Microsoft’s new browser for mobile phone

Microsoft unveiled a new Web Browser for mobile phone called DeepFish. The browser enhances the existing mobile browsing technologies by displaying content in a view that is closer to the desktop experience. The browser is able to adjust normal desktop webpage into a smaller image for mobile screen. The zoom-in function allow user to zoom the desired part by clicking on the screen. Limited downloads available. For more result and download visit the site: http://labs.live.com/deepfish/default/aspx

How fast are you at typing?

Finger Frenzy is a funny online free game. It tests your typing ability – How fast are you at typing? How long will you take to type out all the letters of the alphabet? Just enter the site click on play and start typing A to Z as fast as you can. There is a high score table where you can submit your name but it is meaningless as some top ranks are taken by the people by using automated script to get the top position. Some other games are also there to play.

Click here: http://www.offthewrist.com/index.jsp?id=ff

Make Firefox to a RSS feed reader

Sage is an add-on for Firefox. It allows Firefox to be used as a RSS feed reader. You can add any feed address to sage and it appeared on the left side bar if we click on the icon shown near the address bar.

To subscribe to a feed click on the icon shown near the address bar. Now a sidebar window opens up. Click on Option – Manage feed list – New book mark. In the open up window enter a name you like in the “name” field. In the “location” field enter feed URL. Check the box “load this bookmark on sidebar” and click OK.

Otherwise click on “search for feeds” button on the sidebar, which will launch a search window that will list the available feeds on that web page. Adding the link will create new entry in the feed list. Install Sage from Mozilla add-on site.

Why we are all love Firefox?

I should say Firefox is a simple, cleaner, faster, and highly customizable browser. There are no unwanted features. User interface is simple and doesn’t confuse the user in any way.

Being an open source browser, a strong developer community always is making improvements to the browser, and widely promoting it. This community is also responsible for add-ons, which greatly enhances its core functionality making it most versatile browser. The mozilla community is highly active, and you’ve several extensions to select, though not all are useful.

Coming to security side Firefox has a pop-up blocker and has no support to VB script and activeX which give additional layer of security and we can easily control JavaScript from the tool menu to surf the suspicious site.

Browsing speed is another advantage of Firefox. It fist render the page then get all desired images and files, which cut down the waiting time.

I tried many browsers and all have their own features, but Firefox is the most convenient browser.

Samsung developed a 64GB flash drive – may replace moving hard drive

Samsung has developed a 64 GB flash-solid state drive (SSD). The 1.8”-type flash-SSD is based on an 8GB single-level-cell (SLC) NAND, which provides higher performance over conventional SSDs.

The flash-SSD is a secure and reliable means of storing data which can access data quite fast. The new flash-SSD’s read and writes performance increased by 20 percent and 60 percent respectively over the 32GB flash-SSD introduced last year.

It is expected that the new SSD’s ability to perform over conventional moving hard drive may replace it in the near future.

Convert YouTube video through online to MP4, MOV, AVI, 3GP etc.

Have you ever watched YouTube video that you would like to download? Of course certain sources are available for download video from YouTube to save to computer. But the videos are in FLV (flash movie) and required a flash player to watch or required a video converter to convert to regular format.

Vixy.net is a website that provides a free online service to convert FLV videos straight into a number of different video formats, including MP4 (iPod), AVI (Windows), MOV (Mac), 3GP (Mobile) and MP3 for those who required audio only.

No need to download from YouYube, just copy the URL and paste in Vixy and select the format you required and push start button. After the conversion you can download it from Vixy.

The service is pretty fast and the out put quality is comparable to the original. This service allows you convert a Flash Video / FLV file (YouTube's videos, etc) to MPEG4 (AVI/MOV/MP4/MP3/3GP) file online. It is using a compressed domain transcoder technology (outline in Japanese). It converts FLV to MPEG4 faster and less lossy than a typical transcoder. When you submit a URL, it will download and convert to the video format.

Visit: http://vixy.net/flv_converter

Create PDF documents online with Adobe

If you want to create PDF documents occasionally, you needn’t install any software instead you can use Adobe’s online service to create PDF. You will get all decency of developed Acrobat engine like file encryption, pass word protection for printing etc and also at a very high speed. We can create PDF from the file stored on computer or the web page itself.. Converted file can be either downloaded from there or send to our email as an attachment as per the choice. Remember that you need to register with Adobe to create PDF and also only first 5 are free. For further services you need to pay about 9 Euro per month.

Visit at http://createpdf.adobe.com/

Create a flash movie

Nowadays video sharing is popular among web users and most of them uses flash based movie to upload. If you want to create a flash based movies from a regular video clips, you can easily create with Flash video studio. The step by step interface guides you through the whole process easily.

Each tab contains in the main interface (5tabs) lead you to make a flash movie very easily. You can proceed to make movie by browsing a movie file from your collection. Flash Video Studio accepts WMV, MPEG, MOV, AVI, ASF, Dvix and QT files.

Clicking on the next tab take you in the effect section where you can select 19 video effects like gray scale, motion blur, sepia, posterize etc. Here displays your original clips alongside a screen that displays the effected video you are selected. You can also adjust brightness and contrast here.

In the following screen you can add a graphical or text based watermark in your swf video and also adjust the position of watermark. In the next option you can configure the audio video options, sampling rate etc.

Finally you can publish your flash Video. Here the software produce swf file which can also be compressed.

To publish in the website the software can generate an HTML file that links the flash movie. These can be uploaded to an FTP server directly with in the software. The main interesting thing with this software is it’s easy of use.

New version is 1.7, file size 4.1Mb. Download trial version from

www.flashvideostudio.com/

A New Google Search engine feature

Google has officially unveiled a new feature called ‘Plus Box’ on its search engine page. With this new feature, Google enables users to see more information about individual search results. For example if you search for a well known restaurant, you will also be provided with a map. Depending on the search query and location, the user will see a little ‘plus’ sign and address information under the search result.

Now it shows two types of Plus Box results: stock information and maps. You can find a plus box next to the home pages of companies listed on NYSE, NASDAQ, and AMEX. Clicking the plus box icon for any of these companies displays the latest stock price, chart, and company information.

Report from Google official blog.

Selected high resolution Vista Wallpaper from PhotoVista competition

Microsoft recently conducted a photo competition named PhotoVista in Singapore. During this contest Microsoft Singapore accepted around 2000 entries and the contest is exclusively based on Singapore. Some of the selected high resolution wallpapers are made available for download by the Photo Vista site. To download visit the site from the following link: http://www.vistaphotocontest.com/

Make your Gmail account as a storage medium

GMail allows lot of storage pace, more than 2GB, but not a lot to fill it up with. Now with the Gmail Drive, a little software, you can easily copy files to your GMail account and retrieve them at your convenience.

Gmail Drive adds a new drive to your computer under the My Computer folder, where you can create new folders, copy and drag and drop files to.

GMail Drive shell extension is a tool that creates a virtual file system on top of your GMail account and enables you to save and retrieve files stored on your GMail account directly from inside Windows Explorer.

License: Free

Visit to download: http://www.viksoe.dk/code/gmail.htm

What is Apple TV?

Apple TV is a set top box that enable to stream digital content from any computer running Mac OS X or Windows with iTunes onto a high-definition widescreen television. You can watch movies, TV shows, movie trailers, podcasts, and photo slide show from your computer on your TV. Apple TV puts your iTunes library such as movies, TV shows, music, and podcasts plus movie trailers from Apple.com on your TV.

Apple TV connects to your TV via an HDMI port or component video and audio ports and its built-in, superfast 802.11 wireless capability syncs your iTunes library from any Mac or windows PC. Connect Apple TV to your TV and open iTunes on your computer. iTunes wirelessly detects Apple TV. And if you don’t have wireless capability, you can connect Apple TV to your network using an Ethernet cable.

Requirements: Widescreen TV, Mac OS X 10.3.9 or later, Windows XP SP2, iTunes 7.1, HDMI cable or Component video cables and analog audio cables.

TV with 1080i, 720p, 576p, or 480p resolutions.

Stay current with Yahoo Widgets 4

Yahoo! Widgets help you save time and stay current by bringing an always-updated, at-a-glance view of your favorite Internet services right. Yahoo Widgets 4 is compatible with both Mac and Windows and contains several important improvements added like increased speed for the functionality, a mini widget sidebar able to include all the gadgets currently available, etc. New Widget Gallery offers over 4,000 desktop Widgets and no need to browse through the internet.

Important thing about Yahoo Widgets 4, it works quite fast because it requires a very low amount of memory on both Windows and Mac.

System Requirement: Windows XP SP2, 2000SP4, Vista, Mac OS X 10.3.9 and above.

512 Mb RAM, Internet Connection

Visit widgets.yahoo.com –to download.

Microsoft’s future version- Windows Seven?

Even though there is no official details on the successor of Windows Vista, Microsoft did manage to let a PowerPoint presentation entitled “Windows Future Investment Areas” The PowerPoint presentation delivered by Senior Technology Specialist, Michael S. Hanson from Microsoft Denmark on January 31, 2007 and published by AeroXP.

Two code-names have been associated with the next edition of Windows: Fiji and Seven. As Fiji is in fact the upcoming out-of band release of Windows Media Center, the Windows future investments point out to Seven. Windows Seven is expected to be made available in 2009 and it will be building on the Windows Vista Foundation.

News source: softpedia

High end Windows Ultimate Wallpaper for download

A couple of high-end wallpapers named ‘Windows Ultimate Wallpaper’ made available for download by Windows Ultimate extra team. This high resolution wallpapers available in 3:4, 30” and 24” sizes. The wallpapers are made available for free, no matter if you have Windows Vista Ultimate or Windows XP. You can download it from http://windowsultimate.com

Find out the codec installed on your computer

May be we are all encountered a problem when playing a movie file or audio file that doesn’t get recognized by our media player, instead giving you an unknown file format or codec not found error. The first step to troubleshooting the problem is identifying the codec required for the file.

Gspot is open source software which tells you what codec is using the media file. Gspot is very simple, below 1Mb in size, and no need to install. Just unzip and open. Browse the file for analyzing with browse tab that will tell you all.

download

Set Internet Explorer default home page to Google, Yahoo or you like

It is quite easy to set ‘blank’ as Internet Explorer default home page by going to Control panel - Internet option. But, do you want to set IE’s default home page to Google, Yahoo or Live search or anything you want, just follow the method given .

Click Start -> Run -> Type gpedit.msc -> Enter

Click on ‘User Configuration’ from the left side box. Next, in the right pane double click on ‘Windows settings’-> ‘Internet Explorer Maintenance’-> ‘URLs’-> ‘Important URLs’

Here you can add home page URL like http://www.google.com/ or your choice. Click OK.

There are also two options for you to add URLs - Search bar URL and Support URL

Firefox Short cut keys

Short cut keys always make easy our job. Here are some important short cut keys for Firefox browser (Windows) that may be helpful to you.

Select all text -Ctrl + A

Copy selected text -Ctrl + C

Cut the selected text -Ctrl + X

Undo last action -Ctrl + Z

Print current page -Ctrl + P

Save current page -Ctrl + S

Book mark current page -Ctrl + D

Find text in the current page -Ctrl + F

Find more text -Ctrl + G / F3

Bookmark side bar -Ctrl + B / Ctrl + I

Open new window -Ctrl + N

Open new tab -Ctrl + T

Reload current page -Ctrl + R / F5

Open history side bar -Ctrl + H

Close current tab -Ctrl + W

Nokia 5300 Xpress Music

Nokia 5300 has a sporty slider design and a focus on music. The phone has dedicated external music keys that play / pause, forward and rewind, stereo Bluetooth, and expandable memory up to 2GB all for music.

Features of the phone:

Display -TFT QVGA 320 x 240 pixels 2" size

Band -900/1800/1900

Camera -1.3 Mega pixel, Video recording and playback (3G format)

Multi media -MP3/AAC/eAAC+/AAC+/WMA/Midi format.

-Visual Radio- listen and interact with your favorite radio station

-Skins for music player.

Memory -32Mb flash and 16Mb RAM, microSD up to 2GB.

Browser -xHTML over TCP/IP, GPRS, HSCSD

Messaging -Email-SMPT, POP3 IMAP4 and APOP

Other Features: Animated color screensavers, Changeable color themes, user defined themes, Nokia Sensor, Flash lite player version 2.0, Nokia Audio Manager and Windows Media Player.

Talk time- 3.2 hrs, Music- 12hr.

Spray across your desktop to your heart’s content

DesktopGrafittist is designed for recreation and creativity, and can be used to relieve office stress and boredom. It is a small program that enables you to spray paint your desktop, and anything else that might appear on screen.

The software is small just 200kb. After installation fire up the program and draw what you like. Select 1, 2…to 0, for preset color or right click on desktop for different color. Pres on ‘Esc’ key to close the program and + or – key for increase or decrease brush diameter.

Download

New feature for Google Personalized Homepage

Google has launched a new service wherein you can 'design' and decorate your homepage with the features you like. Google’s Personalized Page is an interesting product that allows you to create your own Google homepage.

You can have your own clock, calendar, themes, the list is not ending. The new stuff themes can be change dynamically according to the user's time of day or local weather conditions. The product was improved with gadgets support, enabling users to place little utilities able to increase the functionality of the product by adding simple functions like Google Search, date and time.

Google also created a new option for Personalized Homepage placed above the search engine, allowing you to quickly switch to the classic view.

Firefox Plug in – MacAfee Site Advisor

We should give prime importance to privacy of our information when we search the web. But the greatest hazard to it is the ignorance of the user, especially in case of spy ware.

MacAfee Site Advisor – a plug-in for Firefox tests the safety of different websites and ranks them as safe, questionable, or potentially dangerous.

>Once the tool has been installed, the user will have access to the MacAfee safety rating via a small icon at the bottom of the browser. The button will turn red if the user is visiting a potentially dangerous site. It also displays the ratings next to Google or Yahoo search results (Red – dangerous, Yellow- Questionable, Green Passed tests and white- never tested). So we can avoid unsafe websites before enter in to the site.

>The installation is simple. Visit at www.siteadvisor.com/ to install plug-in and you will get complete information about the installation.

Put Kernel in to RAM for better performance

The base of Windows XP is ‘Kernel’. It uses the Slower Paging Executive function which slows down the performance. If we put the kernel in to RAM to run, the performance will increase because as we know anything that runs from the RAM will be faster than that run from hard drive or Virtual memory. Do the following hack. Open the registry editor, go to-

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ SYSTEM \CurrentControlSet \ Session manager \ MemoryManagement \ DisablePagingExecutive. Change the value to ‘1’ to disable paging and have the kernel run in RAM. Set the value to ‘0’ undo the hack. Exit the registry editor and reboot.

[Only do this if your system has 256Mb or more RAM]

A Screen Saver showing Live from the Sun to Your Computer

The screen saver made available by the European Space Agency now allows computer users to watch spectacular, almost real-time images of our Sun. The images, coming directly from 1.5 million kilometers away in space, will flash on your computer screen courtesy of ESA's Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO).

You will be able to witness exciting events as they happen on our star: huge expulsions; sunspots, so-called sun-grazing comets, as they disappear forever into our star.

Requirements: Windows 9x, Macintosh and Linux.

Download

Clear out the Prefetch folder

Our day to day computer usages overload the prefetch folder of Windows XP which may slow down our computer. XP uses a system called ‘prefething’ to organize and preload some of the data necessary for commonly used application.

It is a good idea to clear the prefetch folder that become overloaded with reference to files longer in use.

We can manually delete the older files from the prefetch folder. To do this go to C:\Windows\prefectch and delete all the .PF files that are older than a week or two.

How can you find the older files? Just place mouse over a file and see the date.

Clear out the prefetch folder every few months or so.

A good dictionary – You may really love it

Any time you come across a word whose meaning, spelling, or its alternative you want to look up, just select the word and click on the ‘W’ icon shown on the System Tray (Ctrl+Alt+W-you can alter later), you will get its meaning, synonyms, pronunciation, verb, noun, nearest words.etc.

Word Web is a free English thesaurus and dictionary for Windows, and can be used to look up words from within almost any program in just one click. It works off-line, but can also look up words in web references.

The database has more than 150,000 root words and 118,000 synonym sets, many proper nouns, pronunciations, and usage tags.

Version 5 support Windows Vista. Software size 7Mb – free.

Visit the site for download- Click here

Canon EOS-1 D Mark III- A camera which can take photos when lights fades

Canon has announced a high-end 10-megapixel digital SLR- the EOS-1 D Mark III which can take clearer photos in dim light. The CMOS has bigger micro lenses over each picture element, which can record more light from the object.

The EOS-1D Mark III can deliver 10 frames per second at 10.1 Mega pixels for a maximum burst of 110 Large JPEG images.

Canon introduced its first live-view LCD screen on a digital SLR with Mark III. This will give users the ability to compose shots in the camera's 3-inch LCD view screen as well as the optical eyepiece. The camera is compatible with USB 2.0 and includes the EOS Integrated Cleaning System which vibrates for 3.5 seconds to clean off dust.

Basic Specifications

Resolution: 10.10 Mega pixels

Kit Lens: N/A

Viewfinder: Optical/LCD

LCD Size: 3.0 inch

ISO: 50-6400

Shutter: 30-1/8000

Max Aperture: N/A

Mem Type: CF1/CF2/SDHC

Battery: Custom LiIon

Dimensions: 6.1x6.2x3.1in (156x157x80mm)

Weight: 40.4 oz (1,155 g)

Price: $4,000

Availability: 04/2007

More details from- www.imaging-resource.com

Sony Ericsson has announced a new Walkman phone- W660

Sony Ericsson has announced a new Walkman phone, the W660, with a good style and feel. To be available in black and red colors, the W660 can store up to 470 full-length songs (in eAAC+ format) on the bundled 512 MB Memory Stick Micro (M2) card.

The phone also sports 3G support, a 2-megapixel camera with 2.5x digital zoom and Picture Blogging capability. It can deliver RSS feeds straight to the phone's desktop to keep users up-to-date on the latest news and gossip.

The phone's Walkman player comes in version 2.0 with support for Album Art and TrackID, which allows you to record & upload clips of unrecognised tracks to Gracenote, from where you’ll receive back the name of both track and artist.

W660 also supports Music Bluetooth Receiver MBR-100, or the Stereo Bluetooth Headset HBH- DS970. A FM radio has also been incorporated, and the battery life is claimed to deliver 25 hours of music listening when the phone's GSM/UMTS radio is shut off.

Specifications:

Screen size: 262.144 color TFT, 176x220 pixels.

Memory: Memory Stick Micro™ (M2™), Phone memory 16MB.

Phone sizes: 1 02 x 46 x 14.5 mm, 4 x 1.8 x 0.6 inches.

Weight: 93 grm.

The W660 Walkman phone is a UMTS 2100 and GPRS 900/1800/1900 handset and will be available from Q2 2007.

Change the drive letter of second hard drive

While adding a new hard drive to the system after the installation of Windows XP, the drive letters of the new partition succeed that of the optical drive. For those who like to have the optical drive’s letter last in the list under ‘My Computer’, you need to interchange the drive letters.

>Disable optical drive(s) before interchange the drive letters. If the optical drive is active, you won’t be able to interchange the drive letters of the new hard disk and the optical drive. To disable do the following.

> Right click on ‘My Computer’ à ‘Properties’. Under the ‘System properties’ click ‘Hardware’ à ‘Device Manager’. Expand the heading ‘DVD/CD-ROM’ drives. Right click on the listed optical drives and disable them. Exit the ‘Device manager’.

>Now, right click on “My Computer” and select “Manage” from the context menu to bring up “Computer Management”. Select “Disk management” under the heading “Storage”. All the existing partitions will get listed in the right pane. Right click on the drive letter you wish to change and select the option “Change Drive Letter and Paths”. Click on the “Change” button in the next dialog box and choose the new drive letter from the drop down list.

>Since you disabled the optical drive, you will now get the option to assign the drive letter previously assigned to it. Click on “OK” and exit the “Computer Management” application. Now, enable the optical drives you had disabled. Head back to the “Device Manager” and enable optical drives.

Blazing speed with IDM

Internet Download Manager, Ver.5.08, (IDM) is a perfect accelerator program to download your favourite software, games, music and movies. The main interesting is it’s easy of use with its simple interface and compatible with most of the browsers like Firefox, Internet Explorer, Opera, AOL, Maxthon etc.

It’s built in download logic accelerator features intelligent dynamic file segmentation and safe multipart downloading technology that helps to accelerate downloads. Comprehensive error recovery and resume capability of IDM restart broken or interrupted downloads.

The site grabber function lets you download required files that are specified by the filters. And also it lets you download complete web page for off line viewing. The user interface is very simple to configure even by novice.

Microsoft Released Service pack 2 for Windows Server 2003 and XP Pro.x64 Edition

Microsoft announces the release of Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 and Windows XP Professional 64 Edition Service Pack 2. Service packs available in standalone mode as well as integrated with operating system.

The new release includes the following standalone builds of Service Pack 2:Windows Server 2003 SP 2 (32-bit x86), Windows Server 2003 R2 SP 2 (for x64) and Windows XP Professional SP 2(x64).

You may visit Microsoft’s site to get more details of the release and documentation and also the language of the release.

Click here to visit the site.

New Skype Goes Beyond Voice

Skype 3.1 (Windows) included two new item namely SkypeFind and Skype Prime (Beta), giving people a new ways to share their knowledge with one another.

>SkypeFind recommends your favourite local businesses to your friends and the Skype community. It lets users to rate, review and log their favourite businesses no matter where they live.

>Skype Prime allows earning money by offering advice to Skype users. It brings together those people who have expertise or knowledge to sell with others who are seeking advice and pay for it.

Main features of Skype 3.1 are:

1. Make free Skype-to-Skype calls to anyone else, anywhere in the world.

2. Call ordinary phones and mobiles at pretty cheap rates per minute.

3. See who you are talking to with video calls.

4. Send SMS messages to friends on the move.

5. Set up call forwarding so you never miss another call.

6. Group chat with up to 100 people or conference call with up to nine others.

7. Search the web with the Google Toolbar

Access Gmail via Outlook Express

Sending and receiving email through an e-mail client like Outlook Express is pretty easy. Email clients lets you view your e-mails when you are in offline and also let you compose mails without having connected to internet.
Gmail is now open to all (No invitation required) and access trough POP3 is free. It is very easy to configure Outlook express to access Gmail. You need to specify to keep the mail read in Outlook in your Gmail account or delete it.

>Turn on POP access in your Gmail account.

>Open Outlook and select Tools - mail –Add- Click on mail

>Enter your name in the new window that opens up

>Click next. Choose POP3 as the sever type and enter-

>Incoming mail server (POP3) – Type “pop.gmail.com”

>Outgoing mail server (SMPT) – Type “smpt.gmail.com”

>Click next - Enter Your Gmail address and Your Gmail password

>Click next à Apply à Finish.

>In the window shown double click on pop.gmail.com

>From the new window click Advanced

(Make sure to check ‘This server requires an encrypted connection (SSL)’ under POP3 and SMPT)

>Type 465 under SMPT (Outgoing server)

>Type 995 under POP3 (Incoming server), if it is not automatically changed.

>Click OK à Next à Finish.

A Map for Safe Sites to Surf from McAfee

Online safety risks are truly a global issue. The security major McAfee in it’s Site Advisor research report dubbed ‘Mapping the Mal Web' analyzed nearly 265 top level domains basis web safety tests and came up with some amazing results.

The level of risk rated in Red for risky sites, Green for secure site (passed all of McAfee's tests) and Yellow for continued to carry some insecure value. 4.1% of all sites tested by SiteAdvisor are rated red or yellow. But the incidence of red and yellow sites varies dramatically across top-level domains, ranging from a low of 0.1% for Finland (.fi) to a high of 10.1% for the tiny island of Tokelau (.tk). The Tokelauan domains offer some advantages to scammers. Detailed report available from Site Adviser Research site

Are you using older DVD drive; Chances are there it is Region protected

IF you own a relatively older DVD drive chances are that it is region protected. Most of us use DVD drives for playing media and writing. But many of us might not aware of DVD Region Protection code (RPC) a standard implemented to avoid DVD piracy, that allows you to change the RPC to 5 times only. The 5^th change will be permanent and the DVD will stay locked to that particular region allowing you only to play DVD movies disc that corresponds to that region. Newer DVD drives generally not region protected

The solution

>Flashing the firmware will convert your DVD drive to RPC-2- a standard of region free DVD drive. Flashing the firmware is complicated and should be done correctly and with precaution. Visit the manufactures site for latest firmware. It should be listed in the download section. Make sure the exact model number of your DVD drive and download the correct firmware. Detailed information about flashing the firmware is available with the manufactures.

The main advantage of upgrading firmware of your DVD drives is that it support for latest format of DVD discs and older drives only supports DVD-R format and in many cases flashing the firm wire also add support for DVD+R format disk.

Important Short cut keys for MS word

Short Cut keys always help us to speed up work. It significantly improves productivity, especially with Microsoft Office. Here are some important short cut keys for MS word.

Ctrl + Shift + A ---------------------------All caps

Ctrl + B or Ctrl+ Shift + B --------------Bold

Ctrl + C or Ctrl + Insert ----------------- Copy

Ctrl + Shift + C --------------------------- Copy Format

Ctrl + Delete --------------------------- Delete Word

Ctrl + Backspace ------------------------- Delete back Word

Ctrl + Shift + H --------------------------- Hidden

Ctrl + F8 ----------------------------------- Doc Size

Ctrl + F10 ----------------------------------Doc Maximize

Ctrl + F5 ----------------------------------- Doc Restore

Ctrl + F7 ------------------------------------Doc Move

Ctrl + Shift + ------------------------------ Grow Font

CTRL+RIGHT --------------------------- Word Right

Ctrl + 3 or Ctrl + F11 -------------------- Lock Fields

Ctrl + K ------------------------------------ Hyperlink

Ctrl + M------------------------------------ Indent

Ctrl + I or Ctrl + Shift + I ----------------Italic

Ctrl + J ------------------------------------- Justify Para

Ctrl + L------------------------------------- Left Para

Ctrl + Z ------------------------------------ Undo

Ctrl + Left--------------------------------- Word Left

Ctrl + Shift + Left ------------------------ Word Left Extension

Alt + Ctrl + M ---------------------------- Annotation

Alt + Ctrl + K----------------------------- Auto Format

Alt + Ctrl + V or F3 --------------------- Auto Text

Alt + F3 ----------------------------------- Create Auto Text

Alt + Shift + R --------------------------- Header Footer Link

Alt + Ctrl + L ---------------------------- List Num Field

Alt + Shift + D--------------------------- Date Field

Alt + Shift + F7-------------------------- Dictionary

Alt + Shift + F9 ------------------------- Do Field Click

Alt + Ctrl + O---------------------------- Outline

Alt + Left -------------------------------- Web Go Back

Alt + Right ------------------------------ Web Go Forward

Alt + Shift + L ------------------------- Outline Show First Line

Alt +Shift + Left ----------------------- Outline Promote

Alt + Shift + Right--------------------- Outline Demote

Alt + Shift + = ------------------------- Outline Expand

Alt + Shift + Down-------------------- Outline Move Down

Alt + Shift + Up ----------------------- Outline Move Up

Alt + Shift + or Alt + Shift + Num - Outline Collapse

Shift + Up------------------------------- Line Up Extend

Shift + F2------------------------------- Copy Text

F1 --------------------------------------- Help

Inkjet prints that last 100 years

Pictures fade when they're exposed to light, air pollution, moisture, and heat. Kodak introduced a new technology in printing paper that last inkjet prints for 100 years. Not a big deal in this digital age, since we can store image in digital media and reprint. But Kodak likes the idea of long-lasting .

‘Colorlast’ technology introduced by Kodak shields your pictures from heat, moisture and light so your prints will last over 100 years, even when they're displayed at home unprotected.

>Kodak ‘Colorlast’ Technology locks ink molecules into the image layer, protecting your picture from fading factors like heat and light. Using a unique blend of mordant in the bottom two layers, along with nanoparticulate ceramic particles in the top layer stabilize the image. Kodak scientists have engineered a significant leap in longevity and color reproduction. The proprietary three-layer coating controls smudging, speeds dry time, and increases ozone fade resistance.

ICC World Cup 2007 Cricket Live Score and Videos added to Google Desktop Search

ICC Cricket World Cup 2007, the largest sporting event opens yesterday. Sir Garfield Sobers, the greatest all-round cricketer ever, opened the World Cup in a spectacular ceremony at Jamaica that designed to show what happens on the field over the next six weeks.

Millions of Cricket lovers around the world are looking for live scores and videos through online for the next six weeks. Searching through the website is not convenient every time.

Google added 3 gadgets to their “Google Desktop Search (GDS)” namely Cricket news and photos, Cricket Videos and Score board which helps to know latest happenings in the field right on our desktop.

QTVR – Quick Time Virtual Reality

QuickTime Virtual Reality is an interesting concept by apple that moves the photographic image from the flat 2D to 3D imagery. QTVR allows users to interact with images instead of just looking at them on the computer.

That is, for example, we can see a photograph of a mobile phone from its front, back, top, below, left, or right – just like rotating the phone-with the mouse – a useful tool for product manufactures to present their product.

Now we can see how it works? If You take photos of your mobile phone from its front, left, right, behind top and bottom – then the software puts them together and make a spherical 3D image that it display as a movie. We can see this MOV file in the quick Time player by keep the left mouse button pressed and moving the mouse.

When seen in a browser (streaming) the image are loaded in to the player one at a time and you can clearly see the 3D grid that is being used.

For those who like QTVR software click here

If you want see an example of QTVR click on the image to download a sample QTVR file (740kb)

(Quick time player should be installed)

HD Photo- From Microsoft

Microsoft has officially announced HD Photo - a new image file format that overcomes the limitations of existing image formats. The compression ratio considered to be twice the efficiency of JPEG, with fewer damaging artifacts that results a high quality image with half the file size.

HD Photo is the new name for Windows Media Photo. Both names refer to the exact same file format. The Windows Media Photo name is still used to describe the implementation of HD Photo in Microsoft Windows products

HD Photo offers an increase in image fidelity, preserve the original image content and enabling higher-quality exposure and colour adjustments. This new format offers the ability to decode only the information needed for any resolution or region, or the option to manipulate the image as compressed data.

Microsoft has announced the beta release of HD Photo plug-ins for Adobe Photoshop. These plug-in enable users to edit and print HD Photo files from within Adobe Photoshop, and include support for high dynamic range pixel formats. These plug-in let photographers to save a raw image taken directly from a camera's image sensor as an HD Photo image. The plug-ins works with Photoshop CS2 and with the upcoming CS3.

HD Photo

Montage-a-Google

Montage-a-Google is a simple web-based application that uses Google's image search to generate a large gridded montage of images based on keywords entered by the user. Not only an interesting way of browsing the net, but also to create a desktop pictures or posters.

The screenshot shown is a college for the key word SachinTendulker.

Visit the site

Useful Firefox add on-Gmail manager

Gmail Manager allows you to manage multiple Gmail accounts and receive new mail notifications in to your browser.

If you place your mouse over ‘M’ shown below on progress bar of Firefox, displays your account details including unread messages, saved drafts, spam messages, labels with new mail, space used, and new mail snippets.

We can set the time to notify new massages at any time interval like 10 or 30 minutes or as per your choice. Right click on ‘M’, select preferences- notifications button. Set to any time you wish.

Download

World's Largest movie database - IMDb

The world’s largest movie data base IMDb (internet movie data base) is s an online database of information of films, actors, TV shows, video games and production crew personnel. IMDb is updated frequently so we get latest information of movies around the world.

In IMDb you can search by Movie titles, characters, biography, names and more. For example, If you are search for a movie, The Godfather, you will get all details like actors and their biography, release date, director, video clippings, trailers, audio clipping, photographs etc. Just look the image below which shows when search for biography of Kate Winslet.

IMDb is a free site owned by Amazon, which requires a free registration to access complete range of data and activities and can also be search without any account but can’t vote for your favorite movie. More details for IMDb available from -

www.answers.com/topic/internet-movie-database

Visit IMDb

Optimize your PC power consumption

LocalCooling is an application that automatically optimizes your PC's power consumption by using an effective power save mode. You will be able to see your savings in real-time

LocalCooling is a free power management tool from Uniblue Labs that allows users to optimize their energy savings. It gives you full control over your power mode settings of computers.

You can set to any time to switch off your monitor, spin down hard disk or completely switch off computer itself. And also if you are playing MP3 or Video movie etc you can also instruct LocalCooling to never shut down PC. It gives detailed information about the power consumption of your monitor, CPU, hard disk, graphic card and other peripherals using in the computer. Installation is very simple and settings are easy to do even by a novice.

Software is 2.5Mb. OS-windows XP. Download

“More than 30 billion kilowatt-hours of energy is wasted because many of us simply forget to shut down our computers when we’re not using them. If we could just improve the efficiency of how we use our PCs, the savings in energy costs would be over $3 billion dollars! The CO2 emissions from just 15 computers are equivalent in energy terms to the gas consumption used by one car”. Learn More About PC Power Consumption...

Gmail chat in Opera

By default Gmail chat doesn’t work with Opera. This is because Gmail is sniffing out Opera. Here is a simple solution to overcome this.

Open Gmail (gmail.google.com)in Opera. Right click any ware on the page and click on the ‘Edit site preferences’. Under ‘network’ tab, change identification option to ‘mask as Firefox’. Now click on ok and refresh the page to start using Google chat from Gmail.

How to build Yahoo pipes?.A step by step idea

Pipes is a free online service that lets you remix popular feed types and create data mashups using a visual editor. You needn’t to know any technical knowledge to build pipes. You can create Pipes for many purposes. Maybe the most common is combining all your favorite feeds, but there are more sources available. The current list of sources includes: Yahoo Search, Yahoo Local, Fetch (RSS feeds), Google Base, Flickr etc. Each source can be searched or queried using either pre-defined or user-defined parameters.

Let’s begin to build a basic Pipes-feeds. This is only a basic idea, but once you created, you can edit it to create the ultimate mash-up.

Go to Yahoo Pipes and click on MyPipes (you should have Yahoo Id). You will get a visual interface editing page (see the image)

You can drag and drop items from the left side bar menu to this editing page. For example, from menu bar, under Sources, drag Fetch onto the editing field. You’ll see an URL box.

In the URL field add the RSS URL you wish. You can add several feeds by dragging more Fetch box on to the editing field. You can also add more URLs by clicking the “+” sign next to URL in the Fetch box. Put URL address in all URL field.

Next Drag a Union box (Look under operators menu on the side bar) onto the editing field. Connect the outputs of your Fetch boxes to the inputs of the Union box by clicking and dragging your mouse from point to point.

Next drag a Filter box (shown under operators menu) onto the editing field. Connect the output of the Union box to the input of the Filter box. Connect the output of the Filter box with the input of the Pipe Output. (See the image).

The Filter box allows you to filter your content. It is necessary to use a filter to limit the data flow to a manageable level, because we are using a number of feeds that will provide numerous head lines to us which is inconvenient. Click on the title and contains boxes to see the many possibilities. You can select from the list you don’t need and you can also select either block or accept.

Finally click on save button on the top of the editing field, and name your Pipe. On the MyPipes page, you can click Publish button to make your Pipes public. Here you may need to put some short description and tags. Click on Run this Pipe to see the aggregated feed you’ve created.

PaPeRo with built-in Multi-Media Blog Creation System

NEC, a Japanese company, has announced the development of an automatic multimedia blog creation system, which has been embedded into PaPeRo, a personal assistance robot.

PaPeRo (Partner-type Personal Robot) has its natural expressions and ability to remember its owners' interests and preferences. It was designed to bring about a more natural interface with which people can easily and automatically benefit from the Internet. It can easily access Internet without the use of a keyboard

Its ability to interact naturally with people opens up a variety of application possibilities. It can be used as an automatic multimedia blog creation tool. When a user begins to talk about their events with PaPeRo, the system records and analyzes it. Following this, PaPeRo searches for suitable multi-media content on the Internet, including images, illustrations and music, which are automatically uploaded and edited along with the video recording on the user's blog.

PaPeRo has been developed using the latest technologies. Main features are given below.

Weight: 5.0 kg; continuous operation time: 2-3 hours; Built-in Internet wireless modem handset; USB 2.0; microphones for detecting the direction of the sound, as well as for recognizing certain sounds; a video camera with CCD sensor; sensors for ultrasonic, step height, elevation etc.

More details and functions are available from PaPeRo’s home page

Power saving tips for laptops

First off all use the power management features of laptop to improve battery life. You can set the device to switch off the LCD screen and hard drive after a set interval of time.

Bright screen consumes a lot of battery power .So reduce screen brightness when you are not connected to the power source.

Close any application you are not using when on battery power. Running application increases CPU utilization which reduces battery life.

External accessories like external optical drive, PC cards and USB key board lights draw power from the notebook. Disconnect such devices when not in use.

Booting the laptop draws more current. When it not connects to a power source, instead of shutting down your laptop in the middle of a conference, choose the suspend mode if you wish to use it again after a short period of time.

Playing graphic intensive games, videos, or music drains the battery quickly. Close such application when on battery.

Can you develop a game?

Microsoft is providing the opportunity for game developers to participate the Dream-Build-Play game development contest, offering a $10,000 grand prize and the opportunity for a winner’s game to be published on Xbox LIVE Arcade.

Prize includes an opportunity for the winner to receive an Xbox LIVE Arcade publishing contract, providing a chance to showcase the winner’s game on Xbox LIVE Arcade.

Dream-Build-Play is open to any user of XNA Game Studio Express, including the Garage Games Torque X platform. No purchase is necessary to compete.

The contest ends 2 July 2007, and winners will be announced 13 August at Microsoft Game fest 2007 in Seattle.

Dream-Build-Play is a global contest that offers aspiring game developers the opportunity to showcase their innovation and talent to the world. More than 20 winners will be selected to win fantastic prizes with a total value of more than $40,000 from Microsoft, Alienware, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Inc., Autodesk Inc. and Softimage Co.

Click here to enter the contest

Accelerate your printing job

By default windows uses the spooling technique for print job, which is a background program that writes data to temporary files in C:\Windows\Temp directory. The final print command is send to the printer through the spooler, allowing you to perform other tasks while you print. This might actually slow the printing process that is by writing data to temporary files and then printing.

There must be number of occasions that you only need to print multiple documents or photographs without do any other tasks. So you can disable the spooling technique. This will tie up your application until the printer has all the data, but your print job should finish more quickly.

On most printers you can turn off the spooler. Go to start-settings-printers. Right click on the icon of the printer you are using, Click properties and select advanced tab. Select the print directly to the printer option.

LG KE850 PRADA

LG has unveiled a new hand set Prada (LG KE850) -looks like Apple's iPhone with touch screen-controlled snazzy graphical user interface.

Fashion designer Prada is responsible for the looks of the phone, the design of the advanced touch user interface, ring tones, accessories and the content comes with the phone.

LG KE850 PRADA is a tri-band GSM phone with GPRS and EDGE, a large 240x400 pixel touch-sensitive display that can playback widescreen video clips, Bluetooth 2.0, microSD expandable memory, and has an FM radio and a two mp camera.

The LG KE850 PRADA comes with MP3, AAC, WMA and RealAudio, MPEG4, H.263 and H.264 video. The KE850 has a web browser with Adobe/Macromedia Flash support, a document viewer (supporting text, Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and Adobe Acrobat file types), an email client and messaging applications. Size: 99x54x12mm, 85grms.The price of the phone may be around €600 / £380.

Main drawback of the phone is it doesn’t have WiFi and have only 8mb internal memory.

LG say that the PRADA phone will be available in selected dealerships in the UK, Germany, Italy and France from late February, and then in Asia from late March.