A simple trick to speed up Firefox

If you have a high speed internet connection why not make use of it to the max to get a better performance when you browse using Firefox. Follow these simple steps at DemoGeek.com to speed up Firefox.

Technorati Tags: Speed up Firefox,Speedup Firefox,Firefox Trick,How To

Make your web sites available in different languages using Google Translate Gadget

If you have a blog or a website then it would be nice thing to have the ability for your readers to translate your website into their own language. You don’t have to create different versions of your website to provide your readers with a way to read your website in the language of their choice.

DemoGeek.com has a well explained article on how to translate your website or blog to different languages using Google Translate Gadget.

It is definitely worth a read.

Technorati Tags: Google Translate,Google Translate Gadget,Website Translation,Language Translation,Multi-lingual,How To

Microsoft to break open a trend in Vancouver, Canada

I’m not sure if the mainstream media and the public is fully aware of the US Immigration fairlessness and the hardship legal immigrants face before getting past the immigration gate. One good example is the latest fiasco by the USCIS/DOS on it’s Visa Bulletin game. You can read a little bit about this fiasco from here. It looks like not just the poor legal immigrants but the employers as well go thru this hardship it seems and one good example is this move by Microsoft to open up a development center in Vancouver, Canada.

Read the full story from here.

Tags: Microsoft, Immigration, News, Development Center, Canada, Vancouver

ExplorerXP – Windows Explorer Alternative

Hate Windows Explorer? Count me on that list too. There were off a lot of features missing in the standard Windows Explorer. I’ve tried quite a few alternatives like Explorer2, Frigate File Manager etc. But nothing made me comfortable until I found this…ExplorerXP. This is a nice little tool that has pretty much of what you miss in the standard Windows Explorer. On top of that it is FREE.

Try it from here.

tags: Tools, Free, Free Software, Free Stuff, Windows Explorer, Explorer XP, Windows Explorer Alternative

Why Google is again the #1 place to work for?

Fortune magazine again nominated Google as the best place to work for. It is just so unique of a company that offers that much perks and challenge mixed together. That would be fun and motivating.

This video quantifies that Google could be on the top of the list for quite sometime to come.

Note: If you can’t view the video above then here is the link to the video.

tags: Google, Fortune Magazine, Best Companies to work for, Best Company, Video, Google Campus

Amazing HD View from Microsoft Research

I was looking at the latest research stuff from Microsoft, HD View. It’s really an awesome application that let’s you zoom in so deep that I was able to see the people standing on top of the Seattle Space Needle.. While taking a virtual tour around Seattle Downtown I noticed this, which looks to me as a bug. Notice the pole that has the US Flag. Is that looking unrealistic to you?

May be I’m testing this free for Microsoft. I love Microsoft products and I don’t mind doing this on my free time.

Well done Microsoft Research Team. I hope you guys put in more pictures to view.

Microsoft Research HD View

tags: Microsoft, Microsoft Research, HD View, Bug

Microsoft: Don’t use pirated softwares, if you do, use our’s

Microsoft has finally decided to deal with the devil on it’s own turf. They are now suggesting that you don’t use pirated softwares of theirs but if you do use pirated softwares they want you to use Microsoft’s softwares. The motivation behind this scheme is that even if your current version of the software is pirated you may be tempted to buy a future version of the software when it comes out. Even though it is just a “IF SO” kind of thing they just don’t want to miss out on that customer base.

Source

tags: Microsoft, Piracy, Pirated Softwares

WordPress 2.1.1 has been hacked, advised to upgrade to 2.1.2

It’s been a breaking news on the blogosphere. That’s no surprise given the popularity of WordPress blogging platform. They just (few days back) released the latest version of WordPress 2.1.1 and that had some good stuffs that must have got attention of some of the bloggers to upgrade.

To their surprise, it’s been revealed that the copies they’ve downloaded might not be the genuine copy. Someone (?) had hacked into their servers to modify the release bits to include backdoors. So whomever have downloaded WordPress 2.1.1 for the past few days are advised to upgrade to WordPress 2.1.2.

Given the severity of this stuff, they’ve even established an email address, 21securityfaq@wordpress.org, that you can use if you have any questions regarding this. 

Source: Matt at WordPress

Yahoo integrates Yahoo Messenger with Yahoo Mail Beta

Yahoo is in the process of releasing a killer feature on their Yahoo Mail (beta) platform, to integrate it’s ultra-famous Yahoo Messenger with Yahoo Mail. The way they are doing it makes it even neat. What that brings to user experience is that a single platform for both mail and messaging. Google tried that a while back but it wasn’t a huge hit with the users as Yahoo Messenger seems to still rule the instant messaging world.

I use Yahoo Messenger a lot and I love it. And then I use Yahoo Mail as well. So we are talking about 2 applications and so 2 windows on your precious Windows Taskbar real estate. With this integration you’ll be able to see the online status of your contacts from the Yahoo Mail and if they are online you can ping them to get them involved in a chat session. That will open up a new web tab within the Yahoo Mail window (this tab is not a browser tab, don’t get confused with that) and you can have a hierarchical view of the conversation. The neat thing about this whole thing is that you can convert the whole chat session into an email and have a record of what you said or embarrass your buddies, however you wanna’ do it.

This new service from Yahoo is not yet available to the whole public. The requirement is that you have to use their new Yahoo Mail Beta (not the traditional one) and keep your fingers crossed. If you see an online status icon next to your contacts name on the email then you are all set to chat within the context of Yahoo Mail.

Good luck.

tags: Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Mail Beta, Yahoo Messenger, Yahoo Mail and Yahoo Messenger Integration, Yahoo, New stuff from Yahoo

Flaw found in Office 2007

The consumer version of Office 2007, which launched only four weeks ago, is designed to withstand higher scrutiny by malicious code writers, as Microsoft subjected the software to code auditors as part of its security development lifecycle.

But researchers at eEye Digital Security found a file format vulnerability in Microsoft Office Publisher 2007, which could be exploited to let an outsider run code on a compromised PC.

“We were surprised we could find a flaw so quickly (after Office 2007 launched) and one that was part of their core products,” said Ross Brown, eEye’s chief executive.

An attacker could create a malicious publisher file, he said. Once the recipient opens the file, he or she could find the system infected and susceptible to a remote attack.

Researchers at eEye used a standard process of code auditing in discovering the vulnerabilities, Brown added. He noted that Microsoft either did not do a “good job” with its code auditing, or it may not have had enough people working on such a task.

Microsoft, meanwhile, said it is investigating eEye’s report of a possible vulnerability in Publisher 2007 and will provide users with additional guidance if necessary.

Executives at the software giant have recently said they expect security challenges to keep emerging, as an increasing number of devices connect to the Internet.

No public exploits have been reported in circulation for Publisher 2007 and, given Office 2007’s recent release, the flaw may hold little attraction for attackers who may wish to concentrate on software that is in greater distribution, eEye said.

Source

tags: Office, Microsoft, Microsoft Office 2007, Bug in Office 2007, Error, Bug

MSN Soapbox is now public beta

You must not have noticed this but Microsoft just moved it’s YouTube competitor Soapbox service from private beta to public beta. So what does that mean to you and me? It means that they are done with a smaller user base testing and now they want to expand that user base to a larger scale. That’s a step forward.

Soapbox

Technorati tags: Soapbox, MSN, Microsoft, YouTube Competitor

GMail is now open to the public

Gone were the days where you have to wait for someone to send an invitation to create an account for Google’s best application so far, GMail. Google just announced that they are making GMail open for anyone to enroll without any invitations. Google Docs & Spreadsheets and Google Calendar and few other Google web applications are an added bonus that you can access with the GMail account.

Sign-up for a GMail account.

Technorati tags: Google, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Account

Windows Vista Speech Recognition Hole

Microsoft has confirmed an issue with the Windows Vista Speech Recognition feature.

An issue has been identified publicly where an attacker could use the speech recognition capability of Windows Vista to cause the system to take undesired actions. While this is possible there are a number of factors that make this “attack” very hard to pull off.

In order for the attack to be successful, the targeted system would need to have the speech recognition feature previously activated and configured. Additionally the system would need to have speakers and a microphone installed and turned on. The exploit scenario would involve the speech recognition feature picking up commands through the microphone such as “copy”, “delete”, ”shutdown”, etc. and acting on them. These commands would be coming from an audio file that is being played through the speakers. Of course this would be heard and the actions taken would be visible to the user if they were in front of the PC during the attempted exploitation. It is not possible through the use of voice commands to get the system to perform privileged functions such as creating a user without being prompted by UAC for Administrator credentials. The UAC prompt cannot be manipulated by voice commands by default. There are also additional barriers that would make an attack difficult including speaker and microphone placement, microphone feedback, and the clarity of the dictation.

The flaw is being regarded by many as a non issue.

Technorati tags: Windows Vista, Bug, Speech Recognition, Microsoft

Microsoft Pumps $500 Million Into Vista Marketing Campaign

We all know that Microsoft is good at marketing it’s products even if they are a bit less than sublime. Now, how about $500 million budget for the grand mela? That sounds a stretch too far since the PC’s that will be shipping from now on till for some time is going to carry Vista by default. But…hey…it’s Microsoft, the hefty.

Read the full story from here.

Technorati tags: Windows Vista, Vista Marketing, 500 Million Marketing

Windows Vista Updates are out already

Microsoft just made available the updates for it’s to-be-released-tonight Windows Vista. As soon as you buy-it-and-install-it-tonight you can get the updates using Vista’s “Windows Update Client”. There are 22 updates altogether, if you don’t see all 22 of ‘em you should use the “Check for updates” option.

Here’s the breakdown of the 22 updates,

• 5 Updates for both 32bit and 64bit flavors of Vista (KB930857), (KB928089), (KB929427), (KB931573) & (KB929735)
• 15 Language Packs (Chinese Hong Kong, Chine Simplified, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish)
• 2 Ultimate Extras (BitLocker and EFS enhancements & Hold Em Poker Game)

Technorati tags: Windows Vista, Windows Vista Updates, Windows Updates for Vista

New Windows Vista home page for Vista launch

Microsoft is prepping itself for the flagship Windows Vista launch by giving Windows Vista home page a redesign. It now has a bigger Vista Orb that animates along with it’s Vista launch slogan “The Wow starts now”. The menu bar got a Windows Media Player 11 skin. Overall it looks great, just in time for the launch event.

Visit the new Windows Vista home page.

Technorati tags: Windows Vista, New Windows Vista Home Page, Vista Launch, Redesigned Vista Home Page

Google’s Video Search Engine

It seems like Google is finally trying to make something out of it’s mammoth acquisition of YouTube. They started integrating stuffs from YouTube into its video search results as it starts to build a comprehensive video search and content platform. 

Read the full story from here.

Technorati tags: Google Video, YouTube, Video Search

Google Adsense competitor Yahoo Panama is ready for the prime time

Until now the pay-per-click terrain is completely dominated by the mighty Google Adsense program. With the acquisition of Overture back in 2003 Yahoo thought it can step into that terrain but lack of development and integration efforts made Yahoo to fall behind Google.

Now, Yahoo is planning to release their own version of pay-per-click program Panama by February 5, 2007. Initially they planned to release Panama by March 2007 but they’ve pre-empted their plan to release it by February 2007 itself.

Source: vnunet

Technorati tags: Google, Adsense, Google Adsense, Yahoo, Panama, Yahoo Advertising, Yahoo Panama, Advertising, Pay-Per-Click

Microsoft to support Windows XP till ~ 2014

With Microsoft’s latest operating system Windows Vista in the horizon of getting to the user’s hand near soon it is obvious that we tend to think what will happen to it’s second best (claims to be) operating system Windows XP.

Well, Microsoft announced before that they will end any mainstream support of Windows XP by April 2009. Now they have announced that they will provide an extended support program which will add an additional 5 more years of support and that translates to ~ April 2014. And they say they will provide the support for the Home and Media Center editions of Windows XP.

Source: PC Pro

Technorati tags: Windows XP, Windows XP Home, Windows XP Media Center, Windows XP Support Terms

Faster Windows Live Mail M9

Microsoft has updated its Windows Live Mail service to M9. New features include:

• Much faster loading and advanced Firefox compatibility (works fully in Firefox 2)
• The Classic Mode will be the default view from Hotmail users – brand new users won’t be taken to the fully AJAX’d page but to the Classic interface for “ease-of-use” purposes.
• A new Today page rolls out, including what would be on your Today page in Windows Live Messenger.
• Recent Updates now added as a tabbed page on the Today page allowing you to switch to what’s changed (blogs, contacts and newsletters etc.)
• Search bar at the top of the page has been updated and tweaked slightly for the other themes.

Not all the servers have been updated as of yet. Use the link below to access Windows Live Mail using the bay117 server.

Access the fastest Windows Live Mail from this bay117 server. Believe me…it’s really fast.

Source: Neowin.net

Technorati tags: Microsoft, Windows Live Mail, Faster Windows Live Mail

10 avoidable IT interview flubs

eWeek runs a report on the top 10 flubs to avoid at an IT interview. Here is a gist of it,

1. Late to the interview means late on projects and deadlines
2. Lack of enthusiasm means you don’t care about your work
3. Little to no company knowledge means you lack research skills
4. Inappropriate dress translates to inappropriate work
5. Too negative is too much: Spells P-R-O-B-L-E-M
6. Arrogance or dominating the interview signals conflict on teams
7. Too quiet means you lack confidence in your work
8. Misstating qualifications means, well, you’re a liar
9. Speaking only tech-ese means you won’t work well with others
10. Not saying thank you is not welcome

Read the full article from here.

Technorati tags: Tips and Tricks, Tips, Interview Tips

WordPress 2.1 "Ella" released

WordPress just released it’s latest stable version 2.1, code named “Ella”, named after Ella Fitzgerald. Here is a list of features that’s been bundled with the new release,

• Autosave makes sure you never lose a post again.
• Our new tabbed editor allows you to switch between WYSIWYG and code editing instantly while writing a post.
• The lossless XML import and export makes it easy for you to move your content between WordPress blogs.
• Our completely redone visual editor also now includes spell checking.
• New search engine privacy option allows you take you to indicate your blog shouldn’t ping or be indexed by search engines like Google.
• You can set any “page” to be the front page of your site, and put the latest posts somewhere else, making it much easier to use WordPress as a content management system.
• Much more efficient database code, faster than previous versions. Domas Mituzas from MySQL went over all our queries with a fine-toothed comb.
• Links in your blogroll now support sub-categories and you can add categories on the fly.
• Redesigned login screen from the Shuttle project.
• More AJAX to make custom fields, moderation, deletions, and more all faster. My favorite is the comments page, which new lets you approve or unapprove things instantly.
• Pages can now be drafts, or private.
• Our admin has been refreshed to load faster and be more visually consistent.
• The dashboard now instantly and brings RSS feeds asynchronously in the background.
• Comment feeds now include all the comments, not just the last 10.
• Better internationalization and support for right-to-left languages.
• The upload manager lets you easily manage all your uploads pictures, video, and audio.
• A new version of the Akismet plugin is bundled.

Get WordPress 2.1 from here.

Technorati tags: WordPress, WordPress Latest Release, WordPress 2.1, Blog Platform

A new ‘iBook’ from Google?

Google is plotting to do for books what the iPod has done for music: make them purchasable by download to a portable access device. Could civilization as we know it be under threat?

The UK’s Times newspaper reported that “Google is working on a system that would allow readers to download entire books to their computers in a format that they could read on screen or on mobile devices such as a Blackberry.”

It quoted Jens Redmer, director of Google Book Search in Europe, speaking at ‘Unbound’, an invitation-only conference at the New York Public Library, saying: “We are working on a platform that will let publishers give readers full access to a book online.” Redmer said that the project was likely to come to fruition “sooner rather than later”.

The Times said the initiative would be part of Google’s Book Search service and its partnership with publishers, which makes books searchable online. Readers are then linked to sites such as Amazon where they can buy a physical copy of the book.

The news immediately lead Sunday Times commentator, Bryan Appleyard to bemoan the fact that: “We are, it seems, about to lose physical contact with books, the primary experience and foundation of civilization for the last 500 years.”

Read the full story from here.

Technorati tags: iBook, Google, Google’s Secret Work

Internet Explorer 7 Hits 100 Million Installs

Microsoft announced Friday it has hit the 100 million installation milestone for Internet Explorer 7, a figure that makes the new browser the second most used behind IE6. Web analytics firm WebSideStory reports that 25 percent of all Web surfers in the United States are now running IE7.

“We expect these numbers to continue to rise as we complete our final localized versions, scale up AU distribution, and with the consumer availability of Windows Vista on January 30, 2007,” wrote IE group program manager Tony Chor on the IEBlog. Because IE7 is built into Windows Vista, Microsoft expects adoption rates to jump further as consumers upgrade. Already, Microsoft is preparing to discuss the next version of Internet Explorer at the company’s MIX conference that begins April 30.

Source: BetaNews

Technorati tags: Microsoft, Internet Explorer 7, IE7, Statistics

Spiral Text Generator

I love spiral texts. Generate one from here (PartyPrinter).

PS: There are other shapes like heart, wave and even maze. Also keep in mind that the output comes in a PDF format.

Visit DemoGeek.com for amazingly detailed quality articles on Computer, Internet, Browsers, Software, Programming and much more.

Technorati tags: Tools, Spiral Text

Workrave – Prevent Repetitive Strain Injury

We all know that we spend so much time in front of the PC that it would be for good to have some breaks in between. Being into an interesting piece of work we tend to forget the goodness of taking a little break.

Workrave is a nice little utility that’s dedicated for this and only for this purpose, that  keeps annoying you for a break.

Here is what Workrave has to say about this utility,

Workrave is a program that assists in the recovery and prevention of Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI). The program frequently alerts you to take micro-pauses, rest breaks and restricts you to your daily limit.

Download it from here.

Technorati tags: Utility, Tools, Repetitive Strain Injury

Corporate world meets Web 2.0

When the corporate world meets Web 2.0 standards their logos might look like this. Some of ‘em are really creative and some of ‘em are really shiny.

Take a look at here.

Technorati tags: Web 2.0, Web 2.0 Corporate Logos, Corporate Logos

Download (in iPod format) Steve Jobs Keynote video from MacWorld 2007

Steve Jobs’ MacWorld Expo 2007 Keynote video was streaming at Apple’s website. You know that. But who wants to watch the keynote in the computer? What happened to the Apple frenzy, iPod?

Here is a location from where you can download the keynote video in m4v format (widescreen - 680×360) and can carry it in your iPod.

Pre-download Warning: The video file size is around 1.2 GB and you might want to be little diligent while downloading.

Download it from here.

Technorati tags: Apple, Macworld, MacWorld 2007, MacWorld 2007 Expo, MacWorld 2007 Video, Steve Jobs Keynote at MacWorld 2007

FileMenu – Handy Right Click Menu Customizer

Here is a nice little utility that comes in handy given the limitations of the default Windows menu choices, particularly the right click menu. LopeSoft’s FileMenu utility let’s you customize the choice of menus that you want to appear on the right click menu and also it allows you to add new shortcuts to the menu. It’s a great little utility and it works like a snap.

Give it a try. I’m sure it will be handy and you’ll like it.

Technorati tags: Tools, FileMenu, Utility, System Tool, Windows Menu Tool

Commercializing CAPTCHA

Seth Godin has a great idea of commercializing CAPTCHA’s. The idea is great because as so many people reads blogs and leaves comments and even logs-in to Web 2.0 services these days it is a great way of an advertising stream because they have to read the CAPTCHA’s before typing the text.

Technorati tags: Idea, CAPTCHA

A day in the life of a "Googler"

CNN has a nice video clip of a day in the life of a “Googler”. As you might know, Google is the #1 in the list of Fortune’s “100 Best Companies To Work For in 2007″. And this video quantifies why they are at the #1 position.

View it here.

Technorati tags: Google, Googler, CNN, CNN.com, CNN.com Video, Video, Fortune Best Companies to work for in 2007

~

Apple Computer is now Apple Inc.

Om Malik at GigaOm concludes that by dropping the “Computer” from it’s name Apple has become not just a computer manufacturing company but a consumer electronics company.

Here is a quote from GigaOm,

Dropping Computer from its name is a sure sign that Apple, from this point forward, is a consumer electronics company, a mobile handset maker – one that also makes computer hardware and software as well.

And the picture is the proof.

Technorati tags: Apple, Apple Inc., Apple Renames

Test Drive a Windows Vista near you

Do you want to test drive the latest OS from Microsoft, Windows Vista, without downloading the mammoth ISO files from those beta releases? Microsoft Virtual Labs is having a solution for you, Windows Vista Business Test Drive. Yes, it’s a hosted Vista that you can try without any risk or overhead.

Update: The last time I’d checked this web site it was down for updates, at least that’s what it said.

Feel like giving it a try? Click here.

Technorati tags: Windows Vista, Test Drive Vista, Microsoft Virtual Labs

What’s next Microsoft?…Windows Fiji and Windows Vienna

Having the count down already started for the consumer release of Windows Vista, what’s next in the line cooking up there at Redmond? Windows Fiji and Windows Vienna. That’s right. These are the Windows version on the queue to be in line for the subsequent releases.

On a gist, Windows Fiji will be either an update or a service pack to the current version of Windows Vista. This release should have features that didn’t make it in time for the Windows Vista launch.

According to Wikipedia here are some of the rumored features to be included in Windows Fiji.

• The user interface will be updated with things that were originally promised for Vista, along with a more powerful sidebar, which will be more than just a dock for widgets
• .Net Framework will be updated to 3.5 or 4
• WinFS will be applied over NTFS to give us Virtual Folders
• All bundled application will be updated to newer versions
• Tighter integration with Windows Live. Probably through ‘Codename Nemo’, a media center application that’s integrated with Messenger, Spaces, and probably lots of other Windows Live Services
• We might see Monaco, a music authoring tool, similar to Apple’s Garageband
• Default playback of HD-DVD, Vista currently identifies these disks but cannot play them without an external decoder
• A more advanced speech recognition software
• The system will be made more secure
• New themes, icons, wallpapers, games, and minor tweaks to almost everything

If Windows Fiji is an update to the current Windows Vista, Windows Vienna is a complete revamp of the way Windows works and behaves. I particularly like the concept of “pie” menu instead of the traditional one (yeaaaay!!! more screen real estate).

Cybernet Technology News has a nice article with screenshots.

Disclaimer: As I’ve said it’s all in a very early incumbent stage and things might change drastically as the development progresses (like Windows Vista).

Technorati tags: Windows, Windows Fiji, Windows Vienna

Internal workings of Windows Live Messenger

Take a look at the way the “Messenger Relay” system relays your Windows Live messages from one end to the other. (Click on the image to see the full view)

Here is how the whole thing flies around,

1. The user starts the session by double clicking a contact.
2. The user’s Windows Live ID credentials are sent across to the Windows Live ID Credentials server for further verification
3. The information is passed through a incoming only firewall to the dispatch server. This is the first point of connection for the message being sent.
4. Depending where the user is in the world, a connection will be made to the local notification server. There are main ones in Singapore, Dublin, Redmond and Reading. This keeps the connection between the two users alive, and keeps things updated such as user status, chat requests and email notifications from Windows Live Mail/Hotmail.
5. The message itself doesn’t go near the notification servers – it is passed onto the switchboard server which is the where all the messages and files are exchanged. The user starting the chat can talk to one user, whilst using another switchboard session to talk to someone else, and another switchboard session for someone else still – without even knowing it. Invitations, file transfers and video/voice chat are also sent through here.
6. The information is then relayed back through an outgoing firewall and checks the user is still online. If the user is offline by the time the message is ready to be received, then it’ll bounce back and be saved on the switchboard session until the user logs back on again. If they are online, they will receive the message.

Source: http://www.msblog.org

Technorati tags: Windows Live Messenger, Relay System

Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 (SP1) Released

Scott Guthrie announces that, Visual Studio team shipped the final release of Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1 yesterday. It is available for immediate download in all 10 languages (English, French, Spanish, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and both traditional and simplified Chinese). 

This SP release is a pretty major service pack release and incorporates a lot of bug-fixes and feedback from customers. Included with the service pack are the support for VS 2005 Web Application Projects (which is also made available as a separate download back in May). It also contains a number of design-time performance optimizations and fixes across the product.

You can download and install it here.

Technorati tags: Visual Studio.NET IDE, Visual Studio 2005, Service Pack, VS 2005 SP1

Microsoft launches a redesigned Microsoft.com site

Yes, on December 14th Microsoft.com has launched the newly redesigned site.

I think the site deserves a redesign and that was due for a while. The site looks good overall but the page background color is very plain (no patterns) and the Microsoft logo and the page image (the big one) takes up too much space for me to scroll down to see the page content, on a 1280 x 800 screen resolution.

Visit Microsoft.com to see the new design.

For Q&A on the redesign, visit this page.

Technorati tags: Microsoft, Microsoft.com, Microsoft.com Site Redesign, New Microsoft.com site

Download Adobe Photoshop CS3 Beta

Adobe Labs now offers the new beta version of Photoshop CS3 for public download. The beta is available as a Universal Binary for the Macintosh platform as well for Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Vista computers, with the final shipping release of Adobe Photoshop CS3 planned for spring 2007.

The Photoshop CS3 beta is available in English only but to Photoshop CS2 users worldwide. It is available to licensed users of either the Photoshop CS2 (full, upgrade, and education), Adobe Creative Suite 2 Standard or Premium (full, upgrade, and education), Adobe Production Studio Standard and Premium (full, upgrade, and education), Adobe Video Bundle (full, upgrade, and education) or Adobe Web Bundle (full, upgrade, and education). You will need to provide your Photoshop CS2, Creative Suite, Production Studio or Bundle serial number in order to get a Photoshop CS3 beta serial number, enabling you to activate the Photoshop beta and use it beyond the two-day grace period.

DownloadSquad reports that even if you don’t own CS2 you can still try the CS3 beta for free for 30 days.

Download the Adobe Photoshop CS3 Beta from here.

Technorati tags: Adobe, Photoshop, Photoshop CS3, Download Photoshop CS3 Beta

Google releases Google Toolbar 3 Beta

Google announced on Tuesday the availability of it’s new Google Toolbar 3 Beta version. The new beta version is packed with handy features that makes downloading Google Toolbar 3 Beta a smart thing to do. Here are the new features at a glance.

• Custom buttons
• Send To
• Google Docs & Spreadsheets
• Bookmarks
• Google Account Sign-in
• Enhanced Search Box
• Google Safe Browsing
• AutoFill
• WordTranslator
• Subscribe to Feed
• Send with Gmail
• Custom Layouts
• AutoLink
• SpellCheck
• PageRank Display
• Highlight Search Terms
• Word Find Buttons
• Auto Update

Here is the full list of the new features.

for Firefox 1.5+ versions.

For Internet Explorer 6.0+ versions please use this link to download the toolbar.

Technorati tags: Google, Google Toolbar 3, Google Toolbar 3 Beta

Interesting trivia about Digg

TechCrunch has some interesting trivia about Digg on Digg’s 2 year anniversary. Here is the trivia,

* First story to hit the home page after officially releasing: http://digg.com/tech_news/Google_Cheat_Sheet

* # of users who registered in the first week: 578
* # of registered users today: 707,593

* First 10 users who registered and are still actively Digging:

http://digg.com/users/Waldoze
http://digg.com/users/drinet
http://digg.com/users/mkirk
http://digg.com/users/jkenzer
http://digg.com/users/nickster
http://digg.com/users/Anthony
http://digg.com/users/dkurfurst
http://digg.com/users/bnitro
http://digg.com/users/CUBApete
http://digg.com/users/martinhuard

* # of servers Digg had at launch: 1 (rented)
* # of servers Digg has today: 103

* # of stories submitted the first week: 923
* # of stories submitted last week: 15,412
* # of stories submitted (all-time): 1,001,865

Mike even have put forward a complete coverage about Digg. Take a look at here for the complete coverage.

Congratulations Digg Team on the 2nd year anniversary!!!

Technorati tags: Digg, TechCrunch, Digg Trivia, Digg 2nd Year Anniversary

Microsoft Windows Vista final bits are now available on TechNet and MSDN

If you are an MSDN Subscriber, head on to fight for bandwidth with every one of your fellow MSDN’ers for Windows Vista. That’s right…Microsoft has released Windows Vista a day earlier than expected. To get the download bits you will need to login with your MSDN subscription credentials and request the proper keys for the installation.

The product key used to install Windows Vista will determine which edition will be installed. The product keys used to install Windows Vista Business N, Windows Vista Home Basic N, and Windows Vista Starter are not currently available.

It looks like MSDN has got only the x86 bits whereas TechNet has got both the x86 and x64 bits.

This single download, which is the file “en_windows_vista_x86_dvd_X12-34293.iso” is an ISO-9660 DVD Image, with a total of 2555 MB, includes the following Windows Vista editions:

• Windows Vista Business
• Windows Vista Business N
• Windows Vista Home Basic
• Windows Vista Home Basic N
• Windows Vista Home Premium
• Windows Vista Starter
• Windows Vista Ultimate 

Let us know how your install experience was. And enjoy the early Vista experience!!!

Technorati tags: Windows Vista, TechNet, MSDN, MSDN Subsription, Windows Vista Download

Yahoo to integrate Instant Messaging with Yahoo Mail

In the next two months Yahoo is going to integrate instant messaging with the Yahoo Mail platform. With the new beta platform already being popular among the users this will add a new boost to the already popular email client.

Unlike Gmail with Talk, Yahoo is planning to tightly integrate instant messaging into the UI framework itself to give the users a unified look and feel as Yahoo Mail Beta.

Here is a picture for you to visualize on what that means.

Hope it doesn’t slow down the Yahoo Mail performance. We have to wait and see. But I think this step forward is in the right direction as many times it happens that users can access Yahoo Mail but couldn’t get to the messenger at some places, for example at work. This will greatly resolve that issue.

Technorati tags: Yahoo Messenger, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo, Yahoo Mail and Messenger Integration

Gmail gets some new features

With all the cool things that Gmail already offers, here are some new features that Gmail team has added to Gmail and is available for you to experience.

Reply on top
No more scrolling to the bottom of a long message to find the “Reply” link. Now there’s a Reply button right on top, along with a lot of other options under the little dropdown arrow.

Embarrassment-reducing new message notifications
Ever replied to a message only to find out that someone sent a better, smarter reply right before you? Now, if someone sends a reply while you’re in the middle of reading a conversation (or replying to it), you’ll get a notification that a new message has arrived. Click “update conversation” to see what you’ve missed.

Forward all
When viewing a conversation, use the new “Forward all” link on the right if you want to forward the entire conversation instead of just one message.

Chat even when your friends are offline
Chatting in Gmail just keeps getting better. Now, if you’re chatting with a friend who goes offline, your friend will be able to see whatever you were typing the next time he or she goes online.

Technorati tags: Gmail, New Gmail Features

Channel9 is getting a redesign

I’m a regular viewer at Channel9. I keep hitting that site at least once a day. It has such great content in video and what I like the most is that they’ve put a human face to the otherwise hidden development team at Microsoft. Even though it had great content I never liked the design of the pages. It always looked to me like they were stuck with the <tr><td> world.

I was surprised to see that they are working on a new redesigned Channel9 which looks much better than the old design. Here is what the home page looks like. (click on the image below for the full image. If you cannot see the image click this link for the full image.)

I particularly like the new layout and also the many different download options. It looks like with the new design you can download Channel9 videos to your iPod, PSP, Windows Media Player and guess what, to Zune as well. That’s plenty of options and surely will make the life of the viewers a lot easy.

Thank you Channel9 team. Keep up the good work.

Technorati tags: Channel9, Channel9 Redesign

InlineSearch – Search like Firefox in IE

For those us who use Firefox day-in and day-out are kind of blessed, particularly when it comes to trying to find something on a page. We just either start typing-in and let Firefox do the inline search and move to the block of text that matches or we “Ctrl + F” and then type-in the text that we want to find. Blessed are the Firefoxers.

Now think about the same experience if you are using Internet Explorer. IE, by default, comes with a modal search dialog that’s pretty much annoying at times of searching thru long pages. Now, blessing arrives for IEers in the form of InlineSearch.

InlineSearch is a free add-on for Internet Explorer that brings into IE the same search experience of Firefox. It pretty much behaves the same as Firefox search. It hijacks only the search shortcut key “Ctrl + F”. What does that mean? That means for those patriotic IEers you can still go back to the traditional IE search by using the Edit menu.

Here are some shortcuts that would be handy when using InlineSearch,

CTRL-F – to open/refresh the search pane

ESC – to close the search pane when in focus

F3 or ENTER – find the next occurrence

SHIFT-F3 – find the previous occurrence (Shift-Enter works too)

You can download InlineSearch from here.

Note: It plays nice with IE versions 5.5 and above.

Technorati tags: IE, Internet Explorer, IE Add-on, InlineSearch, Tool, Browser

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Office 2007 Released To Manufacturing (RTM)

It seems like by last Friday, November 3rd, at approximately 2:30 PM Microsoft Office Team has signed off on build 4518.1014 as the 2007 Microsoft Office system and has released it to manufacturing.

How you can get Office 2007?

Office 2007 products will be available at retail by early 2007 so you’ll be able to get your hands on them soon. Business customers will be able to get Office 2007 through the volume licensing program before the end of this year.

Technorati tags: Microsoft, Office 2007, RTM

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SQL Doc – A handy tool for documenting SQL Server databases

Red Gate has released a public beta of a new tool, SQL Doc.

SQL Doc is a simple tool for documenting your SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005 databases. You can download this beta from here.

This beta release of SQL Doc includes the following features:
- Document one or many databases
- Produce documentation in HTML, with or without frames
- Includes all cross-database dependencies
- Live preview pane
- Command line access version

Limitations:
As you know, this is a beta release and will probably contain some bugs.

And they claim that the following are the known issues which they claim will be fixed by the final release:
- Menus do not work correctly under Windows Vista
- Connection properties dialog does not always behave correctly when editing an existing project

The picture below will give you an idea of what SQL Doc can do. Click on the picture to view the original size.

Technorati tags: SQL, SQL Server, SQL Server 2000, SQL Server 2005, Red-Gate, Tools, SQL Doc

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BREAKING NEWS: Windows Vista is released to manufacturing (RTM)

Breaking News:

Just few minutes ago, Jim Allchin, Co-President of the Platforms & Services Division at Microsoft , announced that Windows Vista is ready for RTM (Released To Manufacturing). There are no further updates on when it is going to be available for the MSDNeners to download. I’ll keep you updated as soon as I come to know.

Congrats to the folks involved and Congrats Jim!!! Well done!!!

Technorati tags: Microsoft, Windows Vista, RTM

Microsoft .NET Framework 3.0 has officially been released

Microsoft just officially released the .NET Framework 3.0 version.

You can download the .NET Framework 3.0 components here:

• .NET Framework 3.0 Runtime Components
• Windows SDK for Vista and the .NET Framework 3.0
• Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 (Windows Workflow Foundation)
• Visual Studio 2005 Extensions for .NET Framework 3.0 (WCF & WPF), November 2006 CTP

Note, if you are using Windows Vista the .NET Framework 3.0 Runtime Components are installed by default. For all other operating systems you have to install it manually by clicking on the appropriate links above.

The Readme for the released version of the .NET Framework 3.0 is available here.  If you have a previous .NET Framework 3.0 CTP installed, please be sure to review the uninstall instructions.   If you have questions about installing the .NET Framework 3.0, please post your questions to the .NET Framework Setup Forum.

Technorati tags: Microsoft, .NET, .NET Framework, .NET Framework 3.0

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Zune™ ready to be launched by Nov 14, 2006

The picture says it all. Zune™ is all set to be launched right on time for the holidays 2006. As the image says it is scheduled to be launched by Nov 14, 2006. For a comparable configuration (with iPod) of 30G, Zune is a bit cheaper than iPod, at $249.99. I particularly like the widescreen format even though the click-wheel is a huge miss. 

Here are some interesting facts/specs about Zune™, if you care.

Size and Weight

4.4 in. x 2.4 in. x 0.6 in. (h x w x d)

Weight: 5.6 ounces

Battery[2]

Music, up to 14 hours (wireless off), up to 13 hours (wireless on); pictures, up to 4 hours; video, up to 4 hours

Charge Time: 3 hours; 2 hours to 90%

Display

Size: 3.0 inches

Orientation: Vertical and Horizontal

Resolution: 320 x 240 pixels

Audio

Windows Media® Audio Standard (.wma): Up to 320 Kbps, CBR and VBR, up to 48-kHz sample rate

MP3 (.mp3): Up to 320 Kbps, CBR and VBR, up to 48-kHz sample rate

AAC (.mp4, .m4a, .m4b, .mov): Up to 320 Kbps, Low Complexity (LC), up to 48-kHz sample rate

Pictures

JPEG (.jpg): All resolutions (desktop software will automatically convert to 640×480 at sync time)

Video

Windows Media Video (.wmv): Main Profile, CBR or VBR, up to 1.5 Mbps peak video bitrate, 320 x 240 pixels, 30 frames per sec., with Windows Media Audio up to 192 Kbps, 44.1 kHz, stereo audio; Simple Profile, CBR, up to 736 Kbps video bitrate, 320 x 240 pixels, 30 frames per sec., with Windows Media Audio up to 192 Kbps, 44.1 kHz, stereo audio.

Wireless

Connectivity: 802.11 b/g

Range: Up to 30 feet

Language

English

PS: I’ve bought a 30G Video iPod and wasn’t happy with the way it syncs with iTunes. So many times it hangs and I had to sync it multiple times to get the stuff done. I hate that portion of it. I have to wait and see how Zune™ fills in that space. If so then I might give Zune™ a try.

Technorati tags: Zune, iPod, Zune Player, Zune Specification, Microsoft

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Adobe Labs releases Adobe Digital Editions Beta

I’m not a big time online book (eBook) reading guy. Having said I have to say that I do have few eBooks that I wish I have the time to read. Normally I used to read ‘em (glance at ’em) using our favorite PDF readers (lately I’m pretty much impressed with the FoxIt Reader). It was boring for sure…but hey…we didn’t have a choice. But now I cannot have that excuse.

Adobe Labs lately came up with a flash based eBook Reader and they’ve weirdly named it as “Digital Editions”. The name might be fitting in their books but on my book. I wish they should have chosen a different name which can reflect more of the product than just a fancy name.

Anyway, I had this on my list of items to do for a few days now. I couldn’t find the time to download and review it a bit. Today I got the time and have downloaded the latest beta version of Adobe Digital Editions and have just peaked at an eBook that I wanted to read for a while now. It looks pretty cool to me. The installation was a breeze with “almost no user interaction”. I particularly liked the black background that tend to occupy the whole desktop area when you are in the reading mode. That’s pretty cool to make all the distractions hidden in the background.

Also, I like the way the library has been separated from the current reading pane and the cool thing is that it remembers the last layout when you’ve exited Digital Editions and takes you to that layout which is pretty helpful in places, particularly when reading, when you have a multi-page eBook and wanted to jump directly into where you left off the last time. That’s pretty neat.

Things to keep in mind is that it still is in Beta edition and so things might not have been as sturdy as it is supposed to be. And also I’ve noticed that it was taking around 50 MB of memory space when loaded with around 10 eBooks (only one open at the reading pane). 50 MB is not a big deal if you are on the multi-Gig group but if you are on the multi-Mega group then you might want to watch out as our lovely Foxit Reader (with the same eBook open) took only around 11 MB, which is quite a difference. So you weigh in your options and if you have the infrastructure to go for it then go for it. It surely is a worthy product to keep it in your Frequent Programs list.

You can download Adobe Digital Editions Beta from here.

Technorati tags: Adobe, Adobe Digital Editions, eBook Reader, Free eBook Reader

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Windows Media Player 11 for Windows XP is officially released

Microsoft recently released it’s flagship media player, Windows Media Player 11, for Windows XP. I’ve been using the beta version of Window Media Player 11 for a while now and it seems to be pretty well built. I particularly like the new user interface that it comes with. It’s kind of Vista’ish but that looks something different than the blue Windows XP world.

I like the concept that there is no Stop button rather it just has the Pause and Play buttons, which is one less confusion to the user. Also, it has support for URGE, the Microsoft version of iTunes Store and it seems like they both (Windows Media Player 11 and URGE) play well together.

The drawback that I could see is that there is no support for podcasters and that’s a pretty big miss. But if you don’t really care about podcasting then you wouldn’t be disappointed with this new Windows Media Player 11 for Windows XP.

Download the Windows Media Player 11 for Windows XP from here.

PS: As a Microsoft standard these days for downloading any softwares this download also requires a “Windows Genuine Advantage” check.

Technorati tags: Microsoft, MSFT, Windows, Windows Media, Windows Media Player, Windows Media Player 11, URGE, Windows Media Player 11 for Windows XP

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Issue with uploading an avatar to WordPress

This morning I was just trying to upload an avatar for my profile at WordPress. Okay, so it asked me for a picture and when I uploaded an image of mine it gave me this “Crop Image” page where it asks me to crop the portion of the image.

But, weirdly, there wasn’t a way to crop it. There are no controls available for me to crop the image. And so when I hit the “Crop Image” button it just uploads an empty image, a black empty image. Matt, or someone out there whom have done this before, can you guys let me know how to get over this issue?

Thanks in advance.

Technorati tags: WordPress, Avatar

Microsoft is offering Office Accounting 2007 for free

Before they change their mind go grab a copy of Microsoft^® Office Accounting 2007 Express, if it matters to you. Its available as a free download from Microsoft. On a cautious note, it is a 338MB file and so if you are not on a high speed connection you might want to do it at an off-peak time. With my high speed FiOS connection it took a good 20 minutes to download.

This is what Microsoft has to say on this new software,

Microsoft^® Office Accounting Express 2007 is everything you need to make your small business idea flourish. Whatever your idea, take it further with these great features:

Save time on everyday tasks

• Create quotes and invoices; track expenses and employee time
• Enter data once and share it seamlessly with other Microsoft Office system programs
• Manage payroll and taxes with ADP’s integrated payroll service

Get a complete view of your business

• Store and organize all your customer, vendor, employee, and financial information in one place
• Get business insights with over 20 customizable reports
• Easily share your books with your accountant through Office Live

Grow your business online

• List items on eBay, track sales activity, and download and process orders
• Email invoices and get paid faster with PayPal
• Monitor your customers’ business credit in real-time through Equifax

If the “Download Office Accounting Express” image doesn’t show-up above, please use this link to download the software. I apologize for this inconvenience.

Technorati tags: Microsoft, Microsoft Office, Microsoft Office Accounting 2007, Free, Free Software, Free Download

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ASP.NET AJAX v1.0 (formerly ATLAS) is now available for you to experience

(If you don’t see any of the images below please refresh the page a few times until you see the images. WordPress for some reason randomly cuts off some of the images at times. My apologies for the inconvenience.)

I know I’m blogging this a bit late but I just wanted to get this info out to my readers anyway. Microsoft ASP.NET Atlas team has released the renamed framework, which competes with AJAX, with the name “ASP.NET AJAX“. They call the initial release as “ASP.NET AJAX v1.0“.

AJAX is a great infrastructure and a great experience for the web based users without having to mess with page refreshes for small little things. It gives the user an enhanced and rich user experience allowing things to be done in the background without stealing the control of the page from the user. It provides the framework and controls to support/enable this great user experience.

At a glimpse, here is what the ASP.NET team says about AJAX,

Cross browser compatibility…that’s a great news from Microsoft. I love it when things work across the browsers without having to tweak things to make it work across. That’s a great news. I’ve tried this a bit and it looks very promising and cool to me. We even have thought about using this on one of our product functionalities. There are pretty lengthy keyword/attribute names to deal with but hey, as long as it works who cares.

For those of us to get started on this new framework, Scott Guthrie, the General Manager at the .NET Development Platform team, has put forward a videocast that explains pretty much of the basics for anyone to get started. (You might want to watch the video very closely as Scott is fluent enough to do things pretty fast).

There are a bunch of other ASP.NET AJAX resource videos at this location. It’s pretty cool to see Nikhil Kothari, the guy who is the cause of this whole thing from the beginning, has some videos for us to view. Great job Nikhil.

Okay…enough said. Go ahead and get the new framework, read some of the documents, watch few videos and get started.

(Alternate link if you don’t see the “Download Now” image above.)

You might want to download this as well as this toolkit has pretty rich and ready-to-run sample controls and a powerful SDK to simplify creating custom ASP.NET AJAX controllers and extenders.

(Alternate link if you don’t see the “ASP.NET AJAX Control Toolkit” image above.)

Of course, you should visit the official ASP.NET AJAX site to understand this whole thing. This site is the home site for ASP.NET AJAX and it has pretty extensive help/documents/videos to get started on this new framework.

Technorati tags: .NET, ASP.NET, AJAX, ASP.NET AJAX, Atlas

del.icio.us tags: .NET, ASP.NET, AJAX, ASP.NET AJAX, Atlas

TinyMenu – A space saving Firefox add-on

Try this add-on to eliminate the precious space the menu takes up on the Firefox toolbar. If you notice that it takes the whole line for the menu bar but half of the space is just wasted as the menu really fills only half of the line.

Get TinyMenu from here.

Here is what you should do once you install and restart your Firebox browser,

• Right-click on a toolbar and click “Customize”.
• Drag all the items from the navigation bar up to the menu bar. You’ll have to do them one at a time, so it takes a little while.
• Click “Done” to get out of customize mode.
• Right-click on a toolbar and un-select the navigation toolbar.
• Right-click on a toolbar again and click “Customize”.
• This time, drag the items from the Customize window to the menu bar (arranging it as you’d prefer). Again, you’d have to do this one at at time and so it takes a while.
• Click “Done” to get out of the customize mode.

And that’s it. You’ve just saved a line of real estate on your browser.

Technorati tags: Spacesaver, TinyMenu, Firefox add-on

Dell.com offers free upgrade to Windows Vista on your new PC/Laptop purchase

On one of my previous posts I’ve talked about postponing your PC/Laptop purchase until Oct 28, 2006 if you want to experience a free upgrade to Windows Vista.

It looks like Dell.com has started offering this a bit early. Today when I was customizing a laptop that I wanted to purchase for a while (and have postponed since that post), I noticed that there is a new category that they’ve added during the customization process which allows you to do an upgrade for $10.

There are 2 ways you can upgrade your Windows XP based system to Windows Vista for almost free.

• Express Upgrade to Windows Vista Home Premium from XP Media Center Edition
• Express Upgrade to Windows Vista Business from XP Professional

 

I’m not sure about the other retailers whether they would do it from Oct 26 onwards or they would do it only after Oct 28. I couldn’t find anything on their web sites that says that. You might wanted to check that out at your local stores.

But on Dell.com, when you custom build a PC/Laptop they’ve included an option for you to pick and choose the upgrade kit. They, of course, charge you $10 to cover the cost of shipping the upgrade kit. But, hey, $10 to experience Vista than $$$? I’m up for this deal.

Dell.com says it clear that even though you can enroll for the upgrade kit now it will only be available on February 2007 when Vista will be (hopefully) available for the public.

Visit Dell.com to start customizing your Home/Home Office PC/Laptop.

Technorati tags: Windows Vista, Free Upgrade to Windows Vista, Dell.com free upgrade to Windows Vista, PC purchase

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How to post a YouTube video on to your WordPress.com Blog?

I was struggling a bit in the morning today to post a YouTube video onto this blog. For security reasons WordPress.com doesn’t let you <embed> objects within your post. That’s understandable and makes sense. So, what would be the workaround to post a video on to your WordPress.com blog? There should be a work around…right?

Sure, there is. Thanks to Matt at WordPress, here is how you could get the video to your WordPress.com blog.

• Locate the URL for your YouTube video (it should be next (on the right side) to the video on the YouTube site itself).
• In your blog post type-in this in the space where you want the video to appear, ““ (without the quotes) 
• Replace the URL above with the URL that you’ve just grabbed from the YouTube site.
• Publish your post.

Simple, that’s all you have to do to get the video to your WordPress.com blog. Now, in case if just pasting the thing didn’t work then,

• Change to the HTML mode so that you’ll have access to the post’s HTML.
• In the space where you want the video to appear, type in this, “<code></code>” (again, without the quotes) 
• Replace the URL above with the URL that you’ve just grabbed from the YouTube site.
• Publish your post again.

That’s it. You should be able to see the embedded video player on your WordPress.com blog.

Please see my comment on the updated steps for this to work as WordPress seems to eat up a bit of my post. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Technorati tags: WordPress, WordPress.com, YouTube, YouTube Video, Embed YouTube Video On WordPress.com Blog

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Scrybe – "It will blow you up" kind of an Online/Offline Organizer

Warning: You will be amazed or stunned by looking at this stuff. Please use caution.

My search for an online organizer/companion ends right here. Yes. Scrybe, an incredibly “out of the world” online organizer with offline support as well is about to launch this month and I have no words to explain how this has been thought thru and done with perfection that I would rather let you watch this video and blow your mind up.

Recommended: Grab a chair that’s sturdy enough.

If the embedded player doesn’t work, here is the outgoing link for you to experience.

Where in this world these folks have arrived from?

Scrybe, you’ve just completely taken off of me if this holds true on the real release. I can’t wait when you folks raise the curtain up at iScrybe.com.

And, these are just simple words to say, thank you for a job well done.

Way to go Scrybe!!!

Technorati tags: Online Organizer, Scrybe, Online/Offline Organizer, Online Companion

del.icio.us tags: Online Organizer, Scrybe, Online/Offline Organizer, Online Companion

Internet Explorer 7 Is Available For Public Download – A Hack To Avoiding The Automatic Upgrade

Microsoft just managed to release the full version of Internet Explorer 7 just on time and is ready for public download. You can get the latest Internet Explorer bits in 2 ways.

• One is to go download and install it by yourself.
• And the other is to do a Windows Update.

If you don’t install it by yourself then by the time the next Windows Update happens (if you have it configured to update automatically) you’ll get the new Internet Explorer.

I agree that it looks like its been forced upon you. I can see that. But, don’t worry, there is a hack available to stop the automatic Windows Update from upgrading your Internet Explorer.

Here is how,

• Copy this command (except the quotes) to a .BAT or .CMD file “REG ADD “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Setup\7.0″ /v DoNotAllowIE70 /t REG_DWORD /d 1 /f“
• Run the file, by calling it in the command prompt or by double-clicking it.

Note: When you are ready to allow Windows Update to upgrade your browser then change the above switch from 1 to 0 for the REG_DWORD. Here is the script for allowing automatic update to do its job. “REG ADD “HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Setup\7.0″ /v DoNotAllowIE70 /t REG_DWORD /d 0 /f“

Okay, so by now you must have gotten the latest Internet Explorer 7 bits and must have (mostly) installed it already. Then, what’s next? Wait there is more on the line. You can extend your Internet Explorer experience by installing some of these add-ons (that’s a new thing to IE of what Extensions are for Firefox).

There are a bunch of add-ons available, like for example,

• Pop-Up Blockers
• Parental Controls
• Download Managers
• Developer Tools
• Offline Browsers
• Music and Audio Players
• Video Players etc.

Keep in mind that there are a whole bunch of add-ons available under each category and so please pay attention before choosing one. But some of the add-ons are really useful and I hope that the add-on community will unleash more as now IE7 is available for the mainstream public.

Hope there won’t be an SP1 right away!!!

Until then, enjoy your new Internet Explorer 7.

Technorati tags: Internet Explorer 7, IE7, Browser, Windows Auotmatic Update, Stop Upgrading To IE7 Automatically, IE7 Add-Ons

Searching Within Google Search Results – Are We Missing A "Locate This" Kind Of Thing?

I may be missing something here or may be Google (and may be other leading search providers for that matter) is/are missing this feature. And I’m sure if Google is missing this then you might also be feeling the same as me if you are an active Google searcho’holic.

I rely heavily on Google search for even small little things like, lets say, checking a syntax when I code and things like that. It does a decent job of giving me what I want. Note the word “decent job” and I mean it. At times MSN Live Search has gotten me the correct result set than Google.

So, I search for something and it gives me that gazillion number of links and pages and then its my headache to go thru it to reach my result set. I’ve noticed that I always end up with paging thru the search results to arrive at what I was looking for. You might get an impression that rather I should use specific keywords to arrive at the desired result set. To a certain level I agree. But not in all the cases.

For example, a while back I’ve posted about a transformation pack that transforms your Windows XP into Windows Vistas’ look and feel. A while back I was looking for to see where I am on the search results on Google when I use the search term “Windows Vista Transformation Pack”. For the first few weeks I was on the first page of the search results, at times as the very first entry, but then over time I’ve got dropped to the second page. Now when I searched for that term it came up with a bunch of pages and I had to browse thru it to find out where I am. I know what I was exactly looking for but I felt I was forced to browse thru the result sets. It would be a lucky day if you could locate the entry on one of those first few pages. Since I was on the second page it wasn’t been a big hassle. Now think about an entry getting pushed down to the 10th of greater pages and you know the pain if you are to locate that.

It would have been a simple thing for Google (or any other search providers for that matter) to implement a feature that would help us locate an entry within the search result. I don’t mean to say that to bring up the entry to the first page. That I know I should have used a different search term like for example “Windows Vista Transformation Pack + askar” to arrive at the correct entry. But what I’m talking about here is a way to locate an entry within the gazillion number of pages that comes out of a search result so that we can jump down to the entry of interest. Do you see what I mean?

I’ve looked into Google, Yahoo Search, Windows Live Search and some other leading search providers and to my irony no one seems to provide that functionality.  Did they take it all for granted on us to go thru the gazillion number of result pages so that they can advertise on each of the page? Do you think that way?

Technorati tags: Google, Google Search, Windows Live Search

Windows Live Mail Desktop (Beta) – A Refresh Available For Download

Windows Live Mail team has recently released a beta refresh (Build 1083) and have made it available for public download. I’ve been using Windows Live Mail Desktop and I feel it’s one of a slick and “not-so-messy-configuration-settings-to-figure-out” kind of a thing. These days I check my Gmail and MSN accounts both on the Windows Live Mail Desktop. Even though at times the Gmail server fails to respond (or something happens that sort of) the application stayed pretty stable.

With the latest refresh Windows Live Mail team claims these as some of the enhancements,

• More bug fixes
  • Over 150 of them since the last refresh build – including lots of accessibility and stability updates
• Current View settings are now sticky
  • We admit it, we made a mistake.  In the last refresh build, every time WLMd was launched, the Current View settings were lost and needed to be reset.  What a pain – especially when reading newsgroups!  I’m happy to announce that this has now been fixed.
• Update Feeds Button
  • In the RSS tab, we have added a new button for you to be able to automatically sync all your RSS feeds.
• Easier Help Options
  • Now under Help you’ll see the option for getting Technical Support.  This will take you right to our Support site so you can fill out a ticket and get assistance from our support team!
• Minimizing to System Tray
  • I think I may have just heard a small roar of excitement from our Beta testers. J  You all have been asking for this one for a while, so here you go!
• Support for Windows Live ID sign in (for non-MSN Mail, Hotmail, and Windows Live Mail account holders)
  • Adding the ability to use non-Windows Live ID accounts in WLMd was a popular customer request – and I am super-psyched that we are able to provide it for you!  You can now sign in to WLMd using any Windows Live ID account, not just one that has an email account associated with it (such as @messengeruser.com).  And for those who don’t yet have a Windows Live ID, WLMd allows you to create one as a part of sign-in! Remember that this is a very new feature for us – so please spend some time playing with it and let us know what you think!

Looks promising to me. You can download the latest refresh from here.

Technorati tags: Windows Live Mail Desktop Beta, Windows Live Mail Desktop Beta Refresh, Free Desktop Email Client

Best Practices On Google’s Software Development Methodology Revealed

Here are some of the best practices that Google follows with its development effort. It seems like the environment is pretty open, reaching out and motivating.

Take a glimpse at the Google culture below.

• There are managers, sort of, but most of them code at least half-time, making them more like tech leads.
• Developers can switch teams and/or projects any time they want, no questions asked; just say the word and the movers will show up the next day to put you in your new office with your new team.
• Google has a philosophy of not ever telling developers what to work on, and they take it pretty seriously.
• Developers are strongly encouraged to spend 20% of their time (and I mean their M-F, 8-5 time, not weekends or personal time) working on whatever they want, as long as it’s not their main project.
• There aren’t very many meetings. I’d say an average developer attends perhaps 3 meetings a week, including their 1:1 with their lead.
• It’s quiet. Engineers are quietly focused on their work, as individuals or sometimes in little groups or 2 to 5.
• There aren’t Gantt charts or date-task-owner spreadsheets or any other visible project-management artifacts in evidence, not that I’ve ever seen.
• Even during the relatively rare crunch periods, people still go get lunch and dinner, which are (famously) always free and tasty, and they don’t work insane hours unless they want to.
• Google drives behavior through incentives. Engineers working on important projects are, on average, rewarded more than those on less-important projects. The rewards and incentives are too numerous to talk about here, but the financial incentives range from gift certificates and massage coupons up through giant bonuses and stock grants.
• Google is a peer-review oriented culture, and earning the respect of your peers means a lot there. More than it does at other places, I think. [..] your actual performance review is almost entirely based on your peer reviews, so it has an indirect financial impact on you.
• Google has a long all-hands in which they show every single project that launched to everyone, and put up the names and faces of the teams (always small) who launched each one, and everyone applauds.

Developers can switch team anytime and no questions asked? I still wonder how do they manage that resource gap? If a developer is in the middle of an effort and if he wanted to move out of the team then who is going to fill that gap? How soon? From where? Do they maintain a pool of resources that showed interest to join the team? Or is it like the dev has to wait till he comes to a point where they can replace one person with another? How does that happen real time? I’m just curious.

But overall its pretty neat and simple (as their products) that keeps things moving forward. I wish I could work there sometimes.

Technorati tags: Google, Google’s Software Development Process, Development Culture

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Messenger Plus! Live – An Awesome Windows Live Messenger Extension

Visit DemoGeek.com for amazingly detailed quality articles on Computer, Internet, Browsers, Software, Programming and much more.

I’ve been using the beta version of Windows Live Messenger for a while now and it looks to me pretty slick. When I was looking for extensions I just came across this extension pack for Windows Live Messenger and this seems to extend the experience further.

Here are some features of Messenger Plus! Live that you might want to take a look at if you are to consider this extension,

Tabbed chats

Use a tabbed web browser? Even if you don’t, you might find tabbed conversations useful for organizing your chats by converting a myriad of windows into a simple single one. Vertical tabs on the left, normal tabs on the top. You name it. You can also use tabs to group just some special chats and keep all the rest in normal windows if you want.

Quick Texts

Tired of always typing the same? Meet quick texts and text replacements: automatic and customizable messages that can be sent with a simple shortcut or typed command, or automatic text replacing to use written shortcuts or using it as a word filter.

Custom Sounds

The Custom Emotion Sound feature brings sound integration in Messenger to the next level by allowing users to send their own sounds during a conversation. Sounds are played instantly on both ends and are transferred automatically and transparently when needed.

New emotion sounds can be easily created from existing sound files (such as MP3s) or can be recorded live from a microphone or other audio source but, if sound authoring isn’t your thing, thousands of sounds can be found in the public database or imported from sound packs.

Colors, formatting and commands

Messenger Plus! gives you the possibility to choose any color you want for front and background, and add formatting, such as bold, italic, underlined and stoke-out. It also lets you control almost every aspect of Messenger via text shortcuts called commands, much like the ones in traditional IRC chat rooms.

Personalized Status

Create custom away or busy statuses with a special name tag, personal message or even an auto-responder. Set a timer to reset your status in a certain time and organize presets to reuse common statuses.

Visit DemoGeek.com for amazingly detailed quality articles on Computer, Internet, Browsers, Software, Programming and much more.

Messenger Lock

Be it for security in shared computer environments or for avoiding your boss (which would be wrong wrong wrong!), this feature lets you lock Messenger with a simple shortcut (or Plus! menu command) and hide it in the system tray with an inconspicuous icon, the ability to password protect it and to automatically send a message to your contacts to inform them when you have locked and unlocked your Messenger.

Contacts Desktop

Similar to what ICQ used to offer, you can show the status of any desired contact on your desktop in the form of small floating windows. You can drag and drop messages or links into these to send a message to the contact, or drop a file to start a transfer.

HTML Chat Logging

Messenger Plus! Live lets you keep logs of all your conversations in a much more flexible way than the original Messenger ones. Heck, Plus! let you do that for years before MSN Messenger added it as a standard, though not perfect, feature. But what does Plus! Live improve over it?

• HTML Logs: beautiful styling and the flexibility of files you can take anywhere
• Emoticons and Winks: Everything is logged, even custom emoticons are kept and winks shown as thumbnails
• Log viewer: Shows you all your logs sorted by contact and date within Messenger Plus!
• Skinnable logs: if you get tired of the default style of logs and know CSS or get a custom.css file, just drop it in your logs folder and change their look!

Event Viewer and Event Logging

Contact sign ins and sign outs, status changes, display name and personal messages changes. Everything can be logged and archived in XML-based files which you can view from your browser.

You can also use the Event Viewer in the Plus! menu to view this info in real time, to find if a certain contact signed in earlier or analyze their status changing behavior, or even their musical tastes!

Contact List Clean-Up

Easily view stats about all your contacts (last sign in, when you had the last conversation, etc.) and clean your contact list deleting old and repeated contacts.

Run Multiple Messenger Sessions

Just check a box in the Messenger Plus! Live Preferences and you’ll be up and running for logging into more than one Messenger session at the same time, all integrating with Plus! correctly and without patching any files.

Tabbed Chats and running multiple messenger sessions were a sell for me and I liked it after I installed this extension. Above all its free.

Here is the link to the site where you can download the Messenger Plus! Live Extension.

Happy Chatting!!!

Visit DemoGeek.com for amazingly detailed quality articles on Computer, Internet, Browsers, Software, Programming and much more.

Technorati tags: Windows Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, Windows Live Messegner Extension, Free Extension For Windows Live Messenger

Windows XP Service Pack 1 Is Officially Dead

Microsoft has published details related to the end of support for Windows 98, Me and XP Service Pack 1 since January 6, 2006. Consequently, on October 10, 2006, the operating system has officially been pronounced dead. As of today “Microsoft will end all public assisted support for Windows XP Service Pack1 (SP1). After this date, Microsoft will no longer provide any incident support options or security updates for this retired service pack under the policies defined by the Microsoft Support Lifecycle policy.”

The solution? Upgrade to Windows XP Service Pack 2. For systems that pack a powerful software configuration even Windows Vista is an option as it is close to ship to RTM. With this move, Microsoft disallows support for XP SP1 after a total of four years since the product was released in September 2002. The Redmond Company has even kept the support alive for over two years although it should have ended it 12 month after the release of Service Pack 2 on August 2004.

As of yet, Microsoft has failed to announce an official date for support termination for Windows XP Service Pack 2. It is expected that this will be in close relation with the adoption level of Windows Vista.

Technorati tags: Microsoft, Windows XP, SP1, Windows XP Service Pack

Hold on to your next PC purchase until Oct 28, 2006 for a free Windows Vista experience

The title says it all. Microsoft is set to offer either free or discounted Vista upgrades to those who purchase new computers during the holiday season, press reports indicate. To qualify for the coupons, a PC would need to be purchased after October 28 of this year (2006), and the upgrade would be good through March 15, 2007.

Microsoft would not confirm the program publicly, other than saying “we’re working with partners on this”. Reports indicate that the free or discounted upgrade would be based on the version of operating system installed.

For example, those who have Widows XP Professional, XP Tablet PC Edition, and XP x64 Edition would be entitled to the free upgrade. Those using Windows XP Home would be permitted to upgrade to Vista Basic for $49 and Premium for $79. No upgrade price was specified for Media Center Edition.

I was about to buy a new high-end laptop to replace my aging Compaq laptop. Glad that I didn’t commit to it so far. I would rather wait till the end of October to have a chance to experience the real Windows Vista.

Technorati tags: Windows Vista, Buying New PC, Free upgrade to Windows Vista

Google To Acquire YouTube For $1.65 Billion

Google just announced today that it has agreed to acquire YouTube for $1.65 billion in a stock-for-stock transaction. To clarify the confusion that since Google is already having its own video site so what will happen to YouTube, they were quick enough to make it clear that YouTube will operate as an independent unit of Google once the deal closes and will retain the YouTube brand name. They added that no YouTube workers will lose their jobs as a result of the acquisition and that Google will maintain its own online video business. Rumor says that Yahoo, Microsoft and News Corp. (now the parent company of MySpace) also had probably expressed interest in buying YouTube. But at the end its Google that’ve won the competition.

Technorati tags: Google, YouTube, Acquisition

Windows Vista RC2 is available for public download (Download link provided)

Microsoft has just released the Windows Vista Release Candidate 2 (RC2) version for public download. Initially it was suspected that Microsoft will release this only to their beta testers, MSDN and Technet subscribers and to the Customer Preview Program (CPP) members. But then, things must have changed that made them to make this version available to the public, but only for a limited time.

Anyways, as always, go grab ‘em before its gone. Microsoft has explicitly said this time that it will be available only “for a limited time” and “may not have the same level of support” as RC1 (whatever that means). So you you should go grab ‘em as soon as you can if you wanted to get the feel the new Vista version and to realize the 1400+ bugs it still has.

Here is what you should have to do to get RC2.

• Navigate to this link.
• Select the version of Vista you want to run, either 32-bit or 64 bit, your choice.
• This will launch a new window where it tries to use the Akamai Download Manager (which comes in handy) to download this massive 2.49 GB file.
• Accept the security dialog boxes so that the system can allow the Akamai Download Manager ActiveX control to work.  

Now, you might need tons of patience for this monster to get downloaded. Once downloaded you have to burn the ISO image to a DVD before installing it on to your (test/spare) machine.

There is no explicit product key provided for this RC2 as the expectation was to use the product key from RC1. I haven’t tried this though but it looks like that’s what the plan is. 

How do you get the product key for RC1? Read my previous post on how to get the product key for Windows Vista RC1.

Enjoy Windows Vista (without any cost).

Latest Update: It seems like the build 5744 (which was later renamed as RC2) had some issues that Microsoft pulled it off from the public download space and have said that it will be made available for public download again once they fix the issue. So hang-in there. It will be back with may be fewer than 1400+ bugs. Keep watching this blog and I’ll update it as soon as RC2 is made available again.

Technorati tags: Microsoft, Windows Vista, Windows Vista Release Candidate 2, Windows Vista RC2, Windows Vista Release Candidate 1, Windows Vista RC1, Windows Vista For Free, Windows Vista Download Link

Microsoft Is About To Release Vista RC2

Paul Thurrott at WindowsITPro says that Microsoft is going to release the final prerelease version of Windows Vista by Friday (10/06/2006). And they’ve named the release as “Release Candidate 2″ (RC2).

This build (in Microsoft terms, build# 5743) is not open for public and is only available for the beta testers, MSDN and TechNet subscribers, and some Customer Preview Program members. Also, this is the final release before Microsoft releases Vista for manufacturing (RTM). And so its expected that this release would be more stable.

Read the full article here.

Technorati tags: Microsoft, Windows Vista, Windows Vista RC2

Windows Live Writer Now Supports Blogger Beta

For those of you who use Blogger platform, you are now blessed with the Windows Live Writer team for providing support for the Blogger platform. They say that immediately after they released the new feature Blogger did an update and that caused some issues with the new functionality. But then they’ve corrected that and the latest bits out there are stable.

You can get the latest bits from this location (its a download location).

Technorati tags: Windows Live Writer, Windows Live Writer Beta 1, Blogger

A Comprehensive List of Passwords For Your Routers

Often I find myself in a situation where I set quite crappy/complex/idiotic/once-in-a-lifetime-I-got-that-word kind of passwords for my router assuming that will be the safe bet. But after a while once (obviously) I forget those passwords I keep resetting my router to its factory default mode.

Fine, now it asks for the router’s default login credentials. Who knows? I don’t have the time to look for the manuals (out of the many different manuals I’ve got) and so I end up calling the customer service to figure out the password.

Now there is an easy solution to that problem. Someone at phenoelit.de had composed a comprehensive list of default passwords for the various routers. Of course, it comes with the “terms of usage” policy that for this to work you shouldn’t have reset your router’s password. If you have then follow my way of life of resetting the router and then use the password from the list.

Isn’t that handy? To me…sure it is.

Here is the link.

Technorati tags: Router, Password List, Default Password List

One Another Latest QuickTime 7 Issue

In one of my previous posts I’ve mentioned about iTunes 7 having trouble picking up the latest QuickTime 7 player the first time when you try to launch iTunes after the install.

Today I was streaming ScobleShow on the new QuickTime player (embedded in the browser). After around 25% of streaming it just stopped by itself and was refusing to continue further. I thought it’s because of the ScobleShow server having issues, sort of. After some attempts it looks like the latest QuickTime 7 player (that came with iTunes 7) itself was buggy.

PS: I just happened to stumble upon Apple’s QuickTime page which also looks buggy when it tried to play a .mov file. Here is a snapshot of what I’m talking about. Look at the bottom right where you can see a placeholder instead.

Unbelievable to see how Apple can release such buggy products!!! Were they in a hurry? Or is it just me having all these issues?

Tags: Apple, iTunes7, QuickTime, QuickTime7, ScobleShow

Yahoo! Developer Network Launches Ruby Developer Center

Yahoo! Developer Network just launched Ruby Developer Center which has some great information on how to mingle Ruby with Yahoo!’s open API’s.

Visit the site here.

Tags: Yahoo, Yahoo Developer Network, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Ruby Developer Center

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Automatic Restart After Windows Update – Solution

On one of my early postings titled Automatic Update After Windows Update I’ve talked about this annoying and sometimes detrimental effect of Windows automatically restarting after updating itself and the way the dialog box has been designed to accidentally accept the “Restart Now” button.

Colin Angus Mackay has found a solution for this to postpone the prompting dialog from popping up every 10 minutes. Here is the solution at a glimpse.

• Click “Start” button
• Click the “Run“ menu
• Type “gpedit.msc” (without quotes) and hit ENTER
• Your Group Policy console will launch with ”Local Computer Policy” node expanded
• Expand the “Computer Configuration” node 
• Expand the “Administrative Templates” node
• Expand the “Windows Components” node
• Select the “Windows Update” node 
• On the right side of the pane double click the “Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations” and make it enabled with the number of minutes you want the prompting to be suppressed.
• It requires a restart of your machine to take into effect.

Pretty neat. Read the full article here.

Tags: Windows Update, Automatic Restart

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How A Book Gets Printed?

Chris Sells, takes us thru the printing process of his latest book “Windows Forms 2.0 Programming” with pictures.

Its pretty amazing to see such huge machines and how they get that all together.

Take a look at here.

Thanks Chris for the book and for sharing the pictures. The book was great. One of the best reads.

Tags: Chris Sells, Windows Forms 2.0 Programming, Book Printing

I’m All Set For My FiOS Internet Connection

Here is a very decent site that tells you your internet connection speed, both upstream and downstream. It requires you enable JavaScript on your browser (if you use NoScript extension). Give it a try here.

I’m a long time Comcast high-speed internet customer. They claim that they have the fastest connection speed. To a certain level I agree…yes. But not always. It depends on how many of your neighbors use the same cable service for their connectivity. My local connection speed on my machine says 100.0 Mbps. But I know it’s not 100 Mbps for sure as I, at times, have to wait for few seconds to minutes to download a page. Particularly this was true at the time when my neighbors are up and using the service (mostly daytime).

For a proof I used the above service to find out about my true internet connection speed and here is the report.

(Click on the above image to view an enlarged/readable image)

Just by looking at the above report you can easily notice that I’m not getting any way closer to the claimed 100.0 Mbps download speed. No way closer. And my upload speed is even worst.

Now, Verizon offers FiOS (Fiber Optic Service) in my local area (thank you Verizon). And there were 2 options with FiOS. You can get 5.0 Mbps and 15.0 Mbps downstream speed. And for the downstream speeds you’ll get 2.0 Mbps upstream speed. The cool thing about FiOS is that you get the full speed that Verizon claims. Since there is no sharing of your network line with your neighbors you get the speed you’ve subscribed, like a DSL connection. Isn’t that neat?

Given the horrible customer service (I’ll soon write to you in detail about my story) and billing service that Comcast has got I’ve decided to make the move. I can report you back with some more facts after a month of usage.

You can get Verizon FiOS from here or by calling 1-800-616-4231.

Disclaimer: I don’t work for Verizon or any of it’s affiliates and the view expressed above is purely my own.

Tags: Verizon, FiOS, Fiber Optic, Comcast, Connection Speed, Internet Connection Speed Test

The All New Yahoo Mail Beta

The latest and greatest version of Yahoo Mail (its still in beta) is open for public now. You can give it a try here.

Here are some of the features at a glance.

• Reading Pane (I liked it)
• Tabbed Messages (Pretty cool)
• RSS Feeds
• Auto check for new messages
• Drag & Drop
• and many more.

I was a beta user for this new Yahoo Mail for quite a while now. My personal comments on the new endeavor is good and bad I would say. I liked the interface a lot more than others. It pretty much looks like Microsoft Outlook and the tabbed messages gives you enormous control when you are to read many emails at a time. It’s primarily AJAX at it’s best.

But the bad part that made me switch was the performance. In a normal day I receive around 50 emails on my Yahoo mail box and to go thru it all at a time on a day was a real pain. It just was so slow. Sometimes, unbelievably slow. Now I’ve switched back to the traditional ‘ol Yahoo Mail. It might be my machine as I run so many apps on my machine. I doubt that could be the case. But if you find it not that of a performance wore you can leave me a comment.

Here is the link for you to give it a try. There is nothing to loose. You can always switch back.

Tags: Yahoo, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Mail Beta

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Windows Vista RC1 – Product Key and Download Link

Before they run out, go grab the latest Windows Vista RC1 (Release Candidate 1) product key and the download link.

All you have to do is,

• Navigate to this link.
• Sign in with your Passport.
• Answer few basic questions.
• Then you’ll be presented with the product key page along with the links to the download page. You might need to install the download manager as it would help downloading this massive 2.5 GB file.

(Hint: Refresh the product key page again to get another product key. It seems like a bug on the page that it allows you to grab 2 keys before it realizes)

You have to burn the ISO image to a DVD before installing it on to your (test/spare) machine.

Grab ‘em before they are gone.

Good Luck and Enjoy Vista (without any cost!!!).

Link: Windows Vista RC1

Latest Update: Alternatively you can download RC1 from this location as well.

Windows Vista Get ready site has also opened up the RC1 download. Grab it before it goes.

Tags: Windows, Vista, RC1, Product Key

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SAP’s In-Memory Technology – An Oracle Killer

eWeek (print) has an interesting article about SAP’s in-memory technology that could be an “Oracle killer”. Everyone knows that the performance cost on any traditional database lies on its I/O operations. With SAP’s in-memory technology, the data will be stored and indexed in memory rathen than on disks, reducing the cost of I/O operations, which obviously will result in better performance.

Reliability? I don’t know. They say that it’s pretty reliable as it’s been test run on pretty large enterprises like Coca-Cola, BP which has pretty large data warehousing needs.

Here are some of the quotes from the article.

SAP may have stumbled onto an Oracle killer: in-memory technology that could, in theory, quash the need for a relational database in some cases.

SAP has sussed out a way to organize its business intelligence data in columns versus tables, storing and indexing the data in memory and then running it all on blade servers. The result is faster queries than would be possible by tapping data stored in a data warehouse or relational database.

SAP is working on in-memory data management capabilities that could go beyond BI to other areas of the application stack, replacing the need for a relational database in new software installations.

SAP puts its technology on IBM and Hewlett-Packard server to speed up, by order of magnitude, querying capabilities. It put the boxes out in the field at some big companies with pretty large data warehousing needs: Coca-Cola, Whirlpool, British Petroleum and Novartis. The results were astonishing: a 90 percent increase in reporting performance, with queries cut from 50 seconds down to 3 seconds in the case of Coca-Cola.

SAP’s use of in-memory technology brings up an interesting question: if the technology could potentially disrupt Oracle’s database business, wouldn’t it also disrupt IBM and Microsoft as well?

In-memory database technology keeps data in memory rather than stored on disk. The technology is now used primarily in financial and telecommunications applications, where speed is critical, but people in the industry suggest it could be relevant in SOA, RFID, manufacturing and e-commerce as well.

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Technorati : Database, In-Memory, Oracle, SAP

10 Steps To Lock Down Your Laptop

Some may seem obvious, but following these rules will keep your laptop and the data it carries out of other people’s hands.

• Use visual deterrents such as cable locks.
• Avoid leaving unsecured laptops unattended, even in the home or office.
• Keep laptops inconspicuous by using simple carrying cases.
• Use complex alphanumeric passwords and change them regularly.
• Use anti-virus, encryption, anti-spyware and firewall software.
• Back up valuable data on a scheduled basis.
• Understand the dangers of pirated software and file sharing.
• Stay informed of emerging threat schemes.
• Use asset tracking and recovery software.
• Employ advanced data protection tools.

Tags: Secure, Laptop

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Digging on Digg.com – My Experience

Okay…so…I submitted my 2 stories to Digg few days back and was following the pattern of how people are digging the stories. I noticed that the story was dugg by few people as soon I’ve submitted them. Happy. And everything looked fine. Then as few hours passed by there wasn’t as many diggs on to my story, even though I could see more people hitting my blog. Digging just slowed down. Weird, I thought. Then I started looking into the details of how a story make it to the front (Popular) page.

Here is how (as per Digg),

Once a story is submitted by a user it is instantly posted in the
Upcoming stories section. This is a temporary holding place where
stories wait to be promoted to the homepage. To help promote stories to
the homepage, simply visit the Upcoming stories section and digg
stories you think are cool. Once a story has received enough diggs, it
is instantly promoted. Should the story not receive enough diggs,
surpass 24 hours, or is reported, it eventually falls out of the
Upcoming stories section. Digg works because a large group of people
actively digg (promote) good stories and report (remove bad stories).
Since digg’s content is user-driven, it is up to YOU to contribute.

Fine. So, to get to the front page a story should receive an unknown number of diggs. The problem lies on the way the “Upcoming” stories are presented to the diggers. It’s either in a cloud view or the traditional list view. Both has problems. As soon as few other stories got submitted you could easily see your story leave out of the first page of “Upcoming” stories on the list view and in the case of cloud view it just gets mixed with all the latest ones. It’s kind of hard to locate the story there after. If it’s hard to locate the story then I cannot expect the story to get as many diggs as it deserves. Because of this issue I’ve seen there were stories that reach the front page without the real qualification.

I’m not saying anything wrong here about Digg. Digg is a great thing that could happen on the web and it’s a great tool to get quite a mix of news. I like it like anything and used to hit the site quite often in a day. But I felt little disappointed when it comes to my turn of submitting the stories. That’s when I realized this issue. It could work for me one day, if I’m lucky that there aren’t that many stories submitted when I submit my story. Otherwise I know it’s kind of hard for a story to sail thru given the methodology involved.

I may be wrong, but I just wanted to state that out louder so that I could be corrected or it could be heard by the responsible parties.

Let me know what do ya think.

Tags: Digg, Digg.com

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How To: Bring Google Calendar on your Windows XP Desktop

I hate (I’m sure you do as well) that many windows floating around on my screen. But there are times when you cannot avoid.

One certain application window I always keep was the Google Calendar window. But then I hate cluttering my Windows bar with that many windows. I just came across this invaluable (at least to me) tip to bring Google Calendar on to my desktop so it will always be readily available to me in a click of a key (actually 2, Windows + D). .

Here is how you do it,

• Right-click on your desktop and select the "Properties" option on the menu.
• Click the "Desktop" tab.
• Click the "Customize Desktop" button that’s down below that dialog.
• Click the "Web" tab.
• Click the "New" button.
• For "Location:" key-in http://www.google.com/calendar/render
• Click the "Properties" button for this URL.
• Click the "Schedule" tab.
• Add at least one time each day to do the sync. Remeber: You can always refresh by yourself whenever needed but do pick a time to sync.
• Click OK to make each window go away.

When you do this, Windows might complain about unable to sync to the page etc. Just say "Ok" to that and close all the windows by clicking "Ok".

Expand the window on your desktop as much as you want or in my case what I did was I clicked on the little menu (a down arrow when you hover over the top of that desktop window) to select the "Split Desktop with Icons" option. By this way I have access to my desktop icons as well Google Calendar on the side. Great!!!

Now you should be able to see the Google login page on your desktop. Just key-in your login credentials and make sure to check the "Remember me on this computer" option and hit the login button. It might open up another window (the default web browser that you’ve set on your computer) with Google Calendar rendered.

Hey…Don’t panic. Don’t call 911   Just close the window. And right click on your (still) the log-in page on your desktop and hit "Refresh". Woila…there the Google Calendar, this time, on your desktop.

Hope you find it useful.

Tags: How To, Useful, Tip, Google, Calendar, Desktop, Technology

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Socializer 1.0 – A Social Link Generator

Hello Blog World -

Often I found it a bit hard to generate the social links for my blog posts and everytime, prior to Socializer, I had to copy/paste from a notepad and replace the parameters and you must have sensed it by now, that’s a pain.

I just got some free time over the weekend that I just wanted to take my head out of my regular work and wanted to get this one done.

So, what is Socializer?

“Socializer” – in a nut shell – is a .NET application (or utility) that will help you generate the famous social links to be posted on to your blog with a click of a button.

How does it work?

Simple. You key in the inputs and with a click of a button you will get the output. As the inputs are self-explanatory, you key-in the URL of your post and give it a title. Hit the “Generate” button and whoila…all the links to the famous social sites are generated for you. You can the copy/paste the link to your hyperlink or to the image.

What social sites are supported in Version 1.0?

Currently I’ve got only the time to include these 7 social sites.

• Del.icio.us
• Reddit
• Digg
• Furl
• Newswine
• Blinklist
• Co.mments

But as soon as I get some time I will definitely add more sites to the list and will try to make it customizable.

How do I download?

Just click on this link.

Follow the instructions to download the ZIP file. As a safe practice always scan any downloads for any viruses before opening it up. Once you are done with the virus scan (it’s clean by the time I upload) you can then unzip the files to a folder of your choice.

There are 2 files. One is the “Socializer.exe” executable. The other is the “Socializer.exe.config” which as its name indicates is a configuration file. Please try not to mess with the configuration file. The exe is directly executable (there is not installation package) and so you can create shortcuts to the exe whereever you feel comfortable.

Licenses?

It’s just my pass time application and there is no issue with licensing as long you use it for your personal use.

And there it is. You’ve got a little application to make the social link generation a piece of cake.

P.S: If you find it useful then please bookmark my blog (or subscribe to my feed) and please pay a visit often. You might find another utility any time. It’s cooking!!!

Download

Tags: Social, Link, Generator, Utility, .NET

Socialize:

HP’s Photosmart Printer Drivers

Lately my laptop was just crawling and for a long time I wanted to clean up. I realized that I was running short of space on my 2 partitions and the Defragmentation utility couldn’t defragment my partition proper as it needs at least 15% of free disk space (and I didn’t have one).

So I sat down in the morning to free some space. I was trying my best to get rid of all the tools and stuffs that I don’t use day-to-day.  But couldn’t get enough space for the utility to run. Then by accident I came across a folder named “HP”. All these days I never thought of getting rid of that folder thinking that it’s something from HP that wouldn’t make my laptop work otherwise (my bad, I should have checked that out in detail before).

Interestingly, it was all HP Photosmart printer drivers. What’s more interesting was that the drivers were in all sorts of languages that I don’t even know (even in my dreams!!!).

Ironically, I use a DELL printer (sorry HP, couldn’t beat DELL on this one). I don’t know what makes HP bundle their own printer drivers in their laptop without any customer awareness. I was about to sacrifice some of my day-to-day usage softwares to get the free space. But luckily I came across this monster and with a click of a button I got rid of this and I was able to reclaim beyond 15% of my hard disk space.

So, by the way, you would think how much space was that monster occupying? Right?…A whopping 180MB!!!

I then got my defragmentor to work and got the performance back. Instead of enforcing those drivers by default and in that effect occupying more space on the hard drives. may be HP should distribute those drivers seperate as it’s possible that people might not be using the Photosmart printers (never at all, at times).

Tags: HP, Photosmart, Printer, Driver

Socialize:

Port Numbers for Various Programs and Protocols

Need a list of port numbers for various programs and protocols? Look no further.

Here is the complete list.

Tags: Port Number, Port, Programs, Protocols

Socialize:

The Story Behind These Company Names

A very nice article about how the Fortune companies coined their names.

Some of the interesting ones are,

Hotmail - Founder Jack Smith got the idea of accessing e-mail via the web from a computer anywhere in the world. When Sabeer Bhatia came up with the business plan for the mail service, he tried all kinds of names ending in ‘mail’ and finally settled for hotmail as it included the letters “html” – the programming language used to write web pages. It was initially referred to as HoTMaiL with selective upper casing.

Microsoft – Coined by Bill Gates to represent the company that was devoted to MICROcomputer SOFTware. Originally christened Micro-Soft, the ‘-‘ was removed later on.

You can read the full list here.

Tags: Company Names, Company, Tech Company

Don Box – What is he cooking lately?

If you are a Microsoft techie then I’m sure you must have heard about him, Don Box. An incredible techie from Microsoft who used to keep the smile while he delves into the details on his interviews. He is an inspiration for me.

A while back it used to be that the Windows Foundations (Presentation, Communication etc.) were on the headlines and Don Box used to be the guy to spread the word and so he was everywhere on Channel9, MSDN TV, The .NET Show etc. But lately I couldn’t hear from him anymore. Even thought I could see that he is posting in his blog every now and then but he wasn’t in the news lately. What happened to him? Is he working on something that’s mind-boggling that he wanted to keep it with him until it matures? No ideas? Anyone?

Tags: Don Box, .NET, Channel9, Microsoft

Making 6 figure by training…

Over the weekend I was just listening to the radio and heard this news about a teenager, I think his name is Taylor but I’m not sure where he is from in the US, making well into the 6 figure salary. I heard that he charges around $45 per hour and planning to raise it to $65 an hour. And the latest news is that he is making…guess what…$3,000.00 or more in one week. That will put him well into the 6 figure range and if he raise his rate as he said to $65 I don’t know what to tell ya.

All this by doing what? Training kids and adults on how to play the Microsoft xBox game HALO (I think Halo 2 as well). Isn’t his idea just wonderful as he sensed the market and acted on it soon. I think it started off for him as he was asked by a neighbor to train his kid in xBox Halo and for that the neighbor gave him $25 and he sensed an opportunity there. He acted quick to come up with something that’s feeding him well and beyond.

And that’s America!!! Any idea will shine as long as it’s authentic and there is a need for it.

Well done, Taylor.

Xbox, Xbox 360, and the Xbox logos are registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp.

Tags: microsoft, xbox, halo

Socialize:

Microsoft: .Net Beat Java, Who’s Next?

Isn’t that fascinating to hear (of course, if you are a Microsoft technology developer)?

Wanna’ read more about this? Here it is.

Tags: technology, .net, java