tech-alert

Add Yahoo Messenger Chat to browser sidebar panel

noreply@blogger.com (Pramod) — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 20:41:00 +0000

Chat with friends on Yahoo! Messenger in the Firefox or Opera browser sidebar without installing anything.

Do you regularly chat with your friends on Yahoo Messenger? Would you love to message your friends from the browser itself? Or your mobile phone browser? If yes, then this is the right place for you. Read further on adding Yahoo Messenger Chat to your browser sidebar similarly adding Google Talk in sidebar.
Though there is Yahoo! Messenger for the Web, the flash interface is slow to load and occupies too much screen space. Therefore it is not possible to use it in the browser sidebar. However there is a solution:
» Bookmark the given webpages and select the appropriate option to add them in browser sidebar / panel. Works both in Opera & Firefox.

http://us.m.yahoo.com/p/messenger
http://wap.oa.yahoo.com
http://wap.yahoo.com
http://mm.yahoo.com

While these Yahoo Mobile Messenger website interfaces may not be loaded with features like the Google Talk Gadget provides, but it allows you to easily check on your friends while browsing and you have anytime access to your contacts and message history; great for at work or travel. Adding it to the sidebar is as easy as bookmarking the above links. So have fun chatting with your friends. If you have any suggestions or tips, please leave a comment.

Note: You can also access the Yahoo Messenger in your mobile phone browser using the above websites.

Add shortcut icons to My Computer

noreply@blogger.com (Pramod) — Sun, 15 Jul 2007 14:09:00 +0000

Folder2MyPC - Add folder, program icon to My Computer

Ever wanted to add your own icons to My Computer or the Control Panel ?
Well now you can add shortcut icons to any folders and programs in "My Computer" and "Control panel" using Folder2MyPC software developed by Shedko Software which is available for XP and Vista.

Download links are provided below. Try it and comment if you like it.
Read more about Folder2PC here.
Features:

You can add shortcuts to any folder to "My Computer".
Any icons from "My Computer" can be changed or removed.
You can add a shortcut icon to any program to both "My Computer" and "Control panel".
Control Panel icons can be sub-grouped under the default folders.
Windows special system folders such as Printers & Faxes, Fonts, Network Connections, etc can also be added easily.
Custom icon can be specified for the shortcuts.
You can also set the title and comment tooltip for the icons.
It is possible to create folders for the current user or all users.
Option to open folder in new window or same window.
The software available in both Windows2000/ XP & Vista.
Program available in English, French, Russian, Arabic, Portuguese (Brasil), Italian, Spanish, Polish, Turkish and Ukrainian languages.

Download: Folder2MyPC 1.9 for Windows Vista
http://rapidshare.com/files/30593707/shedko_folder2mypc_19.zip
Download Folder2MyPC for Windows XP
http://rapidshare.com/files/26213856/Shedko_Folder2MyPC_1.8.5.0.zip

Chat in Google Talk in your browser

noreply@blogger.com (Pramod) — Sat, 14 Jul 2007 20:32:00 +0000

Now you can use Google Talk in the panel / sidebar while browsing with your favourite browser.You don't need to have the GTalk desktop client installed at all. GoogleTalk Gadget can be displayed in browser enabling the user to chat in the browser itself.

The Google Talk Gadget is clearly more usable than the stand-alone GTalk desktop client or the floating AJAX chat version in GMail. It has many features like group chat and emoticons which are not yet available in the desktop client.

Each chat session in TalkGadget opens up as a tab (like browser tabs), it can show previews of images or video and the chat client can easily be embedded inside webpages. In addition to viewing YouTube videos and Picasa Web Albums, you can now also watch Flickr slideshows in your chats.

Steps to use GTalk in your browser:

Goto Bookmark Manager. Click to create new bookmark.
You can also visit the given webpage and bookmark it by pressing Ctrl + D.
Paste the following URL in the address (URL location) field.

http://talkgadget.google.com/talkgadget/client
Enter any name for the bookmark like GTalk.
Checkmark the option for adding in sidebar or panel.
Select "Show in Panel" for Opera Browser.
Select "Load this bookmark in the sidebar" for Firefox.
Click OK to save the bookmark and you are done.
Now you can chat away easily with the TalkGadget at your disposal within the browser panel / sidebar.

Google TalkGadget requires Adobe Flash Player 8 or above.
Works in both Opera Browser & Firefox.

Write in flip-text like this ʇxǝʇ dılɟ

noreply@blogger.com (Pramod) — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 06:42:00 +0000

Check out the cool flip text! Its nothing special but only plain Unicode. Ya! you heard that right, its the Unicode character encoding scheme which allows characters from all language scripts to be encoded in a single character set.

There are multiple uses for this kind of text though funny it may be.
You can use it in social networking websites, personal blogs, movie or book spoilers, solutions to riddles or crosswords, or just to annoy your readers!

So would you like to write like this?
If so, then just check out here and here. Go ahead and have fun flipping your text.

Google Calendar alerts via SMS on your mobile for events

noreply@blogger.com (Pramod) — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 16:42:00 +0000

Google Calendar, previously code-named CL2, allows users to receive event reminders and notifications on your mobile phone. So you don't have to be online to get the reminders of gCalendar events and you can just chose to receive them as sms alerts on your mobile phone. What's more is that sms alerts for your events are free and setting them is easy. Most mobile carriers are supported though the list of supported service providers may not show your mobile carrier as it is not updated.

Follow these steps to activate the free sms reminders.
Open the Google Calendar site.
Login into using your Google account.
Click on "Settings".
Goto the "Mobile Setup" tab option.
Select your country.
Enter your mobile number (No need to put international code).
Click "Send Verification Code".
You will get a sms on your mobile phone with the verification code details.
Input the verification code in the box provided on the website.
Click "Finish Setup" and you will be shown a message that your mobile phone is successfully validated.
Do not forget to save the settings when you are done.

You will also require to set the reminder types which would prefer to be reminded via. Email, SMS and popups are the choices available in the dropdown menu.You can also select the time before the event when you should be reminded. Google provides a maximum of five reminders per event but they can be of any aforementioned type. If you need more reminders, you can always set another event for the same.

Thus you can schedule reminders for events on your personal calendar or any other calendar to which you're subscribed. Whether it's World Cup's schedule, a birthday/anniversary calendar, or any other calendar, you can set up mobile reminders for all of them separately.
You can also specify different reminder alerts for some events which will override the general settings for that calendar. So now you can receive sms alerts whenever you have a important meeting or task scheduled. And you will never forget birthdays and parties and those important events of your life...
And did I mention that these sms reminders are free...

Opera mini launches 10 days before iPhone

noreply@blogger.com (Pramod) — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 20:48:00 +0000

The beta version of the Opera Mini mobile web browser (codenamed
"Dimension") was launched on 19th of July, just 10 days before the release of the much hyped iPhone from Apple. The Opera Mini 4 beta has impressed fans and critics alike with its fast clean and easy to use approach to browsing. Opera Mini provides users with browsing capabilities not unlike the desktop browsing scenario with features such as intelligent zooming, power scrolling, cursor with context menu, new desktop layout view, CSS support ~~but some features like RSS are still missing as this is still a beta version~~. Opera Mini 4 beta does not yet clear the Acid2 test but renders the smiley face completely and perfectly recognizable.

The beta works perfectly almost without any glitches,
formatting the text and images to fit in screen width when zoomed and even highlights the links when mouse pointer is over them. The only problems encountered are when loading AJAX pages. Google Reader opens in the browser but doesnt show any content. Apart from that there are also some issues with fonts due to the new support for Hebrew and Arabic languages.
The geek world has already gone gaga about the beta and already touted Opera Mini as the iPhone killer. In fact the battle between Opera's latest offering in the Opera Mini series and iPhone's inbuilt browser Safari is being now said to be very crucial for Apple who have not been able to capture attention like before with the latest products such as Safari internet browser for Windows and the iPhone. However it needs to be remembered that while the iPhone is a innovative product of impressive features and the Opera Mini is an amazing software application with tremendous potential for the future with emergence of mobile internet browsing.

Opera Mini uses a remote server to pre-process Web pages before sending them to your phone. Web content is compressed to reduce the size of data transferred, enabling handling on simpler phones and creating fast browsing at low costs.
Opera Mini is a J2ME browser (Java 2 Mobile Edition) Web browser which can be installed on any mobile supporting jar and jad files. It seeks to bring the entire internet to all mobile devices in the world so that information is always available at our fingertips. Opera Software has once again proved itself to be the world leader in cross-platform browser technologies, earlier with its desktop Opera web browser and now the Opera Mini mobile web browser.

Opera Mini can be easily installed on your phone once downloaded using SMS, WAP, or your computer. To download Opera Mini using WAP, point your phone's WAP browser to operamini.com and click on 'Download Opera Mini'. You can also download Opera Mini to your desktop computer, and transfer it to your phone using Bluetooth or USB. You can also get SMS from Opera with the download link to Opera Mini. Enter your phone number and you will shortly receive a short text message with a download link to Opera Mini directly to your phone.
http://www.operamini.com/download/

Safari 3 Beta security update for Windows

noreply@blogger.com (Pramod) — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 19:30:00 +0000

The Safari 3 Public Beta was released for users of Windows XP/Vista and Mac OS X on the 11th of June. The beta version of the browser was for a preview trial build and intended to collect user feedback prior to the final build. It was riddled with bugs and issues. Security flaws abounded in the first attempt by Apple to introduce Safari to Windows users who have slammed it as being broken.

This for the browser that Apple touted as enabling "worry-free" browsing. "Apple engineers designed Safari to be secure from day one," the company said on its Web site. Researchers were finding security flaws in the new browser's coding within one hour of its release.

In response to the reports, Apple has quickly deployed an update which fixes some security issues.
Safari 3.0.1 Public Beta for Windows is now available (3 days after Safari 3.0) and addresses the following issues in Safari 3 Public Beta:

CVE-ID: CVE-2007-3186
Available for: Windows XP or Vista
Impact: Visiting a malicious website may lead to arbitrary code execution
Description: A command injection vulnerability exists in the Windows version of Safari 3 Public Beta. By enticing a user to visit a maliciously crafted web page, an attacker can trigger the issue which may lead to arbitrary code execution. This update addresses the issue by performing additional processing and validation of URLs. This does not pose a security issue on Mac OS X systems, but could lead to an unexpected termination of the Safari browser.

CVE-ID: CVE-2007-3185
Available for: Windows XP or Vista
Impact: Visiting a malicious website may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution
Description: An out-of-bounds memory read issue in Safari 3 Public Beta for Windows may lead to an unexpected application termination or arbitrary code execution when visiting a malicious website. This issue does not affect Mac OS X systems.

CVE-ID: CVE-2007-2391
Available for: Windows XP or Vista
Impact: Visiting a malicious website may allow cross-site scripting
Description: A race condition in Safari 3 Public Beta for Windows may allow cross site scripting. Visiting a maliciously crafted web page may allow access to JavaScript objects or the execution of arbitrary JavaScript in the context of another web page. This issue does not affect Mac OS X systems.

The update is available via the "Apple Software Update" application,
which is installed with the most recent version of QuickTime or iTunes on Windows.

Safari 3.0.1 Public Beta for Windows is also available via Apple's
Safari download site at: http://www.apple.com/safari/download/

Safari for Windows XP or Vista
The download file is named: "SafariSetup.exe"

Safari+QuickTime for Windows XP or Vista
The download file is named: "SafariQuickTimeSetup.exe"

Meanwhile Apple has reported 1 million Safari for Windows downloads and has gained maximum awareness through the publicity of Safari's issues.
You can report bugs/issues or security flaws and vulnerabilities to product-security@apple.com

Safari 3 beta browser for Windows

noreply@blogger.com (Pramod) — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 12:41:00 +0000

Welcome to Apple's latest offering for Windows users. The cross platform internet browser ported from Mac - Safari 3 beta for Windows.

For those waiting to get their hands on it, here is the review:

Starting from the start - the Apple website startpage, the first website to be launched took ages to load and after completely loading still displayed the startpage incorrectly and incompletely... maybe their own website was at fault but sure Safari 3 Beta in Windows still has some serious teething problems.

The default interface is nothing to be much talked about. It feels simple and very basic with no advanced customization. The blue scrollbars distract from the main interface which is a dull metal grey. The engraved lettering in the grey is almost unreadable and tiny. Safari doesnt use native Windows gui and it makes a really bad job of being user-friendly.

Clicking Safari's task-button in the taskbar to minimize it does not work. Clicking the tiny buttons in the title bar is a hard thing to do and then you might clicked some other instead. Try maximizing the browser and it will get distorted for a second or two. Safari doesnt obey the global Windows hotkey Win+M which minimizes all open windows. It uses ctrl+m hotkey to minimize.

After minimizing Safari will not restore to the maximized state, so you will have to maximize it again. Safari has another quirk that doesnt allow window resizing by dragging the window edges, but only allows the resizing by dragging the resize handle at right bottom! This is Mac-specific but Windows users will find it troublesome.

The inbuilt search provides search only through Google and Yahoo. Other search engines can not be added. Also search field can not be turned off as it is joined to address bar. This is a step backwards when compared to Firefox / Opera web browsers.

Browsing is a little better as it is fast, faster than firefox. It loads most websites before you can even read the title. However it was definitely slower than Opera, Firefox2 or IE7 on its own website and websites with heavy content are incorrectly displayed.

The page rendering is so awful that sometimes elements are missing in websites which when refreshed will be shown. This shows that much is required to be done before users will accept Safari in Windows. Fonts are thick, shadowed and do not look crisp. Sometimes images load before the text thus simply resulting in waste of time not to mention highly irritating.

The privacy mode is the USP of the browser. Safari has introduced this highly useful feature and one has to applaud its innovative approach. When it is turned on the browser will not save any browsing history, downloads or searches till the it is closed.

Serious work needs to be done in managing of bookmarks. Bookmarks are not imported from other browsers as claimed in the website documentation (or if it did they are not added to bookmarks menu). The bookmarks manager has no trash bin, so recovering deleted items is not possible.

Even Ctrl+Enter doesnt work in the address bar. This is a surprise because almost every browser supports website URL completion. Some links irritatingly open in new windows rather than in new tabs and there is NO option to change this behaviour except for external links.

Also there is a problem with displaying fonts as many users found out. The Apple forums are full of complaints regarding this. This is a result of improper installation of fonts installed by the setup. Though I daresay this will be soon fixed by Apple as this is a Beta setup.

The Result: For Opera and Firefox users this is definitely a trip some 5 years back. If you are looking for a browser with features (atleast the basics) then please look elsewhere. Safari is not to be your choice for browsing in Windows. Safari offers nothing new except private browsing while missing the standard browser features. Watch out for updates soon to this farce.

Why did Apple have to port this app to Windows where users already have great alternatives. Now they will not only have to attract new users but also users who burned their hands trying this half-baked browser. Reading some comments by users on internet, I couldnt help but laugh at person who commented "Apple should show a message in Safari stating 'WORK IN PROGRESS'"...

Read some more comments at macworld forum.

DOWNLOAD INSTALLER HERE (8 MB):

Blog -- Technology

noreply@blogger.com (Pramod) — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 18:55:00 +0000

Blogging
Originally uploaded by geeneeyes.

A weblog, which is usually shortened to blog, is a website where regular entries are made (such as in a journal or diary) and presented in reverse chronological order. Blogs often offer commentary or news on a particular subject, such as food, politics, or local news; some function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. Most blogs are primarily textual although many focus on photographs, videos or audio. The word blog can also be used as a verb, meaning adding an entry to a blog.