Tip: To uninstall Adobe applications completely on a Mac, fire up the Adobe Installer app from Utilities folder in Applications. Pure trashing will not remove the apps completely from the system and will run into issues when you try to install them again.

The temperature in Chennai is at all time high and soaring. Its increasingly difficult venture outdoor these days without breaking into a sweat. For those confined to the cosy comforts of your home/office/home-office, it wouldn’t make much difference. However, if you’re the type who has to travel for work, then you’re bloody gonna find it difficult. Worry not, as I’m in the same boat and have a few tips to share.

• Fluids – Drink loads of water. Your body is continously working to keep its temperature down by sweating. This is an automatic process and nature’s way of protecting you from severe heat. In order to keep going, its important that you take in as much water as you can.
  Drink tender coconut water atleast once a day. This is by far, the best natural coolant that you can find. Helps avoid dehydration.
  As you sweat, a lot of body salts are depleted. An easy way to replenish lost salts is to have lemonade or butter-milk mixed with salt.
• Clothing – Cotton and linen are fabrics that breathe and are the best during summer. Wear loose fitting light coloured clothes as they’ll keep you feeling fresh through the day. Pastel shades and cool blues are in. Black and darker colours are out as they tend to show sweat marks once dried.
• Accessories – Wear sunglasses. In addition to making you look cool and sexy, sun glasses play a pivotal role in blocking harmful UV radiation that can lead to cataract.
• The other things – Wash the face regularly with cool water. This helps in cleaning out the pores which can get accumulated with dirt leading to acne and pimples.

These are some simple tips that I’ve been following to beat the heat. If you’ve got similar interesting tips to share, do so by leaving a comment.

These days, a trip to the Chennai airport to recieve someone can take anywhere between 1 -3 hours depending on traffic. This is due to severe traffic congestion during peak hours and lack of quality roads amongst other things. For these reasons, I prefer flights that operate during non-peak hours (12am – 6am). Even though this means being awake at unearthly hours, it does get you to the airport much quicker (~ 20 minutes). However, the part that is most annoying is – having to wait at the arrival terminal.

Here’s a neat workaround on how to get in and out of the airport quickly -

• Call the flight enquiry desk at the airport and double check the flight arrival time. There could be a delay due to bad weather or other reasons. This is also the prime reason why most people end up waiting at the airport for longer than necessary.
• Depending on how far you are from the airport and the time of the day, plan your trip so that you reach the airport within 15 minutes of landing. This time frame is ample for immigration and baggage clearance provided that the passenger is among the first few in the line.
• If you’re like me and would like to avoid parking, ask the person you’re going to receive to give you a call as soon as he/she comes out. This way you can drive directly to the terminal and recieve. Of course this works best for those who are carrying a cell phone that operates in your home network. But nevertheless, thats the most effecient way to beat those nasty tow-vehicles and avoid the heavy parking charges.

I’ve been doing this for quite some time now and it has definitely reduced the time spent on commuting to the airport and back. Although this may not work exactly as described, you do get the general idea.

Here’s a nice little tip that I discovered by accident. To change your homepage quickly, select the favicon (of the webpage you want to set as homepage) and drag it to the homepage button on the toolbar.

Once thats done, you get the following pop-up

Select ‘Yes’ and voila – you have your homepage changed! *That was too easy, wasn’t it?*

Note : In case you don’t see the homepage button – Right click on the toolbar, select the homepage button and drag it onto the toolbar.

Google News now allows you to customize news and make it appear the way you want to. It even allows you to create your own topic for inclusion as standard news module on the front page. I’ve always felt the need to have news reported to me in a manner that I liked and Google seemed to have answered just that – appreciating the individuality of its users.

A few months back, when Yahoo! revamped their personal pages, I found it to be uber cool to have content and layout changed to one’s liking. Google can perhaps take a cue from Yahoo and as a step forward, give a few options (like colors and fonts) on Google News.

If you’re a frequent Gmail user like me, you would’ve noticed that Gmail provides secure [encrypted] login while the rest of the pages are blatantly unsecure. Using it in public wireless networks allows anyone on that network to access all the emails that you send and recieve. A simple way to secure your Gmail data transfers from prying eyes is to use https which is nothing but http layered over SSL (secure sockets layer).

The default login will take you to your inbox and the session remains unsecure. It looks as follows -

Using https directs the message to a secure port address rather than the default Web port number of 80. Your Firefox browser will show the address bar turn pale yellow indicating a secure site.

So the next time you decide to browse at your local wifi-enabled Barista or Starbucks, make sure you have your Gmail session secured.
[via stopdesign]