Problem installing Google Voice and Video Chat Chrome plugIn – FIXED (for me)

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Problem installing Google Voice and Video Chat Chrome plugIn – FIXED (for me)

I was recently having problems installing Google Voice and Video Chat plugin for Chrome on a new Windows (Win7 x64).  After downloading and  installing the plugin and restarting Chrome my camera would not be detected, and would ask to reinstall the plugin.

I went into the {Drive}:\Users\{UserName}\AppData\Local\Google\Google Talk Plugin directory nothing was there except a log file.  I went back to a working profile and seen that the full install was there.  I could copy the install to the new profile, it worked but that would be cheating… I wanted to figure out how to fix this without copying the install from one profile to another.

So I backed up a couple directories and a file named googletalkpluginaccel.msi in the {Drive}:\Users\{Username}\AppData\Local\Google\Update\Install\{ADCFD26D-E545-4AD6-AEA6-4D55EE3ADD19} directory.  Double-clicking this file to install did nothing, BUT right clicking on the file and clicking repair from the context menu completed the plugin installation.  After restarting Chrome it worked fine!

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Strange behavior in Chrome on Win 7

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Strange behavior in Chrome on Win 7

Been noticing for a while now that the first time Chrome is launched after clean booting into Win 7 the pages in tabs do not load correctly.

I had a little time to troubleshoot and here is what I’ve found:

* Only happens after a cold boot or reboot then launching Chrome for the first time
* If I click in the address bar and hit enter the address in that tab will load
* I normally open 3 home tabs; G+, Twitter, and Google. The result is the same if reduced to only one tab (Google)
* I have 2 extensions installed in Chrome; goo.gl URL Shortener, and Replies and More
* If both extensions are disabled or removed all returns to normal
* If Replies and More extension only is enabled / re-installed all tabs load except the G+ tab. (Matt Mastracci, I still wouldn’t do without your extension. It should be baked into G+ as far as I’m concerned!)
* If goo.gl URL Shortener extension only is enabled / re-installed no tabs load correctly.
* I dual boot with Linux, on the Linux side all is well.

I’ve had these extensions installed for quite some time. This issue only recently came to light. I don’t know if google made a change to Chrome, a recent MS update knocked things out of whack (wouldn’t be the 1st time for that!), or if the extension developers made a change to the extensions.

It’s only a minor nuisance, but a bit annoying simply knowing that something isn’t quite right. Has anyone else seen this problem or have a possbible solution, besides the obvious..”It works in Linux, use Linux!”

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How to use G+ as a Simple and Searchable Bookmarking Service

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How to use G+ as a Simple and Searchable Bookmarking Service

While Pinterest may be all the rage right now, it could help some people to know that Google+ is the ultimate bookmarking service.

Not only can you easily bookmark and categorize things that interest you, G+ makes it possible to search your bookmarks down the road and even share them to others.

It’s all in the beauty of Circles.

Newer users may not be familiar with the various ways Circles can be used. Not only can you categorize people according to interests, but you can also create empty circles to save things to yourself.

I created separate Circles named Bkmks:___ for each interest, and any time I read something I want to refer to later, I simply +1 the page to myself and share it to that empty Circle. In the event that the webmasters for the page are behind the times and don’t have a +1 button available, I use the Google +1 Button Extension for Chrome so that I can bookmark any page on the web!

It’s really that easy! A nice bonus is that I can search my Bookmarks later with the G+ Search feature (narrowing it down to my own posts,) and I can manage or delete them as necessary.

This is also handy when I’m using StumbleUpon and other services (and even surfing great G+ posts) where I want to search or refer to things later.

This way I have all my interests in the place I spend the most of my time– right here on G+!

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Linux Mint 13 – Cinnamon Quick Review

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Linux Mint 13 – Cinnamon Quick Review

I installed Mint 13 with Cinnamon the other day. In a nutshell Cinnamon 1.4 is a major regression from Mint 11’s Gnome 2. Although I haven’t tried them all, from what I hear that is true of all the major players’ desktop environments today.

KDE’s plasma drove me away a couple years ago. I couldn’t stand Unity, so I parted with Ubuntu and found Mint.

I hadn’t tried Gnome 3, I couldn’t comprehend the logic to need extensions for the desktop to complete basic tasks that should be baked into the desktop to begin with. I just couldn’t see how that could be resource friendly. I took Cinnamon for a test drive to find out. After using it long enough to see that quite few basic functions could not be found I noticed the fans in the tower had sped up… Something must be exercising the CPU a bit, opening the resource monitor, it turned out to be Cinnamon using between 20 & 40% on one core. I wasn’t doing anything that should require that kind of CPU cycles, it was just Cinnamon spinning it’s wheels and going nowhere. I loaded XFCE and tried it and the core went back down to between 2 & 4% where it should have been in the first place.

In my mind that pretty much confirms my initial thoughts. Seems to me to be pretty sad days for the Linux desktop, I hope Gnome 3 can get though it’s growing pains. In the meantime I’m going to give Mint 13 with MATE a try.

When I loaded XFCE (I hadn’t tried that before either) I kind of liked what I saw, so if Mint with MATE don’t work out for me I may give Xubuntu a go.

Gotta love the options Linux gives you!

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