If you haven’t tried it yet, check out my Magicjack review.

If you used Magicjack, you know you get a dialer in your desktop or laptop where you have the Magicjack software installed. One annoying thing about it is that, even when you are using your home phone, at the end of the call the Magicjack screen will pop up.

In fact, if my wife was using the phone upstairs and if I was on the computer, it will popup when she dials a number and when she hangs up the phone. Grrrr..

Finally, I found a solution. Now I can stop the Majicjack window from popping up at all. I switched Magicjack to run as a Windows Service.

• Install a minimize to system tray program such as 4t Tray Minimizer
  
• Launch Tray Minimizer and Click Add button. [The free version saves this info only during the current session. If you know of a free utility that will save across reboots, let me know in the comments]
• Now, with your Magicjack window open, drag the icon shown in the picture onto the Magicjack window
• It will automatically populate the form
• You can choose the defaults and choose to go to system tray on minimizing

That should do it!

We can also run Magicjack as a Windows service and we won’t see the magicjack window at all. But that is a little bit more involved and I will post a tutorial next week.

Stop Magicjack From Popping Up In Your Screen - Published at ShanKrila.com (RSS)

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I have used Picasa for organizing my photos so far. I have heard about Adobe Lightroom 2 a lot but couldn’t justify the price so far.

Now, trying to become a little serious with my photography I started looking at Lightroom with renewed interest.

Guess what? Now, I downloaded Adobe Lightroom Beta 3 for free!

if you are thinking illegal torrents, you couldn’t be more wrong. I downloaded a free legal copy. Here’s how.

Adobe is offering Lightroom 3 beta for free and you can use it for 6 months for free! This will give me enough time to try out this software and see if I really need it. I am more than happy to spend money on quality software but with so man quality freeware out there, you can’t be too careful.

Of course it is going to be a little buggy as it is just a beta but I am not worried about that. Beta software is just right up my alley. You may want to think about it, if you want to use it for serious work.

If you are a Lightroom 2 user, here are some of the new features Lightroom 3 has:

Some of the new features included for you to play with in the Lightroom 3 beta are:

• Brand new performance architecture, building for the future of growing image libraries
• State-of-the-art noise reduction to help you perfect your high ISO shots
• Watermarking tool that helps you customize and protect your images with ease
• Portable sharable slideshows with audio—designed to give you more flexibility and impact on how you choose to share your images, you can now save and export your slideshows as videos and include audio
• Flexible customizable print package creation so your print package layouts are all your own
• Film grain simulation tool for enhancing your images to look as gritty as you want
• New import handling designed to make importing streamlined and easy
• More flexible online publishing options so you can post your images online to certain online photo sharing sites directly from inside Lightroom 3 beta (may require third-party plug-ins)*

You can download the public beta of Lightroom 3 here

Download Adobe Lightroom 3 beta

The current beta is set to expire on April 30, 2010. If you have been wanting to try out Lightroom, this is a great way to try the latest and greatest in case you get convinced to shell out the big bucks for this software.

If you are a Mac user, you have another great choice with Apple’s Aperture 2.

Download Adobe Lightroom 3 Beta For Free - Published at ShanKrila.com (RSS)

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Despite the announcements by various retailers including Sony, Barnes & Nobles, Kindle enjoys a sizeable lead in this area.

You can ebooks on Amazon from a WiFi enabled Kindle and download ebooks seamlessly so you can read anywhere you had your Kindle at.

Amazon then released the Amazon Kindle iPhone app that lets you to continue reading the book you were reading on your Kindle last night to pick up and continue reading on your iPhone in your morning commute to work.

Now, Amazon Kindle App for Windows lets you continue reading the book you left off in any computer with this Kindle App for Windows.

With WhisperSync, you can access your library of Kindle books, notes, bookmarks, etc. And you don’t need your Kindle with you. It even automatically synchronizes your last read page and keeps annotations between devices.

Download Kindle for Windows

A Mac version is supposedly in the making.

Amazon has been extending their eBook platform like no one else and this is another nice addition Kindle users will appreciate.

Personally, I hardly find time to read books physical or electronic. But, I love listening to podcasts and lately been trying out Audible books with their free trial. I am able to take so much in more than ever without sitting down with a book while I am working, walking or exercising.

What is your favorite method of getting information? Reading books, ebooks or podcasts/audio books?

Looking for more product suggestions from me? I add my favorite electronics, camera gear, books, etc in our own ShanKrila Amazon Store here.

Amazon Kindle App for Windows PC - Published at ShanKrila.com (RSS)

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Now, they have extended the free wi-fi offer to passengers traveling via these 47 airports in the US. So, if you one of the millions who will be spending time at airports around the US getting to your family or traveling on vacation, look out for Google signs in the airport.

You can connect to the Google’s wi-fi offering for free!

Of course, if you are an AT&T iPhone customer, you already have free wi-fi at the AT&T Wifi hotspots around the airports in the US.

Also, if you are traveling on Virgin America flight, you can enter a photo contest by submitting your picture of using Google Wifi or a participating airport. Your photo will be featured at Freeholidaywifi.com plus you could win some cool prizes.

Happy wifi’ing this holiday season!

[via Official Google blog]

Google Spreading Some Free WiFi Holiday Cheer - Published at ShanKrila.com (RSS)

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Google has a winner with this free tool for webmasters and I use it on every site I run. It offers a myriad of features and I hardly use maybe 50% of the features in there.

I like to spend more time playing with new web apps, software and digging up tips & tricks rather than pouring through little data point in Google Analytics.

Google Analytics opened up their Dashboard API and we are just starting to see developers putting that to good use.

Trakkboard is an Adobe AIR app that lets you add Google Analytics widgets in a tabbed interface so you can create your own customizable Google Analytics Desktop Dashboard.

Trakkboard Features

• 15 different report widgets available
• Top/flop keywords widget (movers & shakers)
• Drag-drop and resize report widgets
• Update all widgets at the same time
• Update individual widgets at set intervals
• Use tabs for more dashboards
• Resize report widgets
• Notes widgets for comments
• Add up to two Google Account Email addresses
• FAQ Center available in English, Spanish, German

One of the great features of Trakkboard is that it can individually query each of these metrics in a time interval you mention – like 20 mins, 30 mins, 1 hour or 2 hours. This dramatically reduces the time it takes for you to see your stats which traditionally has been the next day in Google Analytics.

Google Analytics dashboard offers a nice way to take a quick look at all the stats but I might do that once a week. But, with a desktop tool like Trakkboard I can see myself firing it more often to take a quick look at how my sites are faring during the week and make adjustments.

Plus, if I had multiple Google Analytics account I can bring them all together into one interface with Trakkboard!

Download Trakkboard

Trakkboard is in beta now and you just need to register to receive a license key and it is FREE!

[via Google Analytics blog]

TrakkBoard - Adobe Air Google Analytics Dashboard - Published at ShanKrila.com (RSS)

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Dropbox has long offered support for Ubuntu Linux. And they have answered yet again by updating it for Ubuntu 9.10.

If you’d like to try Dropbox or even use it alongside the Ubuntu file sync service, here are the package repositories.

The Karmic repository is up and running and ready to add to your apt sources:
deb http://linux.dropbox.com/ubuntu karmic main
deb-src http://linux.dropbox.com/ubuntu karmic main

Happy sync’ing!

[via Dropbox blog]

Dropbox Updated for Ubuntu 9.10 - Published at ShanKrila.com (RSS)

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My first thought was to check to see if anyone else is logged into my Gmail account elsewhere right now.

You can do that by going all the way down to the bottom of the page and clicking on the ‘Details’ link in the Account Activity line.

If you see someone is logged in from another IP, you can log them out now and you should change your password instantly. Plus, it is a good idea to make sure you have an alternate way like recovering Gmail password with SMS in case someone hacks into your account.

I didn’t but I still changed my password and tweeted about this strange phenomenon. Instantly, Keshav – a friend on Twitter, alerted me to a Techcrunch article that talked about this.

And it looks like I wasn’t the only one experiencing Gmail unread messages getting marked as read automatically.

Here is an excerpt of this issue:

According to this post, the error stems from a change Google made in how it treats the body of an e-mail through IMAP, although the company has yet to confirm this to us (or publicly).

The author of the post also offers a quick fix:

I then relaxed and searched on Twitter and it appears others were also impacted when Google modified how it handles IMAP GET MESSAGE BODY. Even mails on my iPhone were effected by this.

Anyway, thank you to our first user who pinged us so that we could correct this in real time. And for all of you IMAP Geeks around the world, set the PEEK mode to TRUE if you get an mail’s BODY from Gmail.

I am not sure how to set that IMAP Peek setting but at least I am a bit relieved that this was just a Gmail bug.

And my Gmail was NOT hacked this morning. Whew!

{ via Techcrunch }

Was My Gmail Hacked This Morning? - Published at ShanKrila.com (RSS)

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Last night, I came across an excellent deal on a DSLR Camera that has been on my wish list for a long time – Canon EOS Rebel T1i DSLR Camera!

Here is the scoop:

Amazon has this excellent deal where they are offering a $200 instant rebate and a $400 mail in rebate when you purchase these items together.

Add these to your shopping cart and make sure every time you add is sold by Amazon and not another vendor. (if it shows a different vendor, just look below the right hand ‘Add to Cart’ box and choose Amazon from there)

• Canon EOS Rebel T1i 15.1 MP CMOS Digital SLR Camera with 3-Inch LCD and EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS Lens - $749.95
• Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4.0-5.6 IS Telephoto Zoom Lens for Canon Digital SLR Cameras - $243.76
• Canon Pixma PRO9000MkII Inkjet Photo Printer (3295B002) - $446.95
• Tiffen 58mm UV Protection Filter - $7.50
• Pentax DSLR Crossover bag - $13

Now, go through and proceed to checkout until the last confirmation page – you will see a $200 instant rebate and shipping rebate if you chose Free Shipping.

Plus, there is the $400 mail in rebate from Amazon when you combined the purchase of Canon T1i with the Canon Pixma Photoprinter.

The total I paid for this was $1253.56 and after the mail in rebate the net cost would be $853.56 for the whole thing, which I think is an amazing deal!

The UV filter and the camera bag aren’t necessary for this deal but I found that they were both eligible for Amazon Free Shipping so I added them to my order as well.

One thing to note is that the Printer shipping states around Nov 24-30 and the rest ships on Nov 9. I was fine with that.

You can read a lot more about this deal here in this thread.

I probably won’t need the Canon Pixma Photo printer and might try to sell it effectively reducing the cost of my Canon T1i with a EF-S 18-55mm lens and a EF-S 55-250mm IS Telephoto lens to around $500! And I paid around $320 for my Canon SX 10.

What do you think of this deal?

Update 11/3/09: After going through the recent updates in the thread, there is some doubt whether Canon will honor the $400 printer rebate as the terms & conditions states that it can’t be combined with any other offer. What wasn’t clean until now was that the other $200 instant rebate that everyone assumed was from Amazon, is also from Canon. Long story short, I didn’t want to risk it and I canceled my printer order.

However, it looks like we could get an additional $50 off via mail-in rebate when we register our Canon T1i with Canon.

Also, I just found an extremely cheap Canon IR Infrared Shutter Release Remote for $3.49 shipped. Grabbed one.

Disclosure: The above links are our Amazon store links and using them will give you extra props for helping us running this site.

Best Deal on Canon EOS Rebel T1i DSLR + EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS Lens + EF-S 55-250mm f/4.0-5.6 IS Telephoto Lens - Published at ShanKrila.com (RSS)

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I use Windows Live Writer extensively for my blogging and I wanted my drafts folder to be in sync with all the computers I used with Dropbox. Only one problem, My Weblog Posts resides outside My Dropbox folder. Creating a regular shortcut in Windows just doesn’t cut it.

Although I use Windows Live Writer as an illustration, you can apply this trick to any folder you have outside My DropBox folder.

You can do this in a few different ways depending on your OS.

Use Junction (works with Windows 2000 & higher)

junction ”C:\Documents and Settings\User\My Documents\My Dropbox\My Weblog Posts” ”C:\Documents and Settings\User\My Documents\My Weblog Posts”

Use mklink (comes with Windows 7, Vista & Server 2008)

mklink /D ”C:\Users\Kar\Documents\Dropbox\My Weblog Posts” ”C:\Users\Kar\Documents\My Weblog Posts”

Use LinkShellExtension (a GUI utility)

Whatever method you end up using, you are basically creating a special shortcut in the My Dropbox folder to the folder you want to sync.

This will let you sync any file or folder outside of the My Dropbox folder to Dropbox.

Check out my collection of some of the best Dropbox hacks.

Happy syncing!

Sync Folders Outside of My DropBox to Dropbox - Published at ShanKrila.com (RSS)

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Here are the new features in Firefox 3.6

• • Users can now change their browser’s appearance with a single click, with built in support for Personas.
  • Firefox 3.6 will alert users about out of date plugins to keep them safe.
  • Open, native video can now be displayed full screen, and supports poster frames.
  • Support for the WOFF font format.
  • Improved JavaScript performance, overall browser responsiveness and startup time.
  • Support for new CSS, DOM and HTML5 web technologies.

If you are a web developer or develop add-ons for Firefox, check out the detailed new developer features in Firefox 3.6.

Download Firefox 3.6 Beta

[Windows: Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 Setup.exe | Mac OS X: Firefox 3.6 Beta 1.dmg | Linux: firefox-3.6b1.tar.bz2]

Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 Available For Download - Published at ShanKrila.com (RSS)

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• Go to Events page in Facebook (see the bar in the bottom of the page)
• Look for Export Events link in the Events page
  
• Copy the url in the popup window
• Go to Google Calendar – Look for Other Calendars in the left and a ‘Add’ link
• Use the Add by URL link
• Paste the url you copied from Facebook Export Events option and hit ok
• Go to Calendar Settings and change the name of the Calendar to something like FB events

You are done! Now, your Facebook events will appear in your Google Calendar. Enjoy.

[via

How to Add Facebook Events to Google Calendar? - Published at ShanKrila.com (RSS)

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Just want to give you a heads up that this post is mostly my experience in upgrading Windows XP Home to Windows 7 Home Premium with lots of useful resources I came across thrown in for good measure.

First, let me quickly give you an outline of how I approached the upgrade.

Windows XP to Windows 7 is essentially a clean install. You cannot directly upgrade from XP to Windows 7 although it is not as bad as it sounds. We’ll come to that later.

First thing I did before anything was to run the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor. It didn’t find any issues other than that my graphics card doesn’t support Aero transparencies. That’s the fancy transparent effects, shadows, etc you might have seen in Windows Vista. I can live without that.

Backup Data

I recently bought an IOmega 1TB external hard drive and I just copied my important data to it. Since this was going to be a clean install i.e., format my whole hard drive, I also wanted to be ready in case Windows 7 didn’t work out too well.

So, I grabbed DriveImage XML – a drive imaging software  recommended by a colleague and made an image of my hard drive to the external usb drive.

This image would let me restore my machine with Windows XP and all the data in my hard drive should things go south with the Windows 7 install. I’d highly recommend doing both a backup as well as a drive image.

Windows 7 Installation Prep Work

You may or may not need to do this. If you had gotten an Upgrade copy or +pre-ordered Windows 7 with student discount, you might have gotten a link to download the upgrade media. More often than not, it is an executable file.

The way it is supposed to work is that you run the .exe file from within XP and it will run the Windows 7 installer. But, I wanted to install it from a bootable disk (lot of experts recommend it but not sure if it makes a difference).

These couple of links will help you convert the exe file into a bootable Windows 7 DVD:

• How to Create and Make Bootable Windows 7 ISO from EXE Plus Setup1.Box and Setup2.Box Files? – actually following this comment on page 2 is what worked easily for me.
• Clean Install Windows 7 with Upgrade Media – much elaborate article on the same topic

I basically created a bootable Windows 7 DVD and was ready to get the install started.

Windows 7 Installation

I popped in the bootable DVD and restarted my computer. I had to hit a key to boot into DVD and I saw the Windows installer coming up. My screen flickered a couple of times and then there was nothing. Zilch. Nada.

So, I powered off my computer and restarted again. Same thing. Ctrl+Alt+del ‘ed couple of times with the same result.

I powered off the system and tried again, now I could see the cool Windows 7 glowing logo come up and the installer came up. It looked prettier than ever!

After it asked me a few questions, it readied the install files and said it is going to restart the computer.

When it tried, blank screen again. I am Ctrl+Alt+del’ing like a maniac at thus point but no luck. So I powered it off and went to get some water and came back and powered it up. It started going again now!

I was getting the hang of it now. Windows 7 was either having an issue with my graphics card which it warned me already doesn’t support Aero effects but i couldn’t fathom it would bomb out right away! Plus, it was a hit or miss to get it going and not like it couldn’t run it!

I had now found a way to get it going, barely. Installation itself was uneventful and after the startup hiccup, I was able to login to Windows 7.

Windows 7 Post Install

The first thing I did was to run Windows Update and installed Windows Security Essentials (free anti-virus security software from Microsoft) as well as the free and excellent Comodo Internet Security suite.

I then used Ninite (previously Volery) to install all my favorite applications in one shot! If you haven’t tried Ninite, that is the best thing since sliced bread for anyone who installs a Windows OS the first time or multiple times for friends and family.  You just select all the applications you want installed in your machine and Ninite gives you a program to download. You run that program and it will go out and download & install all the apps you selected!

You don’t have to lift a finger! I installed like 15 of my favorite programs within 30 minutes by going to 1 website. Yes, 1 website and not 15 websites!

Windows 7 Experience

I have to say I really like what they have done with the interface especially the tab bar. They have merged the Quick tasks menu and the task bar into one where you can ping an unpin programs, folders, apps of your choice.

Even with my unsupported graphics card, the Window switching, minimizing/maximizing effects were smooth and fast.

There are a bunch of new features in Windows 7 and I am yet to explore a lot of them personally.

So that’s it from me in the last 24 hours of my Windows 7 installation and usage experience. I hope this will help someone out there who is going to attempt this.

Besides the minor point that I wouldn’t know if it will work with another restart, I am happy with Windows 7. :-p I will be posting more on my Windows 7 experiences in the coming weeks.

Stay tuned. You can get updates with my RSS feed or by following me on Twitter.

Upgrading Windows XP to Windows 7 Gotchas - Published at ShanKrila.com (RSS)

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If you don’t have a Playstation 3 or a similar device, you could still get Netflix Instant Movie streaming to your TV with a device like Roku.

Netflix ‘Watch Instantly’ movies and tv shows selection is available to anyone with a Netflix subscription of $9.99 or more.

Roku is a set top box that enables you to easily watch Netflix streaming content on your TV. You just plug Roku into your TV and connect to your home network wirelessly or via a wired connection.

Roku has introduced more options with their set-top box line now.

Roku SD

This is the economical version of Roku that is perfect for someone with no plans for a HDTV in the near future. It costs $79.99 and can handle standard definition (SD) content – DVD quality video nicely.

It sports a wireless and wired connection.

Roku HD

The next version up is $99.99 and it supports High Definition (SD) video content. Also, it has support for optical audio output for surround sound systems and sports a HDMI connector.

Roku HD-XR

The top of the line version Roku HD-XR is $129.99 sports support for Wireless-N networks with extended range. (compatible with b/g/n)

Roku Channel Store

Roku also plans to bring content from Amazon video on demand, blip.tv, MLB.tv, etc as channels into their Roku store. They are said to be planning to have upto 10 channels by the end of the year.

Roku offers a low entry point to get streaming video into your living room compared to other offerings such as a Playstation 3, XBox 360 or Apple TV.

Even though Netflix’s streaming movie collection isn’t nothing to write home about, we can already get a glimpse of what the future has in store for our living room.

Roku Introducing New HD Capable Device - Published at ShanKrila.com (RSS)

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I discontinued Netflix a few months back as I started to watch movies & tv shows streamed to my TV via my Playstation 3 using Tversity media server.

Netflix so far had supported XBox 360 for streaming movies and TV shows from their Instant Watch library. But there wasn’t official support for Playstation 3 owners.

Finally, Sony and Netflix have announced that the Netflix streaming will be available to all Playstation 3 users with Netflix account starting next month.

Playstation 3 is a great gaming platform, without a doubt. And I have been encouraging any friend of mine who asks me about getting a Blu-ray player to get a PS3. Here’s why: you are getting a Blu-ray player as well as a great gaming system with the ability to interface with your computer making a digital media server hub.

One thing that has been putting off many people I know is the lack of Netflix Streaming support in Sony’s PS3 compared to Xbox 360. Now, both Sony and Netflix are set to benefit from this.

Microsoft can’t sell Xbox’s just because it supports Netflix streaming anymore. Plus, Netflix has now access to Sony’s roughly 9+ million US customers and more than 25+ million worldwide.

How to Enable Netflix Streaming in PS3?

It sounds as easy as pie. Netflix will send you a Blu-ray disc. The disc will connect to the Internet and activate Netflix streaming in your PS3.

I am so excited about this. Now, if only Netflix had streaming for all new releases, a streaming only plan, wouldn’t it be heavenly?

So, you don’t have a PS3 or XBox to stream Netflix to your TV? Don’t worry I have some exciting news coming up in the next post on Roku - a set top box for streaming Netflix to your TV!

[via Netflix Blog]

Netflix Streaming Coming to PlayStation 3 - Published at ShanKrila.com (RSS)

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The only downside so far is that Google Tasks opens in a small window inside of Gmail or Google Calendar.

Google Tasks can now be accessed in full screen in one of two ways.

1. Google Tasks via iGoogle
   iGoogle allows you to access Google Tasks in full screen by clicking on the maximize button. It gives you a nice toolbar access to get to the different lists quickly.
2. Access full view directly
   You can also open Google Tasks standalone in full view by going to https://mail.google.com/tasks/canvas


Although I use Remember the Milk extensively for managing my tasks via my computer or via Remember the Milk iPhone app, there are things like my blog ideas that I want to store somewhere quick and fast.

Google Tasks fits the bill perfectly and having it in its own Windows gives me the flexibility and better access than the tiny constrained window within Gmail.

Quick Tip: Access Google Tasks In Full Browser Window - Published at ShanKrila.com (RSS)

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Google Reader team has been busy introducing features that aim towards making it easy to find good web content, sharing it with your friends, leaving a comment, etc.

Some of them have proved popular and some of them make you wonder why they are there in teh first place.

Today’s new features introduced in Google Reader are however, will probably be a welcome addition for most folks.

Let’s take a quick look at what’s new in Google Reader

• Explore section – Recommendations were being provided based on your trends earlier but it’s been brought to the forefront with Popular items & Recommended sources.
  The great thing about this feature is that it evolves based on your reading habits. And it is now easy to find that article everyone is talking about right in your Popular items section.
  
• Magic Sorting – If you would like to see the feeds in an order ‘Google Reader determines you will like for sure’, there is new option under ‘Feed Settings’ called ‘Sort by magic’! This ranking is going to be powered by your reading and sharing habits. The more you like and share posts, the magic supposedly gets better.

I have been using Feedly as a Google Reader alternative recently especially because Feedly has an Explore & Recommendations area where I can easily find new blogs of interest.

It’s great to see the Google Reader team is delivering more useful features to an already awesome product. Plus, you can extend and customize it with cool Google Reader Greasemonkey scripts as well.

If you haven’t given Google Reader a try in a while, you will be surprised to see how many subtle changes it has gone through.

[via Google Reader blog]

Google Reader Steps Up Personalization Efforts - Published at ShanKrila.com (RSS)

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I still run Windows XP SP3 on my 5 year old desktop and it runs like a champ. I never upgraded to Vista as i knew how resource hungry it was.

My wife has been running Vista on her Sony Vaio and it performs fine as that laptop has enough horsepower.

Windows 7 is supposedly a little less of a resource hog than Vista and expected to perform better in a low powered hardware. So, I am looking forward to making the leap from XP  once my Windows 7 pre-order arrives today.

Windows 7 Features

Windows 7 is available in 3 flavors – Windows 7 Home Premium, Windows 7 Professional, Windows 7 Ultimate.

You can see a comparison of different Windows 7 features based on editions here. You can also click on this image to see a full size image of it.

Also, you can check out a bunch of product features videos here.

Free Anti-Virus Software

Celebrating the arrival of Windows 7 some vendors offering their premium anti-virus products for free with 1-year subscription just today.

• Panda Security Anti-Virus protection – 1 year license
• IOBit Security 360 PRO – 1 year license
• Kaspersky – 1 year license (it’s not live at the time of writing)

It’s a good time to grab one of these premium anti-virus solutions if you don’t have one or use a free one.

Windows 7 Useful Articles

If you are looking to get a good grip on Windows 7, here are a few good articles I came across in the last few days.

• Access a Windows 7 Installation in Mac OS X with VirtualBox
• New Themes for Windows 7 from Microsoft
• Free Deploying Windows 7 Essential Guidance from the Windows 7 Resource Kit and TechNet Magazine
• Is Your PC Ready For Windows 7? Check with the Windows 7 Upgrade Advisor
• Windows 7 System Recovery Discs – Repair Tool of the Week
• Which Windows 7 is right for you?
• Prep Your PC for Windows 7 [How To]
• How to get your old system ready for a Windows 7 upgrade
• Disable User Account Control (UAC) the Easy Way on Win 7 or Vista
• The Best Windows Tweaks that Still Work in Windows 7

If you are planning to upgrade, this should be a good starting point. I will try post my own experiences here once I do it.

So, are you planning on getting Windows 7? If yes, are you upgrading from XP or Vista?

Windows 7 Released. Vendors Offer Free Anti-Virus SoftwareWindows - Published at ShanKrila.com (RSS)

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WordPress is one of the most popular blogging platforms and is available in a hosted version at WordPress.com and as a free self-hosting version at WordPress.org.

WordPress 2.9 is the next version in the recent updates and I am pretty excited for a few of the features in the release. But, it is not as exciting as the huge changes in WordPress 2.7 but again that’s why it is a release update and not a version upgrade to 3 yet.

But there is still a slew of new features in this release and let’s take a look at some of them.

WordPress 2.9 New Features

• Post Thumbnails – With a simple filter in the template file you can add a post thumbnail from an image in many views such as index, archives, etc easily
• Image Editing – You can do basic image editing like rotate, crop, flip, etc right from your WordPress admin = faster blogging experience
• Media embeds – Easily embed videos from YouTube, Google Video, DailyMotion or any service that uses oEmbed standard in your posts. (Think Viper’s Video Quicktags plugin)
• Trash Status – Deleted posts, pages, comments are moved to a trash for you to recover quickly if you accidentally delete them
• Comment metadata - This basically means you (or a plugin) can do cool things with your comments data such as displaying popular comments, etc.
• User Registration via XMLRPC – You can now enable user registration through a XMLRPC client
• Gallery Shortcode – You can easily add a gallery attached to a post with a shortcode such as [ gallery ] It’s not new - Thanks Travis & Andrea
• Better Feedback - Better feedback on publishing of future posts and pages
• Plugin/Theme Editor Enhancement – Your scroll position is saved in plugin and theme editor which means no more trying to find the line you just edited!
• Auto Repair Tables – Added means of automatically repairing tables
• Canonical – Support for rel=Canonical for singular pages (Canonical?)

As you can see, as usual this WordPress update has a nice set of new features. I know some of us love frequent updates and new features and some of us hate it as it means frequent website updates.

Automatic upgrade introduced lately has been a great help for many (as long as you make a database and file system backup beforehand) and I have hardly seen any upgrade failure in the many WordPress upgrades my wife has been doing for her clients.

Although it needs my attention now with many new plugins I use, Top WordPress Plugins has been the most popular article in ShanKrila and I hope you will enjoy it too.

[via Dougal Campbell]

Top 10 WordPress 2.9 Features You Should Know - Published at ShanKrila.com (RSS)

KarShan Media blogs: ShanKrila - Top iPhone Resource - Spicy Tasty
@KIntheHouse - @TopiPhone

Earlier, I came across a project OpenDisc where they bundled a bunch of open-source free software and made it available as a downloadable cd.

That did solve the problem of going out to individual sites to download the software I wanted.

Ninite Volery (recently renamed) by Secure by Design Inc. has an awesome new service that makes it even easier. It is in private beta at the moment. It is open for public now.

Here’s what you do with Ninite

• Go to Ninite.com
• Select all the apps you want to install
• Once you have selected the apps, Ninite will give you small .exe file
• Save it and run it.
• Ninite will begin downloading and installing all the software you selected
• Voila!

Ninite makes installing a load of free but quality software a piece of cake. In fact, the selection list amazed me as it had pretty much all the software i usually recommend to my friends listed.

I am looking forward to trying out this service. I just used when during my Windows XP to Windows 7 upgrade and had to re-install Windows 7 twice due to an issue. Guess what helped me the most? Ninite! I could re-install 15 programs in one shot and just loved it!

What do you think of this service?

[via Simple Help]

Install Slew of Popular Free PC Software In One Shot - Published at ShanKrila.com (RSS)

KarShan Media blogs: ShanKrila - Top iPhone Resource - Spicy Tasty
@KIntheHouse - @TopiPhone

TweetDeck is an Posts on Adobe Air Twitter client and offers

• Multiple Twitter accounts support
• Facebook/Myspace integration
• Custom colors for the interface – theme support would be nice as I am terrible at picking nice color combos
• Twitter trends
• Individual column filters
• Notifications for new tweets, mentions and direct messages
• Ability to follow/unfollow users, report as spam, mark as favorite, etc
• Bit.ly auto-shorten url as you type a tweet and image upload support
• TweetDeck account keeps your columns and accounts synced across various computers and devices

Plus, TweetDeck also has a free iPhone app that again syncs the columns and accounts with your desktop counterpart.

One of my gripes with Tweetdeck was the inability to see my recent followers.

Guess what, TweetDeck 0.31 offers that and more! here are some of the new features in v 0.31

• Most recent 100 followers column – you can add 1 column for each Twitter account you have
• Keyboard shortcuts – just hit spacebar to get a Tweetie 2 like HUD menu to access quick shortcuts on screen with just keys
• New notification system – optionally choose the position of the notification window in one of four corners of your screen. And you can retweet, reply, favorite right from the notification window (Digsby anyone?).
• Plus you can set notification options for column by column basis!
• You can now add Facebook fan pages! (Here is ShanKrila & Top iPhone Resource fan pages)
• Plus dozens of bug fixes (complete changelog in the link below)

TweetDeck is THE BEST twitter desktop client IMHO. It continues to evolve and the developer has his ears open for the users’ request and responds to them with timely updates.

If you have stuck to the web interface of Twitter so far. I highly recommend trying out a Twitter desktop client like Blu or TweetDeck or even a professional web twitter client like HootSuite. I started enjoying tweeting more after I switched away from the web based Twitter.

Maybe you would too if you tried it.

Download TweetDeck

[via TweetDeck]

TweetDeck Gets Recent Follower Columns & Inline Replies - Published at ShanKrila.com (RSS)

KarShan Media blogs: ShanKrila - Top iPhone Resource - Spicy Tasty
@KIntheHouse - @TopiPhone