Speed dial websites on firefox

Firefox has a built-in feature to speed-dial websites. The trick here is to bookmark a web-page and attach a keyword to it. There's a difference between attaching a 'tag' and 'keyword'.

So, once you decide upon a list of websites that you would like to speed dial, open the 'Organize Bookmarks' link by holding Ctrl+Shift+O else open it via. the Bookmarks tab.

Select 'New bookmark'. A screenshot is attached, where-in I have added the HDFC bank login with the keyword 'HDFC'. Note that the keywords are case-insensitive. So, even if I type 'hdfc' instead of 'HDFC' (note the case), firefox would open-up the login for HDFC bank. Even though this is a simple technique, not many are aware of this. The good thing is you can even have numbers as a keyword for a website.

If you decide to export your bookmarks to another browser, say 'Google Chrome' for example, you would not lose out on this feature. I haven't tried it on Safari or Internet Explorer so far. Tell me if it works for you!

How to make the headphone socket work with ubuntu 9.10 and Macbook 2,1

I've been having this issue for sometime now and never realized that the solution is pretty simple. Whenever I plug-in a headphone into the headphone-socket on my macbook running Ubuntu 9.10, it never worked. Assuming that there was some problem with the headphone I continued using the speakers. However, the headphone worked on my other OSs.

One fine day, curiosity got the better of me and I wanted to sort this out. It didn't take me a long time to find a solution. This issue was already raised in the Ubuntu forums and has worked for many people. Click here to find out.

Just run the command 'alsamixer' (without the quotes) in terminal and press the key 'm' (without the quotes again). The default setting for the headphone jack is muted and one just has to unmute it.

Make Safari open new windows in tabs

Here's a small workaround to make safari open new links in tabs. Just copy-paste the following command in terminal. Restart the browser and there you go.

defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool true

Note that this trick is for Safari 4 and below versions. In Safari 5, there's an 
option in the preferences window which allows one to change the setting such 
that new pages always open in new tabs. A screenshot is attached.

I know I haven't been writing enough. I promise to share my views and post my latest tweaks more frequently. I guess even small posts aren't that bad!