Technology Bites

Happy Birthday, Firefox

Ram — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:23:47 +0000

Firefox over the years has garnered millions of fans around the world and has a thriving developer community. Firefox is celebrating five years of success today, part of the success of the browser can also be attributed to the developers who developed thousands of add-ons for the browser.

On November 9, 2004 Firefox was released, and with in first four days of launch 1 million people downloaded the browser. Melissa Shapiro says Firefox 1.0 is released “with belief that, as the most significant social and technological development of our time, the Internet is a public resource that must remain open and accessible to all.”

Firefox has now 300 million users worldwide, Firefox still lags behind IE but it is the preferred browser for many of us.

Firefox 3.0 is released in June 2008 and hit 8.3 million downloads in 24 hours. Firefox 3.5 released this June came with some new features like Private browsing and geo location features.

Firefox has completed successful Five years and what about the next five years?. Christopher Blizzard at mozilla hacks talks about the future of Firefox.

Over the next five years everyone can expect that the browser should take part in a few new areas – to act as the user agent it should be. Issues around data, privacy and identity loom large. You will see the values of Mozilla’s public benefit mission reflected in our product choices in these areas to make users safer and help them understand what it means to share data with web sites.

Expect to see big changes in the video space. HTML5-based video and open video codecs are starting to appear on the web as web developers make individual choices to support a standards-based, royalty-free approach. Expect to see changes in the expectations around the licensing of codecs.

And over the next five years mobile will play an increasingly important role in our lives, and in the future of the web. The decisions of users, carriers, governments and the people who build phones will have far-reaching effects on this new extension to the Internet and how people will access information for decades to come.

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Happy Birthday, Firefox

Originally published at Technology Bites by Ram

Google Wave inspired Gmail interface screenshots

Ram — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 21:48:50 +0000

Google is probably tweaking all Google Apps interfaces to have an unified interface inspired from the Google wave’s interface. Google Apps interfaces are not pretty, the recently hyped and still in invite only beta does look better and many users liked that. According to Engadget Google apps will have interface similar to Google Wave.

The screenshots came from an anonymous tipster to Engadget, so for the moment this is not confirmed and it is just a rumor.

Specifically, we’re told that “the goal is to provide a consistent experience throughout all Google Apps and blur the line between the browser and the website (e.g. drag and drop, right-click, etc.).” (Via Engadget)

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Google Wave inspired Gmail interface screenshots

Originally published at Technology Bites by Ram

Flickr App Garden: Developer Showcase

Ram — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 21:52:10 +0000

Flickr, the popular photo sharing site has an open API that allowed developers to build applications on top of Flickr. Some of the featured applications are earlier included in Flickr API Services page as a list. Now Flickr has created an application showcase called App Garden.

The app garden shows the list of application built for various Flickr functions like uploading, retrieving photos. You can explore the apps using the tags or search for apps using the search box. Each app has its own page where users can comment and add them to their favorites.

Now you can find out which application your friends are using for uploading the photos. Each photo pages shows Uploaded using “appname”, this is available only of the application is added to the app garden.

App Garden: Flickr Application Showcase

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Flickr App Garden: Developer Showcase

Originally published at Technology Bites by Ram

MSN launches new home page

Ram — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 20:35:50 +0000

Microsoft today announced a redesign for its popular portal MSN, the most significant redesign came after a decade Microsoft says. The new home page looks clean, uncluttered and with lot of white space around. MSN is visited by 600 million people worldwide and 100 million people in US every month.

Along with the refreshing look MSN also redesigned its logo. The design is not yet live for everyone, they will rollout to users in next few weeks, and becomes widely available in the US early next year. The redesigned home page can be viewed at preview.msn.com.

The new redesign brings some new features like deeper Bing integration, Facebook and Twitter access through the home page among other things. To remove the clutter Microsoft reduced the number of links in the home page 50%.

The new home page also incorporates local information. MSN local edition provides latest information on local weather, news, sports, entertainment and other things grouped by ZIP code.

MSN new home page

MSN current home page

Microsoft Press Release

Features:

Innovative search technology from Bing: Deeper Bing integration on the new home page helps people make faster and more informed decisions and easily find the information they want from anywhere on the Web. Bing is deeply integrated as the core search service throughout the home page via key areas such as shopping, travel and local, and as a way of highlighting hot topics, trends or people.

Information and news people care about: The new home page delivers against the No. 1 customer request — simplicity and ease of use — through its fresh design and smart categorization. In-line high-quality, top news and hot entertainment from trustworthy sources such as MSNBC, FOX Sports, Hulu and Hearst, and comprehensive local information provide a compelling one-stop shop for people to use as their home base online. More in-depth local information is offered on the new MSN Local Edition, which is the only local online source that smartly combines media with Bing search and provides access to real-time community news that is grouped by ZIP code.

Convenient ways to communicate: Simplicity drove the clean integration of popular social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter and Windows Live “What’s New,” which aggregates up to 50 Web activities, including Yelp, Flickr, Pandora and more, onto the MSN home page. People no longer have to jump from site to site to update their status, tweets or see what their friends are up to; the new home page makes it easy to view and update in-line.

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MSN launches new home page

Originally published at Technology Bites by Ram

Access Windows Live SkyDrive from your Desktop

Ram — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 21:26:19 +0000

Windows Live SkyDrive is a free online storage service from Microsoft, it offers 25GB of storage space for users. 25GB of space comes in handy for uploading pictures, documents etc but if you want to use it as a backup space you need to upload files one by one. The better solution is to mount the SkyDrive as virtual drive in windows explorer, in this way you can add files to the drive quite easily.

SkyDrive Explorer is a freeware that allows you to add SkyDrive as a virtual folder in Windows Explorer. Download the application and install it on your system. After installing you will see “SkyDrive Explorer” icon in My Computer along with other drives. Click on that it will ask you to authenticate to Windows Live using your Windows Live ID.

Once you installed and authenticated to SkyDrive you can manage all the files stored in SkyDrive, you can edit, delete and add files and folders to the SkyDrive.

Features

View the structure and contents of folders in SkyDrive
View files information (type, size, creation date in GMT format);
Create new root folders and subfolders;
Copy files into the storage;
Delete files and folders;
Copy files from the storage to the computer;
Copy folders and subfolders from the storage to the computer keeping their structure;
Use Drag & Drop for files operations;
Rename files and folders;
Create links to SkyDrive folders on your computer.

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Access Windows Live SkyDrive from your Desktop

Originally published at Technology Bites by Ram

Google Voice Search for Nokia S60 Phones

Ram — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 19:15:31 +0000

Google Search by voice feature on mobiles allows users to search on Google through voice instead of typing keywords. Google voice search is already available for iPhone, Blackberry and Andriod phones, today Google announced the voice search for Symbian (S60) phones.

If you have a N series and E series Nokia phones you can use this feature by downloading the Google Mobile App from m.google.com. The software works with S60 version 3 for now, S60 version 5, that is touchscreen phones are not yet supported.

See the videos embedded below to see how it works

Via Google Blog

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Google Voice Search for Nokia S60 Phones

Originally published at Technology Bites by Ram

Listorious: Discover the Best Twitter Lists

Srikanth AD — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 05:27:40 +0000

Listorious is a web service which makes it easy for you to find the best Twitter lists on any given topic. Its a directory of Twitter lists enabling you to find the most interesting ones. It aggregates the Twitter lists into categories – media, finance, marketing, food, humor etc. Listorious allows you to search for a list, person or tags in general.

The most popular lists, ranked by how many people follow them and the top tags are showcased on the right-hand side of the page.

You can check out the Twitter lists you have made and the lists you are on. You can even add any list from Twitter to Listorious that you find useful.

Listorious is an intriguing way to discover and follow the best Twitter lists.

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Listorious: Discover the Best Twitter Lists

Originally published at Technology Bites by Ram

YouTube Videos Downloader Firefox Add-on

Ram — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 23:56:56 +0000

There are several websites which allows you to download YouTube videos and there is no shortage of tools available for downloading YouTube videos. Some tools are designed to download videos directly to other formats so that you can transfer those videos to your iPod or other devices.

Best YouTube Videos downloader is a Firefox Add-on that allows you to download YouTube videos in both FLV and MP4 format. Firefox Add-on name has best but it won’t download best videos, it will download anything you want. There are other Firefox add-ons available like DownloadHelper, download videos as Mp3 or MP4 files etc, what is unique in this add-on is that it offers download links to both FLV and MP4 links. Clicking on that link will download the video to your desktop.

If you don’t want to install Firefox Add-on try this bookmarklet for downloading videos as MP4 files

Download Best YouTube Videos Downloader

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YouTube Videos Downloader Firefox Add-on

Originally published at Technology Bites by Ram

uTorrent 2.0: Cure for ISP Throttling

Ram — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 23:30:07 +0000

uTorrent is a popular client for downloading files using P2P networks. uTorrent is developed by BitTorrent Inc. There is much debate over throttling of P2P traffic by ISPs arguing the traffic is causing congestion on the network, users argue for net neutrality rules. uTorrent developers have some sort of solution for this problem which will eliminate the need for ISPs throttling bittorrent traffic.

uTorrent 2.0 beta will become throttle itself if a congestion in the network is detected. As the app itself regulate the traffic, there is no need for the ISPs to throttle the traffic.

The heart of the application is the new uTP protocol, “it is an alternative communication method for BitTorrent traffic that allows the client to automatically regulate its bandwidth usage to avoid adversely impacting your internet connection” according to uTorrent.

This doesn’t mean that users will experience slower download times, according to TorrentFreak, this is not the case. Since there is less congestion, users may experience faster download speeds and no slow down in web-browsing etc.

In this release there is also a transfer cap settings feature that will allow users to monitor how much bandwidth they are using uTorrent. Users can track their usage in MB and also they can configure uTorrent to stop torrenting once the usage limits are exceeded. This is good for users who have fixed bandwidth monthly plans.

uTorrent beta 2.0 is currently in testing, you too can join the test group by downloading the software from this forum.

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uTorrent 2.0: Cure for ISP Throttling

Originally published at Technology Bites by Ram

Microsoft Security Essentials rated high in Malware removal tests

Ram — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 12:21:25 +0000

Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE), the free anti-virus software released by Microsoft got good reviews so far. This is a free product and it may not have all the bells and whistles you get from the commercial products, but it scores good in malware removal tests conducted by AV-Comparitives tests.

The AV-Comparitives October 2009 report contains malware removal/cleaning capabilities test. Sixteen products have been tested using Windows XP Professional SP3 32bit computers. A point to note is that the test only focuses on the malware removal/cleaning capabilities of the security products installed on an infected system. The detection rates and protection capabilities of the software are ignored for the test.

Microsoft Security Essentials scored good in the testing, out of the sixteen anti-virus programs tested only three programs (Microsoft Security Essentials, Norton and eScan) scored good in removal of malware and removal of leftovers. None of the products tested scored very good for the above tests.

The ratings were given as “Advanced+”, “Advanced” and “Standard” based on removal capabilities. Six software out of the sixteen tested got the Advanced+ rating, these include , eScan, Symantec, Microsoft (MSE), F-Secure, Kaspersky, Bitdefender. MSE is the only free anti-virus which got the Advanced+ rating, other free anti-virus software like AVG, Avast got the Advanced rating.

Microsoft Security Essentials beat other free competitors AVG, Avast and Avira in these tests. MSE is a solid free anti-virus product, better than some of the paid apps.

Download MSE. Via DownloadSquad

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Microsoft Security Essentials rated high in Malware removal tests

Originally published at Technology Bites by Ram