Tech guru

21 Sample Poses to Get You Started with Photographing Men

2012-04-09T23:27:00.001-07:00

21 Sample Poses to Get You Started with Photographing Men:
A Guest Post by Kaspars Grinvalds from Posing App.
Following the previous article on posing when photographing female subjects, let’s look at some starting points with men photography. Men are usually less comfortable in process of being photographed, so it’s important to get him to be at ease with the process in order to get good results.
It is always a good idea to prepare before the photo shoot. Just one more peace of advice – involve your subject in the process! He will feel more confident knowing the plan, what he has to “do” and what kind of outcome is expected. Showing this kind of posing cheat sheet to your model is indeed a very good way to prepare your subject for a photo shoot and make him feel more relaxed and confident at the same time.
So, let’s look at some sample poses for men.
1. Very simple pose for a man’s portrait: An upper body shot with crossed arms. Two things to take care of: Shoulders should be pulled back a little, stomach muscles kept in check.

2. Crossed arms works very well in full height shots as well. In addition, ask him to cross one leg in front of the other. But make sure the body weight is not supported equal on both legs, otherwise that would look just awkward!

3. A recurring question from your subject might be “Where shall I put my hands?” The solutions is actually quite simple. There are four places to keep in mind (mixed in any combination utilizing both hands). #1. Loosely by the side. #2. On the hips. #3. In the pockets. #4. Both hands crossed on the chest. And in addition – hands should always be relaxed, which means no muscle pressure, except you are photographing a bodybuilder

4. A casual pose for an uprightly standing man. Men indeed have a problem with placing their hands, by keeping them fully or partly in the side pockets, you have a sure way to achieve natural and relaxed pose.

5. Just a slight variation to the previous pose. Some piece of clothing over the shoulder, merely a thumb in the pocket, and legs crossed work very well.

6. For a sitting pose, putting the ankle of one leg onto the knee of the other looks relaxed and natural. Shoot slightly from above.

7. Leaning against a wall is just another variant for upright posing.

8. The sideways way of leaning against the same wall. Works very well for both casual and formal shots.

9. Very simple pose for a formal portrait. Items held in the hand (e.g. a laptop, books, or even tools) can work as insignia that point at the subject’s occupation.

10. Against common belief, it is absolutely fine to make shots of a man sitting partly on a desk. For formal portraits such a pose might counteract rigidness.

11. Very simple pose for a portrait with a man sitting at a desk. To reveal the subject’s profession place work related items on the desk that can function as insignia.

12. A slight variation of the previous pose. Very appropriate for formal portraits.

13. To show the work environment while removing the distance created by a foreground object like a desk, take your shot from the back side. The result will be formal but inviting at the same time.

14. A man supporting himself on a desk with arms crossed. Again you could place work related items on the desk to point to the subject’s profession.

15. Using a chair as a prop can make a portrait more engaging and interesting. Very suitable when introducing creative people in their work environment.

16. Sitting comfortably in a chair usually works for a corporate and formal portraits.

17. Easy and natural pose with a man sitting on the ground. Try different shooting directions and angles.

18. Another variant of a man’s pose while sitting on the ground. Suitable for outdoor locations.

19. An easy and relaxed looking pose for a sitting man.

20. Informal pose. The man is sitting on the ground resting his back against the wall or some object.

21. Finally, let your subject be the protagonist of your picture. Never be afraid to crop tightly around the model’s face.

That should be at least something to use as a starting point. Again, remember that there are no absolutes, each sample pose might and should be adjusted depending on your shooting environment and scenario. There is no need to overdo anything. Actually, all you need for good people portraits is simplicity. Simple backgrounds, simple clothing, simple poses and natural expressions.
Kaspars Grinvalds is a photographer working and living in Riga, Latvia. He is the author of Posing App where more poses and tips about people photography are available.

Post originally from: Digital Photography Tips.

Check out our more Photography Tips at Photography Tips for Beginners, Portrait Photography Tips and Wedding Photography Tips.

21 Sample Poses to Get You Started with Photographing Men

Top 10 Ways to Make the Best of an Old, Crappy Computer

2012-02-29T04:49:00.000-08:00

Top 10 Ways to Make the Best of an Old, Crappy Computer [Lifehacker Top 10]:

Despite everyone's assumptions, we geeks are not always privy to the latest and greatest technology. If you're stuck with an old, slow, crappy computer, there are a few things you can do to make the best of a bad situation. Here are our top 10 favorites. More »

★ Mountain Lion

2012-02-29T04:48:00.005-08:00

★ Mountain Lion:

“We’re starting to do some things differently,” Phil Schiller said to me.

We were sitting in a comfortable hotel suite in Manhattan just over a week ago. I’d been summoned a few days earlier by Apple PR with the offer of a private “product briefing”. I had no idea heading into the meeting what it was about. I had no idea how it would be conducted. This was new territory for me, and I think, for Apple.

I knew it wasn’t about the iPad 3 — that would get a full-force press event in California. Perhaps new retina display MacBooks, I thought. But that was just a wild guess, and it was wrong. It was about Mac OS X — or, as Apple now calls it almost everywhere, OS X. The meeting was structured and conducted very much like an Apple product announcement event. But instead of an auditorium with a stage and theater seating, it was simply with a couch, a chair, an iMac, and an Apple TV hooked up to a Sony HDTV. And instead of a room full of writers, journalists, and analysts, it was just me, Schiller, and two others from Apple — Brian Croll from product marketing and Bill Evans from PR. (From the outside, at least in my own experience, Apple’s product marketing and PR people are so well-coordinated that it’s hard to discern the difference between the two.)

Handshakes, a few pleasantries, good hot coffee, and then, well, then I got an Apple press event for one. Keynote slides that would have looked perfect had they been projected on stage at Moscone West or the Yerba Buena Center, but instead were shown on a big iMac on a coffee table in front of us. A presentation that started with the day’s focus (“We wanted you here today to talk about OS X”) and a review of the Mac’s success over the past few years (5.2 million Macs sold last quarter; 23 (soon to be 24) consecutive quarters of sales growth exceeding the overall PC industry; tremendous uptake among Mac users of the Mac App Store and the rapid adoption of Lion).

And then the reveal: Mac OS X — sorry, OS X — is going on an iOS-esque one-major-update-per-year development schedule. This year’s update is scheduled for release in the summer, and is ready now for a developer preview release. Its name is Mountain Lion.¹

There are many new features, I’m told, but today they’re going to focus on telling me about ten of them. This is just like an Apple event, I keep thinking. Just like with Lion, Mountain Lion is evolving in the direction of the iPad. But, just as with Lion last year, it’s about sharing ideas and concepts with iOS, not sharing the exact same interaction design or code. The words “Windows” and “Microsoft” are never mentioned, but the insinuation is clear: Apple sees a fundamental difference between software for the keyboard-and-mouse-pointer Mac and that for the touchscreen iPad. Mountain Lion is not a step towards a single OS that powers both the Mac and iPad, but rather another in a series of steps toward defining a set of shared concepts, styles, and principles between two fundamentally distinct OSes.

Major new features

iCloud, with an iOS-style easy signup process upon first turning on a new Mac or first logging into a new user account. Mountain Lion wants you to have an iCloud account.

iCloud document storage, and the biggest change to Open and Save dialog boxes in the 28-year history of the Mac. Mac App Store apps effectively have two modes for opening/saving documents: iCloud or the traditional local hierarchical file system. The traditional way is mostly unchanged from Lion (and, really, from all previous versions of Mac OS X). The iCloud way is visually distinctive: it looks like the iPad springboard — linen background, iOS-style one-level-only drag-one-on-top-of-another-to-create-one “folders”. It’s not a replacement of traditional Mac file management and organization. It’s a radically simplified alternative.

Apps have been renamed for cross-OS consistency. iChat is now Messages; iCal is now Calendar; Address Book is now Contacts. Missing apps have been added: Reminders and Notes look like Mac versions of their iOS counterparts. Now that these apps exist for the Mac, to-dos have been removed from Calendar and notes have been removed from Mail, leaving Calendar to simply handle calendaring and Mail to handle email.

The recurring theme: Apple is fighting against cruft — inconsistencies and oddities that have accumulated over the years, which made sense at one point but no longer — like managing to-dos in iCal (because CalDAV was being used to sync them to a server) or notes in Mail (because IMAP was the syncing back-end). The changes and additions in Mountain Lion are in a consistent vein: making things simpler and more obvious, closer to how things should be rather than simply how they always have been.

Schiller has no notes. He is every bit as articulate, precise, and rehearsed as he is for major on-stage events. He knows the slide deck stone cold. It strikes me that I have spoken in front of a thousand people but I’ve never been as well-prepared for a presentation as Schiller is for this one-on-one meeting. (Note to self: I should be that rehearsed.)

This is an awful lot of effort and attention in order to brief what I’m guessing is a list of a dozen or two writers and journalists. It’s Phil Schiller, spending an entire week on the East Coast, repeating this presentation over and over to a series of audiences of one. There was no less effort put into the preparation of this presentation than there would have been if it had been the WWDC keynote address.

What do I think so far, Schiller asks. It all seems rather obvious now that I’ve seen it — and I mean obvious in a good way. I remain convinced that iCloud is exactly what Steve Jobs said it was: the cornerstone of everything Apple does for the next decade. So of course it makes sense to bring iCloud to the Mac in a big way. Simplified document storage, iMessage, Notification Center², synced Notes and Reminders — all of these things are part of iCloud. It’s all a step toward making your Mac just another device managed in your iCloud account. Look at your iPad and think about the features it has that would work well, for a lot of people, if they were on the Mac. That’s Mountain Lion — and probably a good way to predict the future of the continuing parallel evolution of iOS and OS X.³

But this, I say, waving around at the room, this feels a little odd. I’m getting the presentation from an Apple announcement event without the event. I’ve already been told that I’ll be going home with an early developer preview release of Mountain Lion. I’ve never been at a meeting like this, and I’ve never heard of Apple seeding writers with an as-yet-unannounced major update to an operating system. Apple is not exactly known for sharing details of as-yet-unannounced products, even if only just one week in advance. Why not hold an event to announce Mountain Lion — or make the announcement on apple.com before talking to us?

That’s when Schiller tells me they’re doing some things differently now.

I wonder immediately about that “now”. I don’t press, because I find the question that immediately sprang to mind uncomfortable. And some things remain unchanged: Apple executives explain what they want to explain, and they explain nothing more.

My gut feeling though, is this. Apple didn’t want to hold an event to announce Mountain Lion because those press events are precious. They just used one for the iBooks/education thing, and they’re almost certainly on the cusp of holding a major one for the iPad. They don’t want to wait to release the Mountain Lion preview because they want to give Mac developers months of time to adopt new APIs and to help Apple shake out bugs. So: an announcement without an event. But they don’t want Mountain Lion to go unheralded. They are keenly aware that many observers suspect or at least worry that the Mac is on the wane, relegated to the sideline in favor of the new and sensationally popular iPad.

Thus, these private briefings. Not merely to explain what Mountain Lion is — that could just as easily be done with a website or PDF feature guide — but to convey that the Mac and OS X remain both important and the subject of the company’s attention. The move to a roughly annual release cycle, to me, suggests that Apple is attempting to prove itself a walk-and-chew-gum-at-the-same-time company. Remember this, five years ago?

iPhone has already passed several of its required certification
tests and is on schedule to ship in late June as planned. We can’t
wait until customers get their hands (and fingers) on it and
experience what a revolutionary and magical product it is.
However, iPhone contains the most sophisticated software ever
shipped on a mobile device, and finishing it on time has not come
without a price — we had to borrow some key software engineering
and QA resources from our Mac OS X team, and as a result we will
not be able to release Leopard at our Worldwide Developers
Conference in early June as planned. While Leopard’s features will
be complete by then, we cannot deliver the quality release that we
and our customers expect from us. We now plan to show our
developers a near final version of Leopard at the conference, give
them a beta copy to take home so they can do their final testing,
and ship Leopard in October. We think it will be well worth the
wait. Life often presents tradeoffs, and in this case we’re sure
we’ve made the right ones.

Putting both iOS and OS X on an annual release schedule is a sign that Apple is confident it no longer needs to make such tradeoffs in engineering resources. There’s an aspect of Apple’s “now” — changes it needs to make, ways the company needs to adapt — that simply relate to just how damn big, and how successful, the company has become. They are in uncharted territory, success-wise. They are cognizant that they’re no longer the upstart, and are changing accordingly.

It seems important to Apple that the Mac not be perceived as an afterthought compared to the iPad, and, perhaps more importantly, that Apple not be perceived as itself considering or treating the Mac as an afterthought.

I’ve been using Mountain Lion for a week, preinstalled on a MacBook Air loaned to me by Apple. I have little to report: it’s good, and I look forward to installing the developer preview on my own personal Air. It’s a preview, incomplete and with bugs, but it feels at least as solid as Lion did a year ago in its developer previews.

I’m interested to see how developer support for Mac App Store-only features plays out. Two big ones: iCloud document storage and Notification Center. Both of these are slated only for third-party apps from the Mac App Store. Many developers, though, have been maintaining non-Mac App Store versions of their apps. If this continues, such apps are going to lose feature parity between the App Store and non-App Store versions. Apple is not taking the Mac in iOS’s “all apps must come through the App Store” direction, but they’re certainly encouraging developers to go Mac App Store-only with iCloud features that are only available to Mac App Store apps (and, thus, which have gone through the App Store approval process).

My favorite Mountain Lion feature, though, is one that hardly even has a visible interface. Apple is calling it “Gatekeeper”. It’s a system whereby developers can sign up for free-of-charge Apple developer IDs which they can then use to cryptographically sign their applications. If an app is found to be malware, Apple can revoke that developer’s certificate, rendering the app (along with any others from the same developer) inert on any Mac where it’s been installed. In effect, it offers all the security benefits of the App Store, except for the process of approving apps by Apple. Users have three choices which type of apps can run on Mountain Lion:

Only those from the App Store

Only those from the App Store or which are signed by a developer ID

Any app, whether signed or unsigned

The default for this setting is, I say, exactly right: the one in the middle, disallowing only unsigned apps. This default setting benefits users by increasing practical security, and also benefits developers, preserving the freedom to ship whatever software they want for the Mac, with no approval process.

Call me nuts, but that’s one feature I hope will someday go in the other direction — from OS X to iOS.

As soon as Schiller told me the name, I silently cursed myself for not having predicted it. Apple is a company of patterns. iPhone 3G, followed by a same-form-factor-but-faster 3GS; iPhone 4 followed by a same-form-factor-but-faster 4S. Leopard followed by Snow Leopard; so, of course: Lion followed by Mountain Lion. ↩

On the Mac, Notification Center alerts are decidedly inspired by those of Growl, a longstanding open source project that is now sold for $2 in the Mac App Store. I hereby predict “Apple ripped off Growl” as the mini-scandal of the day. ↩

There is a feature from the iPhone that I would love to see ported to the Mac, but which is not present in Mountain Lion: Siri. There’s either a strategic reason to keep Siri iPhone 4S-exclusive, or it’s a card Apple is holding to play at a later date. ↩

Cats as Fonts

2012-02-29T04:48:00.004-08:00

Cats as Fonts:

LoL by: Unknown

Via: Ojezap Posterous

Gather These Twenty-Five Documents You Need Before You Die [Life Planning]

2012-02-29T04:48:00.003-08:00

Gather These Twenty-Five Documents You Need Before You Die [Life Planning]:

Do your loved ones a favor and organize these important documents so in case something happens to you they can easily make financial decisions and act on your behalf. The Wall Street Journal explains which policies and documents to make accessible. More »

What to Buy at Costco Versus Your Grocery Store [Saving Money]

2012-02-29T04:48:00.002-08:00

What to Buy at Costco Versus Your Grocery Store [Saving Money]:

Buying in bulk at Costco can save your family lots of money—depending on what you buy. To find out exactly which items are the best deals at the wholesale club, personal finance blog Squawkfox did a shopping experiment comparing unit prices on fresh, frozen, and packaged goods between a local grocery and Costco. More »

Improve Your Writing by Avoiding These Twenty Common Grammar Mistakes Almost Everyone Makes [Writing]

2012-02-29T04:48:00.001-08:00

Improve Your Writing by Avoiding These Twenty Common Grammar Mistakes Almost Everyone Makes [Writing]:

When should you use "who" or "whom"? "Which" or "that"? You don't need to be a grammar geek or a professional writer to want to know. This list of common grammar mistakes can help you strengthen your writing for work and in your personal correspondence. More »

Get Up to 4.5GB of Extra Space on Dropbox for Uploading Photos and Videos [Dropbox]

2012-02-29T04:48:00.000-08:00

Get Up to 4.5GB of Extra Space on Dropbox for Uploading Photos and Videos [Dropbox]:

You can never have too much Dropbox space, and now for a special beta period you can grab some additional free space while Dropbox is testing their automatic photo and video uploading feature. In exchange for trying their experimental build, you can get up to 4.5GB of extra space for free. More »

Chocopornoholic cook book comes to America

2012-02-29T04:46:00.000-08:00

Chocopornoholic cook book comes to America:

Americans rejoice! Chocolatier Paul A Young's chocopornoholic recipe book Adventures with Chocolate is out in the USA, in mouth watering goodness. I reviewed the book in 2009 when it was released in 2009, and for those who've missed it, I've included it below. Paul was good enough to supply some images from the book for an accompanying gallery as well. This is my favorite chocolate in the world, and the recipe book is pretty much edibly good.

Adventures with Chocolate: 80 sensational recipe is chocolate genius Paul A. Young's first foray into cook-books, and, like his wonderful shops in London, it's playful, inspiring, delicious and surprising.

Young's gifted touch with truffles, brownies and drinking chocolate have made his Islington store a fixture in our orbit around London. My wife's pregnancy was eased with his sea-salt caramels; we celebrated the birth with kalamansi truffles. The baby practically melted when she first tried a crumb of his cherry brownie. I am visited by Paul's chocolate in my dreams. I have been conditioned to start salivating when I reach the end of Camden Passage, and by the time I reach the shop, I need a bib to catch the dribble.

And here are all of Paul's secrets, laid bare in a superbly designed and printed book whose pornographically chocolated pages make you want to surreptitiously taste them (I tasted them. Tasted like clay-coated heavy paper stock). Paul's recipes are easy to follow and are equal parts inspirational (he makes it clear enough that even ham-fisted me believes that I can make them) and aspirational (in reality, it's a lot more likely that I'll just pop in on the Camden Passage shop and buy another box). And his essay on how he became a chocolatier, as well as his essays on buying and preparing chocolate, are sensational.

And truth be told, there are some recipes here I'd like to try for a special occasion: the savory chocolate recipes, if only because Paul doesn't actually sell these in the shop and I want to find out what a honey-cured bacon, Stilton and chocolate sandwich tastes like, or sip some cocoa-bean infused vodka, or try a salted black-olive bar with 600g of Ghanian tempered 68% dark chocolate.

Adventures with Chocolate: 80 Sensational Recipes

Instantly Backup Data to USB Drives with Drive Backup

2011-01-11T06:54:00.000-08:00

Instantly Backup Data to USB Drives with Drive Backup: "

Backing up data is one of the most important tasks to do on a regular basis on your PC. If you have the habit of forgetting back up task, Drive Backup is a good tool. With a one-time setup for each new removable disk, it is one of the easiest back up freeware. After that Drive Backup instantly backs up your data in the background, without you having to do anything. You can set up the USB drive as backup from computer and also to backup data in USB to computer.

Once you insert the drive, you can easily add the drive using the interface. Select the files you want to backup and the application will automatically do the backup.

The two modes of operation are;

Computer to USB: A computer to USB drive allows you to select files on your computer that will be backed up every time the drive is inserted.

USB to Computer: A USB to computer drive backs up files on your USB drive to your computer each time the drive is inserted

Download Drive Backup

Download BlueFTP Bluetooth File Transfer v 1.70 for Mobiles and v1.2.1.1 for PC

2010-12-27T23:08:00.000-08:00

Download BlueFTP Bluetooth File Transfer v 1.70 for Mobiles and v1.2.1.1 for PC: "

BlueFTP or Bluetooth File Transfer is a great and completely free application to manage files over Bluetooth. This software is work for any Java supported mobile and also available for PC. BlueFTP enable you can use your cell phone to browse, explore and manage files of any Bluetooth ready device. Download, upload, edit, create, delete, move, rename files and folders on your phone, PDA, car kit, notebook, PC, photo viewer, music player and lot more. Latest version for BlueFTP Bluetooth File Transfer v 1.70 for Mobiles and v1.2.1.1 for PC now available for download here.

Fileminx is an Online Document, Music, Image and Video Converter

2010-12-14T03:02:00.000-08:00

Fileminx is an Online Document, Music, Image and Video Converter: "

There are many online file converters like DocsPal, Convert Files etc. Fileminx is another free online service which can easily convert files to documents, music, images and videos formats. It has pretty good conversion options and these are based on the input file formats. It supports files upto 50MB in size and is fast and easy to convert as well.

Formats Supported;

Documents;

DOC, DOCX, LWP, MediaWiki, ODT, PDF, RTF, TXT, Word 6, Word 97-03, WPS

Images

BMP, GIF, ICO, JPEG, JPG, PCX, PIC, PICT, PNG, PSD, SUN, TGA, TIF, TIFF, WMF

Music

AAC, AIF, AIFF, AU, FLAC, iPhone, iPod, MP2, MP3, OGG, RA, SND, VOC, WAV, WMA

Video

3G2, 3GP, ASF, AVI, DIVX, DVD, Flash, GIF, iPod, MOV, MP4, MPEG, MPG, PSP, RM, WMV, XVID

Fileminx is a nice service to try for online file conversions.

Free Online File Converter and Viewer- DocsPal

OCRconvert Converts Image to Text Online

Convert Scanned Document to Text with OCROnline

Free Online File Convert does almost all Conversions

5 Free Text to Speech Online Converters

2010-12-14T02:56:00.000-08:00

5 Free Text to Speech Online Converters: "

There are thousands of useful eBooks available on the Internet and it would be nice to have a text to speech converter to read these documents for you as manually reading through eBooks might take lot of time. There are many online free web services which allows you to easily convert text to speech and download them as MP3 format. Here is the list of top 5 text to speech online converters.

1. iSpeech: iSpeech is a nice service which allows you to convert any text to audio. You can convert your blog posts to audio files in MP3 format with iSpeech, and the audio files can be downloaded, embedded or shared easily.

2. YakiToMe: With YakitoMe you can listen to work documents, homework, PowerPoint presentations, emails, RSS feeds, blogs, books.

3. Zamzar: Zamzar is a popular service online for almost all types of conversion and it also supports converting documents to MP3 format. You can upload your input file in TXT, DOC, DOCX, EPS, PDF, RTF, WPD, WPS formats and covert it into an mp3 audio file.

4. VozMe: This is another free service where you can convert your text to MP3 files. Besides English, vozMe also supports Spanish, Italian, Hindi, Portuguese and Catalan.

5. ABCtoMP3: With this free service you can convert Word documents, Adobe PDF, HTML Files, Text Content, Cut & Paste Text, Website Address or even RSS Feed into MP3 files. ABC 2 MP3 has the wide variety of readers that can read English documents.

Do share your experience using them, if you have tried another good service which is not listed here, please do drop a note in the comments.

Leverage Cloud, Send Fax Without a Fax Machine with SuperFax

2010-11-29T23:59:00.000-08:00

Leverage Cloud, Send Fax Without a Fax Machine with SuperFax: "

In this digitally connected world, do you really need a fax machine? You do need fax service, but you don’t need to own a machine (or even rent one)?

SuperFax is Fax on the cloud service (from Delhi based knowlarity) that enables you to send and receive faxes via email. Once you sign-in, you will get a phone number that maps to your email address. The number when called gives a fax tone. An SMS is sent to you after the fax is received. Fax will be made available in your mailbox as a PDF attachment.

Similarly, in order to send a fax via email, simply email the attachment to to <stdcode+phonenumber>@superfax.in (example 1244100141@superfax.in) and the attachment will be delivered as a fax.

While sending the fax, the service will automatically retry in case of failure and uses 128-bit encryption technology to ensure the data safety.

What’s really neat is that for sending international fax, you don’t need to pay any ISD fee (check out the rate card).

A very useful service that is aptly suitable for small and medium enterprises. What’s your take?

Also see: Indifax : Email/Fax documents using Mobile

Link to a YouTube Comment

2010-11-29T23:57:00.000-08:00

Link to a YouTube Comment: "If you happen to find a YouTube comment that's really interesting and you want to share it with other people, mouse over the comment, click on the 'Share' button and copy the link.

Each YouTube comment has a permalink, but it's not easy to notice that the comment is displayed below the video in a special section titled 'Linked Comment'.

You could also use this feature to annotate a video before sharing it with your friends. Post a comment, copy the link and use it to highlight your comment.

Google Translate Beatboxing

2010-11-29T23:53:00.000-08:00

Google Translate Beatboxing: "

Google Translate’s pronunciations may or may not impress you, but the thing’s got some beatboxing skills. Reddit user harrichr notes a fun result:

1) Go to Google Translate

2) Set the translator to translate German to German

3) Copy + paste the following into the translate box: pv zk pv pv zk pv zk kz zk pv pv pv zk pv zk zk pzk pzk pvzkpkzvpvzk kkkkkk bsch

4) Click “listen”

5) Be amazed

Does it count as beatboxing if the voice is non-human? (Okay, okay, yeah, you could do this on your own with just about anything by slicing off the plosives on words. But if you’re procrastinating on this Monday workday, it’ll seem utterly amazing. And don’t be surprised if Google takes over beatboxing, just like everything else. Thanks, vade!)

More variants: check out comments.

11.23.2010

2010-11-23T05:16:00.000-08:00

11.23.2010: "

Add Items, Shortcuts In Right Click Send To Menu

2010-11-23T04:57:00.000-08:00

Add Items, Shortcuts In Right Click Send To Menu: "

More often, there is a need to transfer some of the files and folders to other places of the computer. For this, either we use copy & paste method or use ‘send to’ option present in the right-click menu. The ‘send to’ option is a very convenient way but it contains only few options in it to which we can directly transfer files and folders.

Most of us will not be knowing that we can actually enhance the send to menu manually according to our need. In windows 9x and xp, it was very easy to achieve it but in windows 7 and vista, it has become a little trickier.

Actually, the items in the Sendto menu are links stored in a folder labeled “Sendto”. The Sendto folder used to be located in the “Documents and Settings” folder under each user name in win 9x and xp but in vista and Windows 7, it is buried deeply in the “UsersYournameAppData” folder, which is normally a hidden folder.

For this, i will suggest you a method to add items in the sendto menu in widows 7 and vista.

at first, you just hold the ‘windows’ key in your keyboard and click ‘R’ key to open the run. Here, write ‘%appdata%’ and click ‘ok’.

It will take you to the folder ‘roaming’. But you have to go further in the folder ‘Microsoft’ then, windows’ then, ‘Sendto’ just like this. Here, you will see the shortcuts in the sendto folder. Now, you just have to copy & paste your own shortcuts so that you can do your work smoothly.

You can not only add shortcuts to applications, but also shortcuts to folders, drives and network locations. You can even add shortcuts to batch files that will perform specific actions on files.

Also, read about a tool on Add Useful Options To Enhance Send To Menu which will do the same job with just few clicks but still you should know how to do it manually and definitely ‘sendto menu’ is a nice feature when you know about its secrets.

Add Items, Shortcuts In Right Click Send To Menu is a post from Technix Update

Download Airtel’s New Signature Tune

2010-11-23T04:56:00.000-08:00

Download Airtel’s New Signature Tune: "

Airtel had announced their new logo and new signature tune few days back. The Airtel signature tune has also been refreshed by A R Rahman making it youthful and dynamic in line with the new visual identity.

You can download the new Signature tune and set the MP3 file as your ringtone.

Download Airtel’s Signature Tune

Barnes and Noble Nook firmware version 1.5 now available

2010-11-23T04:53:00.000-08:00

Barnes and Noble Nook firmware version 1.5 now available: "

Barnes and Noble's just made version 1.5 of its Nook e-reader's firmware available. What can Nook owners expect from this latest upgrade? Well, the company says it boasts improved page refresh rates about 50 percent faster than the previous version -- which is good news as we found it to be slower than its competitors. The update -- which is available for both the 3G and WiFi versions -- is also Barnes and Noble's largest to date for the readers, and includes other fixes such as syncing across devices like the Nook's various apps (finally!), customizable folders for your library, password protection options, improved search functions and battery performance. That sure does sound like a big update to us, so go get it if you're a Nook user! Full press release is below.

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Barnes and Noble Nook firmware version 1.5 now available originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 22 Nov 2010 17:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google Launches Plugin That Fuses Microsoft Office With Google Docs

2010-11-23T04:52:00.000-08:00

Google Launches Plugin That Fuses Microsoft Office With Google Docs: "

For years, we’ve been hearing that the future of productivity is in the cloud. But while visions of real-time collaboration leave technophiles like me starry-eyed, it’s a prospect that means one thing to millions of people: leaving the familiar turf of Microsoft Office 2003 or 2007 so that they can learn their way around yet another application, not to mention some pricey upgrades. But Google wants to let you have it both ways.

Today, Google is launching a new plugin for Microsoft Office called Cloud Connect, which will tie Google Docs directly into the ubiquitous productivity suite, free of charge. Editing a document in Word? It’ll automatically sync to your Google Docs account each time you hit ‘Save’. Want to share a preview of your document without worrying about what file format your coworkers can open? Just send them a link to the Google Docs file. The plugin supports Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel, and it’s a big deal for Google’s strategy with Docs. The new product is going live for Apps for Business customers today as part of a preview program; everyone else will get it soon. Update: Google says that the demand was so high that it can’t accept any more volunteers, but you can sign up to receive a notification when it’s available.

Now, Microsoft is integrating online collaboration with its newest version of Office, but Google is doing them one better: this will work on Office 2003, 2007, and 2010, and there’s no fiddling with SharePoint required, either. Google also points out that Microsoft’s version doesn’t offer Excel support yet.

The new plugin is a result of Google’s acquisition of DocVerse back in March (note that it only took Google around eight months to get this out the door — obviously a lot of people want it). Installing the plugin should be fairly painless; the download takes around thirty seconds, and the installation process doesn’t take much longer.

Once you’ve installed it, you’ll notice a new ribbon toward the top of the Office UI, which gives you a Google Docs link for the document you’re currently working on, as well as a notification to let you know when it’s been synced with Google’s servers. Documents being edited locally save to your Google Docs account whenever you hit the ‘Save’ button, but unlike the normal Google Docs web editor, changes aren’t saved as you type them. Google Docs product manager Jonathan Rochelle says this is done because of user expectations — Office has always required that you hit the Save button to save (safety recovery versions notwithstanding) so it makes sense to leave it this way.

Multiple people can edit the same document and have their changes synced with each save (hooray for the cloud). But because these changes aren’t reflected in real-time, there’s the potential for conflicts — I could edit a PowerPoint slide to say one thing, and my coworker could put something else on the same slide. Google deals with these conflicts by presenting users with an alert prompting them to choose which version they’d like to save; if they want to go back and switch again later, they can using the document’s version history.

In practice it looks like this should work well, though there will be a bit of a learning curve as people navigate through syncing and version conflict resolution the first few times. And then there’s actually getting them to use the features that Google Docs and the cloud affords. Baby steps.

And that’s really the theme here: baby steps. Google says that it often speaks with businesses who are eager to switch to Google Docs, but who have a significant number of users who still want to stay with Office for whatever reason. This plugin will help clear that hurdle by allowing for organizations with a ‘hybrid’ setup. And in the longer term, Google is hoping that as users get more familiar with Docs, they’ll be more comfortable abandoning the Office client altogether.

There is one significant caveat to the integration with Office, but it’s a bit complicated to describe so bear with me. If you save a document from Powerpoint to Google Docs, and then edit that file using the Google Docs web editor, you will not be able to sync those changes back with the native version of the file. You’ll be able to generate a new PowerPoint file that reflects the changes, but they won’t sync automatically.

This is because Google is still working through fidelity issues, and the conversion from native Office document to Docs web document may introduce some formatting changes that the user didn’t intend to make. Obviously Google hopes to offer this in the future, but we’ll probably be waiting a while for it to overcome document fidelity issues entirely.

You may also recall a company called OffiSync, which we’ve been tracking over the last couple years. OffiSync has offered much of the same functionality that Google is launching for some time — but now that there’s an official solution, it seems like it could hamper OffiSync’s business. Not so, says Rochelle, who explains that OffiSync actually has some additional features compared to Google’s product. He also believes that there’s room for more than one solution to this problem.

Note that this isn’t available for Mac. Google explains that Microsoft doesn’t offer the same public APIs for the Mac version of Office, so there’s nothing it can do.

CrunchBase Information

Google Docs

Information provided by CrunchBase

Email Privacy 5.181: Complete Email Security

2010-10-26T03:06:00.000-07:00

Email Privacy 5.181: Complete Email Security: "

After sending an email message, it don’t go directly to the recipient mailboxes. First it goes to your Internet Service Provider, that stores them in its mail servers, and then delivers the messages to your recipients leaving copies of your messages in its database. Don’t you think it’s not a secure procedure at all? You should use “Email Privacy” that lets you send email messages directly from your PC to recipient mailboxes.

Email Privacy bypass your ISP’s mail servers where your relevant information can be stored by using a system-tray local SMTP server program. From your email client, Email Privacy gets your email messages and puts them in the recipient mailboxes without leaving any traces on your PC.

Email Privacy supports email programs like Outlook Express, Outlook, and Eudora. You can easily connect your email program to the server. For this you need to use the word “localhost” instead of your current SMTP host, and then can send the messages. You can send thousands of emails per minute directly from your PC securely. The user interface of the software includes an outstanding documentation that is very easy to use.

Email Privacy 5.181 is 13.7 MB in size, and you can download it from here before it’s too late!

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Email Privacy 5.181: Complete Email Security is a post from: Solid Blogger

Google's Spam Report Extension

2010-10-25T06:15:00.000-07:00

Google's Spam Report Extension: "If you want to improve Google's results and report spammy web pages, there's a Chrome extension for you. Google Webspam Report adds a link next to each Google search result and automatically fills the spam report form with information like the URL of the page and your query.

You can also use the button from Chrome's toolbar to report pages. The most interesting feature is the integration with Chrome's browsing history that lets you select recently visited pages and recent Google searches.

Google links to a feedback form at the bottom of the search results pages and some of the options let you report spam, irrelevant pages and dead links. Unfortunately, Google doesn't make it easy to select the pages you want to report.

{ via Matt Cutts }

Now Enjoy Bollywood Songs through Google Music

2010-10-22T06:29:00.000-07:00

Now Enjoy Bollywood Songs through Google Music: "

While you can find and listen to almost any Hindi movie song or music album on YouTube, there’s now a better way.

Google India, in partnership with In.com and Saavn.com, today launched an online music portal at google.co.in/music where you can search and listen to songs from Bollywood movies as well as music albums.

Google doesn’t host any of the music but streams it directly from partner sites.

It’s a pretty vast collection of both old and new songs and you can further limit your search by the song title, movie name, artist or by the name of actors who were part of the movie. Alternatively, you may use a query like “new songs” to find all the latest music sorted by release date.

You do however need to have the Flash Player in your browser to play the streaming music and it might therefore not work on most mobile browsers. That’s one area where competing sites like Dhingana are still at an advantage.

Google Music India is a labs product and, at the time of writing, it only offered Hindi songs from movies. Also, you cannot create playlists on Google Music but I think all this will change once the product matures.

The service is free and supported by advertising. Thanks Peeyush.

This article, titled Now Enjoy Bollywood Songs through Google Music, was originally published at Digital Inspiration under Bollywood, Music, India.

Lazy Sunday for the kitty. Photo by 1122nagendra

2010-10-22T06:22:00.000-07:00