Quickly ping Google/Yahoo to know your Connection Status.

1. Open notepad and jot down ping -t 209.85.171.100. Close and rename it as *.bat file. This is the IP address* of Google.

2. Send shortcut to your Desktop.Change icon(Optional).

1. 2.

Note: Don’t use IP address of Microsoft.com/Amazon.com, etc as they don’t respond to ping command.

For my broadband connection ‘Round Trip Propagation time’ of around 300-400ms(seen in snapshot above) indicates a fairly good connection speed. If you see reply from remote server, close the batch process.

*why use IP address? If the connection is not ok, the batch process will fail to execute if you simply write ping -t google.com, so you won’t be able to find the problem.

RSS + FeedDemon + Google Reader

I am not gonna tell you what is RSS? To have a quick overview see this Video.

 

I will just show how to make it work for you. Download and  install FeedDemon. If you are already using Google reader for RSS feeds just synchronize it with FeedDemon. If you are new follow the instructions below :

Open a website you want to subscribe. If you open it in Firefox RSS button will be present in the address bar itself.

or else you will find it in the website as shown below :

Just configure FeedDemon as your default feed reader.

Now subscribe all your favorite websites and stay tuned. Happy feeding!