The Perfect Face

Orkut Badges for Power Users

2010-12-01T09:17:00.001+05:30

Google has introduced badges in Orkut profiles to help you easily flaunt how active you are and how much you know of the social site.

For instance, if you have been on Orkut for more than 5 years, you get the “early user” badge while if you are active on Orkut forums, you are awarded with the “Super User” badge.

Some Orkut users have already been assigned badges though the full rollout will happen only in the coming week according to the Google Blog. Overall, this is a good way to give some recognition to the active Orkut users and, in the process, trying to keep them loyal to the site.

How to Verify an Email Address?

2010-11-24T09:13:00.001+05:30

How do you verify if a given email address is real or fake? Well an obvious solution is that you send a test mail to that email address and if your message doesn’t bounce, it is safe to assume* that the address is real.

[*] Some web domains may have configured a catch-all email address meaning that messages addressed to a non-existent mailbox will not be returned to the sender but in most cases, such email messages will bounce.

Ping an Email Address to Validate it!

When you send an email to someone, the message goes to an SMTP server which then looks for the MX (Mail Exchange) records of the email recipient’s domain.

For instance, when you send an email to hello@gmail.com, the mail server will try to find the MX records for the gmail.com domain. If the records exist, the next step would be to determine whether that email username (hello in our example) is present or not.

Using a similar logic, we can verify an email address from the computer without actually sending a test message. Here’s how:

Let say that we want to verify if the address billgates@gmail.com exists or not?

Step 1. Enable telnet in Windows. Or if you already have the PuTTY utility, skip this step.

Step 2. Open the command prompt and type the following command:

nslookup –type=mx gmail.com

This command will extract and list the MX records of a domain as shown below. Replace gmail.com with the domain of the email address that you are trying to verify.

gmail.com MX preference=30, exchanger = alt3.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com
gmail.com MX preference=20, exchanger = alt2.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com
gmail.com MX preference=5,  exchanger = gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com
gmail.com MX preference=10, exchanger = alt1.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com
gmail.com MX preference=40, exchanger = alt4.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com

Step 3. As you may have noticed, it is not uncommon to have multiple MX records for a domain. Pick any one of the servers mentioned in the MX records, may be the one with the lowest preference level number (in our example, gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com), and “pretend” to send a test message to that server from you computer.

For that, go to command prompt window and type the following commands in the listed sequence:

3a: Connect to the mail server:

telnet gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com 25

3b: Say hello to the other server

HELO

3c: Identify yourself with some fictitious email address

mail from:<labnol@labnol.org>

3d: Type the recipient’s email address that you are trying to verify:

rcpt to:<billgates@gmail.com>

The server response for ‘rcpt to’ command will give you an idea whether an email address is valid or not. You’ll get an “OK” if the address exists else a 550 error like:

abc@gmail.com -- The email account that you tried to reach does not exist.

support@gmail.com -- The email account that you tried to reach is disabled.

That’s it! If the address is valid, you may perform reverse email search to find the person behind the address. And if you get stuck somewhere, this step-by-step video should help:

Create a Career Tree from your LinkedIn Profile

2010-11-22T11:47:00.001+05:30

This diagram illustrates the career path of the American President – the branches represent his education and the work experience. I think the size of the circles represent the relative time spent in a particular role.

If you would like to have something similar for your own career, simple head over to Newsweek.com and import your LinkedIn profile.

The more details you have in your LinkedIn profile, the ‘fuller’ your tree will be. You may also add details of your career to the tree manually using the “career tree form” available on the same page without changing your main LinkedIn profile.

Movie Scenes turned into Animated GIFs

2010-11-18T09:51:00.001+05:30

Animated GIF images may remind you of those cluttered and distracting homepages of the Geocities era but take a peek at this impressive tumblr blog and it might forever change the way you think of GIFs.

The site features a brilliant collection of GIF animations created using frames of classic movie scenes that play in an endless loop. Here are some examples:

How to Create GIF Animations?

There are free tools available that let you easily convert video clips into animated GIFs that you can later host on sites like Flickr or Tumblr -- not all image hosting sites support animated GIFs but the one mentioned here do.

This is a two-step process – first convert the video into a sequence of image frames and then assemble these frames into a looping GIF animation with some custom delay.

Step 1: Download FFmpeg for Windows from sourceforge.net and extract the ffmpeg.exe file to, say, the c:\ffmpeg\ folder. The .7z files can be unzipped using the 7-zip utility.

Step 2: Now we’ll extract the frames from our video file. The command* is simple.

c:\ffmpeg\ffmpeg.exe -i movie.avi img-%03d.gif

If your video file is in another folder, you need to specify the full path of that file. Also, you may use MP4, MOV or any video format as well instead of AVI.

Step 3: Grab this portable utility called UnFreez and drag-n-drop all the image frames created in the previous step from Windows Explorer into the UnFreez window.

Enable “loop animation” and set the frame delay to say 20 cs (1 cs = 0.01 second). Click “Make animated GIF” and preview your image is in any browser.

Screencast: Converting videos into GIF movies

[*] If you have a fairly long video file and would only like to convert a portion of it into an image, you need to slightly modify the ffmpeg parameters as shown below:

c:\ffmpeg\ffmpeg.exe -i movie.avi –ss 5 –t 3 img-%03d.gif

The parameter ‘ss’ refers to the start position in the video while ‘t’ is the duration for which you want to extract the frames. So in the above example, image frames for the file movie.avi will be at created from the 5 second mark for the next 3 seconds on the video.

If you would like to stop GIFs from animating in the browser, just hit the Escape key.

Browse the Web with your Email Address

2010-11-17T14:20:00.001+05:30

Web2PDF is an extremely useful web based service that lets you browse the web using your email address.

Compose a new email message, type the URL of any web page in the body of that message and send it to submit@web2pdfconvert.com. The service will then fetch the corresponding web page on its own servers and will send it back it you as a PDF attachment – all this takes no more than a few seconds.

I have tried this service will several web pages, including ones that have complex layouts, and the conversion was more or less perfect in all cases (see examples here and here). The converted PDFs not only retain the layout but also the hyperlinks and thus you may fetch other internal pages as well using email itself.

Such a service may come handy in quite a few situations like when you have access to email but general web access is restricted. Or when you are surfing the web on an old mobile phone with a pathetic browser – in that case, the built-in PDF reader may be a better option for reading web articles.

Shop at Any Online U.S. Store from Anywhere

2010-07-17T07:29:00.001+05:30

This is a guide for people living outside the U.S. who would like to order products from U.S. based online stores (like Amazon.com or Best Buy) and get them shipped to a non-US address even if the store offers no international shipping.

Shop at Online U.S. Stores from anywhere!

Are you craving to own that latest mobile phone that just launched in the USA and may take months to reach your country. Or are you getting a great deal on some product at an online store but they won’t ship it to your country?

Well, if you have an international credit card and don’t mind paying the shipping costs, custom duties and other charges, here are some services that can help you shop at your favorite online U.S. stores from anywhere.

1. eBay with Worldwide Shipping

You normally use your country specific eBay site for shopping (like eBay.in for India) but with the same account, you can also shop on eBay.com, eBay.co.uk and all the other eBay websites.

Here’s a tip – while looking for products on eBay.com, set the “Items available to” advanced search option to your country’s name and eBay will then only show you items where the seller has indicated that they are willing to ship to your country.

2. Appoint a Virtual Cousin in US

Imagine having a cousin in America. You go to Amazon.com, buy some electronic gadgets and music DVDs using your own credit card but give your cousin’s address for delivery. Amazon ships the stuff to your cousin’s place who then ships it to you.

Package forwarding services like vPost, Shipito, comGateway and Borderlinx are like your ‘virtual’ cousins. They’ll provide you with a personal U.S. address that you can use as the delivery address when shopping at any of the online U.S. stores be it Amazon, Gap, Macy’s or Apple.com.

When your package arrives at their warehouse, they’ll forward them to you via DHL or FedEx just like your helpful cousin. If you choose to buy from multiple stores, like a router from eBay and a camera from Amazon, these ‘forwarding’ services will repackage everything into one parcel so as to reduce the overall shipping cost.

3. Shopping without your Credit Card

Even if you give them a US address, some US merchants won’t accept payments through international credit cards that don’t have a US based billing address. And then there could be some people who may not have an international credits card at all.

If you are one of those, or if you are trying to shop at a store that won’t accept your non-US credit card, you can either use the Assisted Purchase service from Shipito or the BuyForMe service from comGateway to make the purchase.

With Assisted Purchase, you send the payment via Wire Transfer to Shipito who will then make the purchase on your behalf. In the case of BuyForMe, you can make the payment to comGateway using PayPal or any credit card and they’ll use their own card to pay the merchant(s).

International Shopping in India

If you are living in India, in addition to the above mentioned services, you should also check out ShopYourWorld.com. Here, as you buy items from the various online stores, they are all added to a common shopping cart and you pay for everything in one go.

ShopYourWorld will always give you a fixed landing price for your order which includes the cost of the items, shipping charges as well as the custom duties and taxes, if any. No last-minute surprises!

Shop at Any Online U.S. Store from Anywhere

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

RAINBOW IN YOUR HAND–Good One

2010-07-11T20:37:00.001+05:30

This book started as a personal project in summer 2007, and was soon published from a Japanese bookstore "Utrecht". It's a flipbook, but rather than seeing animation, it creates a 3D rainbow in your hand. Since being published it has been featured on Japanese TV, Newspapers, major news & blogsites like yahoo news, coolhunting and fffffound. This book won this years NY ADC silver cube.

From - http://www.masa-ka.com/html/rainbow.html

First Look at the Improved and Redesigned Firefox 4

2010-07-07T11:21:00.001+05:30

Windows/Mac/Linux: Mozilla today released the first beta build of Firefox 4, complete with a new look, new features, and support for more HTML5 specs. Here's a quick screenshot tour of how it's shaping up:

The big changes come in the form of an interface overhaul and some updated support for HTML5 features. In this release the new-and-improved Firefox skin is only complete for the Windows release, so Mac and Linux users, you'll have to wait a bit. The highlights from the release notes with images (our notes in italics):

Tabs are now on top by default on Windows only - OSX and Linux will be changing when the theme has been modified to support the change. If you don't like tabs on top, you can disable them by right-clicking empty space on the toolbar chrome and unchecking Tabs on Top.
On Windows Vista and Windows 7 the menu bar has been replaced with the Firefox button. You can get your menu bar back by right clicking empty space on the toolbar chrome and making sure Menu Bar is checked.
You can search for and switch to already open tabs in the Smart Location Bar. This feature is a little strange, and I'm not entirely sure how often a person would use it in its current implementation, but I suppose it could come in handy.
The stop and reload buttons have been merged into a single button on Windows, Mac and Linux. Handy, since many of us have been consolidating those buttons since Firefox 3.
The Bookmarks Toolbar has been replaced with a Bookmarks Button by default (you can switch it back if you'd like).
Crash protection for Windows, Linux, and Mac when there is a crash in the Adobe Flash, Apple Quicktime or Microsoft Silverlight plugins.
Native support for the HD HTML5 WebM video format. Remember, WebM is Google's open video format.
More responsive page rendering using lazy frame construction.

That covers pretty much everything that stands out in Firefox 4 so far, though a couple of feature tweaks that aren't specifically highlighted in the release notes that we particularly like include:

The new add-ons manager, which loads in a tab of its own instead of a separate window.
The new page loading progress indicator you see in the screenshot below.

If you've been kicking the tires on the new Firefox 4 beta and you've got a favorite new feature—whether we mentioned it above or not—let's hear about it in the comments.

Firefox 4 Beta 1 [Mozilla]

Send an email to Adam Pash, the author of this post, at tips+adam@lifehacker.com.

Switch Off Shuts Down Your Computer from Anywhere

2010-07-02T09:52:00.001+05:30

Windows: Whether you're downloading something or streaming media to your smartphone, sometimes you have to leave your computer on while you're out. Instead of leaving it on all day, free utility Switch Off will schedule shutdowns by time, CPU usage, or remotely.

We've shown you how to shut down your computer from elsewhere in the house, as well as with a text message when you're out, and there are a number of ways to schedule your computer to shut down after a specific amount of time. Switch Off, however, puts all these functions into one simple system tray app: you can schedule shutdowns, restarts, logout, sleep, hibernate, VPN connections, and even custom scripts as you choose. You can schedule them simply by time, or by CPU inactivity.

Possibly the coolest feature is being able to remotely shut down your computer using Switch Off's mobile-friendly web interface, whether it be from another computer or on your smartphone. All you need to do is go into the program's options, and on the remote tab, enable the web interface. You can even password protect it, if you prefer. To access the interface, you just need to type your computer's IP address into the address bar of your browser with Switch Off's port tacked on the end (i.e. http://123.456.7.8:8000, where 123.456.7.8 is your IP address and 8000 is the port in Switch Off's remote preferences). It's pretty handy for letting longer tasks run while you're out, without wasting all your power.

Switch Off is a free download, Windows only. Note that there is a portable version available, though I couldn't get it to work on my 64-bit system—but the installable version worked just fine.

Switch Off [via AddictiveTips]

Send an email to Whitson Gordon, the author of this post, at whitson@lifehacker.com.

Enable the Ultra-Compact Menu in Google Chrome

2010-07-01T14:37:00.001+05:30

Chrome: Chrome's interface is already minimalist and compact but if you want to shrink it even further you can collapse the page menu into the wrench menu with a simple command-line flag.

You'll need to be rocking a current version of the Google Chrome Development Channel build—stable release users will likely get the collapsed-menu feature soon. If you're the kind of person that likes to tinker with their browser via command-flags you're likely already sporting the development channel build anyway.

All you need to do to enable the collapsed-menu is add --new-wrench-menu as a command-line flag in the shortcut you use to launch Google Chrome. On next launch all your Chrome menus will be collapsed into the single wrench icon. Have a Chrome hack to share? Let's hear about it in the comments.

Google Chrome Tests Unified Menu [Google Operating System]

Send an email to Jason Fitzpatrick, the author of this post, at jason@lifehacker.com.

Firefox 4 Pre-Beta Candidate Brings Tabs on Top and Other Changes to the 'Fox

2010-06-30T16:34:00.001+05:30

Windows/Mac/Linux: The first pre-beta build of Firefox 4 hit servers today, bringing several changes to the veteran browser, including a new tabs-on-top interface, a refreshed overall look, and consolidated menus.

The update's still rough around the edges, and as a pre-beta, it's a very early-adopter download only. But if you're eager to play with the bleeding edge of Firefox, you can download the release (Mozilla appropriately names their nightlies "Minefield") here. (Look for the appropriate download for your platform with a name like firefox-4.0b2pre.en-US.)

Firefox 4.0 pre-beta nightly builds [Mozilla]

Send an email to Adam Pash, the author of this post, at tips+adam@lifehacker.com.

Sony Ericsson Vivaz new pink colour

2010-06-29T19:00:00.001+05:30

Sony Ericsson will be introducing a new pink colour for its Vivaz. The Vivaz is a very attractive phone and the pink will be added to the existing colours which are cosmic black, venus ruby, moon silver and galaxy blue. Sony Ericsson are segmenting the market to make the phone appeal to the female market which is a very good approach by the company.

Here is a few pictures of the new colour

Source]

From Unofficial Sony Ericsson Blog: http://blog.se-nse.n…ew-pink-colour/

Friday Fun - Isn't it!

2010-06-28T11:31:00.001+05:30

A man walks into a restaurant with a full-grown ostrich behind him.

The waitress asks them for their orders.

The man says, "A hamburger, fries and a coke," and turns to the ostrich, "What's yours?" "I'll have the same," says the ostrich.
A short time later the waitress returns with the order “That will be $9.40 please," and the man reaches into his pocket and pulls out the exact change for payment.

The next day, the man and the ostrich come again and the man says, "A hamburger, fries and a coke."
The ostrich says, "I'll have the same."
Again the man reaches into his pocket and pays with exact change.

This becomes routine until the two enter again. "The usual?" asks the waitress. "No, this is Friday night, so I will have a steak, baked potato and a salad," says the man. "Same," says the ostrich.
Shortly the waitress brings the order and says, "That will be $32.62." Once again the man pulls the exact change out of his pocket and places it on the table.
The waitress cannot hold back her curiosity any longer. "Excuse me, sir. How do you manage to always come up with the exact change in your pocket every time?"

"Well," says the man, "several years ago I was cleaning the attic and found an old lamp. When I rubbed it, a Genie appeared and offered me two wishes.

My first wish was that if I ever had to pay for anything, I would just put my hand in my pocket and the right amount of money would always be there."

"That's brilliant!" says the waitress. "Most people would ask for a million dollars or something, but you'll always be as rich as you want for as long as you live!"
"That's right. Whether it's a gallon of milk or a Rolls Royce, the exact money is always there," says the man.

The waitress asks, "What's with the ostrich?" The man sighs, pauses and answers, "My second wish was for a tall chick with a great figure and long legs who agrees with everything I say."

7LogonChanger Sets Picasa and Flickr Pictures as Windows 7 Login Screen

2010-06-28T11:00:00.001+05:30

Windows 7 only: 7LogonChanger browses and sets selected Flickr and Picasa photos as your wallpaper or Windows 7 login screen easily.

You can change the Windows 7 login screen with a custom image from your computer, but 7LogonChanger tag searches and browses photo services Flickr and Picasa for wallpapers and customizable login screens. If you're in the habit of searching online for images to customize your computer, 7LogonChanger makes it a breeze.

Right-clicking on an image brings up both options, and the program makes it easy to return to your default login screen. Unfortunately, it lacks the option to browse images from your own computer like Logon Changer. 7LogonChanger is a free download for Windows 7 only.

7LogonChanger [krishnanblr via Life Rocks 2.0]

Send an email to Erica Ho, the author of this post, at erica@lifehacker.com.

Find the Person Behind an Email Address

2010-06-25T09:25:00.001+05:30

You get an email from a person with whom you have never interacted before and therefore, before you reply to that message, you would like to know something more about him or her. How do you do this without directly asking the other person?

Web search engines are obviously the most popular place for performing reverse email lookups but if the person you’re trying to research doesn’t have a website or has never interacted with his email address on public forums before, Google will probably be of little help.

No worries, here are few tips and online services that may still help you uncover the identity of that unknown email sender.

#1. Find the sender’s location

Open the header of the email message and look for lines that say “Received: from” followed by an IP address in square brackets. If there are multiple entries, use the IP address mentioned in the last entry.

Now paste the IP address in this trace route tool and you should get a fairly good idea about the location of the email sender.

#2. Reverse email search with Facebook

Facebook has 450 million users worldwide and there’s a high probability that the sender may also have a profile on Facebook.

Unlike LinkedIn and most other social networks, Facebook lets you search users by email address so that should make your job simpler. Just paste the email address of the sender into the Facebook search box and you’ll immediately know if a matching profile exists in the network.

If you are able to locate that person on Facebook, download his profile picture and then upload it to TinEye – it’s a reverse image search engine so you can locate his other social profiles where he may have used the same picture.

#3. Check all the other Social Networks

You can use a service like Knowem to quickly determine if a profile with a particular username exists in any of the social networks.

If the email address of the send is something like green_peas@hotmail.com, there’s a probably that he or she may have created accounts of some other social network using the same alias “green_peas” – put that in knowem.com to confirm.

#4. People Search

Finally, if nothing works, you should try a people search service like Pipl and Spokeo – both services let you perform reverse email lookups but Spokeo has a more comprehensive database than Pipl.

Other than regular web documents, Spoke also scans social networks and even the whois information of domain names to find any bit of information associated with an email address. However, some of the results returned by Spokeo are only available to subscribers.

Also see: Find Postal Addresses with Google Maps

Find the Person Behind an Email Address

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.

Firefox Updates with Chrome-Like Crash Protection from Plug-ins

2010-06-24T11:36:00.001+05:30

Windows/Mac/Linux: Mozilla just pushed out a new stable Firefox update, Firefox 3.6.4. The most notable feature in the update: Firefox now has crash protection (like Chrome) that prevents Flash, Silverlight, and Quicktime crashes from bringing down your entire browser.

Unfortunately crash protection doesn't yet support OS X (but OS X is still receiving an update, presumably of smaller bug and stability fixes). There's not much else to know about the update beyond that, other than the fact that you can go grab it now or hit Check for Updates in your Firefox menu to use the built-in update tool.

Firefox 3.6.4 is a free download for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux.

Firefox 3.6.4 [via The Mozilla Blog]

Send an email to Adam Pash, the author of this post, at tips+adam@lifehacker.com.

Five Really Handy Google Command Line Tricks

2010-06-22T12:28:00.001+05:30

With the right commands, you can turn your favorite command-line text editor into a distraction-free Google Docs app, add new events to Google Calendar, upload images to Picasa or video to YouTube, backup your Google data, and more. Here's how it works.

On Friday, Google released GoogleCL, a saucy command line program that interacts with Google services from any *nix-friendly command-line prompt (on Windows, Mac, or Linux). We spent the weekend playing around with it, and now we're sharing a few of the coolest ways we've been putting it to use.

What You'll Need

Before you can execute any of the cool commands below, you'll need to have installed a few things to get GoogleCL up and running on your system.

Windows users, you'll want to install Cygwin. (If you're not familiar with Cygwin and how it works, check out Gina's introduction to Cygwin.) If you'd really prefer to stick with Windows' Command Prompt, you can set up GoogleCL with these instructions instead.
If you haven't already, you'll need to have installed Python 2.5 or higher on your system. To do so, simply type python -V at your command line prompt (see screenshot).
Next, you'll need to download and install two utilities from Google. The first is the gdata-python-client; the second is GoogleCL—the main tool that drives the tricks below. For more details on the installation process, check out Whitson's instructions for installing GoogleCL. If you're a Windows user and having some trouble figuring out the installation, take a look at PC World's Cygwin-specific instructions.

Now that you've got everything up and running, let's take a look at some of the coolest tricks you can accomplish.

Use Your Command Line as a Distraction-Free, Google-Docs-Backed-Up Text Editor

Distraction-free text editors are all the rage these days, but who needs a fancy new application to give you a plain text word processor when GoogleCL can do the same thing—and when you're finished, upload your results to your Google Docs account every time you save. To fire up your own minimalist, distraction-free GoogleCL word processor from the command line, just try something like:

google docs edit --title "To-Do List" --editor vim

The command above will open and edit an existing document in your Google Docs account if one exists; if not, it'll create one with the title you've provided. The last piece, --editor, determines which command line text editor you'll be working in. If you're a whiz with vim, then you'll probably want to use that. If you're not all that familiar or comfortable with vim, I'd recommend editing using nano, a command-line based text editor that's a bit more like writing in a normal word processor, and will look like so:

When you're finished writing and want to upload your results to Google Docs, in nano type Control+X to upload the results to Docs and quit your text editor. (You can fire it back up to edit the same document at any time by just repeating the command above).

Quickly Add Any Event to Google Calendar with Plain Language

You can quickly add any event to your Google calendar with GoogleCL with one command and plain language. For example, if I were to simply type:

google calendar add "Dinner tomorrow at 8pm with Ellen at Figaro"

...and hit Enter, GoogleCL will create the event in Calendar and figure out what I meant about the when and where. It's the same Quick Add feature available on the Google Calendar site, but you don't have to fire up your web browser and wait for Calendar to load to use it. You can enter the who, what, where, and when, and Google Calendar will figure out the rest.

Upload a Folder of Images to Picasa

Sure you could open up the Picasa desktop app, but if you've got a folder full of old pictures you want to upload to Picasa in a jiffy, the GoogleCL upload tool is a great option:

google picasa create --title "My Awesome Pool Party" ~/photos/poolpartypics/*

As you've probably figured out, —title denotes that "My Awesome Pool Party" is the name of your new album, and the folder directory after that is the folder it's going to upload pictures from. You could upload an individual picture, but if you want to upload the whole folder, make sure you include the asterisk at the end of the path. When it's done, you should see all those pics up and ready to share on your Picasa Web Albums account. Pool photo from lepiaf.geo.

Upload a Video to YouTube

I actually hate using YouTube's web-based uploader, so I'm especially keen on this one. You can upload any video to YouTube like so:

google youtube post --category Technology ~/Desktop/maddow-talks-lifehacker.mp4

Schedule Backups for Your Google Data

Possibly one of the most useful ways you could put GoogleCL to use off the bat—particularly if you're paranoid with the idea of storing all your data online—is to back up the data from your Google services. In a single command for each service, GoogleCL can back up all of your Contacts, Docs, and Picasa photo albums, for example, and I'd guess the backup support will improve for most of the services. Here's how it works for Contacts, Picasa, and Docs.

Google Contacts

google contacts list > contacts_backup.csv

This will pipe all of your contacts to a comma-separated list that can easily be imported to other contact management applications or simply saved to a backup folder, just in case.

Picasa Photos

google picasa get *

Google Docs

google docs get * ~/Desktop/Doc_Backup/

Note: Docs backup isn't perfect just yet (spreadsheets aren't supported, and I had to enter the specific folder I wanted downloaded instead of it letting me grab everything at once, but GoogleCL was released on Friday and already updated once this weekend, so I'd expect some of these tools to get a lot better over time.

Expanding What GoogleCL Can Do with Other Tools

As you probably figured out after examining a few of the actions described above, GoogleCL's syntax is pretty simple. To execute a command, you simply type google, followed by the service you want to access (e.g., calendar), followed by the kind of action you want to perform using that service (e.g., create, edit, delete, post, etc.). Finally, you'll add some specifics after that action based on whatever it is you're doing (e.g., the file you want to upload, the title you want to give to a new document, or the event you want to schedule).

With other tools and tricks, you can do all sorts of fun things stuff with your Google data. Over at Smarterware, Gina suggested using the Calendar tool to display your agenda for the day every time you open a new Terminal window by adding:

echo "Next 24 hours:";google calendar today title

...to your ~/.bash_profile file. Whitson suggested piping the results to a plain text file to use with something like GeekTool (Mac) or Rainmeter (Windows)—both of which can display plain text files on your desktop. A command like:

google calendar today title > myagenda.txt

...would do the trick nicely. (The greater-than sign pipes the output of any command to a file, so myagenda.txt would contain the same text returned in the command line.)

Cron It
Perhaps most useful, a lot of the tasks available—particularly related to downloading backups or uploading folders of pre-defined content—can get especially handy if you set them up to run as cron jobs. Cron schedules any command based on user-defined times, so you could set a cron job to, say, download backups of your Picasa photos on a weekly or nightly basis. If you're new scheduling with cron, check out IBM's introduction to cron.

If you've been toying around with GoogleCL over the weekend—or reading through some of these suggestions gave you some ideas—let's hear how you'd take advantage of GoogleCL in the comments.

Adam Pash, editor of Lifehacker, loves to play around with a cool new command line tool. His special feature, Hack Attack, appears regularly on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the Hack Attack RSS feed to get new installments in your newsreader, or follow @adampash on Twitter

Send an email to Adam Pash, the author of this post, at tips+adam@lifehacker.com.

XPERIA X8 – First Glimpse

2010-06-22T09:57:00.001+05:30

As usual my friend Albin has shot a short video clip showing off his XPERIA X8, comparing it to the X10 products and giving a first glimpse of it.

It can be seen as the middle sister to the X10 products size-wise but will as told earlier be somewhat of a baby sister when it comes to price. Something we think will make it very attractive to an even bigger target group.

As always remember that these videos are done on prototype hardware and pre-release software so things can of course change until release.

Use GIMP to Process Time Lapse Photography

2010-06-21T11:45:00.001+05:30

We've shown you how to create a time lapse video with your DSLR camera, but if you're looking for something a bit quicker and simpler, DIY web site Instructables shows us how to make an animated GIF from a series of photos.

After taking some pictures of clouds outside his house, user V-Man737 wanted to make a simple, small file that would animate them together after the fact. He found that previously mentioned open source photo editor GIMP was the perfect tool to make an animated GIF.

All you need to do is drag each image as a layer. If you didn't use a tripod to stabilize your camera, you'll want to make sure each photo is at the same angle by rotating each one, watching the stationary landmarks and lining them up over each layer. When you're finished, you can just save it as a GIF and specify that you want the layers to be frames in an animation. It certainly isn't as polished as the aforementioned videos, but with a bit of forethought you can make a pretty cool loop with minimal work—perfect for little animated forum avatars and the like. Hit the link to read the full instructions.

Time-Lapse Photography Processing Using GIMP [Instructables]

Send an email to Whitson Gordon, the author of this post, at whitson@lifehacker.com.

Five Plants that Can Survive the Low Light of Your Cubicle

2010-06-18T09:43:00.001+05:30

Got an aching for some a little green life in your workspace or home, don't have the natural light to support most plants, and don't want to buy grow lights and look like a drug dealer? Try one of these five plants.

Photo from Jason's terrarium guide

Design blog Apartment Therapy highlights five plants—maidenhair ferms, mint, swedish ivy, begonias, and moss terrariums (which we've detailed how to make)—that don't need the sunlight most plants do. They make it ideal for low-maintenance caretakers, or for people who simply have trouble keeping plants alive.

If low-light plants aren't a concern, consider opting instead for these twelve plants that are great for improving your indoor air, and if you know a thing or two about keeping your home green, let's hear about the plants that you've found that are easy to maintain and keep thriving in the comments.

5 Overlooked Plants That Can Survive The Dark (Almost) [Apartment Therapy]

Send an email to Erica Ho, the author of this post, at erica@lifehacker.com.

WordPress Blogging Platform Updates with a Brand New Look, Bulk Updates

2010-06-18T09:29:00.001+05:30

Blogging platform WordPress just released their 3.0 "Thelonious" update, debuting, among other things, an attractive and modern-looking default theme and a bulk plug-in, theme, and installation updater. The release also includes over one thousand bug fixes and enhancements.

The new default theme, called Twenty Ten, is a welcome addition to the antiquated-looking WordPress Default 1.6 and WordPress Classic 1.5 themes. WordPress 3.0 also introduces bulk updates, which allows users to download all plug-in, theme, or full WordPress updates with a single click.

Whether you've set up your own WordPress installation at home or have it running on a server somewhere, the update looks pretty appealing. Still, as with many early updates of this kind, we'd recommend that unless you're comfortable as a canary in the coalmine, you may want to wait a few days and keep an eye on any security patches. If you're eager to upgrade, comfortable with the risks, and you've backed up everything you need, then go for it! The WordPress 3.0 update is available as a download through the web site, or through the Update feature in your WordPress Dashboard. If you're ready to give your blog a new fix, it doesn't hurt to take a refresher with our guide on how to customize and trick out your WordPress blog.

WordPress 3.0 "Thelonious" [WordPress]

Send an email to Erica Ho, the author of this post, at erica@lifehacker.com.

How Does the New Hotmail Stack Up to Gmail?

2010-06-17T09:22:00.001+05:30

This may come as a surprise, but the new Microsoft Hotmail is actually pretty good. But how does it stack up to Google's email champion, Gmail? Here's a look at the good and bad of both services.

Photo remixed from creativenonfiction.org.

Where Hotmail Gets High Marks

Inbox ZERO
The new Hotmail focuses heavily on reducing your cluttered inbox and keeping your email organized. New one-click filters let you focus on senders in your Contact List, social updates (via Twitter, Facebook, Linked In, etc.) and more.
You'll also find Quick Views useful when looking for certain types of emails, such as those that contain photos or documents or even shipping updates.

Conversation View feels a little late to the game as threaded conversations are a Gmail staple. However, if you prefer not to view your email messages as threaded, Hotmail allows you the option to toggle Conversation View on and off. The choice is welcome.

While these types of filters can be useful, the more exciting addition is Sweep. Sweep allows you to move or delete all messages from selected senders as well as tell Hotmail to automatically continue with the chosen Sweep action in the future.
While each of these features is technically possible via Gmail's search—and certainly more versatile—Hotmail succeeds in making every one of these actions both fast and easy to accomplish.

Attachments

Hotmail has an elegant new way of handling attachments. Integrating with SkyDrive, Microsoft's free online storage offering, you now have the ability to attach up to 10GB of files per email. This probably sounds both incredible and excessive, and that's probably because the 10GB number is more of a marketing gimmick than a reality. While you could, technically, attach 10GB of files to an email you have a limit of 50MB per file and 200 files per message. SkyDrive also comes with a 25GB limit. Chances are you'll do just fine with these limitations, but nonetheless it's fine print to be aware of.

Attachments in Hotmail go straight to your SkyDrive and are sent as links to your recipients. Nonetheless your files appear just as you'd expect attached files to appear. Hotmail detects kinds of attachments, such as photos. When you send photos, Hotmail not only generates a gallery but a slideshow as well.

The new way Hotmail handles attachments is great but it's also very specific. It forces you to use SkyDrive and Microsoft's design for certain types of content. Power users may find this off-putting and favor Gmail for attachments, but Hotmail's new methods are a definite bonus for the average user or anyone looking for simplicity and ease.

Embedded Content

Hotmail introduces a new feature called Active View that embeds web content in emails. YouTube links come with thumbnails and can be played back within the message, Flickr links become photo galleries and LinkedIn requests can be accepted without every leaving Hotmail.

My personal favorite, however, is how emails with shipment tracking numbers are handled. Hotmail recognizes the tracking number and displays the latest tracking information within the email. While most of these features are available in Gmail already (or via Labs), Hotmail's implementation takes it a bit further and is really well done.

Microsoft Office Integration

If Microsoft's own product didn't offer the best Office integration they'd have a lot to worry about. Fortunately, for them, they've done a great job of integrating Office into Hotmail. The new integration offers a lot more than just opening and editing Office documents; it also handles versioning, corrections, collaborative editing and seamless transferring of files between the web and desktop apps (if you're using a Windows PC, anyway) thanks to SkyDrive. These features get pretty in-depth, so if you're interested in the details Microsoft put together a decent overview (which requires Silverlight—yeah, yeah, I know).

Hotmail's Office integration is very well thought out and offers some noted advantages over Gmail and Google Docs, though it is worth noting that some features (such as collaboration) are available in Google Docs as well. Check out our comparison of the Office WebApps and Google Docs more information.

Where Gmail Holds Strong

Speed

Although Gmail is fast, it's the speed in which it lets you work through your inbox that gives it a leg up over Hotmail. Gmail excels in getting out of your way. Hotmail, on the other hand, likes to sit and chat. Sending email in Hotmail, for example, displays a dedicated success page after sending. It prompts you to add the recipient to your contact list or network if they're missing from either. This may save you a step if you want to add people to your list or network but is an encumbrance if you don't. This is the general downside of Hotmail, in my opinion. It always wants to help you do this or that and inform you of every little choice it makes. While it seems this exists to assist the less tech-savvy in their foray into the world of email—which is a legitimate choice on Microsoft's part—the interruptions begin to feel relentless when all you want to do is reply quickly. I think even the most basic of users, should they have a fair amount of email, will find these interruptions annoying.

Search

Google's a tough opponent to beat in search and they still win out here. While Hotmail's added search suggestions as you type to help find focused results, Google's search not only remains incredibly accurate but versatile in the search terms it accepts. Hotmail's search has improved, but Gmail is still very much the king.

Organization
Hotmail has a nice and generally attractive layout, and definitely isn't disorganized, but Gmail does a phenomenal job at organizing your mail with filters and labels. Along with powerful sorting features, messages can easily be identified by type and status based on colors, shades and labels.

Instant Messaging
Hotmail's late to the party with IM, and you're required to use MSN Messenger. Though it offers nice features like tabbed messaging and SMS, Gmail is still far ahead with audio and video chat and AIM support.

Mobile
With this new release, Hotmail introduces a better app for the mobile web (primarily the iPhone). Still, it has yet to match the functionality of Gmail on a mobile phone. Additionally, Gmail not only performs well as a web app but integrates beautifully into the Android mobile operating system. While we may see a great implementation of Hotmail in Windows Phone 7, it's not here yet.

Where it's a Draw: Spam Filtering

Microsoft made big strides when improving spam filtering in Hotmail. They call it SmartScreen and it implements a number of spam filtering features that have been present in Gmail for some time. One method used is the record of spam messages and spam senders that is generated by Hotmail users, allowing commonly reported spam messages to be automatically filtered out of everyone's inbox. SmartScreen also scans message content to try and determine if it is spam or not, checking sender IDs and whether or not if the message is authenticated. This is all welcome but nothing revolutionary.

Where Hotmail takes it a step further is with your interaction, and this is both a good and a bad thing. Hotmail will track your behavior with certain messages and make relevant suggestions. For example, if you're frequently deleting messages from the same sender without reading them, Hotmail will suggest that you unsubscribe from their mailing list. If the sender does not honor your unsubscribe request then Hotmail will suggest you block that sender. While this is certainly smart and sounds nice in theory, in practice you're being pestered by Hotmail with some regularity. Because Hotmail likes to interact with you, make frequent suggestions and constantly keep you abreast of every choice it makes on your behalf you may feel like getting from point A to point B is more work than you'd prefer.

One of Gmail's best features is how it gets out of your way and allows you to concentrate on your email. Because this extends to spam filtering, which requires a little as marking a message as spam on the rare occasion Gmail doesn't catch it for you, I personally favor Gmail's spam filtering. Hotmail, however, does offer some smart new features for dealing with messages that lie in between spam and regular mail (Microsoft calls these messages "gray mail"). While it's not for me it may be for you, so I say it's a wash.

It's worth noting that we love Gmail here at Lifehacker, so while this is was an attempt to be fair and even-handed we may often favor Gmail because, well, we like it. Nonetheless, there are some great new additions to the new Hotmail and things are still missing from both. What would you like to see in future iterations? What do you like about existing features? Let us know in the comments.

Send an email to Adam Dachis, the author of this post, at adachis@lifehacker.com.

Chart Compares iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4

2010-06-16T22:01:00.001+05:30

This handy chart compares the main features of iPhone 3GS with iPhone 4 that goes on sale later this month.

The only thing they miss out is colors – iPhone 3GS was only available in black while iPhone 4 comes in the both black and white colors.

The chart is from Mahalo but you can also read the official comparison between iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS on apple.com.

Chart Compares iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4

Amit

Today, 5:26 PM

Rainmeter 1.2 Includes New Default Skin, Better Windows 7 Support

2010-06-16T10:42:00.001+05:30

Windows only: Desktop customization application Rainmeter updates again, adding a new default skin, theme packaging tools, and full support for Windows 7—including multiple monitor support.

The new default skin replaces Enigma as the default, but if you're a fan of the Enigma desktop customization you'll be happy to know it's still included. Rather than rehash all of the new features, here's the most important ones from the announcement page:

Rainmeter now includes a new default suite of skins: Gnometer by Poiru. Gnometer is a colorful and exciting alternative to the default Enigma suite. It contains skins which show off with all the information you could want on your desktop, and is fully configurable by the user with an easy to use settings tool.

Rainmeter 1.2 introduces Rainstaller and the .rmskin format. This utility makes it much easier to distribute and install skins and suites. Rainstaller allows skinners to include addons, fonts and themes along with their skins in a single .rmskin package. Skins and suites are then installed by the user with just a double click or directly from a download site in their browser.

Rainmeter 1.2 has a host of improvements to better support Windows 7. Fully configurable support for multiple monitors has been added, so you can position and save your Rainmeter setup in your multiple monitor environment. Rainmeter 1.2 now supports having your skins stay on the screen if desired when Windows 7's "Show Desktop" is used.

A new RainBackup utility is included, so users can save their entire setup as a Rainmeter .rmskin file, making moving your setup to a different computer or recovering from a system crash / reinstall much easier.

Rainmeter 1.2 now supports having both the program and the skins / settings stored on network shared drives using UNC paths like "\\SERVER\FolderName".

Readers should note that this release fixes one of the long-standing problems with Rainmeter—now when you use the Show Desktop feature in Windows 7, there's an optional feature to make Rainmeter stay on the desktop. Rainmeter is a free download for Windows only.

Rainmeter [Rainmeter.net]

Send an email to How-To Geek, the author of this post, at lowell@lifehacker.com.

Find your Facebook Friends by City with Bing

2010-06-15T10:40:00.001+05:30

If you wish to know the current location (city) of your Facebook friends, there are two options.

A. Facebook Friends Explorer

You can open the Friends Explorer in Facebook, choose the “Browse by City” option and then select the city name from the other drop down menu as shown in the above screenshot.

B. Bing Maps

The other good option is Bing Maps – it not only lets you visually browse the current location of your Facebook friends on a map but you can also see the location of them all in one go.

To map your Facebook friends current location through Bing Maps, simply press the Facebook Connect button on the Bing Maps website, authorize the application and within minutes, you can see all your friends, who have listed a “Current City” in their Facebook profile, on the world map.

There’s something more. You can click the picture pin of any Facebook friend and write on his or her wall without leaving the Bing Maps application.

Find your Facebook Friends by City with Bing

Originally published at Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal.