Tech Notes :- Making Google Drive Available As A Windows Drive

It is always a  convenience to have your Google Drive available as a drive in your Windows Explorer. Here are the steps to configure your Google Drive in windows and then having it as a drive in your windows explorer

Download Google drive software(Backup and Sync) for Windows from below link

https://www.google.com/drive/download/

Install it and configure the folder to be Synced say E:\Google Drive

Once you select the folder to be synced, the contents of the folder will be synced with google drive

Now download a software called Visual Subt from below link or any trusted link

https://download.cnet.com/Visual-Subst/3055-2248_4-10598834.html?tag=pdl-redir


Launch Visual Subst and then map the folder that you have selected for syncing(say E:\Google Drive) with Google Drive.

Now you should be able to see an additional drive in My Computer which is the local folder synced with Google Drive. It's that simple!

Tech Notes:-Using Google Maps,GPRS Connection And GPS Module To Make Your Phone Into A GPS In India

If you have a phone with GPS module and google maps installed and you have GPRS or 3G or wifi, you can use your phone as GPS in India.My phone is HTC Touch 23333 with BSNL 3G/GPRS connection,google maps and GPS module. This was handy when I was in Chennai last time.It was a rainy and I was not able to get a taxi even after waiting for almost 45 Mins. Then I decided to use public transport. I keyed my destination address in google maps installed in my HTC touch 2333, one of the cheapest phones with GPS module.It showed me that all that I need to do is to cross the street and get into the Chennai Metro train , I did that and got the down at the station which it was showing as nearest to my apartment. Then it showed me the walking route as well. I reached home in less than 25 mins, were as it takes almost one hour in taxi to go through all the traffic blocks :) and it costed me just 5Rs only.

The only feature that you dont have here when compared to a GPS device is that you dont have voice guided navigation.I tried this even at my home town,Thrissur,it was guiding me even through small pocket roads.

Another new feature coming up is Google Maps Navigation which is in beta phase now.Unfortunately, this is not available for my Windows mobile :(. See the videos below.

Tech Notes:-Using US Number In India Mobile And Making Free Calls To US

Recently I had a requirement. Need to call US whenever I require from India. I found the solution.Here is what you require.

Requirements

1. Wifi enabled phone or 3G enabled connection-->I use BSNL 3g on HTC Touch t333
2. A free account from Voxalot.
3. Registration with IPKall for a free US phone number.They will provide you a number from Washington.
4. SIP client for your mobile. I use Portego.

Steps

1. Register for Voxalot account Registration is fairly straight forward.

2.Register for a free IPKall Washington State number. Use the following on the sign up page: Choose your account type – SIP, Choose Area Code for your IPKall Number – ANY, SIP Phone number – , SIP Proxy – “us.voxalot.com” (no quotes), Email Address – , Password – , # of Seconds to ring before hanging up – “120″ (no quotes).You will receive a mail from IPKall with your configuration

           SIP Phone Number: 6 digit number 
         SIP Proxy: us.voxalot.com
         Email: your email address
         Password: password that you configured

3. Download and install Portego SIP client for your mobile phone from portsip

4.Configure Portego
UserName: Username that you received in IPKall mail . 6 digit number
Password: Password that your received in IPKall mail
SIP Server: us.voxalot.com
SIP Port: 5060
Domain Auth Name: Username that you received in IPKall mail . 6 digit number
You need to select codecs G711U,G771A,GSM if not already selected

Once you are done with the configuration, click login. You are all set to use your US number on your mobile in India either over wifi or 3G.

One more enhancement that you can do is to use your Google Voice number to forward calls to your IPKall number.Its important that you use PortGo here because other SIP clients like Fring may not allow you to accept Google voice calls due to its limitations with keypad(You may not get option to press 1 once you receive a google voice call).

How it works

Google voice will connect any two USA numbers or a USA and a Canada number. IPKall will give us a free USA number so we can receive (and make web activated) calls from Google Voice. IPKall then takes that incoming Washington State number and turns it into the SIP protocol and delivers it to a Voxalot SIP address. Voxalot Maintains contact with your hardware or softphone to be able to deliver incoming calls to it as required.

Calling Phones From Gmail

Rumors have been buzzing about since June, but Google just made it official -- the company's baking Google Voice calls right into Gmail today. Like the Google Chat text, voice and video chat integrated into the web-based email client in prior years, full phone calls will also be an option using VoIP technology from the Gizmo5 aquisition.The new facility makes it possible to call phones from the mail interface itself.Call to US and Canada is free at least for the time being. For other countries they are following the google voice rates.

Incoming calls pop up as a chat window in Gmail (and ring your Google Voice-equipped phones simultaneously) and you press a "Call phone" button that appears near the top of the Chat window to send an outbound call, at which point a dialer appears where you can copy and paste numbers or tap them in manually. Users can screen incoming calls or send them to voicemail with a single tap.

I just tested calls from Google,Skype and Yahoo messenger. Felt like google is better...

How To Submit Blogger Sitemap To Google,Yahoo,Windows Live,Bing And Ask

A sitemap is an XML file that lists the URLs for a site. It allows webmasters to include additional information about each URL in their site, when it was last updated, how often it changes, and how important it is in relation to other URLs in the site. This allows search engines to crawl the site more intelligently. Sitemaps are a URL inclusion protocol and complement robots.txt, a URL exclusion protocol.

Sitemaps are particularly beneficial on websites where:

* some areas of the website are not available through the browseable interface, or
* webmasters use rich Ajax, Silverlight, or Flash content that is not normally processed by search engines.

The webmaster can generate a Sitemap containing all accessible URLs on the site and submit it to search engines. Since Google, Bing, Yahoo,MSN and Ask use the same protocol now, having a Sitemap would let the biggest search engines have the updated page information.

Sitemaps supplement and do not replace the existing crawl-based mechanisms that search engines already use to discover URLs. Using this protocol does not guarantee that web pages will be included in search indexes, nor does it influence the way that pages are ranked in search results.

Sitemap Protocol is based on xml tags.Here is a sample sitemap that includes all optional tags

<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9
http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9/sitemap.xsd">
<url>
<loc>http://example.com/</loc>
<lastmod>2006-11-18</lastmod>
<changefreq>daily</changefreq>
<priority>0.8</priority>
</url>
</urlset>


Submitting blogger blog sitemap to google is easy. Below youtube video explains it clearly.



For submitting sitemap to bing, paste the below URL in your browser after replacing blogname with name of your blog.

www.bing.com/webmaster/ping.aspx?siteMap=http://blogname.blogspot.com/atom.xml


For submitting sitemap to yahoo, paste the below URL in your browser after replacing blogname with name of your blog.

http://search.yahooapis.com/SiteExplorerService/V1/updateNotification?appid=SitemapWriter&url=http://blogname.blogspot.com/atom.xml

and

http://search.yahooapis.com/SiteExplorerService/V1/ping?sitemap=http://blogname.blogspot.com/atom.xml

For submitting the sitemap to Windows Live paste the below URL in your browser after replacing blogname with name of your blog.

http://webmaster.live.com/ping.aspx?siteMap=http://blogname.blogspot.com/atom.xml

For submitting the blog to Ask paste the below URL in your browser after replacing blogname with name of your blog.

http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http://blogname.blogspot.com/atom.xml