the Android-x86 OS without installation.

» You will then see the Android desktop. You cna now run some apps and use the menu for changing the settings. In case you face problems with the internet connectivity, you can use tethering on your phone.

Mozilla has done a brilliant job with Firefox 4, removing all the clutter and making the UI sleek and trendy. You notice that the UI designers have thoughtfully utilized the screen real estate by providing more space for the actual web content. But there’s always a scope for improvement, or so they say. With a little bit of tweaking, the title bar can be done away with to claim more space for the web content.

All you have to do is to download this CSS file (Right-click > Save Link As…) [userChrome.css] and paste it into this folder [If by any chance there's already a file with the same name, replace it.]–

[Windows Vista/7] C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Roaming\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile>\chrome

[Windows XP] C:\Documents and Settings\<user>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile>\chrome\

Now start Firefox 4 and enjoy the trimmed down version. Do note that, you need to have ‘Tabs on Top’ enabled for this to take effect. This is the modified (and working) version of the tip shown here.

Mozilla has implemented a very nice, useful and pleasant looking feature in Firefox 4 called the ‘All tabs preview’. Although it looks more like the task-bar preview, albeit on top, it’s slightly more handy and according to what I feel, ergonomically better. In order, to enable the ‘All tabs preview’ in Firefox 4, this is what you need to do:

While you tweak Firefox 4, do  subscribe to our feeds and join us on  Facebook and  Twitter.

1) In the address-bar, type ‘about:config’ and press enter. Bypass the security by clicking the ‘I’ll be careful, I promise’ button.

2) In the ‘Filter’ box, type ‘browser.allTabs.previews’. Double-click its entry to change its value to ‘true’.

3) Close the configuration tab. Now you will notice the small ‘All tabs’ icon the extreme right in the tool-bar. Click it.

4) Once you click the ‘All Tabs’ button, all the tabs will get listed just below the toolbar in a considerably large thumbnail previews.

The only thing I find missing in the All Tabs Preview is the real-time updating of the thumbnails. It would really add a lot to its functionality. However, this is just the Beta so you never know what’s in store for us in the stable version of Firefox 4.

This probably shouldn’t need an intro paragraph. What else can be more straightforward than 3 beautifully minimalistic, web-based notepad applications that lets you write (and sync and save) random pieces of text on the go? Today we feature 3 web-based notepad applications that’ll prove to be very useful.

SimpleText.ws

I just fell in love with SimpleText at first sight. Clean, distraction-free UI. You can log in using your Google account, write as many text documents and save them. You can access your text files from anywhere.

Gist.Github

Next up, Gist.Github. If you are a developer, you might want to go for this one. It can detect the programming language based on the filename you provide. Store and share snippets of code easily.

Notepad.cc

Notepad.cc – the most minimalist of ‘em all. All you see is big white block and tiny links at the bottom to change sharing URL of the text file and to add password security. If you want to share some paragraphs or a poetry on Twitter or Facebook, I’d day use this one and share the URL.

You know your Facebook friends are spread everywhere around the globe but visualising their location at one go is surely something that you don’t want to miss. Bing Maps has a special feature that lets you connect to your FB account and display your friends’ geographical location on the world map.

Just go to Bing Maps and connect with Facebook using the ‘Facebook Connect’ button and give required permission to Bing Maps. Soon you will see your friends’ profile pic pop up at their current geographical location. Personally, I was quite surprised to see some of my friends sitting in some part of the world when I thought them to be somewhere else Do check it out. One more way to stalk your friends!

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Today Google Labs came up with pretty decent feature for Gmail that lets you move the attachments column showing the different icons for each attachment to far left. This makes more sense because now its much more visible and easy to identify emails with attachments.

Such small enhancements from time to time make Gmail better and better. You can enable the ‘Move Icon Column’ feature in some simple steps.

1) Login to your Gmail account. Click the Google Labs icon located top tight.

2) From the list, ‘Enable’ the ‘Move Icon Column’ feature and click ‘Save settings…’ button at the end of the page.

Now your attachments column will be located to the left hand side where its much more noticeable.