lol, I was wondering when will I get a Google Wave invitation, I have requested few times with different mail accounts of mine from Google Wave. It seems they are taking some time to reply for them. I couldn’t wait anymore, finally I got an invitation thanks to Crazzycool. Wow after few days I got the Wave invitation, it’s cool if you have to do team work, it’s cool if you want to share anything with your friends. I like this service, it’s really useful to me and It’s wonderful. But one thing I have to mention, privacy is at high risk on Google Wave! When you’re using your gmail account to create Google Wave account, it takes your username and creates wave address. username@googlewave.com Google sevices are intergrating each other so it’s easy to identify the gmail addresses. If your friend adds you to a group which you don’t know then all of the group members can identify your Wave address, isn’t it a privacy problem? so that means spammers can use your email address. That’s the bad side of Google Wave.
Most of people are interested to have Google Wave invitations. There were some giveaways last week but I didn’t have time to mention it in here coz of less time. Anyway when I was reading Downloadsquad.com I saw a post about Google Wave giveaway. Just log into Downloadsquad and check that article. I don’t know how many people will able to grab invitations but I’m pretty sure they have bunch of invitations, read the rules and conditions and try to get one. If you’re lucky enough, sure you’ll get it. Good luck guyz!
Today I thought to talk about this new feature of Windows 7. Even though I use the word “Windows 7″, it actually comes with Windows 7 Enterprise and Ultimate editions. So if you’re using or hoping to use Windows 7 Professenal, Home Preminum, Home Basic or Stater editions, you won’t find this feature. Â “Bit Locker to go” provide encrypting facility to your USB flash drives. It helps you to protect your sensitive data on USB flash drives from intruders. BitLocker to go enabled USB flash drives will work with XP sp3 and above systems. Okay, lets see how to enable “BitLocker to go” feature for your USB flash drive. It’s just a piece of cake, Just plug your USB flash drive.
Go to My Computer and right click on USB flash drive, select “Turn on BitLocker…”
Then you have option to choose how do you want to protect your drive. Â Use the option “Use a password to unlock the drive”, then type a strong password with combination of letters (Lowercase and Uppercase), numbers, symbols. Click Next.
Then you can save the recover key to a file or you can print your recover key . Click on “Save the recover key to a file”.
Choose location to save, then click Next.
Click on “Start Encrypting” to start encrypting the USB falsh drive. This will take some time depending on the capacity of your USB flash drive. After encrypting process has been finished it will show “Finished” message. Now you can see a change of USB flash drive icon, now it shows with a locker icon. so now your data on this drive is protected.
Unplug it from the system and plug it again, now it will prompt you to enter password. You have to give the password to access USB flash drive, to access files on it.
I’ve been using Google Chrome with a theme few weeks but I have major problem with that theme’s status bar. I don’t know why those guys haven’t used much clear colour for its text colour. It’s really difficult to read when surfing on the net. I always keep my eye on status bars while I was using Firefox, also with Google Chrome coz I want to know which those hidden links direct me to next when I click on them. In this case, I’ve restored Chrome’s default theme. I didn’t find any other match to the theme which I have used. “Gradient” is the theme which I have used, now back to the default.
Hey Guys, I forgot to tell about Windows 7 Enterprise edition. Sometimes you might think that I’m talking about the RC version. Nope, I’m talking about the Enterprise Edition of Windows 7. And the good news is you can download it from directly from Microsoft website. But you need to be an IT professional to download it, so watch out when you’re filling in the form. This is for 90 days, you can install it on your PC with out providing a serial coz this is Enterprise edition. Actually there is a serial which comes with it, so you need not to worry about it. Simple installation process and it will take between 15-20 minutes. So enjoy the Windows 7 Enterprise Edition, build 7600.
If you have a life with Google email service, you already know what are their other services. I’ve been using Gmail for 4-5 years now. I still remember how I had my first Gmail account. Some people may don’t know about those past years. In those days it’s not easy to have a Gmail account like you having an account today by signing up with just one click. I’d seen one of my friend using gmail account. it was so professonal and I was wondering to make one for me. Then I knew I need an invitation from some one who already using Gmail. Anyhow I able to find a link from the web, so I got my first Gmail account. Okay, that’s about my experience with Gmail, now I’ll come to the topic. Let’s see how to configure your domain name with Google apps. So if you have your own domain then you can have a real cool email address with your domain name.
Example: yourname@yourdomain.com
If you don’t have a domain name, you can purchase a domain name from any domain registar. Price is depending on the registar, also you can purchase one when you’re signing up with Google Apps for US $ 10. Â (At the time I’m writing this article)
To sign up with Google Apps you have to go to the page http://www.google.com/a
If you’re going to setup a domain with your business, then you would need to pay some extra bucks for premium edition. But if that isn’t necessary that much, you can sign up with standard edition. Google is giving it for free.
Step 1
Google Apps Standard Edition sign up page http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/group/index.html and click on “Get Started”
Or Direct link to the Google Apps Standard Edition sign up page http://www.google.com/a/cpanel/domain/new
I’ve already purchased a domain from godaddy.com. So I’m using my domain name, “mydomain.com” to sign up with Google Apps.
Step 2
Under “I want to use an existing domain name”, click on the option “Administrator: I own or control this domain”. Then on the text box type your domain name which you already have purchased. Click on “Get Started”.
Step 3
Fill the from with your details, and don’t forget to check the spellings twice of your email address you are providing in here. Also click on the check box “I understand that if I cannot alter DNS records for my domain, I may impact my organization’s ability to use Google Apps.” It is not necessary to fill “Organization Information”.
Click Next.
Step 4
Now you have to create “Administrator Account”. This is the main account in your domain and this account has full control of creating/deleting other user accounts for your domain. So I highly recommend to use strong password for this account.
Click on “I accept. Continue with setup” button.
Step 5
Now Google wants to know this domain is really belongs to you. So Google is giving 2 options for us. You can proof that domain is really belongs to you by uploading html file with the verification code which google is giving in this process, to your domain’s hosting folder or by creating a CNAME record in your domain DNS control panel. Creating CNAME record can take some time to propagate among server. So I’d like to choose first option.
Click Continue.
Step 6
Copy the verification code to a text file and save it as “googlehostedservice.html” and upload it to your domain’s hosting folder. When you click on http://yourdomain.com/googlehostedservice.html it should show the verification code.
Click “I’ve completed the steps above”
Verification code example: googleffffffffd128714c  (use your own code, okay!)
Step 7
If every thing is ok then you ll get the page “Google Apps set up guide”, you can go trough it and learn how to do basic operations or you can skip the setup guide. You can use the setup guide later, it appears on the top of your page until you close it.
Step 8
Now you have completed 90%, but most important thing haven’t done yet. you’ll see “Mail” isn’t active yet. How to activate it? To do this you have to make MX record settings on your domain’s DNS settings control panel. Before it you need to know google’s exchange server settings details. you can see those details by clicking on the “Activate mail” link. On Setup mail delivery page you can choose your registar. If your registar isn’t on the list you can contact your domain registar to get help. But if you have little knowlege about DNS control panel of your domain host’s then it won’t that difficult to create MX records. First thing you have to do is clear all MX records if there are any existing.
Here’s the MX records for Google exchange servers.
PriorityValue HostName Goes To Address (Mail Server) TTL Value
10 @ ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM. 1 week
20 @ ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM. 1 week
30 @ ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM. 1 week
40 @ ASPMX2.GOOGLEMAIL.COM. 1 week
50 @ ASPMX3.GOOGLEMAIL.COM. 1 week
My domain is registered with Godaddy, so I’ll show my DNS control panel and how to make MX records on it.
First I have log into my Godaddy account and I have selected the domain which I have used for Google Apps. Then I have logged to Total DNS control.
(My products >> Domains>> Domain Manager>> “Choose your domain”)
Delete those MX records and add new MX records of google exchange servers. To add new MX records click on “Add New MX Record” button.
Host > @
Goes To Address> ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
(Don’t forget to include the period at the end)
Priority> 10
TTL> 1 week
Confirm box will appear, click ok on it. Then you will see “pending setup” state on MX records. It will take some minutes to apper on MX records. So you can add other 4 MX records as above. (Priority level and exchange server names must use as mention in google MX records setting details.)
Step 9
You have finished setting up new MX records for your domain, Now back to the Google Apps set up email delivery page, click on “I have completed these steps” button. Then you ll see “Updating” status on email area. This will take some time to complete. (up to 48 hours 
) It took me just few minutes. So check it later, If you see “Active” status with Email service, BOOOOOOM! We have completed it successfully.
Step 10
After complete above 9 steps you should be able to send and recieve mails. In tis step I’m going to talk about how to add “SPF record” to your domain. You have to go back to DNS control panel of your domain. By adding SPF record we tells to others servers that these mails are actually coming from our domain. So our mails won’t show in receivers “Junk/Spam” folder.
SPF – Sender Policy Framework
Actually we can do that by adding TXT record on Dodaddy DNS control. Click on “Add New TXT Record” button. Use the following details.
TXT Name> @
TXT Value> v=spf1 include:aspmx.googlemail.com ~all
TTL> 1 hour
That’s it! Now you have configured your domain with Google Apps. In the next article I hope to talk about how to create CNAME records for your mails/docs/calender etc to use with your domain name. example by using http://mail.yourdomain.com By default you can access your mail account by http://mail.google.com/a/yourdomain.com
Default link to manage your domain http://www.google.com/a/yourdomain.com
Default link to access your docs http://docs.google.com/a/yourdomain.com
Default link to access your calender http://calender.google.com/a/yourdomain.com
Default link to access your sites http://sites.google.com/a/yourdomain.com
I think it’s good to make a note about Google Chrome. I know this is very early stage to say anything about it yet but one thing is clear, that’s Google Chrome will change the future of browsers. How about Firefox? Yep, I already a fan of Firefox but after using Chrome for few weeks I have positive thoughts about Chrome’s performance. But I’m still worrying about the plug-ins support which is must if they really want to succeed beyond other browser platforms. Firefox released their latest version last week which is version 3.5, also they rushed to make a quick update 2 days ago. Firefox is a flexible browser in the current browser market but will they able to keep that crown? That’s the question most of people have. I assume you they will give an answer for this question with their next release.
Google Chrome – Pros
- Crystal clear sky blue interface with simple operations on the top.
- Quick startup
- Private browsing (yep, I know Firefox 3.5 release have got this feature)
- Loads most of web sites quicker than Firefox
Cons
- Less plug-in support
I have to mention something about plug-in support in Google Chrome. Most of Chrome users don’t know how to add plug-ins to their browser; also they haven’t idea where to find Chrome plug-ins. So folks, I’ll show you how to do that correctly in the future articles.