Technofriends

Google Voice Mobile App Comes To The Android And BlackBerry

admin — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 15:03:24 PDT

Google has launched Google Voice for mobile which caters to the BlackBerry and Android cellphones for now. With Google Voice for mobile, you can call and also send text messages using your Google Voice number. The application also provides facility for voicemail transcriptions and cheap international dialing which starts at as low as $0.02 per minute.

The Official Google Blog details down what all your can do with the app

Access your voicemail: read message transcripts, follow along with “karaoke-style” playback of messages, read SMS messages sent to your Google Voice number (even if your phone doesn’t receive SMS messages) and access your call history

Place calls that display your Google Voice number from your address book, the app dialer (Blackberry) or the native dialer (Android)

Send SMS messages that display your Google Voice number

Place international calls at low rates.

Watch the following video below to see how Google Voice for mobile works:

If you wish to download the new mobile app for Blackberry and Android, simply visit the Google Voice mobile site at m.google.com/voice. The app is also available via the Android Market, just search for “Google Voice”.

If you don’t have a Google Voice account yet, you can request an invite here. Currently, Google Voice is only available in the US.

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[Microsoft Outlook] Xobni Announces Xobni Plus.(Claims it to be the Most Powerful Outlook search tool ever)

admin — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 10:40:32 PDT

Xobni is an interesting Microsoft Outlook Plugin tool which indexes your mailbox in a totally different way. It gives you lightning fast search on your inbox, and also displays conversation threads in the way that they were intended to be viewed. Also, It also gives you an idea of when people send you emails via a cool timeline graph. What this means is that if you send them an email at their peak times, they are most likely to respond quickly vs sending the email during their sleeping hours.

Now, Xobni has released its first premium plugin called the Xobni Plus.Xobni plus was created directly from the feedback of our users and therefore is claimed to contain a lot of extra features as compared to the plain Xobni plugin.

Xobni Plus can be purchased for $29.95. This license gets you all of the power of Xobni Plus on one computer and premium technical support for a year. Individuals that want to use Xobni on multiple computers can purchase additional licenses for $9.95. Companies and groups can buy packs of multiple licenses for a discount.

Features available with Xobni Plus

1.) Advanced Search query builder.
2.) Ability to search within conversations and networks.
3.) Support for phrases and Boolean queries.
4.) Xobni Rank-powered AutoSuggest.
5.) Advanced conversation and network filtering.
6.) Top level premium technical support for one year.

Xobni has also updated the free version of the plugin. The free plugin can downloaded from here and includes the following improvements:

500,000 company profiles from Hoover’s.

New search UI – including photos for people results, attachment file name search, and new email search results.

New hover tip design for conversation and mail view.

Search performance enhancements.

From the new free version of Xobni users can start a 14-day free trial of Xobni Plus at any time.

Below embedded video, walks you through the new Xobni Plus plugin.

Via

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[How-To] Hide PHP Version Info On Your WebServer

admin — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 21:12:24 PDT

Security is not only about keeping your Operating System, softwares, firmwares etc updated and firewalled. Its also about keeping some essential information secret from the outer world. If you are wondering why would you ever want to hide the PHP version number or lets say the server you are running your application on from the guys outside, read on further.

As a web application performance and optimization consultant, i have seen that most of the webservers and application softwares like the CMS software are usually not updated to the latest version. The older versions running on these systems can cause potential risk to the whole system. Hackers and script kiddies are often looking for this information in order to either exploit or fully compromise the system. Therefore, its always in your best interest to protect the version information of your software from getting revealed outside ( just in case there is a existing flaw and script kiddies who recently learnt a new trick are looking for fresh meat)

Though PHP is generally regarded as a reliable and secure platform, older versions of PHP are known to have contain security holes. So if you are running an older version of PHP, this article will help you get some degree of safety from reconnaissance attacks.

By default, webserver outputs the version of the PHP platform in a special HTTP Response Header called X-Powered-By. (e.g. X-Powered-By: PHP/5.2.9).This value is outputted in the response header because of a setting called expose_php in php.ini configuration file.

Image:Sample HTTP Response header containing X-Powered-By header with PHP Version Information.

In order to set the value of expose_php to off, navigate to your php.ini file and set the value to “off” for expose_php

expose_php=off

Setting expose_php to off doesn’t ensure you a completely secure system but it does give you some level of protection from script kiddies and bots looking out for information of their choice.

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[Twitter] O2 Will Offer Free SMS Alerts

admin — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 20:15:56 PDT

O2 UK has announced a partnership with Twitter which will allow users of O2 to get free sms alerts from Twitter.This move from O2 comes after a similar move was earlier announced by Vodafone. Following this partnership, O2 customers will be able to receive twitter tweets, @replies and direct messages on their mobile phones.

Also,they’ll be able to send replies via SMS, at standard network rates. While receiving tweets will be free, O2 has asked the customers to stay below the 600 messages per month limit.

The press release from O2 says

“We believe that mobile will soon become the most popular way of accessing social networking sites, giving real time access to tweets and status updates wherever you are,” said Antony Douglas, Head of Content at O2. “The agreements we now have in place with Twitter and the other key sites brings this a step closer, making it quick and easy for O2 customers to access their favourite social networks straight from their mobile.”

This was all about O2, UK and the free cell phone twitter sms alerts, however, if you are someone whose cellphone provider doesn’t offer free sms from Twitter, you can still use another service called Twe2 for receiving twitter alerts via sms for free. I have detailed article on Twe2 in my post titled [Twitter] Receive FREE Twitter Alerts via SMS with Twe2

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[iPhone] Windows 95 on an iPhone

admin — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 06:17:44 PDT

An interesting video which shows Windows 95 running on the iPhone. The hack makes use of a standard Windows 95 image and the Bochs emulator, though as you can expect, the performance is pretty poor. The group is also working on getting Windows XP running on the iPhone.

(if you are on a feed reader and having issues with watching the video, click here.)

Via

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[WordPress] WordPress for BlackBerry Is Available in Public Beta

admin — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 05:35:39 PDT

Wordpress for BlackBerry which was earlier talked about and rumored high is now officially in Public Beta. The wrote about it in my earlier post titled [BlackBerry] Official Wordpress App Coming Soon? The public beta app is now available officially for the BlackBerry.

The application will allow Wordpress blog owners to manage their wordpress blog using a Blackberry. While the initial testing has already been done by the wordpress team, there is always a scope for some surprise ( especially with application in beta). Therefore,a word of caution is to either test the Wordpress for Blackberry using a private blog or a backup blog before using on your high-traffic main blog or optionally wait for the 1.0 version of the Wordpress for BlackBerry app.

Before you get excited about the app and prepare for testing it, here are a few things you need to know.

The app is for WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress version 2.5.1 or newer.

This app should work with any of the new BlackBerry devices such as the 8700, Pearl, Curve, Bold, and Storm.

BlackBerry OS requirements are OS 4.2.1 or newer.

For self-hosted WordPress sites, please make sure you have XML-RPC enabled. To confirm, it’s a simple check box in your dashboard under Settings -> Writing

Below embedded video gives a quick tour of the BlackBerry for Wordpress app.

How to Install the Wordpress for BlackBerry app on your BlackBerry device?

Point your BlackBerry browser to http://blackberry.wordpress.org/install and follow the instructions. Most BlackBerrys will install apps, including this one, in the “Downloads” folder.

Wordpress will be pushing updates out on a fairly frequent basis, and the app should prompt you to download a new version. When you install the update, it will ask you to overwrite the current app. Doing so will just overwrite the app, but your settings and local drafts should be preserved.

Via

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[How-To] Track Package Shipments Using Bing (UPS,FedEx,USPS and DHL)

admin — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 04:18:21 PDT

I earlier wrote about how Twitter can help you track your DHL,FedEx,USPS and UPS couriers in my post titled Using Twitter to track your FedEx, UPS or DHL Shipments. If you are someone who is not on twitter or doesnt want to search for specific websites of the packaging companies to track your packages ( from FedEx,USPS,UPS and DHL), this article will walk you through the steps required for tracking your shipments using Bing, the latest search engine from the IT czar,Microsoft ( read: Microsoft Live Search Transforms into Bing)

1.) Navigate your browser to Bing (www.bing.com).

2.) At the search box, enter the name of the company. For eg, if you wish to track a FedEx package, enter “FedEx” at the search box ( without quotes).

Image: Tracking shipments from FedEx/DHL/USPS/UPS using Bing.

3.) The resulting page has link to the official website of the courier company and contains another input box which says “Track a package” .
Type your package number and press search.

You just tracked your shipment from Fedex/DHL/USPS/UPS for free using Bing.

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[Windows 7] Final RTM Build Is Not Yet Done

admin — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 00:24:10 PDT

A day after the internet came out with the build string and the news that Microsoft Windows 7 team has signed up the Windows 7 RTM build, Windows 7 team blog has come out with a denial about Windows 7 RTM build 7600.16384.090710-1945.

Windows 7 Team Blog says

We are close, but have not yet signed off on Windows 7. When we RTM you will most certainly hear it here. As we’ve said all along, we will RTM Windows 7 when it’s ready. As previously stated, we expect Windows 7 to RTM in the 2nd half of July.

Also Microsoft has information about how and when you can get hold of Windows 7 when its finally done. Interestingly, the answer depends on who you are.

MSDN & TechNet Subscribers: Subscribers will be able to download the final version of Windows 7 a few weeks after we announce RTM.

Volume License (VL) Customers: As announced today by Bill Veghte during his WPC09 keynote, Windows 7 will be available to Volume License customers on September 1st.

Consumers, Enthusiasts, & Beta Testers (Everyone else): The retail version of Windows 7 will be available in stores October 22nd. If you pre-ordered Windows 7, it should be delivered sometime around the October 22nd timeframe (depends on the retailer). You can pre-order Windows 7 today through many online retailers like the Microsoft Store.

On New PCs: OEMs are expected to start shipping new PCs with Windows 7 pre-installed on them around October 22nd.

So the overall summary is, Windows 7 is on track and the RTM build string 7600.16384.090710-1945_x64fre_client_en-us_Retail_Ultimate-GRMCULXFRER_EN_DVD.iso is actually hoax. There are a lot of malware induced copies of Windows 7 available on Torrents, so please be extra careful when you download and install a Windows 7 copy.

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[Gmail] Latest Labs Feature Adds Anti-Phishing Key For Ebay and PayPal

admin — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 20:45:06 PDT

Gmail has added another interesting Labs feature which lets you be sure that the email claiming to be from eBay and PayPal is actually from the intended source.

The latest labs feature called “Authentication icon for verified senders” ensures that the email is from intended (right now only for PayPal and eBay) by looking at the “From” header, and when it says “ebay.com” for example, it means it really did come from ebay.com. Anything else is rejected; it won’t even appear in your spam folder because Gmail won’t accept it.

While this feature as of now only works for PayPal and eBay, Gmail says

It’s a bit of work for senders to make their email super-trustworthy, which is why this feature is limited to just eBay and PayPal right now. We hope to add more senders in the future, and when we do, you’ll know because you’ll see the super-trustworthy key icon magically appear by those senders too.

In order to enable “Authentication icon for verified senders” labs feature, follow the steps below

1.) Login to your Gmail account.

2.) Navigate to the menu called Settings.

3.) Lookout for tab link which says Labs.

Image: Enable Authentication Icon for Verified Senders feature in Gmail

4.) Enable the feature which says “Authentication icon for verified senders”.

5.) Click on Save changes button at the bottom of the page.

In my opinion, this is definitely a very interesting feature which certainly does gives a lift to the security of the end users.

For those of you who aren’t aware, Gmail also has gives alerts for emails which it believes are phishing attempts. You can read about that in my earlier article titled Gmail’s phishing alerts warns you of suspected messages.

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[Freeware] Convert PowerPoint to YouTube Video With Acoolsoft PPT2YouTube

admin — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 20:23:02 PDT

Looking out for a solution to convert your Powerpoint presentations to videos which can be uploaded to Youtube and other video sharing websites? If yes, then Acoolsoft PPT2YouTube is a completely free tool which helps users easily convert PowerPoint presentations to video format for free.

All you need to do is to import your PowerPoint files and click Start, after that, this PPT2YouTube tool will automatically convert PowerPoint to MP4 for free with animations, transitions, sounds and video clips retained. And then you can effortlessly upload it to YouTube and other video sharing websites for wide sharing.

In order to get started with the process of conversion of Powerpoint Presentations to Video Format MP4 follow the steps below

1.) Download and Install Acoolsoft PPT2YouTube.

2.) Next you need to Import the powerpoint file to convert to Youtube video format. You can import upto 12 powerpoint presentations at a time.

3.) Once the import is done, choose the output folder where you the converted video must be saved.

4.) Click on Start ad the conversion process will begin automatically.

The below embedded video explains the above steps visually

Key Features of PPT2YouTube

Convert PowerPoint to YouTube video for free with one click.

Auto PC shut-down option after converting PowerPoint to MP4 video for free.

View the conversion process with a Task List Manager.

So go ahead, download and install AcoolSoft PPT2Youtube and get started with sharing your powerpoint movies on Youtube.

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