Apparently Microsoft has succeeded in getting Live Messenger 9 (currently in private testing) to communicate with Google Talk, and they are working on integration with AIM and ICQ also. Seeing as how Live Messenger 8 already talks with Yahoo Messenger, we could be getting very close to a polished, officially released, messenger hub.
You have to wonder what has taken so long for the companies to get with doing this. Trillian has been out for what seems like eons, and while it doesn’t talk from one IM to the other, it at least combines everything to take up less memory. I for one am thrilled to see the IM programs finally working with one another as I’m tired of having all of them open every day!
Today in this post I will tell you about Splashup. Edit your images on the fly online with Splashup, a web-based image editor that integrates with Flickr, Facebook, and Picasa. Splashup offers up a surprising array of image editing tools, far beyond the usual crop of resize and contrast— you can also edit multiple images, play with filters and layers, use a variety of brushes, and more. Splashup is one of the best image editors in a long line of image editors; i.e., Picnik, Pixoh, and Resizr, to name just a few.
Source : Lifehacker
The site includes the complete OpenSocial API Documentation, FAQ and Group area.
Also now live is OpenSocial support for Google’s big in Brazil social networking site Orkut. According to Google, the OpenSocial implementation on Orkut has the following benefits:
* Building both showcase and canvas views, with Apps having the ability to create multi-page experiences in the full page canvas view.
* Foster communication among friends by allowing access a user’s profile information, friend list, and an update feed so that people can see what their friends are up to.
* Learn once, write everywhere as apps written for Orkut under OpenSocial can be used to build social apps for other websites.
The OpenSocial team also has a blog here.
Source : Tech Crunch
Please update your Firefox browsers now
What’s New in Firefox 2.0.0.9
Release Date:
November 1, 2007
Stability Update:
This release corrects several problems that were found in the previous release, Firefox 2.0.0.8.
Earlier Changes:
For information about previous changes, please see the Firefox 2.0.0.8 Release Notes
Firefox 2 Features:
For an overview, please see Firefox 2 Features.
you can download fresh version here
Userscripts are add-ons for the Firefox web browser, which dynamically enhance the communication and visualization of certain websites.
To be able to use these scripts you need to have installed greasemonkey on Firefox - this enables and manages the userscripts. If you have greasemonkey in Firefox you can install and use these userscripts instantly.
Following are my 10 most useful scripts for Flickr given in no particular order of importance:
Flickr Auto Page
This is definitely one of the most useful scripts for flickr. It allows you to scroll though a stream without clicking the “next page” - button. Older images are loaded automatically.
Flickr New Contact More Links
This script displays more useful information in you flickr-inbox about the user when they add you as a new contact.
Flickr Multi Group Sender
This one gives you the ability to post an image to multiple Flickr groups at the one time. Warning : If an image is posted in too many groups you reduce the probability of your image being explored ! I recommend adding images to a maximum of 5 groups.
Flickr Move Comment Form Up
This makes commenting on images a lot easier. This script always displays the comment box underneath you selected image - regardless of how many other comments have already been written.
Flickr Photo Rank
Photo Rank will show you a photo’s rank if it is in the top 1000 most interesting images of the day. After installation you can find it under “Additional Information” on the photo’s page.
FlickrPM
FlickrPM allows you to get important information about another user in a short amount of time by blending in different buttons next to the username on their stream (like icons for mail, profile, favorites, Scout and interestingness). Useful: With FlickrPM you can send the user a flickrmail without leaving the selected page.
Buddy Icon Reply
This i another of of my biggest time saver scripts for flickr. With it you will never have to copy&paste user names you want to reply to on your or other images. With one click you will get a little icon of the user you want to answer in your comment box. Nice !
Flickr Background Color
This script is all about aesthetics and is an easy to use tool that changes the background color on a photo page. It displays several shades of gray through to black. So if an image has a “dark feeling” the white standard flickr background won’t disturb it.
Flickr Follow Comments
This useful script helps you to view images that you have commented on - but only those that interest you. If you are writing lots of comments every day you know how hard it is not to get distracted by the overload of images when you click “Comments You’ve made”. With this userscript you have 4 different options to see only certain types of comments.
FlickrMailManager
This MailManager is the one of those scripts I will always value, because it makes handling your flickr-inbox much easier. For instance you can “mark all as read”, “delete group invites” and “nuke mailbox”. The processing time depends on the size of your inbox - so I use it very often.
Source:Digital Photography scool
“The desktop is a powerful, powerful machine in which to run applications. Broadband, as quick as it gets, is still going to have some limitations in the short term,” said Chizen at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.
Chizen said desktop software is still a customer preference but that this would change over time, Reuters reports. When asked if the change would come within five or 10 years, he said it would almost certainly be closer to the latter.
Adobe has already started offering some applications online such as Buzzword, an online word processor it recently acquired plus Share, a web-based document organiser.
It will also launch Photoshop Express, a free tool that lets users edit photos online, and a free video editing tool called Premiere Express.
Chizen speculated that professional customers would rather pay a subscription for software than encounter advertising during everyday use.
Google leads the way with its web-based apps, branded Google Docs. But Microsoft has shown signs it believes web-based apps will be the future - although, as is the case for Adobe, such a shift would require a complete re-thinking of its business model.
The download weighs in at only 13.1 megabytes, which should be quick on most broadband connections, and for Windows users, the install process, while not the prettiest in the world, is relatively painless and took about 45 seconds or so (as opposed to the reported two hours it can take to compile on Ubuntu). I was able to connect to all my accounts error-free, and was chatting within five minutes of my download completing.
The interface is still a bit rough around the edges, but it is early beta. Just like other Mozilla products, there is a plug-ins interface, so that add-ons can be written for the product. There are about ten minor IM networks that out of the box Instabird is also compatible with, although Skype is currently missing from the list.
According to Secunia, an update to Opera 9.24 will be needed to solve the three known issues affecting all prior versions. First of all, Opera may launch external email or newsgroup clients incorrectly, thus allowing the execution of arbitrary commands when visiting malicious sites. Still, this flaw won’t affect users unless they had already configured an external email or newsgroup client.
The second flaw has to do with cross-site scripting attacks, due to a bug in processing frames from different websites. The last issue on Opera’s list is an unspecified error in Opera in combination with Adobe Flash Player 9.0.47.0 or earlier on Mac OS X. The details have yet to be made public.
The vulnerabilities story gets much longer in Firefox’s case. There are seven issues in need of a quick fix:
- various errors in the browser engine can be exploited to cause a memory corruption.
- various errors in the Javascript engine can be exploited to cause a memory corruption.
- an error in the handling of onUnload events can be exploited to read and manipulate the document’s location of new pages.
- input passed to the user ID when making an HTTP request using Digest Authentication is not properly sanitised before being used in a request. This can be exploited to insert arbitrary HTTP headers into a user’s request when a proxy is used.
- an error when displaying web pages written in the XUL markup language can be exploited to hide the window’s title bar and facilitate phishing attacks.
- an error exists in the handling of “smb:” and “sftp:” URI schemes on Linux systems with gnome-vfs support. This can be exploited to read any file owned by the target user via a specially crafted page on the same server. Successful exploitation requires that the attacker has write access to a mutually accessible location on the target server and the user is tricked into loading the malicious page.
- an unspecified error in the handling of “XPCNativeWrappers” can lead to execution of arbitrary Javascript code with the user’s privileges via subsequent access by the browser chrome (e.g. when a user right-clicks to open a context menu).
Firefox users are advised to update their browser to version 2.0.0.8.
Source : Portal IT NEWS
Screen shots are posted at bottom.. Checkout few features below.
- visual IM notifications
- drag and drop link and image sharing directly from web sites
- drag web content onto contact names to automatically open a new IM and share the link or image
Source: Lifehacker