How to survive a Gmail failure with only a few scratches?

Google provides offline access which makes your mailbox available to you even if their servers are down. You won't be able to send mail, but at least you can read the old ones and that's something, isn't it?

Gmail is down again

Can't be accessed from anywhere. Reports are rolling in from all over the world. It's a bad day to be a Gmailer.

How can I extract and view broken RAR files?

It's pretty easy actually. Open the file with Winrar and don't worry when it's complaining about an unexpected end of archive file. Just start the extraction and in the extract dialog box select the option Keep broken files. Winrar will extract the broken file, but won't delete it from the disk, so you can view its contents.
If it's a movie file then you can use VLC player to watch it. It is able to play unfinished files.
Enjoy.

How to preview quickly related Youtube videos

When watching a video on Youtube it's often worth to check out the related videos too. Of course, most of them will not be interesting, so it would be nice if one could quickly watch them without clicking them one by one.

It is possible to do this with a bookmarklet which you can easily add to your browser and activate on any Youtube page.

Click this link: youtube hover with the right mouse button and in the appearing menu select Add to Favorites (Bookmarks). When it's done you can watch any video on Youtube as usual and if you want to see the related videos then you click on the bookmarklet, simply hover over the related links with the mouse and the related video appears instantly in a popup window.

Isn't it cool? Write a comment if you find it useful or you have suggestions.

How to use Google Reader effectively?

If you read lots of feeds in Reader then the number of items waiting to be read can be intimidating. You know you have to process all news items, because new ones are coming continuously and you'll be overwhelmed if you don't read the ones you have in Reader already.

This is very stressful. I know, because I've been there.

The solution: employ a more casual approach to the reading of news. Collect similar feeds (e.g. economics, entertainment, etc.) into a common folder and use the folder to read all the relevant feeds mixed together. The secret is you don't have to read all items. Just skim the river of news and stop at an item which captures your attention. Don't worry about the others.  If something is really important it will come around again.

This way you can use Reader in a more relaxed way. No more stress, more efficiency. :)

How Do I View Full Screen Videos on Youtube?

My older relatives always complain when watching videos on Youtube that they are tiny and hard to see, and they don't know how to make it bigger. Do you also have that problem?

At the bottom-right corner of the video there is a little picture showing a small rectangle within a bigger one. Just click on it and you watch the videos in glorious full screen.

Much better, right?