Keeping your operating-system current with all the latest updates is crucial to maintain optimal performance, stability and security, but sometimes the update mechanism fails to function properly as was the case when I received my computer after an hardware warranty replacement - the Windows Update simply refused to work throwing Error Code - 80072F8F luckily the fix was as simple as it can get as described below.

Firefox 4 is getting ready to take on the browser war to next level and public beta 2 of the application is now available for download, the new version now supports "App Tab" feature allowing users to have an permanent faviconed tab for websites, powered by the new Gecko 2.0 page-rendering engine the browser now supports even more CSS3 standards specifically "CSS Transitions".

Apart for addressing 652 issues, performance has also been tweaked to offer faster javascript, improved scrolling and better startup times - to test things out without affecting your existing Firefox install you can use the Firefox 4 Beta 2 Portable version download provided below.

Few months ago PayPal started having issues with Indian regulations and blocked withdrawls for Indian users but the matter was resolved soon, it seems their are still some regulatory hurdles left as PayPal has now stopped electronic withdrawals to Indian banks for the time-being. The bank emailed all users informing about the decision stating that until the matter is taken care of users can withdraw money via Cheques and they will refund the $5 USD cheque withdrawal fee for any cheque withdrawals made on July 29, 2010 onwards.

A PPTP (Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol) based VPN service has the benefit of easy configuration and the ability to work on all popular desktop and mobile platforms out-of-the-box without requiring any third-party client application, if you did not got a chance to have your own free PPTP VPN account
in earlier giveaways - free VPN service proXPN is here for you. The free service allows users to browse the web securely and anonymously via an encrypted VPN tunnel having USA IP perfect to bypass country specific restrictions like watching Hulu and restricted Youtube videos from outside USA.

The best part of proXPN is that you can use the service without installing the client software from Windows, Mac, Linux, iPhone or any other PPTP supporting desktop or mobile platform.

We have shared both free and paid utilities to use iPhone as an removable disk-drive, iPhone Folders is yet another free software which takes it a bit further by allowing users access to the iPhone File-system right from Windows Explorer - the explorer extension let users browse contents of their iPhone or iPod Touch like any other removable drive. They can perform regular file copy-paste operations and create shortcuts as usual coupled with the ability to view thumbnail previews of png and jpg files on the device.

Finally, the Indian currency Rupee has got it's very own symbol, previously denoted as Rs. or INR (internationally) the currency now has it's own symbol like $ (US Dollar), £ (British Pound), ¥ (Japan Yen) or € (Euro). Since, the new symbol is not yet part of the UNICODE you will need to use special font to use it in your documents - the font can be downloaded from the link provided at the end of this blog post.

YouTube is always tweaking their code and something similar broke majority of Youtube video downloaders out there, following are few comments posted on Youtube Video Downloader post after the update went live.

While most other video downloaders are still broken our beloved "Easy Youtube Video Downloader" is still working after an update, to get on track again all you need is update to v 3.5 from the link provided below.

Windows Installer Cleanup Utility (MSICUU2.exe) has been an invaluable tool for fixing Windows Installer related issues but sadly Microsoft has decided to discontinue it citing the following :

While the Windows Installer Cleanup utility resolved some installation problems, it sometimes damaged other components installed on the computer. Because of this, the tool has been removed from the Microsoft Download Center. The Fix it Solutions in this article provide the ability to fully remove Office 2003, 2007 and 2010 suites without damaging other Windows components.

If you are still looking for Windows Installer Cleanup Utility we have direct-download link available at the end of the post.

Looking for a trick to download images from Picasa Albums without installing Picasa itself - freeware utility "Picasa Album Downloader" for PC, MAC and Linux does exactly that and that to without requiring any registration or account with Picasa.

To grab images all you need to do is start the utility and tell it the user and the album name you want downloaded, rest is taken care by the software itself.