Tech Trouble?

How to post blog post from Android Phone / pad / tablet

2011-02-03T23:22:00.001-08:00

Now you can easily post blogger blog post through your Android powered mobile phone / pad / tablet on the go.

Blogger had released a Blogger app for android for blogging that you can use easily.

Download this free app from here -

http://market.android.com/details?id=com.google.android.apps.blogger

You can use your phone camera to post photographs and manage multiple accounts too with this app.

More details here : http://buzz.blogger.com/2011/02/introducing-blogger-android-app.html

Top missing features in Tata DOCOMO OneTouch Net Phone

2010-10-11T09:19:00.000-07:00

Ok, ok, Tata DOCOMO OneTouch Net Phone is one hell great smart phone. But it had following missing features that makes it no smart in any way:

1
It can show your location with the help of GPS and Google Maps. It can even show you your way if you happen to live in some selected cities. I know my place’s position well. Can this piece of marvel tell you the position of the caller at the other end? Is it smart enough to tell me that the caller is calling either from his bathroom or is he actually on roming with his GF as he is NOT claiming?

2
It can tell you description about the caller – which a simple, basic phone can also do. But this smart phone can’t tell about the mood of the caller. For example, you are prepared to have a romantic chat with your fiancé or want to have a lovely conversation with your boss in the morning, but eventually you ended up receiving endless nags & brags. And you say your phone is smart! Huh!

3
Can this smart phone – or any smart phone if that matters - tell you “Brother, you are going to misplace me right now, so be cautious” No! And it isn’t any smart either to tell its own location if you misplace it somewhere and desperately searchig for it.

4
OK, when it get lost, it can lock & encrypt sensitive data so that no one can use it. And it has mobile tracker. But if some one stole it for forensic analysis – e.g. your fiancé – then can it destroy itself with all its sensitive data?

5
Agreed, Tata DOCOMO OneTouch Net Phone can do host of work that include entertaining you with audio-video, games, help you in your office work, can automatically order pizza… etc. But, is it smart enough to turn pages of news paper that you are reading right now? It can not prepare steaming hot coffee for you either.

Are you still going to buy Tata DOCOMO OneTouch Net Phone?
(picture courtesy - Gizmodo)

How to connect to Internet through Nokia CDMA phones in Windows 7?

2010-01-27T23:24:00.001-08:00

For Net connections, Nokia PC / Nokia Ovi suit isn’t working in Windows 7 for CDMA phones. Nokia had stopped support/update for their CDMA phones.

So, how would you connect to Internet through your Nokia CDMA phones?

It is assumed that you have CDMA Phone with standard Bluetooth Modem - such as Nokia 6275i

Insure that your phone's bluetooth is on, and your computer has bluetooth support, enabled.

In Windows 7, Go to control panel, click on connect to internet, and then from there, create a new connection Say, Reliance (for Reliance India Network) with

standard settings - such as "username" and "password" as your "Mobile phone number" and Dialing Number #777.

1 - Right click on Bluetooth Devices.

2 - Go to modem settings

3 - In modem tabs, you will see many modems here. Click on standard modem over Bluetooth link.

4 - Click on properties.

5 - In new window that appears, click on Change settings.

6 - Again a new window will appear, where you will find Extra initialization command - +CGDCONT=,,"#777". Delete

this, then click OK , Apply and you are done setting part. Now, to connect to internet through your mobile,

7 – On system tray’s Bluetooth Devices, right click on your mobile phone, then click on Dial up networking > Reliance. It will

connect to internet instantly provided you accept this connection in your Phone.

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How to connect to Internet through BSNL EVDO card in Linux

2010-01-27T19:31:00.001-08:00

BSNL EV-DO card provides broadband (144 Kbps – 2 Mbps – averaging about 500 Kbps) on the go, with limited roaming. It works well in Windows XP environment. There is Dialer application provided with EVDO for Windows.

What about Linux? Here is no nonsense guide to connect to internet in Linux through EVDO card. In Ubuntu 32/64 bit Linux machine, running this device is pretty much straight forward. Here is how you can install and run BSNL evdo card in your Linux machine: (though you can do this with dozens of different methods with equal number of tools – classic Linux style!)
1 – install kppp if you don't already have. Skip to section 2 if you already have kppp. Connect to Internet with some alternative method, and then use following command to install kppp in Ubuntu:
# apt-get install kppp
2 - Now, run kppp by giving command:
# kppp

On the kppp window that appears, click on Configure, then click on Accounts tab that appears. Click on New, and then provide connection name such as BSNL, and in telephone number, fill #777. Click OK. Further, click on Modem tab and then click on New. Give it a name such as evdo, then onModem Device dropdown menu, select /dev/ttyUSB0. Click OK twice to save setting. Finally, click on Connect button on KPPP main window. And, Bingo! Your evdo device connects to internet instantly.
Except KPPP installation, the method given above will work well in all major latest Linux Distributions such as Fedora, Mandrive, SUSE etc.

How to embed Audio – MP3 file in your blog post – the easiest way!

2009-10-10T22:40:00.001-07:00

Just Upload your audio file – MP3 file to http://archive.org and copy its download (stream link) link.

It may be like this (sample) - http://ia310829.us.archive.org/3/items/Meridhun-RaviratlamiGharAaJaVe/RekhaKePyarMe.mp3

Now, where you want to embed online audio player, copy-paste following code :
<embed allowscriptaccess="always" flashvars="valid_sample_rate=true&external_url=DOWNLOAD-LINK-OF-MP3" height="52" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" quality="high" src="http://www.odeo.com/flash/audio_player_standard_gray.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="300" wmode="transparent"></embed>

Here, simply replace DOWNLOAD-LINK-OF-MP3 with that of YOUR mp3 files that you have uploaded to http://archive.org.

If we use the link given in sample, the final code will be like this -
<embed allowscriptaccess="always" flashvars="valid_sample_rate=true&external_url=http://ia310829.us.archive.org/3/items/Meridhun-RaviratlamiGharAaJaVe/RekhaKePyarMe.mp3" height="52" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" quality="high" src="http://www.odeo.com/flash/audio_player_standard_gray.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="300" wmode="transparent"></embed>

And, you are done!

Here is the actual implementation of the above code -

This method has many benefit – services like e-snips and lifelogger remove your mp3 files randomly without giving you reasons. Archive.org files remain forever (provided it is not copyrighted material)

How to solve youtube video upload problems?

2009-10-09T07:14:00.001-07:00

At times, you try to upload a video on youtube and you get error message after some time that upload failed. Quite annoying? You can solve this by using Google Gears. Download and install Google Gears from here.

multimedia course on blogging

2009-10-04T02:09:00.001-07:00

I don't know whether it works or not and, may be whether I need it in the very first place. Still I see no harm in trying & evaluating it. It is from a site called simlpe.ology... They have put precondition to publish this piece of code in one’s blog to grab a copy of Blogging Guide! Does one really need a blog guide? A blog is a blog is a blog – isn’t it? Anyway, here is the code for that codeware (as freeware...)

I'm evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they're letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.

It covers:

The best blogging techniques.
How to get traffic to your blog.
How to turn your blog into money.

I'll let you know what I think once I've had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it's still free.

Yet another [FAILED] online Auto-translation service : Babylon

2009-09-14T06:47:00.001-07:00

Though Google is expanding its online translation business at a never ending pace, some other players like Babylon and Bab.la were also testing waters.

Let us try to translate Babylon’s own English string (copied from their site) in to Hindi through Babylon’s Online Machine translation service:

ORIGINAL :

Babylon's Free Online Translation

is your one-stop website when it comes to translation. Our online translator will help you to achieve the best language translation over the Internet; so start your multilingual journey here:

TRANSLATED :

की स्वतंत्र ऑनलाइन babylon है'''''' आपके बेली वेबसाइट को आता है, जब यह'''''' । हमारे ऑनलाइन अनुवादक आप की सहायता करेंगे को प्राप्त करने के लिए उत्तम भाषा के अनुवाद के ऊपर इंटरनेट; अत: शुरु करने से पहले आप यहां बहुभाषी यात्रा:

Here is the screen shot if you don’t believe it:

Any one with little knowledge of Hindi will outright reject this ridiculous machine translation. For languages like Hindi, where everything – that includes ‘form’ and ‘syntax’ – changes, no machine can ever translate as accurate as Human.

Let us try free Online Dictionary service by Babylon. Though I could not find link to English-Hindi dictionary, I believe Babylon does have it. I tried English-English dictionary for word - ‘Eternal’. The results were quite impressive. I got multiple results and references from Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary (1913), Wordnet, Wikipedia etc.

Verdict : Online translation fails, Online Dictionary works, but needs more language options.

Want to learn Linux through Webinar?

2009-08-18T08:25:00.001-07:00

This wednesday Digit – India’s premier technology magazine brings to you a webinar - The complete guide to Linux Basics. Webinar is great way to learn things in realtime through your net PC conveniently at your own place.

About this Webinar:

The Linux webinar will be a guide to setting up Linux on a target machine using a number of approaches Including an installation CD/DVD and dual booting with another operating systems.The webinar will have step-by-step screenshots for each of these and some basics on getting started, including setting up drivers and installing additional applications.

Date: Wednesday, 19th August 2009

Time: 1500 Hrs (IST, +5.30 GMT)
Click here to open webinar link or copy paste this link in your browser: http://snipurl.com/qd45t

Meeting Key: thinkdigit

Mark your Calender right now!

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You too can host webinar through free online tool like dimdim

Read / Download Linux Pocket Guide in Hindi for free

2009-07-23T03:28:00.001-07:00

Now you can read / download Linux pocket guide in Hindi here all for free. The book is easier than dummis’ and Idiots’ series.

Download Link

Read in e-paper here: Note that the book is 6+ MB, so it may take a while to load on slow connections.

Linux Pocket Guide in Hindi

Linux Guide in Hindi PDF E-book

2009-07-21T20:10:00.001-07:00

I had just published my book - "Linux Pocket Guide" in Hindi through POD (http://nullpointer.debashish.com/print-on-demand)

You can order / have preview of this book from here :
http://pothi.com/pothi/preview?pFile=558

And, yes, the book has some useful chapters like - How to install Linux in Windows / How to run Windows Apps - like MS Office in Linux etc

Run Programs without reinstalling them in Windows 7

2009-06-23T07:42:00.001-07:00

While experimenting a little with Windows 7, I happily noticed that my most (even typical ones,) programs installed on the same machine but on different partitions on Windows XP were flawlessly running on Windows 7 too.

What you simply need is to create shortcut of preinstalled programs on you Windows 7 Desktop to run them natively – as they have installed on Windows 7.

It was not the case with earlier windows versions and you need to reinstall all the applications in each and every Windows installations separately!

Windows is learning fast – perhaps with big mistake with Vista?

How to Run KDE in Windows

2009-04-08T00:00:00.001-07:00

KDE – the desktop environment for GNU-Linux is true cross platform set of application tools that you can install and use in nearly all top class Operating System environment – and that includes Windows OS too.

Here is no nonsense, straightforward ‘how to guide’ for you to install KDE 4, the latest version of KDE in Windows XP / Vista / 7 (may work in other Windows versions as well):

Step 1 : Go to this link : http://windows.kde.org/ (direct download link: http://www.winkde.org/pub/kde/ports/win32/installer/kdewin-installer-gui-latest.exe )

and download the latest KDE 4 for Windows GUI installer, and run it. You need to remain connected to Internet since this is an online installer.

It will ask where to download and what to download in its initial Installation wizard , which is pretty straight forward. Please remember to use installation directory such as C:\kde4 that is easily accessible to all. And keep other default settings intact if you are unsure about them. When you are done, click Next.

Step 2 : In its next step, Kde 4 Windows installer will ask you to select download server. Select the one which is close to you and has sufficient bandwidth. Then Click Next.

Step 4 : Now you need to select the supported application to download. You can download source code of some of application / packages too. If you are unsure, click on KDE on package category and KDE application with all dependency files will gets displayed and you can then select them individually. When done, click Next.

Step 5 : KDE 4 Windows installer will start downloading packages from the mirror server you had selected, and will take a little time to download them that may depend upon your selection. Wait till your download completes. Meanwhile, feel free to perform other windows task till your downloads completes.

Step 5 : After download, KDE 4 Windows installer installs applications and packages you had selected. If you have used 3^rd party tools such as Active perl, then you need to give your input such as agree to their license term by clicking I accept button and clicking on next button.

Step 6 : When installations finishes, KDE Installer tells you that now you can run your KDE application in Windows, else it will give you error message, and you need to act upon that. At times, some files may not be available during setup and you can ignore that file.

Step 7 : Before you run KDE application in Windows, you need to give (presently, to fix certain things) following commands in your command window:

C:\KDE4> bin\update-mime-database C:\KDE4\share\mime

And,

C:\KDE4> bin\kbuildsycoca4 --noincremental

Note that c:\kde4 is the directory in which you have installed KDE 4 for Windows, that may be different according to your choice.

Now, you are ready to run your KDE applications in Windows. Go to Bin sub directory under KDE installation directory, and double click on the exe file of KDE program – for example, Ktuberling.exe if you want to run Ktuberling game. And voila this glossy KDE 4 game pops alive in Windows.

QT designer running on Windows:

Ktuberling and many other KDE application running on Windows:

KDE’s Khangman with its glossy semitransparent effect running on Windows XP:

KDE Kmine game in windows:

To SWITCH APPLICATION’S GUI LANGUAGE, click on Help> Switch Application Language then select the language from available list (that depends upon your installed language files that you may have been selected during initial installation dialog ) and restart the application.

Here is the screenshot of multiple applications running in multiple language in Windows XP (Vista and 7 also supports)

You can find latest, further information, support and guide here:

Kde 4 windows how to

http://techbase.kde.org/index.php?title=Projects/KDE_on_Windows/Installation

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Beware! Google adsense ads may embarrass you and finally may land you in legal hurdles too!

2009-04-05T09:58:00.001-07:00

Recently, in one of my Indic blog, a Google Adsense appeard that is really embarrassing to both me and my readers.

Here is the screenshot of ads that appeared:

Apparently, the cunning advertiser had successfully fooled Google bot with Adult Hindi Keywords. I had immediately blocked the URL in Adsense ads filter, but by the time, damages had been done. Moreover, in India, displaying such advertisement in your blog may land you in serious legal hurdles and you may actually land in JAIL displaying such adult content on your blog!

Google must review its own advertisement policy and strict measure must be adopted to curb such menaces. A better solution – such as advertisement moderation is the need of the day.

In the meantime, be aware with your Google Adsense!

Here comes Playboy to sell Silverlight!

2009-03-23T05:55:00.001-07:00

Now you can read past issues of Playboy (55 selected issues spanning from 1955 to 2007) magazine all for free. But you need to download and install Silverlight (a free Microsoft product aming to give real blow to Adobe Flash) to view them.

Now that war is initiated, won’t Flash offer us free issues of Hustler?

Who knows. Only time will tell.

How to make your PC Hindi (say, Indic) friendly

2009-03-13T23:35:00.001-07:00

In Windows XP (not the case with Windows Vista or Windows 7 though), Hindi (read Indic) pages and applications having Hindi GUI looks ugly. Here is how to set your pc for good looking Hindi.

(Default Hindi display)

(Display after applying Hindi friendly settings)

(1) Right click on an empty space on your Desktop, and select Properties. A child window named Display Properties will open. Click on Appearence Tab and select Font Size - Large Font, and click on Apply.

(2) On Display Properties window, click on Effects button. Select Clear type on ‘Use the following method to smooth edge of screen font’dropdown option on the window that appears. Click OK.

(3) On Display Properties Window, click on Advanced button. Click on Active Window on the Advanced Appearece Window that appears. Select Mangal (or any other Unicode Indic font if you wish so) on the Font dropdown list for each item. Select Size 12-14 (you can experiment a bit) as anything less will display Indic font too small. Click OK, then click Apply and finally, click on OK to apply new settings.

Voila. Your PC is now Hindi friendly. Isn’t it ?

How to fix Thunderbird startup problem?

2009-03-06T09:47:00.001-08:00

Recently My Thunderbird stuck somewhere, and refused to start saying – Thunderbird already running. Close the process to restart or reboot your computer. I rebooted, tried to fix with reinstallation but failed. A quick search at Internet advised to remove .lock or parent.lock file under %APPDATA% directory. But I did not find one in my computer. Now what to do?

I simply removed profile.ini file under %APPDATA%Thunderbird directory, and restarted thunderbird. Voila, it fixed the problem.

How to Dual / Triple boot Windows 7 with Windows XP / Linux

2009-01-16T21:22:00.001-08:00

Here is no-nonsense quick take to dual / triple boot Windows 7 with Windows XP and Linux.

What you need additionally : Ubuntu Linux Live (or, any Live Linux CD/DVD) CD/DVD. You can download Ubuntu Live Linux CD from here.

Assuming that you are installing Windows 7 on a separate partition in a machine that had Windows XP and Linux installed already.

If your machine had only Windows XP and no Linux, Windows 7 is generous enough to let you choose to boot older version of Windows through its boot manager.

But, it deliberately ignore other non-windows OS and file system, and hence you can’t boot Linux through Windows 7 boot manager.

In such case, you need to restore GRUB boot manager. Follow these steps carefully and restore your old GRUB:

Boot through Ubuntu Linux Live CD/DVD

Start terminal and give following command:

$ sudo grub

You will then enter in grub configuration mode. Here, give following command:

$ root (hd0,0)

Then give following command:

$ setup (hd%1,%2) - here, %1,%2 is the disk volume and partition value of your original Linux installation where /boot/grub is already installed. For example, in my machine, it is on disk 1, partition 6, so the value will be – (hd0,5). So, be careful here else your Grub will not be restored, and you will get error message instead.

Finally, give following command within grub configuration mode:

$ quit

$ exit

Now, reboot (do not forget to remove Linux Live CD/DVD to boot from HDD). If everything had gone right, your Grub boot manager will load and prompt you to choose to boot from either Linux or Windows 7. Enjoy!

Why not to use Google Chrome in your Power Savvy Laptop?

2008-12-05T23:08:00.001-08:00

I had previously used and tested Google chrome for its Hindi (Indic) capabilities, and had quickly abandoned since it was giving trouble here and there. Recently, after going through a report about browser share – yes, Chrome is gaining share - I tested Chrome again.

To my horror, when I opened about 8-10 tabs in Google Chrome, my laptop’s on-demand CPU cycle remain steady at 100% status and because of this, my laptop goes red-hot and its battery drained more quickly than ever. Instead of usual Two-and-half hour back-up, my laptop’s battery drained completely within an hour.

Probably, this is because, Google chrome opens a new process every time when a user opens a tab, and hence it uses your precious CPU cycle, memory and – Well, your computer’s power at an unprecedented rate.

So, beware – use Google Chrome with caution especially when you are on Battery power.

I have used Opera, Konqueror (in Linux), Firefox, Internet Explorer, Epipheny – and found that Firefox uses least CPU cycles on its heavy usage. And, if you use Opera as RSS reader, otherwise a light browser, it too become bloatware.

Yet another reason to use Linux instead of (Windows) Vista

2008-12-02T08:52:00.000-08:00

Yet another reason to use Linux instead of (Windows) Vista

Recently I baught BSNL EV-DO card that provides broadband (144 Kbps – 2 Mbps – averaging about 500 Kbps) on the go. I tried to run it on my 64 bit Windows Vista Laptop (a triple boot machine XP, Vista 64 bit & Ubuntu 64 bit) but failed. Driver simply failed to work. However, it works well in Windows XP environment.

Then I tried it on Linux. On my Ubuntu 64 bit Linux machine, running this device is pretty much straight forward. Here is how you can install and run BSNL evdo card in your Linux machine too: (though you can do this with dozens of different methods with equal number of tools – classic Linux style!)

1 – install kppp if you don't already have. Skip to section 2 if you already have kppp. Connect to Internet with some alternative method, and then use following command to install kppp in Ubuntu:

# apt-get install kppp

2 - Now, run kppp by giving command:

# kppp

On the kppp window that appears, click on Configure, then click on Accounts tab that appears. Click on New, and then provide connection name such as BSNL, and in telephone number, fill #777. Click OK. Further, click on Modem tab and then click on New. Give it a name such as evdo, then onModem Device dropdown menu, select /dev/ttyUSB0. Click OK twice to save setting. Finally, click on Connect button on KPPP main window. And, Bingo! Your evdo device connects to internet instantly.

Except KPPP installation, the method given above will work well in all major latest Linux Distributions such as Fedora, Mandrive, SUSE etc.

Chhattisgarhi Operating System will now be a reality very soon

2008-10-30T08:33:00.001-07:00

I was dreaming for this since long-long ago. Now it will be a reality. Sarai had accepted to support Chhattisgarhi Localization of KDE. Here is the mail by which Gora announced this. Maithly and Gujarati were another language among accepted projects :

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Hello everyone, It gives us great pleasure to announce the list of fellowsfor the 2008 Sarai FLOSS fellowship programme.

The number of fellowships
this year represents a dramatic increase from pastyears. We are thankful to NIXI, and in particular, to theirCEO, Mr. Rajesh Aggarwal for their
generosity in making somany fellowships possible. Below is the list of 21 awardees.

The list is also availableonline at <http://www.sarai.net/fellowships/floss/2008-sarai-floss-fellowships-list> .

We will be in touch with each of the fellows, andalso with anyone who sent in a proposal by the coming weekend.Please feel free to write to me with any queries, and/orconcerns. The final list is: 1. Debayan Banerjee/Sawood Alam: Joint award for OCR in Urdu, Bengali, etc., based on Google Tesseract

2. Abhishek Choudhary et al: Hindawi is a system to allow programming in Indian languages. This project proposes to build online courseware to introduce the various components of Hindawi, to improve the project documentation, create a syllabus around Hindawi, distribute live CDs, and hold lectures.

3. Hassath: Making of a short film using FOSS tools, documenting the process, and listing pros and cons of the applications.

4. Sachin Joshi: Integrating automated speech recognition (ASR) for Hindi into the Linux platform.

5. Aadil Kak: Kashmiri font completion, and localisation of KDE 4.2.

6. Friji Karthikeyan: Internet Radio framework, with interface to, and hosting on Giss.tv

7. Satya Komaragiri: Speech-to-text support in OLPC, with Hindi ASR.

8. Manu Konchady: FOSS online tutor to teach students new languages, using text-to-speech, and a web-based framework.

9. Ajay Kumar: Sahana client on Openmoko mobiles. Sahana is the disaster relief management system used for the Bihar floods, tsunami, etc.

10. Sangeeta Kumari: Maithili localisation of KDE4.2, Fedora, and the Chatzilla IM client.

11. Pranav Madhyastha / Sriram Chaudhary: Joint award to develop a system of machine translation (MT) from English to Hindi.
This will consist of a web framework to assist improvement of the background engine, and work on an open-source MT engine, Anusaaraka.

12. Helen Mary: Open-source database, and tools to study mental retardation.

13. Kartik Mistry: Gujarati localisation of KDE 4.2, usability workshop, and some internationalisation work for KDE

14. Rajeev Sebastian: Indic text rendering in Scribus, a page layout (DTP) application, using the Harfbuzz library.

15. Shishir Sharma et al: Intelligent Transliteration from Romanised English to Hindi

16. Syed Shikeb: Urdu localisation of KDE 4.2.

17. Ravishankar Shrivastava: Chhatisgarhi localisation of KDE 4.2.

18. Sreeraj R: Adding feature to System Verilog support for ICARUS. System Verilog is a hardware description, and verification language (HDVL) used, e.g., to program FPGAs.

19. Srujanika: Addition to Oriya dictionary, including scientific and technical terms.

20. Shamail Tayyab: Web-based secure P2P. Promotes sharing in a community-based way

21. C S Yoganada: Extend Sagar (TeX) to Tamil, Telugu, Punjabi,Gujarati and Oriya

Regards,

Gora

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Congrats to all!

Get Email alert about new blog posts by BigB Amitabh Bachhan

2008-10-22T01:05:00.000-07:00

When you try to subscribe Amitabh Bachhan's Blog at BigAdda through a link given in sidebar, to your HORROR, you will see this:

For Some bizarre and strange reasons, registrations had been disabled!

Still, you can subscribe BigB's blog in your favorite Rss readers and E-mail client that support RSS feeds. The feed address of BigAdda - BigB blog is:

http://blogs.bigadda.com/ab/feed/

Further, If you want to get email alert on your inbox, (Once in a day - provided that there is new post by AB, by Feedburner.com ) here is a workaround - burn that feed as a new feed in Feedburner, and get subscribed yourself. If you think this is too complicated, I had deviced it for you. Simply fill your e-mail address in the box given below, click on subscribe button, confirm the subscription as directed and you are done.
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To Get E-mail ALERT about Amitabh Bachhan’s new blog post on your in-box, simply fill in your e-mail address below and click on subscribe button. You will get an e-mail alert from Feedburner whenever Big-B writes something new. Happy reading!

Windows Vista Resource Kit : A valuable reference book for all

2008-10-09T03:35:00.001-07:00

Windows Vista Resource Kit (Updated for Service pack 1) is jointly authored by Mitch Tulloch, Tony Northrup, Jerry Honeycutt with Microsoft Windows Vista team and Published by Microsoft Press. It may be considered as valuable, complete reference book for Windows Vista. A must for Windows Vista System administrator, since book had not only covered all new features of Windows Vista, but had few dedicated chapters on Windows Vista Troubleshooting.

The book’s content is divided in 6 parts namely,

Overview : What’s New, Improvement, security enhancement etc.
Deployment : Setup and installation issues, testing application compatibility, configuring Windows etc.
Desktop Management : Managing group policies, managing user disk & file system, bitlocker drive encryption in detail, managing printing, search, Internet Explorer etc.
Desktop Maintenance : Desktop Health, software update etc.
Networking : Configuring Firewall, remote users etc.
Troubleshooting : Issues related to Setup, Startup, Hardware, Driver, Disk Issues etc.

Further, the book contains valuable, easy How to guide for practically every tough task. For example, here is a few list that is self explanatory :

How to use startup and recovery dialogue box
How to use system configuration tool
How to use BCDEdit…

And so on…

The book is voluminous one and above stated 6 parts of the book had been further divided in to 32 detailed well crafted chapters. The book is full of illustrations and minutest of Vista’s aspect such as “how to use on-screen keyboard” had been illustrated. The book’s language is simple, the format is well designed for easy navigation and at the end, you can find glossary where you can search for the topics with the given keyword.

So, if you are going to work on Vista for quite some time, then go no further. Consider owning this book and you will never regret for your decision.

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Windows Vista Resource Kit (Second Edition)

Authors : Mitch Tulloch, Tony Northrup, Jerry Honeycutt with Microsoft Windows Vista team.

Publisher : Microsoft Press

ISBN No. 9780735625969

Pages : 1969, with a companion CD

Price : $69.99 Discounted price &44.09 at Amazon.com

Top missing features in Google Android Smart Phone

2008-10-02T10:16:00.001-07:00

Ok, ok, T-mobile’s G1 with Google Android is one hell big smart phone. But it had following missing features that makes it no smart in any way:

1 It can show your location with the help of GPS and Google Maps. It can even show you your way if you happen to live in some selected cities. I know my place’s position well. Can this piece of marvel tell you the position of the caller at the other end? Is it smart enough to tell me that the caller is calling either from his bathroom or is he actually on roming as he is claiming?

2 It can tell you description about the caller – which a simple phone can also do. But this smart phone can’t tell about the mood of the caller. For example, you are prepared to have a romantic chat with your fiancé or want to have a lovely conversation with your boss in the morning, but eventually you ended up receiving endless nags. And you say your phone is smart! Huh!

3 Can this smart phone – or any smart phone if that matters - tell you “Brother, you are going to misplace me right now, so be cautious” No! And it isn’t any smart either.

4 OK, when it get lost, it can lock & encrypt sensitive data so that no one can use it. But if some one stole it for forensic analysis – e.g. your fiancé – then can it destroy itself with all its sensitive data?

5 Agreed, your smart phone can do host of work that include entertaining you with audio-video, games, help you in your office work, can automatically order pizza… etc. But, is it smart enough to turn pages of news paper that you are reading right now? It can not prepare steaming hot coffee for you either.

Are you still going to say it as Smart? May be some day, in near future it may become one.

(picture courtesy - Gizmodo)

13 worst web glitches of 2008 (so far)

2008-08-19T00:54:00.001-07:00

In the era of Cloud Computing (Dell failed to get trade mark for this, thank god, else we may have to pay for this term too) web glitches are as certain for the mankind – as taxes and, well - death.

Here are # top 13 worst web glitches of 2008 (so far, and counting…)

# 1 – E-Mail : Yep, e-mail. Everybody had encountered more and more spam than genuine mail in the year 2008. No matter how strong you define filters for Viagra, no matter you use HSCA (Heaviest and deadliest Spam Cruncher Application) to weed out mail offering you Viagra, mail containing V}Agra or Vi{}gra will sneak in to your inbox to erect your anger. Isn’t e-mail be termed as the #1 worst web glitches of all time? Just Imagine our easy life if e-mail had not been invented in the very first place.

#2 – Blog : Do you blog? If not, then you are nobody. And that is why everybody – from celebrity to nobody is in to serious blogging. Blogging had made glitches everywhere – from work to relationships and what not. You are in to serious business, and your rss reader pops up from nowhere telling you that your web friend had just published a great blog post. And, you have to read it first at all cost. Damn, glitch!

# 3 – Social Networking sites : Orkut – Facebook – Linkdin et al : Web users are getting more and more antisocial with the help of these social sites. They are getting indulged in more and more virtual activity than REAL physical activity. Reading and writing scrap books and messages were getting more important than saying hello to your colleague next bench. Web Glitch for Social man? If not, then what?

# 4 – YouTube : Once upon a time, getting too bored with his idiot box (the TV), man turned to the web – only to find TV’s big daddy – the YouTube. All kinds of funny and racy videos out there makes glitches in your fertile mind before and after watching them! And with Zoost, BlipTV etc. - huh! Glitches – more Glitches!!

# 5 – Twitter : Man was never so much interested in what other men were doing in their bed rooms and bath rooms until Twitter arrives. Twitter also helps you know what your friend’s friend’s friend’s cousin is doing at the moment you were seriously trying to fix that damn bug in that tiny two lines program. If you do not think this as glitch, then you are a moron, and you are free to use as many twitter clones like pownce, tumblr and what not.

# 6 – Flickr : Photos – photos and photos. Beautiful Lindsay Lohan posing as nude Marlin Monroe, bathing Paris Hilton caught on camera, Michel Jackson without his nose prop and so on… If, according to you, these are not glitches for you, then go seek an appointment to your psychiatrist right away…

# 7 – Wikipedia : Ask somebody some question, and, instead of using his brains, he instantly turns to Wikipedia for an answer. If not, then, I bet, he sure turns to Wikipedia for a second opinion. The real glitch is, web-life without Wikipedia is now unimaginable.

# 8 – Google : Struck somewhere for a clue? Want tip to grow wheat in barn? How to overclock an ordinary digital clock? Google hai na. Turn to Google. And you will find 1000000000 answers. Means, 1000000000 glitches. Oh, man!

# 9 – IM, Skype, Gtalk : The real glitch here is the man with few words in his real life become too talkative. A case of split personality? Yeh, you are right. This is the real glitch with IMs.

# 10 – e-Bay : You have the newest and latest model of MP3 player, working in perfect working condition. Still, when an irresistible offer pops out in eBay with a big bargain, you opted to get one. The glitch here is, you already have a dozen or so latest MP3 player you have purchased within six months. And the case is similar with other gadgets as well. And for payment? There is another glitch. So, read on…

# 11 – PayPal : With PayPal donation button, you can always hope for begging hefty donation. The glitch is, they never materialize, and instead, you end up spending money with your PayPal account. If you have PayPal account, you are perfect candidate for glitch no. #10.

# 12 – The Piratebay : All your torrent search landed here. The glitch is, you never know which torrent had embedded Viruses and Trojans. And, if you think you are fine with Viruses and Trojans, then the glitches are for other parts – music companies, artists, application developers etc.

# 13 – Here comes glitch by you. So, comment on!

How Microsoft build IE 8?

2008-08-14T19:41:00.001-07:00

As IE8 beta is all set to come out any time soon in August 2008, it is interesting to know how it is being build – or the programmers plan to build IE8. An outline can be guessed from CHAT transcript with expert team of IE8 programmers.

You can read informative as well as interesting full transcript HERE.

How to copy and open multimedia / youtube swf video files from Opera cache?

2008-07-26T03:42:00.001-07:00

Opera browser is notorious in making everything cryptic inside its cache. When it stores internet history in its cache, it renames everything to its liking and you are left behind to guess which file belongs to what.

Still, you can use multimedia files renamed by Opera in such cryptic manner. For example, Multimedia / Youtube video files were normally big in size, and you can easily judge them by their size in cache directory. Oprea cache directory normally located at \Program Files\Opera\profile\cache4\. Under this directory you may find hundreds of files with cryptic names generally started with ‘opr’ prefix. Sort them by size and hunt for the file with a particular time stamp – i.e. the time when you were surfing or streaming a particular audia/video. Copy that file to another folder and rename it with extension swf (if Youtub video) or jpg or mp3 as the case may be. Open the file in appropriate program. If you use Mplayer, then you may directly open files of any media you have copied.

Scan (and clean) your Windows XP/Vista computer for viruses through a Live Linux CD

2008-07-26T03:20:00.001-07:00

You can do a lot of things through Live Linux CD – including playing Lara Craft game – oh, sorry, you are right – the game had some other silly, non sexy name.

You also can Scan and wipe out viruses off your Windows Machine (both from Fat32 as well as NTFS) through Linux Live CD equipped with F-Secure antivirus.

Download the zip file that contains iso image of the Virus Scanner Live CD from here.

The system scan remain Complete and thorough and hence you may experience it as a bit slower. But Virus cleaning is guaranteed with latest virus database from F-Secure (Need your computer be connected to internet.)

Download Hindi Chanakya font

2008-07-24T04:03:00.001-07:00

The old legacy, ascii Hindi font Chanakya.ttf is still being used a lot and is in great demand. Chanakya.ttf is known to work great for Hindi DTP.
The font in question is also used in online edition of Hindi newspaper Punjab Kesari.
You can find link to download font from Panjab Kesari site itself.
(The links have been removed due to Copyright issues.)

This font is quite different from Hindi Walkman-Chanakya font, which is a variant of hugely popular Krutidev font.

Manage your Zune through iTunes in a lot better way!

2008-07-24T01:43:00.001-07:00

If you want to add your previously collected MP3 files that necessarily may not have MP3 tags such as Album/Artist name, then Zune is notorious enough to not let you set album/artist name, and when you copy these files to your Zune, it keeps all of them in Unknown Artists category. In case you have hundreds of MP3 files then managing them will be next to impossible.

You can use MP3 tag editors to define album/artist name to avoid this. A better way is to use iTunes. In iTunes, select as many MP3 files you want to give album name, and right click on the selection. Click on Get Info.

A window named Multiple Item Information will appear where you can fill down Album name/Artist name / Genre and click OK to save. Then copy these MP3 files to your Zune in usual way. Now you will have album names/genre/artist in your Zune – easy to manage songs now!

world’s most stickered laptop (notebook pc)

2008-07-20T06:12:00.001-07:00

Ladies and Gentlemen, here is the world’s most stickered (laptop having pasted with highest number of stickers!) laptop:

Can you guess the proud owner of this antique – eh Unique piece?

And, can you count the stickers? At least you can give it a try!

Sorry, no hint!

How to download and install phonon.dll, phonon4.dll, libphonon.dll – phonon.dll download

2008-07-04T09:20:00.001-07:00

Many *nix applications are being now ported to Windows and when you try to run them, they display missing phonon.dll file error messages specially if the program is Multimedia kind.

Here are the files you can download :

phonon.dll

phonon4.dll

libphonon.dll

libphononexperimental.dll

Download these files and copy them in application’s directory. For example, if you are using KDE 4 Windows, then place these files in KDE4’s bin directory – where all KDE4 executables are placed.

You can try placing them in Windows system directory too.

How to uninstall problematic FireFox 3 extensions

2008-06-25T02:21:00.001-07:00

If some Firefox extension or add on started giving you trouble, and the trouble is so serious that Firefox simply fail to start, then what to do? Here is the simple way you can uninstall any Firefox extension:

Go to User’s - $Documents and Settings\a\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\ directory (the example is for user a under Windows. In Linux, the folder may be stored in your home directory under hidden directory .mozilla). You will find a cryptic directory such as this - p79bty4k.default. Under this directory, you will find a directory named extensions. Within that directory, all your Firefox extensions that you have installed so far were available. Now choose the offended one among the list – that may be an entry or a sub directory – and delete it. Restart Firefox. The offended firefox extension will vanish forever.

Hindi speech to text free program download

2008-06-23T04:01:00.001-07:00

There is a nice demo program released for Hindi (can be extended for Indic languages as well) speech to text conversion. Now you simply need to speak in a microphone and record your word directly in Unicode Hindi text. Alternately, you can give oral commands in Hindi to do computing tasks like “Thunderbird Kholo” to open thunderbird.

This Hindi speech recognition program is currently available for Linux as it is based on Sphinx and Perl. Still, a port to windows is possible in near future. The project is currently maintained by Sachin Joshi as a part of Sarai FOSS project.

Download Hindi Automatic Speech Recognition System from here

FireFox 3 problems arising and too many

2008-06-22T02:01:00.001-07:00

Just after creating Guinness word record for most download program in a day, it had been found that FireFox 3 has a critical code execution vulnerability that puts millions of Firefox3.0 users at risk of PC takeover attacks. That may be patched soon, but there were too many problems for users that had shifted from FireFox 2 to 3.

There were reports that FireFox 3 is unable to handle Hotmail correctly. Many Addons and FireFox plugins that are meant to version 2 are not working as well (see a workaround here). I too am getting trouble running things. For example, TinyMCE is not working properly in FireFox3.

Finally, Wine is out after maturing for 15 years

2008-06-18T01:37:00.001-07:00

Wine – the program that lets you run Windows Applications in Linux was finally released as Version 1 today. Wine was under rigorous development since last 15 years and had never been released as stable version.

With Wine1.0 stable release, now you can run thousands of Windows Applications directly on Linux that includes – MS Office, PhotoshopCS2, Lotus Notes, Half-Life, Command & Conquer etc.

Chances are, Wine is already available in your installed Linux distribution. All you need is to upgrade it to latest, stable version. Download wine from here.

Still, you may face occasional glitches in running Windows Applications in Linux through Wine. But, then Windows Vista don’t let you run all Windows applications either!

Three cheers for Wine.

Now Phishers have started targeting innocent mobile phone users

2008-06-16T23:57:00.001-07:00

After Internet, phishers have started targeting mobile phone users. They simply send a sms or mms message to contact them back either through a mobile number or through email. And when you get trapped in their hand, they extort money in the name of service charge, courier charges, taxes and what not. BEWARE of such messages and never reply them.

Here is an interesting story appeared in Fsecure blog:

There's an ongoing SMS / e-mail fraud underway.

People are receiving text messages to their phones that look something like this:

If you send an e-mail to the listed address, this is what you'll get back:

From: Gsm Notification (gsmn92@yahoo.com)
Date: 11.06.2008 11:49

FROM THE
DESK OF THE PROMOTION OFFICER,
GSM MOBILE SWEEPSTAKES PROMO.
CALLE CLAUDIO COELLO 41, 28001 MADRID,
SPAIN.

UNITED KINGDOM ( UK ) / SPANISH ALLIANCE GSM SUBSCRIBERS PROMOTION.

To,
Mr. Xxxx Xxxxxxx .
Verification No: CN435-663-6
Winning No: +35840XXXXXX
Country: Finland.

Date: 11th June , 2008.
Congratulations!!! On behalf of UNITED KINGDOM(UK)/SPANISH GSM Staffs we hereby

Congratulates you on your Mobile Phone Serial Number has won you the Sum of

€170,000.00 (One Hundred and Seventy Thousand Euro) on the ongoing UNITED
KINGDOM(UK)/SPANISH GSM MOBILE PROMOTION . A Cheque has been issued under your name ( Xxxxx Xxxxxxx.) and it will be Deliver to your House Address through the Deplomate Parcel Officers.

But you will never get any parcel or any check!

Read The full story here

Microsoft: If you can't beat Yahoo, pay live search users

2008-06-14T10:06:00.001-07:00

Microsoft had started paying its live search user. There was this story about a month back:

Microsoft has a big announcement today, one that should show the world they’re capable of running a search business even without Yahoo: their Live Search CashBack program will enable you to use special savings “coupons” after you buy stuff you’ve found using Live Search. (Read full story here)

Now, the cash-back award had gone one step further. Microsoft Live search cashback award had tied up with e-bay, and now you can redeem your cashback award with any e-bay purchase. Read the full story here

Now, the question is - Just for a few buck - will you use search that throw away irrelevant search result? May be not!

(picture courtesy Mashable.com)

How to display certain page elements / gadgets only on Home, Item or Archive pages ib blogger blog

2008-06-13T00:31:00.001-07:00

At times you need that certain page element or a piece of gadget should only appear on Home page of your blog, and not on archive or other pages. Similarly, some elements may not be so relevant in your blog's home page but are important for archive / individual post (item page) pages.

Now, the question is - how to do this?

There is an excellent article on Blogbuster that you can refer here to implement this in your Blogger blog.

How to make video screencasts on Linux

2008-06-12T21:47:00.001-07:00

A picture is worth a thousand words, especially when you're teaching someone how to do something on a computer, and recordMyDesktop is a great little Linux application for creating screencasts. YouTube is full of recordMyDesktop screencasts showing all kinds of captures, including Beryl/Compiz in action. I lead a dull life; I'm not into ripping music videos or wobbly 3D bling, but I do like having a tool
like this for good Linux show-and-tells. In this series we're going to learn how to create glorious Linux screencasts with sound and video.

Read the full story Here (part1) & Here (part2)

Download recordMyDesktop from here

Want to be a part of Guinness Word Record? Download Firefox 3 on June 17th

2008-06-12T21:27:00.001-07:00

This indeed will be the easiest way to become a part of Guinness Word Record holder party. Just download Firefox3 on 17th June 2008, and you will be counted as part of another history that is going to be created - Most download on a single day!

I hope Firefox had already strengthened their servers to meet the download demand. When Fedora9 was available to download, its download servers were crippled during initial hours.

Read the full story here and here

How to add multitouch gesture support to Synaptics TouchPad-equipped laptop

2008-06-11T22:38:00.001-07:00

If you happen to own a Laptop with Synaptics TouchPad (I have one, that is - Compaq V3225AU), and had installed Linux, then you can convert that touchpad in to a MultiTouchPad. After converting, you can then use that touchpad with gestures and hence can use that in many innovative way.

How to convert Synaptic Touchpad in to a MultitouchPad?

Read the full, step-by-step detailed tutorial here.

How to increase your Laptop's battery life, its power and backup time

2008-06-10T20:44:00.001-07:00

No matter how you have chosen the most expensive Laptop having world's most long duration battery power backup time, in practical world, it gets exhausted way too early. For example, company claimed that your laptop brand comes with 6 hours battery backup, but in actual use, it hardly runs up to 3 hours.

There are some great tips you can try to increase your Laptop's battery life as well as its backup time. Read the full article here

How to post to twitter from Linux

2008-06-10T10:11:00.001-07:00

Desktop client for posting Twitter posts makes your life easy. There are many excellent twitter clients for posting to Twitter on Windows environment. Linux has limited choice such as Twitux and gTwitter but still, you can effectively use these tool that can boost your productivity.

Mark Hinkle had an excellent post on How to use Twitter Clients on Linux.

Read complete story here.

How to install Ubuntu Linux in a USB Key / USB Flash Drive

2008-06-10T01:53:00.001-07:00

Installing Linux in a USB Flash drive can be tricky, and no straight procedure. However, here is a great article, giving you step-by-step account to install Ubuntu Linux in a USB Harddrive, with relevant screen shots that makes instructions even more clear.

Read the full article here

Got bored reading same and similar news in top blogs?

2008-06-09T07:24:00.001-07:00

Top blogs have tendency to lift big news ASAP. But, in the end, readers end up reading same and similar stories multiple times. Here is my take on the Story of Google Fevicon Design Contest :

Googleblog blogged about it Here.

Zdnet wrote about it - Google want your help with their icon

Google operating system featured this as New Google Favicon

Mashable had the same story but with different Heading - Google VP calls for comment on Favicon design

My Digital life directly asked you to Design Favicon for Google

QuickOnlineTips also asked you to Design favicon for Google

Techmeme lifted the plain odd heading of original google blog : One fish, two fish, way too many fish...

And the list goes on...

If you are going bombarding with same and similar news in so many top blogs, the what is the point subscribing all or many of them? But, then, nobody wants to ignore big, interesting news like this. A catch 22 - 22 situation?

World's top #10 Blogger blogs

2008-06-09T06:23:00.001-07:00

Which one is top, no. 1 Blogger Blog ?

Every one can have their own reason for their own choice, but BloggerBuster had released a list of World's top 50 Blogger Blog. For Ranking the blogs, combination of Google Pagerank, Technorati Rank,
Bloglines subscribers, Google Backlinks and Alexa rank had been used. Here is the complete rundown list. PLEASE don't offend if you do not find your own or your favorite one.

In next 10 Years, there will be no news papers : Steve Ballmer

2008-06-06T22:18:00.001-07:00

There will be no media consumption left in 10 years that is not delivered over an IP network. There will be no newspapers, no magazines that are delivered in paper form. Everything gets delivered in an electronic form. - Steve Ballmer [Read More]

Incidently, here in India, Media barons are engaged in never before war of launching new editions. DNA is launching its Jaipur edition today and Banglore edition is in pipeline, Patrika had launched its Bhopal editions... and so on.

It will be interesting to see their death warrant 10 years from now on.

How to play Gmail snakey within Gmail?

2008-06-06T21:31:00.001-07:00

If you are lucky one and use English interface, you will see Google Lab menu in Google Gmail Settings.

Click on it and select Old Snakey Radio button and save settings. Do not forget to enable Keyboard Shortcut in Setting>General menu.

Now, simply press & button of your keyboard and play Old, lovely Snakey.

I tied a few time, but, as you see, I need a little more practice!

How to add Gadgets in your Blogger Blog from within Blogger

2008-06-06T06:52:00.000-07:00

Blogger in Draft lets you add unlimited number of Gadgets in your Blogger blog. Simply sign in to your blogger blog account through Blogger in Draft, click on layout and then click on Add Gadget. You will be then given option to install from more than 40000 gadgets (as of now) that you can choose from.

Easy huh? Then, why not gadgetize your Blogger Blog to optimum level - so that it will become most Gadgetized blog in the world!

Yet another English to Hindi Machine translation system : Matra 2

2008-06-05T04:38:00.001-07:00

There was this Mantra - the English to Hindi Machine translation system, then comes Google English to Hindi (and vice versa) online machine translation system.

Finally, here comes yet another English to Hindi Machine translation system called Matra2 from CDAC.

Naveen Kumar of CDAC tested Matra2 against that of Google Translate and here comes an interesting comparison:

Here are some of the sentences that Naveen Kumar had tested randomly. (M) stands for Matra translations and (G) stands for Google translations

AIDS is a disease
ए.आइ.डी.एस एक बीमारी है। (M)
एड्स की बीमारी है (G)

Rama ruled Ayodhya for many years
राम ने बहुत साल के लिये अयोध्या रल किया। (M)
राम अयोध्या के लिए कई वर्षों तक शासन किया (G)

Rama killed Ravana
राम ने रावण को मारा। (M)
राम रावण मारे गए (G)

This is a dead language
यह एक मृत भाषा है। (M)
यह एक मृत भाषा (G)

English is national language of England
अंग्रेजी एन्ग्लन्ड काई राष्ट्रीय भाषा है। (M)
राष्ट्रीय भाषा अंग्रेजी है इंग्लैंड (G)

President bush is dumb
राष्ट्रपती झाड़ी गूज़्गा है। (M)
राष्ट्रपति बुश है मूक (G)

I like translating documents
मैं दस्तावेज़ों का अनुवाद करती हैं। (M)
मैं जैसे दस्तावेज़ों का अनुवाद (G)

I like document translation
मैं दस्तावेज़ अनुवाद पसन्द करती हूँ। (M)
मैं जैसे दस्तावेज़ अनुवाद (G)

India is a country of thinkers
भारत चिन्तक का एक देश हैं। (M)
भारत एक देश के विचारक (G)

This course provides you a comprehensive overview of what is open source, how to start using it, how to be part of the open source community and how to contribute to the community. At the end it introduces you various bussiness models and licences that exist today in the open source world.

यह पाठ्यक्रम प्रदान कर आप एक विस्तृत सिंहावलोकन का वट हो खोल स्रोत , कैसा शुरू हो जा इस्तेमाल कर वह , कैसा हो भाग का खोल स्रोत समाज और कैसा सहयोग दे समाज एन्ड पर, वह आप भिन्न कामकाज नमूने और लिसेन्सिज़ वह खुला स्रोत विश्व में आज मौजूद हैं पेश करते हैं। (M)

यह पाठ्यक्रम प्रदान करता है आप एक व्यापक परिदृश्य का खुला स्रोत क्या है , कि किस प्रकार इसका प्रयोग शुरू करने के लिए , कैसे हो समुदाय का हिस्सा खुला स्रोत और कैसे योगदान करने के लिए समुदाय के हैं . अंत में यह परिचय आप व्यापार के विभिन्न मॉडल और लाइसेंस मौजूद है कि आज दुनिया में खुला स्रोत है . (G)

Malaria killed most people in Africa
मैलारीअ ने अफ्रिक में मोस्ट लोगों को मारा। (M)
मलेरिया अफ्रीका में अधिकांश लोग मारे गए (G)

Insects are most dangerous animals on this planet
कीड़े यह प्लैनिट पर मोस्ट खतरनाक पशु हैं। (M)
सबसे खतरनाक जानवर हैं कीड़ों पर इस ग्रह (G)

Interesting? perhaps. All said, as database increases, translation quality is bound to refine. And in near future, Machine translation will be near perfect.

By Goosh ! it is equally great for localized search too!

2008-06-03T23:17:00.001-07:00

Everybody is excited about new, browser based, command line search tool Goosh. The very concept and easy of web app had steal the hearts of one and sundry.

Another best part of the Goosh is – it is equally compatible and efficient while searching in Localized languages. It means, Goosh is fully Unicode enabled.

Here is my take on Goosh with Hindi language:

I gave the command –

guest@goosh.org:/web> blogs मुंहफट

And the result is :

Pretty good and admirable, neat and clean and well, EXACT – what I had wanted in first place.

Then I tried to Translate I Love You in Hindi. For this, I gave following command in Goosh:

guest@goosh.org:/web> translate en hi I love you

And the result is –

Again, perfect. Though the translations of long sentences got meaningless - but then it is no fault of Goosh but that is of Google translator tool itself.

Long live Goosh. I want many more command to be included it it soon. For example – this one:

>email a@a.com Hello how are you

Will send my message Hello how are you to a@a.com. And what about this –

>twitter a.twitter.com ***** Right now I am writing a review on Goosh

Will publish Twitter post Right now I am writing a review on Goosh to my twitter account.

Well, the options and wish list are endless….

How to delete Windows Vista Folder ?

2008-06-03T08:38:00.001-07:00

Deleting Windows vista folder is next to impossible. You cannot delete it even in multiboot environment - while booting from other partition having other versions of Windows OS. Windows Vista folder contains whopping 8GB space and at times it becomes essential to claim this unused space. To reclaim this space, you need to reformate the partition and eventually face risks of data loss. In some cases, you need pricy third party tool. Here is free easy workaround for you.

Download and burn Knoppix 5.1.1 (or later) Linux live cd from here and boot your machine using this live CD.

Knoppix 5.1.1 Live CD will automatically detect and place icons for your computer’s all available harddisk partitions on Knoppix desktop. Right click and select read write mode to mount the partition which contains Windows Vista files that you want to delete. The partition will be mounted in read write mode.

Now double click over this partition’s icon to open it with Konqueror. Go to Windows Folder, right click on it and select delete. Some time it will ask for root privilege – in that case, open terminal and with sudo Konqueror command, run Konqueror in root user mode and then delete the Windows folder.

Acrobat.com : Decorated sans Unicode support

2008-06-02T22:18:00.001-07:00

The all new online office suit - Acrobat.com is all set to alter user experience of any given web application. This online office suit has most beautifully decorated web interface, its Flash based design is real fast and cool animated menus were cool to your eyes too. You can export, import and share your document as any other web office application.

But it has many glitches too. For example, it has Flash based login form instead of plain HTML that may hinder simple copy paste login.

The biggest letdown factor is lack of Unicode support. When you try to enter Unicode character in Buzzword documents, all you will see were dots. However, while copy pasting the same to local notepad, Unicode characters magically reappears. It indicates that may be there were some problem in displaying and rendering Unicode characters.

Still, Acrobat.com offers many new, funky features that users will love and adore.

Google’s top 10 flop

2008-06-02T05:49:00.001-07:00

Google is #1 web company delivering many superb web apps – most of them free for most users. It doesn’t mean Google had not delivered Flops.

PC word had complied list of top 10 Google flop –

1 Google X

2 Google Catalogue

3 Google Video Player

4 Google Web Accelerator

5 Google Answer

6 Google Coupons

7 Google Video Search

8 Google Voice Search

9 Google Viewer

10 Google Checkout

How to recover corrupted NTFS data through Knoppix Linux Live CD / DVD

2008-06-01T20:39:00.001-07:00

Recently one of my PC having Windows XP failed to boot. I tried to reinstall the OS. But Windows XP installer gave the error message that C drive having NTFS partition contains undefined File system, and it needs to be formatted. The partition in question contained valuable data, and an alternate way was needed.

I tried to boot with Knoppix 5.1.1 Live CD. It was a breezy success. It showed all the partitions of hard disks on my desktop. When I tried to mount the corrupted partition (C drive in Windows), it asked me to Force mount it since the partition in question had some problem. I said yes, and voila! It worked.

I changed the attribute of other mounted harddisks NTFS partition to read-write mode (right click on partition in question and select read write attribute) and copied all my data to other, safe partition. Knoppix 5.1.1 had built in NTFS partition READ-WRITE capabilities. You can also use USB Key or Burn a CD / DVD to backup data.

After backing up my data, I reformatted the C drive and finally I was able to clean reinstall WindowsXP again.

You can download latest Knoppix Live CD / DVD image for free from HERE

How may ways you can use your notebook PC?

2008-06-01T19:53:00.001-07:00

Especially if it is ultra thin MacBook Air.

There were reports, that increasingly, people were using it to cut cake, bread and what not. Here, founder of Voodoo PC and CTO of HP's global gaming business - Rahul Sood is cutting his birthday cake by MacBook Air. Expensive, Nice replacement for knife, huh?

I have a Compaq V3225 AU notebook. It gets so hot at its bottom that you can virtually fry PAPADs, and, in dire need, you can prepare a cup of hot steaming coffee. Am I joking? NO. You have to use it to believe it!

Now, this is the REPLY - The Pirate Bay way!

2008-06-01T00:23:00.000-07:00

Recently I was wandering in web and found this very funny reply from TPB - The Pirate Bay. Often, given the opportunity, instead of your very polite reply, you too may have been considering giving these types of reply since long. Well, read on the reply of the letter from Warner Brothers:

From: anakata To: "Dorothy Sherman | GrayZone, Inc." Date: Thu, 09 Jun
2005 13:57:17 +0200

On Wed, 2005-06-08 at 15:35 -0400, Dorothy Sherman | GrayZone, Inc.
wrote: > First Notice of Infringement and Declaration

"First Notice of Infringement"? Is that kind of like when I don't pay my
bills on time? "First notice", "Second notice", "Third notice", "WE KILL
YOU!", then a package with the sawed-off head of a pig?

> TO: THEPIRATEBAY.ORG > Fredrik Neij > PRQ > Box 1206 > Stockholm 11479
> SE > Phone: 46.707323819 > Fax: 46.707323819 > tiamo@prq.se >
info@prq.se

We already know our own postal address - you don't have to inform us of
it.

> TO: TFR.ORG > Tenhults Forenade Rollspelare > Davidbagares gata 12 >
Stockholm 11138 > SE > Phone: 1.467047954 > tiamo@TFR.ORG > > >
REGARDING: http://thepiratebay.org/search.php?q=billy+corgan > >
IMMEDIATELY REMOVE ALL UNRELEASED AND UNAUTHORIZED MATERIAL IN >
CONNECTION WITH BILLY CORGAN.

IMMEDIATELY STOP SCREAMING. You may also consider not using red,
underlined HTML.

> IMMEDIATELY REMOVE ALL TORRENT FILES OF BILLY CORGAN's UNRELEASED >
MATERIAL PLANNED FOR RELEASE ON WARNER BROS. RECORDS, INC. THE >
FOLLOWING LINK AND ALL BILLY CORGAN DOWNLOADS MUST BE COMPLETELY >
REMOVED: > > http://thepiratebay.org/search.php?q=billy+corgan > (see
below)

Sorry, but I can't remove search.php - our users would get upset if TPB
suddenly lacked a search function. The problem here seems to be that the
material is unreleased? If that is the case, you can easily fix the
problem by releasing it. We'll be more than glad to help you distribute
it - free of charge! - to our users.

> WARNER BROS. RECORDS, INC. > > I, the undersigned, do solemnly and
sincerely declare and CERTIFY > UNDER PENALTY OF PERJURY that: > > 1. I
am the owner or an agent authorized to act on behalf of the owner > of
certain intellectual property rights, said owner being named WARNER >
BROS. RECORDS, INC. ("IP Owner"). > > 2. I have a good faith belief that
the materials identified in the > addendum attached hereto are not
authorized by the above IP Owner, its > agent, or the law and therefore
infringe the IP Ownerÿs rights > according to the laws of the (check
all that apply): > > United States > Australia > Canada > EUR > France >
Germany > Italy > Japan > Mexico > Netherlands > Russia > Sweden >
United Kingdom > All of the above X > > Please act expeditiously to
remove or disable access to the material > or items claimed to be
infringing.

The material hosted on The Pirate Bay is (check all that apply): Your
copyrighted work German scheisse-porn Torrent files X

> 3. I may be contacted at: > > Printed Name: Dorothy Sherman > Title:
Consultant > Company: Warner Bros. Records, Inc. > Address: 3300 Warner
Blvd. > Burbank, CA 91505 > Attn: Susan Genco, Esq. > > Email
(correspondence): GrayZone@rcn.com > Telephone: 212 946-1718 > > > You
should understand that this letter constitutes notice to you that > the
sale and/or other distribution of this product is unauthorized. > This
letter > does not constitute a waiver of any right to recover damages
incurred > by virtue of any such unauthorized activities, and such
rights as well > as > claims for other relief are expressly retained.

You should understand that your email and all further communication with
us will be published at http://thepiratebay.org/legal.php , and that we
will charge you for the web publishing and hosting services. Should I
send the invoice to your address above?

> Finally, notwithstanding our use of the required notice form, we >
believe that http://thepiratebay.org 's activities and services fall >
outside the scope of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA"). >
Our use of this form, as required by law, is meant to facilitate >
http://thepiratebay.org 's removal of the infringing product listed >
above and is not meant to suggest or imply that >
http://thepiratebay.org 's activities and services are within the >
scope of the DMCA.

We are well aware of the fact that The Pirate Bay falls outside the
scope of the DMCA - after all, the DMCA is a US-specific legislation,
and TPB is hosted in the land of vikings, reindeers, Aurora Borealis and
cute blonde girls.

> I make this declaration conscientiously, believing it to be true and >
correct, and in accordance with the laws of each of the countries >
listed > above. I am aware and agree that the contents of this statement
may > be relied upon against me in any court or arbitration proceeding.

So it's OK with you if we bring legal action against you for a) claiming
that we host any infringing files, which we don't, b) claiming that DMCA
has any relation what so ever to the activites of the site, and c)
making my eyes bleed by writing in UPPERCASE, underlined, and red text?

> Fictionally, > > Dorothy Sherman > Digital Signature: Verisign

I fixed the typo for you.

===============

You can read many more such REAL reply HERE - and they are absolutely entertaining!

Finally, Windows XP / Vista goes true Multilingual

2008-05-30T00:28:00.000-07:00

Finally, Windows XP / Vista goes true Multilingual, the way I had always wanted.

Thanks to KDE4 port to Windows, NOW you can run your applications and programs (you can choose among 100s such from KDE4) within Window in true Multilingual style. Here is how:

Download the Latest KDE4Windows installer from here. And run it.

Select applications, program packages and LANGUAGES you want to use among many supported languages at KDE4Windows installer options.

Once the KDE4Windows installed, start KDE4 applications and click on Help. You will see “Switch Application Language” dropdown menu. Select the language you want, and click OK. Restart the application. Your application will be up and running in new language environment. You can start as many applications in as many languages as you want (only one instances of one application) and there is virtually no limitations!

(click on image to see larger picture)

The above screenshot shows running some popular KDE Games apps in Hindi, Nepali, Tamil and Panjabi languages simultaneously within Windows XP.

For detailed instructions to how to install KDE4 in Windows, refer this and this articles.

Update : New kde4windows installer can add Windows Program Menu entries, from where you can run kde 4 applications. See screenshot below. As you can see, menu appears in Localized languages (here,Hindi) too:

(click on image to see larger image)

Hindi Spell Checker Plugin for Firefox

2008-05-29T01:21:00.001-07:00

Here is the first ever release of Hindi Spell checker plugin / addon for Firefox. It works well in FF version through 1.5 to 3.x.

Download and install Hindi Spell checker Addon for firefox from here.

To use, type in Hindi in any input box within Firefox and right click anywhere in Input box and then select Hindi Spell Check. Misspelled words will be underlined with red marks. Right click on them and select the suggested, appropriate word. You can add new Hindi word by selecting Add this Word.

Here is some example -

Check spelling on Google Indic Transliteration :

Check spelling in Blogger post editor :

Misspelled Word suggestion:

For detailed instructions to how to use Hindi Spell Checker Firefox plugin, pl see this page (Hindi)

Thanks to G. Karunakar for providing Hindi-Words (Approx. 1 Lakh, some needs proof-reading though.)

Do you double check the web addresses?

2008-05-28T09:39:00.001-07:00

To avoid phishing, double check the web addresses. Especially, those where you need to input information about yourself.

The above picture is a screenshot of a fake phishing website, fully loaded to cheat you. But it looks more authentic than Google.

So, double check the address. And if you feel suspected, try PhishTank to verify.

Photo courtesy F-secure

How to split Unicode text files?

2008-05-27T12:13:00.001-07:00

There are hundreds of File splitter and merger utility available for you to choose and use.

But only a few support Unicode. If you try to split Unicode text files through non unicode supported tool, your data may lost and all you end up collecting Garbage.

Here is a nice utility called JR Split Files that you can use to split / merge Unicode text files. The tool is tiny one, merely of 170 KB. Simply download from here, unzip it and start using. No installation required, and the interface is pretty straight forward.

You can ALSO define in how many parts (byte size) you want your files.

How to install Windows live writer in Windows XP?

2008-05-27T01:29:00.000-07:00

Windows live writer is one of the best blog publishing tool as of now. But it had one of the worst installation tool (for XP at least) and you get many errors during installation. Here is your workaround :

(1) If you have earlier version of windows, then pl install SP2, or at least download and install latest .net framework from here. Current one is version 3.5

(2) Download and Install latest Windows installer. The latest one at the time of writing this article can be had from here

(3) Download and Install IE 7 from here

(4) Finally, Download and install Windows Live installer from here.

The download links were direct one and were working fine at the time of writing this article.

Adsense goes truly contextual.

2008-05-19T06:19:00.000-07:00

Since last week, Adsense program had gone truly contextual. That is, it had stopped displaying adsense advertisement on pages which are in Adsense-non-supported languages. Though it is continuing displaying Referral Ads. Many users have confirmed this. And, if you view these non English language pages translated in English through Google translate tool, advertisement dynamically reappears. Earlier, once you signed up with any supported language such as English language as Language option, it lets continue to display advertisement in English to non supported languages pages such as in Hindi Blogs.

Now, unsupported language users such as Hindi walah have no option but to wait till Adsense program start supporting their language or hunt for other option to monetize their web pages. But then there were very limited choice in the offing. Anyway, Adsense program for non supported language such as implementation on Hindi (it was always taken as experimental) was not delivering things up to the mark and except a very few, most users were waiting for their first cheque from Google. Even, that dream had vanished for now.

Let us hope, Google adsense program will soon start supporting all the languages on the web.

How to reduce / lower temperature of AMD processor?

2008-04-16T05:17:00.001-07:00

Your AMD laptop is too hot to handle? It is so hot that you can virtually fry a PAPAD with it or prepare a cup of hot coffee over it?

Your AMD PC are getting freezing now and then due to excessive heat?

Come summer season and you face problem like this – especially in Indian sub-continent.

You can cool down your PC / Laptop a little bit with a little utility though.

AMD had since been released a utility called cool-and-calm utility that works with certain AMD processors and certain OS. If you use Windows, try your luck with this download:

http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/utilities/AMD_Processor_Driver_1320053.zip

There is another one for Linux too. Search www.amd.com for your version of linux.

Simply unzip and install the above utility. It takes your processor in on-demand mode by reducing its clock speed and hence keep the temperature less by about 5-10 degree Celsius otherwise.

How to run KDE 4 applications in Windows XP / Windows Vista directly off CD/DVD ROM?

2008-03-25T00:02:00.000-07:00

Run KDE 4 Desktop applications in Windows XP / Windows Vista directly off CD/DVD ROM.

Here is how:

Install kde4 for Windows in your computer as described here.

Copy entire install directory of KDE 4 and burn it on a DVD (you can use CD ROM too, if you have installed few apps. A full KDE install takes about 2.5 GB).

Now put DVD on any Windows XP / Windows Vista computer and run KDE applications directly by executing .exe files from DVD’s Kde 4 bin sub-directory under installation directory.

For example, you can double click kate.exe under bin sub-directory on CD/DVD Rom to run it.

You can copy the entire KDE 4 install directory to another Windows XP / Vista computer’s hard disk and can run kde applications without the need of cumbersome installations.

How to run KDE applications in Windows ?

2008-03-16T02:41:00.001-07:00

Run KDE in Windows

Ktuberling and many other KDE application running on Windows:

(Click on the picture to see enlarged picture)

KDE – the desktop environment for GNU-Linux is true cross platform set of application tools that you can install and use in nearly all top class Operating System environment – that includes Windows OS.

Here is no nonsense, straightforward ‘how to guide’ for you to install KDE 4, the latest version of KDE in Windows XP (may work in other Windows versions as well):

Step 1 : Go to this link : http://download.cegit.de/kde-windows/installer/

and download the latest KDE 4 for Windows GUI installer, and run it. You need to remain connected to Internet since this is an online installer.

Step 2 : In its next step, Kde 4 Windows installer will ask you to select download server. Select the one which is close to you and has sufficient bandwidth. Then Click Next.

Step 3 : Now you need to select the supported application to download. You can download source code of some of application / packages too. If you are unsure, click on KDE on package category and KDE application with all dependency files will gets displayed and you can then select them individually. When done, click Next.

Step 4 : KDE 4 Windows installer will start downloading packages from the mirror server you had selected, and will take a little time to download them that may depend upon your selection. Wait till your download completes. Meanwhile, feel free to perform other windows task till your downloads completes.

Step 5 : After download, KDE 4 Windows installer installs applications and packages you had selected. If you have used 3^rd party tools such as Active perl, then you need to give your input such as agree to their license term by clicking I accept button and clicking on next button.

Step 6 : When installations finishes, KDE Installer tells you that now you can run your KDE application in Windows, else it will give you error message, and you need to act upon that. At times, some files may not be available during setup and you can ignore that file.

Step 7 : Before you run KDE application in Windows, you need to give (presently, to fix certain things) following commands in your command window:

C:\KDE4> bin\update-mime-database C:\KDE4\share\mime

And,

C:\KDE4> bin\kbuildsycoca4 --noincremental

Note that here, c:\kde4 is the directory in which you have installed KDE 4 for Windows, that may be different according to your choice.

KDE’s Khangman with its glossy semitransparent effect running on Windows XP:

(Click on the picture to see enlarged picture)

You can find latest, further information, support and guide here:

Kde 4 windows how to

http://techbase.kde.org/index.php?title=Projects/KDE_on_Windows/Installation

----------

Anatomy of a phishing site

2008-03-03T21:59:00.001-08:00

Here is the anatomy of a phishing site. Discussed in great detail. brought to you by F-secure blog. You will wonder that hundreds of bogus websites containing Paypal and Citibank as words in their bogus URL had been used to fool innocent Internet users. A MUST read.

Read the complete story here:

Anatomy of a phishing site

Now give commands in Windows in complex Asian languages like Hindi, Tamil... etc.

2008-02-12T01:35:00.001-08:00

These kinds of features were available in *nix platform (probably in Mac too) since long. Now you can use Indian Languages (Asian complex script fonts) such as Hindi, Tamil, Punjabi to give commands in your very own Windows. You can use vernacular language commands to not only open applications, but to write complex script too. With the use of Windows PowerShell's advanced features like pipes, you can write powerful scripts for your everyday computing need.

You can use these (say in Hindi) commands through Alias only. It means that there were no internal commands in other languages. For example you can set alias for notepad.exe as (set your browser View setting view>encoding>Unicode UTF-8 to view command in Hindi) नोटपैड with the help of Windows PowerShell set-alias utility like this: –

Set-Alias नोटपैड "c:\windows\notepad.exe"

Now you can start notepad by giving नोटपैड command in PowerShell command terminal window .

Similarly, if you give command नोटपैड मेरी फ़ाइल then Notepad will start, if मेरी फ़ाइल.txt is available, it will open it for you, else will ask you to create one for you..

You can create Alias for all your applications. For example, you can set दस्तावेज़ as alias for your MS Word program like this –

Set-Alias दस्तावेज़ "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Hindi Office\Office12\winword.exe"

Now you do not need to click open MS Word in Windows Start Menu. Simply give command दस्तावेज़ in PowerShell command input terminal and MS Word will fire instantly..

As you can see, दस्तावेज is not displaying correctly here. In Linux systems too, except in some graphical shell, Complex Script like Hindi are not displaying correctly in Shells. But this does not debar you to use these languages for giving everyday computing commands.

There were detailed user manual and getting started guide for using Windows PowerShell that can be used to write complex script in one's own language. Windows PowerShell is currently available in Early Alfa, and is released free to download and use.

Download Windows PowerShell from here

Download Documents and Manual for Windows PowerShell from here

How to connect to Reliance Internet in Linux using RIM LG / Nokia / Samsung CDMA mobile phone and USB data card/stick ?

2008-01-06T00:48:00.001-08:00

Here is a no nonsense quick guide for you to connect to Reliance Internet in Linux using LG / Nokia / Samsung CDMA mobile phone and USB data card/stick ?

1

Open terminal and give command –

# dmesg | grep ttyACM

If you get some output, fine. You can go ahead. (Else your Kernel is not ready. It means it require additional steps to enable USB module upgrade/recompile your Linux Kernel)

2

Give this second command in terminal as Super user.

# ln –s /dev/ttyACM0 /dev/mobile

Please note that 0 in ACM0 is ZERO (Number) and not O (character).

3

Give third command as super user :

# chmod a+rw /dev/mobile

4

Open gedit as super user, copy paste following code and save it as mobiles.rules file in /etc/udev/rules.d folder :

Content: BUS=="usb" SYSFS{product}=="Qualcomm CDMA Technologies MSM*" KERNEL=="ttyACM*" SYMLINK=="mobile" MODE=="666"

Now Start KPPP. You need to configure it. Click on Configure button to create a new account. Phone number will be #777 and User Name and Password both will be your mobile phone number. Further, you need to specify modem. For this, in KPPP Configuration window, Click on Modem tab, and click on New and then select /dev/ttyACM0 from dropdown list as your modem and click OK.

Now you are ready to connect to Internet through KPPP with this newly created connection.

(Courtesy - An article by Prabind Kr Singh in Linux For You, January 2008, regarding connecting TATA indicom USB stic. Method will be similar, only User name and Password will be different - use internet as username and password.)

List of top 100 blogs of year 2007.

2008-01-01T22:11:00.001-08:00

Here is the list of top blogs of 2007. Top 125 elite blogs precisely. Elitechoice.org had published the list of top 125 blogs of the year 2007. Many of them are my favorite too, and am reading for quite some time regularly – such as Gizmodo, Mashable etc.

I was a bit surprised though. I could not find Digital Inspiration in the list. It may have appeared in Technology Section. What do you say?

See the complete list here

Technorati tags: top blogs, elite blogs, top 100 blogs of year 2007, list of top 100 blogs

Honey, I shrunk the pics...

2007-12-31T23:15:00.001-08:00

How to shrink picture sizes on the fly and dynamically?

You know that newer Digital camera now comes with 39 Megapixel and the trend will go upward further. Now, when you try to send these huge files to your friend via email or want to upload somewhere in the web, unless it is for taking large print or of some academic value, LARGE photos are normally useless for the user when used in e-mails and web sites. A web page with smaller photo tends to load quickly. And it is an established truth that your reader may go away from your page if it does not load within 10-15 seconds.

There were hundreds of tool available to manipulate picture size. But, these two very convenient, on the fly picture size conversion freeware tool may be your ultimate friend:

1 - Windows Powertoys [Download] - Simply download this tool, install it and it is ready to convert your picture size on virtually anywhere where your context menu appear. Right Click on any picture and select Resize Picture context menu, and select appropriate picture size and you are done.

2 - Shrink Pic [Download] - Download and install this tool if you send large quantities of pictures to your friends or clients or you are involved in serious Photoblogging. This tool converts large pictures to web/email friendly small size pictures on the fly (you don't need to do anything once you install and configure it. It remains sit on system tray and once you attach a picture in your mail, it gets activated, and reduces the attached picture size.). It works equally great in Email Clients like Outlook or Thunderbird and Web mail like YahooMail or Gmail. If you photoblog with email, this tool may be your ultimate one.

----

In Linux, there were many programs you can use (for a normal user, not an advanced one who can use scripts;) such as GIMP, Krita etc. but they need manual manipulations.

----

Maybe, you have used other similar applications worth mentioning. Please let us in your comments.

Murphy’s Law of New Year

2007-12-30T01:57:00.001-08:00

Murphy’s New Year laws

· New year comes with new problems

· New year comes with new, strange problems

· New year comes with old resolutions.

· In New year, old resolutions are taken with gravity to forget about it with equal gravity.

· New year’s resolutions goes the same way as old ones – remain unfulfilled.

· New year’s resolutions are easy to take but impossible to fulfill.

· New years first morning always comes with a hangover.

· New year passes same like old one.

· New year comes with same, old thing.

· In New year, your thoughts will not do magic either.

· New year comes late and goes fast.

· In New year – progress is eternal – in taxation, pollution, inflation, viruses, spam…

· In New year, you will have new thoughts that will not work either.

· New year’s experience will remain as old one.

· Smile. New year will be tough.

· For any given person, his or her best New years had already been past.

· Time passes, (new) years gets accumulated.

· New year goes the same way as old one and if you try to shift other way, it tries harder to go same way.

· You can’t buy happiness in this New year too.

· You won’t be new in New year.

· New year is great for everyone, but unfortunately, it comes a year or two later.

· Tanks, a bad year had passed. Worst comes as New year.

· Opportunity does not arrive in a New year. Either it had come with the past one or will come a year or two later.

· New year comes with great opportunity for great mistakes.

· History repeats itself. In New year, it will remain so.

· New year does not prove anything worthwhile.

· New years’ party’s intensity is directly proportional to how hard the going year had been experienced.

· New year brings you new expectations and left as it is after a year.

· New year can’t change anything. Including you.

· There is big myth that there is a thing like New year.

How to type Unicode Hindi in Remington (Krutidev series) Keyboard in Linux?

2007-12-10T23:38:00.000-08:00

Online, the easiest way-

Use this online tool (you can use it offline too by saving it at appropriate location,)

http://raviratlami.googlepages.com/Remington-Krutidev-Online-Hindi-Easy-Editor.htm

Offline way, you need to install a remington binary file for scim:

Make sure you have installed latest version of SCIM.

Download this binary file - dev.remington.bin from here:

http://oriya.sarovar.org/download/dev.remington.bin

And copy it to /usr/share/scim/tables.

Restart SCIM.

There should now be an entry for Remington
under Hindi.

You can also copy
http://oriya.sarovar.org/download/dev.remington.png
to /usr/share/scim/icons.

(thanks to Gora Mohanti, gora at sarai dot net for the offline tip)

Why not to purchase Compaq Pressario Notebook V3225AU!

2007-12-10T23:13:00.000-08:00

I had blogged about certain issues that I had faced with this particular unit in my previous post. The main reasons were - Its 64 bit Hardware was bundled with 32 bit operating system, and it is getting too hot to handle at its bottom!

After a few months of use, its optical drive starts giving trouble. To get it repaird, I had to submit it at Indore - that is 130 KM away from my location!

Anyway, I finally submitted the said unit to My local Vendor Satyam Computers Ratlam on 29th November 2007. It was delivered to Redington Indore on Dated 1-12-2007. But was refused since they do not accept on Saturdays and Sundays. Finally, it was delivered on 3-12-2007 for repair! (And, you talk about 24x7 service man!)

After 10 days, I got my repaired Laptop on dated 10-12-07. And, shockingly I found that the DVD drive is not reading any CD/DVD. After repair, the laptop was received in worst condition. I resubmitted the said unit for repair again, and am keeping my fingers crossed - when will I get my laptop back, and in good condition? Meanwhile, people at Redington Indore don't talk nice. I had registered a complain to HP-COMPAQ. Let us see what happened.

Meanwhile, I advise my readers to stay away from purchasing such type of faulty pieces. Further, always purchase Laptop/Notebook of brands that give you ON-SITE warranty or at least their service centers were located nearby you. I had burned my fingers, and I will not let this to my readers.

Following is the TEXT of complaint I had lodged at HP-Compaq site:
-----------

My Compaq Pressario Notebook V3225AU - Sl. No. (S)2CE7214Q0X, Product No. (1P)RY301PA#ACJ had giving me error in reading DVD/CD Rom drive. The said unit was deposited to HP service center REDINGTON INDORE for repair. The said unit was deposited on dated 3-12- 2007 to rectify the problem in reading CD/DVD ROM drive.

The unit was only repaired and delivered on dated 8-12- 2007 - i.e. after 6 days. With utter dismay, It was found that the unit was not reading any CD/DVD media - while earlier it was reading some. The repaired unit was received in worst condition.

The said unit is again submitted today to Redington Indore, India for repair.

The technician at Redington Indore called me for administrative password of my Laptop. Which, in my opinion, was completely unnecessary, and I refused for that. Another person misbehaved and blamed me that I had installed 3 Pirated Operating System, and that could be the reason behind not running CD / DVD. But the said laptop was not BOOTING with live bootable CD / DVDs. Neither it is reading and writing any CD/DVDs

I am very much disappointed with this Compaq Laptop, its AFTER SELLS SERVICES particularly of Redington Indore and all that. I am going to advise my friends and my blog readers to stay away from buying such product.

Please look in to the matter and solve my problem at the earliest.

PS- I am using computers since last 20 years or so. I am a proud owner of COMPAQ PRESSARIO Notebook that had come with 8 MB RAM and 250 MB HDD (a premium hardware combination then). And, this ancient piece is still working (Win95) perfectly!

--------

Buzzworld: Not the Real Web-Based Word Processor...

2007-11-27T23:27:00.001-08:00

Buzzworld:

The First Real Web-Based Word Processor

Adobe's flash based online word processor - Buzzworld claims to be The First Real Web-Based Word Processor, but it failed in many count. Firstly, it is not UNICODE compliant. At least, it had not displayed Unicode Hindi content, and you cannot input Hindi Unicode matter in to it. Any Real Web app must be Unicode compliant these days.

Further, it is very slow in loading and response - even with my broadband connection. Other Online wordprocessor, once loaded work well unless they are downloading/uploading something.

IMHO, Buzzworld is not the Real, let alone the First!

How to charge an iPod with an Onion? or, say with Cow Dung?

2007-11-25T08:28:00.001-08:00

There is a video out there in Youtube claiming to charge an iPod through an Onion. The video had been viewed 3,868,695 times and counting, and it had attracted 22375 comments so far! See the video yourself:

Not a great Idea?

Yeh, it seems. Some people in India are actually using COW DUNG not only to charge and power up their mobile devices, but to illuminate their surroundings during night hours! You can read about this in BBC Hindi article here.

Powering UP with Cow Dung.

Technorati tags: ipod, charging with onion, charging with cow dung

How to install Tally 9 in Linux?

2007-11-22T21:37:00.001-08:00

There is an interesting article appeared in Linux For You Nov. 2007.

Now you can install and run Windows version of Tally 9 - the most popular Accounting software in Linux.

Here are some simple steps-

Install latest version of WINE , if it is not installed already.

Copy Tally 9 installer to your hard-disk, and install it through WINE.

You will find Tally 9 Menu in Wine program menu after successful installation. Though I myself had not tested it, but the article said that it runs perfectly - including printing and saving.

For more detailed instructions, refer Linux For You November 2007.

100 Great reasons to use Linux!

2007-10-11T01:52:00.001-07:00

Well, in fact, there may be more. But, here I am giving you the list of top 100 Linux distributions – they are tailor made for your different requirement. Just hunt down a little and you will get a Linux distribution that will perfectly suit your Hardware-Software requirement.

For example, I tried Ubuntu, Fedora, Mandriva, Knoppix but finally settled for Sabayon because it had most drivers for my LAPTOP COMPAQ PRESSARIO V3000. It had out of the box support for most hardware including Nvidia 3d Graphic.

Here is the list : (List courtesy http://distrowatch.com/)

Sl. No. Distribution

1 PCLinuxOS

2 Ubuntu

3 openSUSE

4 Fedora

5 Sabayon

6 Mint

7 Debian

8 Mandriva

9 MEPIS

10 Damn Small

11 Slackware

12 CentOS

13 Zenwalk

14 Gentoo

15 Kubuntu

16 Puppy

17 KNOPPIX

18 Arch

19 Freespire

20 Dreamlinux

21 FreeBSD

22 Ubuntu Studio

23 Vector

24 sidux

25 Xubuntu

26 PC-BSD

27 SLAX

28 Elive

29 DesktopBSD

30 Red Hat

31 Ubuntu CE

32 Absolute

33 Xandros

34 Foresight

35 64 Studio

36 SAM

37 Nexenta

38 Fluxbuntu

39 linuX-gamers

40 Frugalware

41 BackTrack

42 Yoper

43 Pioneer

44 GeeXboX

45 Solaris

46 KANOTIX 1

47 OpenBSD

48 KateOS

49 Scientific

50 Yellow Dog

51 Musix

52 Wolvix

53 SystemRescue

54 Linspire

55 Pardus

56 Novell SLE

57 Ark

58 DragonFly

59 Parsix

60 GParted

61 GoblinX

62 Granular

63 SmoothWall

64 MCNLive

65 JackLab

66 NetBSD

67 FreeNAS

68 Berry

69 TinyMe

70 Linux XP

71 ClarkConnect

72 VideoLinux

73 IPCop

74 DeLi

75 Turbolinux

76 LFS

77 Lunar

78 Feather

79 BLAG

80 SME Server

81 Edubuntu

82 BeleniX

83 m0n0wall

84 EnGarde

85 Bluewhite64

86 Skolelinux

87 dyne:bolic

88 Symphony OS

89 NimbleX

90 AUSTRUMI

91 Helix

92 Vine

93 SaxenOS

94 gNewSense

95 Gentoox

96 FoX Desktop

97 Pentoo

98 LiveCD Router

99 Devil

100 Ulteo

---------

Technorati tags: top 100 linux distro, linux distro

Video resume at www.nextjob.us

2007-09-17T06:13:00.001-07:00

Add spice to your Resume' by adding Video in it. www.nextjob.us gives you such facility. But be sure to get your video done by some professional, else things may go wrong.

Watch here the possible benefit of adding video on your Resume' :

And, for Christ' sake, do not forget to get done a good makeup on your face before shooting!

You must look younger than you are? Isn't it? Just kidding.

Video resume is indeed a great idea :)

Hindi Localization of KDE4 project accepted

2007-09-17T02:37:00.001-07:00

RGF-Sarai FLOSS fellowship for Hindi Localization of KDE4

Sarai had accepted - for the forth time in succession –
my Hindi Localization Project.

My Earlier projects included – Gnome 2.8, KDE 3.5, OpenOffice2.0 Help.

This time, the project is sanctioned for Hindi Localization of KDE4.

Thanks to everyone at Sarai, who made this possible – else Linux Hindi

may not have the looks it has got today, and, with this project, it is all poised to

make tremendous improvement further!

Here is the latter of approval sent by Mr. Gora Mohanty of Sarai,
reproduced below:

-----------

Hello everyone,

  It gives us great pleasure to announce an initial list of proposals
that have been accepted for the RGF-Sarai FLOSS fellowships programme.
 Here is the current list of fellows for the 2007-2008 cycle:

  o Sawood Alam, et al:

      Urdu localization of GNOME 2.20

  o Sachin Joshi, Venkatesh Keri:

      Hindi speech recognition system using CMU Sphinx framework

  o Ravishankar Shrivastava:

      Hindi localization of KDE 4

  o Dr. C. S. Yogananda, and D. Shivashankar:

      SAGAR: Typesetting Indian languages in TeX / LaTeX

FLOSS fellows will be contacted independently to inform them of details.

 This year, we received over 30 proposals spanning a wide range of
topics, of which more than half were of high quality. It has been a
really difficult task for us to try to fit the number of excellent
 proposals into the available resources, and in fact we have decided
to actively solicit more funding in order to be able to accommodate
 more of these. Thus, in about 4 months time, we expect to make an
 announcement of a second set of fellowships from among the short
 list below:

  o Kishore Asok:

      A beginner's guide and video presentation on learning science
 with Phoenix and free software

  o Niyam Bhushan:

      Documentation for 'Digital Color Workflows' under FOSS

  o Sriram Chaudhary, and Jagadeesh Gorla:

      Rupantar - An English to Hindi translation package

  o Abhishek Choudhary, Sweta Choudhary:

      Hindawi Indic programming languages and system software

  o Jayesh Goel

      Providing an information dissemination system for the city
public transport

  o Hassath

      Assessment of the ICT practices of a sample set of NGOs in Delhi,
 and an exploration of their readiness to convert to FLOSS

  o Anand Kulkarni:

      Localizing Open Office user guide in Marathi and Urdu,and
development of animated software for Open Office instruction

  o Abhishek Kumar:

      Enhancement of Newsrack for media analysis

  o Prem Kumar, et al:

      Prajna FLOSS corps for teaching FLOSS-based solutions,with
an aim to uplifting the poor.

  o Jayasimha Makhineni:

      Moodle for Hindi and Telugu languages

  o Hari Prasad Nadig

      Aspell dictionary, and localisation work in Kannada

  o Fred Noronha

      Book of stories about FLOSS work in India, Asia, and Africa.

  o Santhosh Thottingal:

      Aspell Malayalam spelling checker

  Please contact floss AT sarai DOT net should you have any
further queries. For a public discussion on this topic, please
address posts to the Sarai PRC mailing list:

https://mail.sarai.net/mailman/listinfo/prc

Regards,

Gora

---------

del.icio.us tags: linux, kde4 localization, hindi linux, linux hindi,
hindi kde, sarai, floss fellowship

Hey! ...I'm really not a very polite person! : Linus Torwalds

2007-08-21T00:36:00.001-07:00

Recently, Linus Torwalds gave a detailed interview to Asia's largest IT technology publication media house - EFY group. While giving answers to 35 questions - most of it were asked by readers, Torwalds taked about virtually everything, and very interesting.

He told along with many more such interesting things:

I actually tend to 'like' arguing
I've never really talked to MS, no.
hopefully, [there will] be some mutual respect [between Linux & MS] instead of just the fear and loathing.

You can find this interview not only insightful, but classic Torwalds style - Hugely Informative.

Must read for every one who matters in IT/Computers.

Read entire Interview in English Here

And, there is a translated version in Hindi here.

Technorati tags: linus torwalsd, linux, windows, interview

del.icio.us tags: linus torwalsd, linux, windows, interview

Which one is best for your latest, x64 laptop – Mandriva, Ubuntu or Knoppix?

2007-08-06T08:45:00.001-07:00

You may have read hundreds of reviews, shoot-outs and comparisons for Linux distros - telling you this or that one is best. But, until you face them yourself, you simply can’t tell which one may be best for you.

I tried (actually – forced to try) three most popular Linux in succession - known to be easiest for beginners – Mandriva Spring 2007, Ubuntu 7.01 and Knoppix 5.1.1

I had used Live CD version of these to install Linux on my New Laptop.

My laptop’s configuration is as follows –

Compaq Pressario 3225AU

AMD Turion-x64, 2.0 GHz

1 GB RAM

Nvidia GO 6150 shared Graphic card,

Nvidia Network card

Synaptic touchpad

At first, I installed Knoppix 5.1.1 on my system. It simply failed to detect my laptop’s Nvidia Go 6150 Graphic card. It also failed to detect Nvidia network card. Therefore, I was unable to connect to Internet, and, as display was limited to only VGA, visibility was also very poor. Further, Knoppix had a command line installer that needs to run through non graphical environment.

Next, I tried Ubuntu 7.01 x64 bit edition. Ubuntu also failed to detect my laptop’s Nvidia graphic card. Though it successfully installed Nvidia network drivers. I tried to download and install Nvidia Linux Graphics drivers, but failed due to Kernel compatibility issues. My display again struck to a very limited, VGA quality only. Further, during 7 step no-nonsense installation, it simply didn’t ask me to set root password and, after installation, it had taken many precious minutes to set things right. Its disk partitioner utility is also very confusing - especially while working with advanced option.

In my third attempt, I tried to install Mandriva Spring 2007 x64 edition. Though it needed a few extra steps to install Mandriva as against their counterpart, but the process is interactive one and involves easy steps. Further, its partitioner utility is graphical one and during installation, you can set advanced boot options too. Mandriva successfully detected and configured my Nvidia Go 6150 graphic card as well as Nvidia Network card. It also detected my laptop’s Synaptic touch pad – the other Linux that I had tested had set it as simple mouse. Mandriva also asked me to choose my Display quality – whether I use plain or 3D display. Its 3D display quality is good and it had very nice online software update and installation tool.

My Verdict –

For early adopters and for beginners too, Mandriva is best. It detects and configures my laptop’s latest drivers and is painless in installation, configuring and running.

------------

Technorati tags: mandriva, ubuntu, knoppix, linux shoot out, best linux

HP’s technical incompetence

2007-07-27T02:31:00.001-07:00

In their posts, Amit, followed by Alok reenergized my recent wound. Actually, they have talked about HP’s technical competence – how HP had blown down its own, running data center just to show that their mission critical applications did not affected a bit. But this news made me sick. Real sick because HP had shown total technical Incompetence on me.

OK, let me tell you in detail.

I had needed a Laptop once again (My old Compaq 33 Mhz, Pentium 386, 250 MB HDD, 8 MB RAM, Win95 had died two years ago giving uninterrupted, faithful service to about eight years) so I collected information, specifications, referred laptop shoot outs, starred endlessly at comparison charts, build my own laptop about a dozen times at Dell’s site and then finally settled for Compaq Presario V3225AU. This machine looks advanced enough and less taxing to my pocket. Digit – July07 had already declared this machine as best buy in its category.

Let us see some of the main specifications of Compaq Presario V3225AU: –

Processor – AMD Turion64 MK-36 2.0Ghz

OS – Windows Vista Home Basic

Chipset, Memory --- Blah blah…., but they were the best in their category.

Telling you only two main specification has a reason – I just want to tell you where HP wounded me and had shown me its utter technical incompetence.

As you had seen above, this laptop contains an advanced 64 bit AMD Turion mobile processor. To get most out of it, you MUST install 64 bit OS and applications on this laptop. But I got first jolt after purchasing it – it was supplied with 32 bit Windows Vista Home Basic! I had never imagined this kind of technical backwardness from HP!

The outer cover shows you the picture of a castle, but inside it is only hut!

I got more jolts later. The laptop contains no genuine installation media – instead, instruction manual told me that user must first create his own backup of installation and OS through Recovery Manager Program. I tried thrice but failed.

Further, my life goes all hell again – Compaq online registration dialogue box comes pop out every ten minute or so even after registering successfully at least five times. I finally got rid it by deleting its executable file that needs your time and patient to hunt down it.

So, don’t you think - HP had blown me off to show its Technical Incompetence? I am feeling cheated. Really cheated. What do you say?

Technorati Tags: hp, compaq, amd turion 64, hp technical competence

del.icio.us Tags: hp, compaq, amd turion 64, hp technical competence

How to connect to Internet through RIM LG Mobile in Windows Vista

2007-07-24T05:10:00.001-07:00

Here is a quick, no-nonsense, easy method to connect to Internet (Rconnect) through LG Reliance India Mobile phones (having built in modem) in Windows Vista.

The method is tested with LG RIM 5130 in Windows Vista Home basic. But it will, and should work in other models and other versions of Windows Vista as well.

Prerequisite : An already established Internet connection to download and update drivers.

Step 1 – Settings at Mobile phone:

Go to your mobile’s menu and select :

Settings> Phone>Data settings>Data/Fax>Data In

and,

Settings> Phone>Data settings>Data Baud>USB

(you must use USB modem cable to connect to your PC/Laptop with Mobile. If you use serial cable which is not recommended, settings will be different)

Step 2 – Settings at Computer:

Connect the LG Reliance India Mobile with the help of USB cable to your PC / Laptop running Vista which is ALREADY connected to Internet. Vista will detect it immediately and will ask you to download and install updated driver. Say yes, and it will install the latest driver needed for your LG Mobile modem. When your hardware – i.e. mobile is installed and configured successfully (the process is pretty much automatic) you can create a connection and connect to internet through this newly installed mobile modem as you do with any standard modem.

To create a new connection, go to –

Start Menu>Connect to> and then select ‘Setup a connection or network’. A new selection window will appear where you will find ‘Setup a dial-up connection.’ Select it and click on Next button. In the new window that appears, fill your mobile phone number as username and password. In the Dial-up phone number, fill #777. Give your connection a name and you are done.

Now click on connect, and within no time you will be connected to Reliance RConnect through your LG RIM Mobile. Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: rim, reliance india mobile, rconnect, lg mobile, internet

First look at Windows Vista Hindi

2007-07-19T04:13:00.001-07:00

Recently, Microsoft had released Windows Vista Language Installer Pack (lip) for Hindi language. It is a sleek 2.6 MB file that you can download from here and install in your Vista machine.

I tried to give a quick look on Windows Vista Hindi.

It is far better than its predecessor – Windows XP Hindi. When you install Language pack in Windows XP, it was nearly an irreversible process and you will find difficulty in bringing back your default interface.

This major annoying problem had been beautifully addressed in Windows Vista language pack. Now you can select language from control panel, and to change your system language, all you need is a reboot. Different users can have different language and you can install as many language pack as you wish. Unlike in Windows XP, in Vista, you can uninstall and disable language packs easily.

Still, Windows Vista is way behind against multilingual capabilities of Linux where you can use multiple language environment simultaneously, and, in background, you can start and login at least six different language desktops simultaneously.

Windows Vista Hindi had many shortcomings that includes –

You cannot install Vista Hindi LIP in 64 bit architecture as of now.
Vista’s default Hindi font is very small, and hence created visibility problem. You need to increase desktop font size from 8-9 to 10-11 for each and every item which is very cumbersome and annoying. As in Linux, there must be some facility to increase all font size in one go within the same windowing scheme. Hadn’t developers / testers notice this? Or they have different, larger desktops?
One can easily guess that quality and quantity of translations were not up to the mark. User interface has been translated most, and the help files had not been translated at all.
In most cases, translations appears straight from English to Hindi – word by word. You can find at least a couple of translation error in most pages. Some example –

There is a translation at some place – “कार्य पर केंद्रित करने के लिए इसे आसान बनाएँ” what do you understand by this string? I also do not understand what it meant.

At another place it says – इससे सॉर्ट करें. Mr. Translator, had you translated it this way - इस विधि से छांटे then it might have been a bit correct and better.

Similarly, Windows Media Player’s Now Playing becomes अब चला रहा है in Hindi. You will find many strings like ताज़ा आइटम्स as well as व्यक्तिगत बनाऐं.

In a couple of his blog posts, Alok had already thrashed poor quality of Windows XP Hindi.

Verdict : In all, there is a feel and a sense of goodness, a kind of euphoria users feel while using Vista Hindi especially if you are one among Hindi loving people. So what are you waiting for? Download and install Windows Vista Hindi language pack today. And, there is no need to loose heart if you are using old, faithful Windows XP. You can find link to download Windows XP Hindi LIP from the same, above stated location.

***-***

Technorati Tags: windows vista hindi, lip, language interface pack, hindi, hindi computing

del.icio.us Tags: windows vista hindi, lip, language interface pack, hindi, hindi computing

The way the top bloggers blog…

2007-07-11T04:56:00.001-07:00

(Amit Agrawal wrote about page views in Digital inspiration)

(Darren Rowse wrote about page views in Problogger)

Do you know how top bloggers blog? I mean, how they choose their subject? How they think a particular subject may interest their readers?

I have since been following some of the world’s top blogger’s blog and had found some interesting things that I wanted to share you.

Grab the big Stories from biggies.

Chances are, every top blogger will blog about big stories. No matter hundreds of other blogger out there may have blogged about the story earlier. And, many times they will be blogging and telling nearly same thing, but with a different language. So, if you are reading a couple of top bloggers, chances are you may be reading same stories multiple times. Here is an example –

Official Adesense blog blogged about a new adsense feature – Adsense ads now can have Rounded corners. Not a big thing. It simply is a new feature added to an existing service. Yet, top bloggers grabbed the stories. Darren Rowse wrote about it, Amit Agrawal wrote about it, Quick Online Tips blogged about it!

Similarly, recently there is a story about Page View – how Page Load is becoming irrelevant and actual page view time counts – Darren Rowse blogged about it, Amit Agrwal wrote about it, Mashable wrote about it.

When Adsense earning dips, Amit wrote about it and so is Rowse. When Adsense Referral 2 launched officially, Darren Rowse and Quick Online Tips were quick enough to grab the big news and blogged about it.

Moral of the story –

To become a top blogger yourself, Grab the big news. Blog about it. Even if hundreds may have already blogged about it since the news broke – you must blog anyway. And, when you really become a top blogger one fine day, you can freely blog rubbish – such as this one occasionally :)

Technorati Tags: top blogger, blog ranking, blog, darren rowse, amit agrawal, quick online tips, mashable

del.icio.us Tags: top blogger, blog ranking, blog, darren rowse, amit agrawal, quick online tips, mashable

Aol.in ???????

2007-07-01T05:35:00.001-07:00

aol.in recently tried to invade Indian Internet user base with a bang. It is trying every idea and pushing every effort to win Indian Internet users.

You can find aol.in advertisement in virtually every media. Indian blogs – where Adsense advertisements were embedded in their blog posts - were bombarded with aol.in advertisement. You can see a performer blowing flames in aol.in advertisement – can it blow out other players – Yahoo or Google? Certainly not. Why? Let us see.

Completely blown out with aol’s flame that I encountered everywhere, finally I opened an email account on aol.in.

Aol.in exactly looks like Yahoo!. Its appearance is exactly Yahoo! look alike and at times you forget that you are not in Yahoo!. Further, there is nothing new in aol.in’s interface and it is crowded with flash based advertisement. The interface takes time to load completely. Though for slower connection, it has older interface that loads a bit faster but comes with some less functionality. I wanted to test its Unicode Hindi handling capabilities. For this, I send a Hindi mail to this new aol.in account and send another one from this account.

And, predictably, result came out – the same Question marks…??????

Though the Unicode Hindi matter in the body of email remain intact, its From / To and Subject field gets corrupted.

Aol.in is trying to invade Indian internet user base with a new aol.in brand name, but it had miserably failed in addressing Indian Language’s Unicode issue – or it is luring only Indians who are using English?

Will aol.in be able to get the taste of success in India? Only time will tell. Since it is not offering anything new that is to be noticed upon, users may remain shy away from aol.in for quite some time. And, unless there were some compelling reason, no one will switch to aol.in either.

And, yes, one thing you can bank upon - aol.in handles spam perfectly – at least it seems. It puts my own mail in to spam folder that I had send from that alternative mail address which I had used to register to create my new aol.in account!

Verdict: for Hindi Unicode – Gmail and iGoogle are the best, and you don’t need to look beyond that!

del.icio.us Tags: aol india, aol.in, unicode hindi

Technorati Tags: aol india, aol.in, unicode hindi

Why MSN sucks and Google rocks?

2007-06-24T10:48:00.001-07:00

Recently, I simply wanted to install latest version of Windows Live writer. Earlier, I had tried it and had dumped it in favor of TinyMCE because Windows Live Writer was producing errors while handling Unicode Hindi Text. Recently, I had read some favorable review from most of the quarters and wanted to give a try.

To get latest version of Windows Live Writer, I simply head to Microsoft’s Download center, and searched for the Key word – “Windows Live Writer”. I had deliberately kept to search in all section checked.

Windows Live writer is from Microsoft stable, and supposed to give you download link for latest version of Windows Live writer.

Instead, it simply gives me error message that it could not find keyword –“Windows Live Writer”. Whereas, Windows Live Writer is gaining ground and today, it is one of the best offline Blog writing tool. I tried MSN search, but I failed again. I tries various locations and search terms, but failed every time.

Finally, I turned to every one's favorite - Google. I used the same keyword –“ Windows Live Writer”, and voila – I got at least 3 working links that points to Windows Live Writer download in first 10 search result.

Way to go MSN. You simply failed to search your own popular content! Very bad. Indeed very bad! Me too, feeling bad about it!

PS – I had since been shifted to Windows Live Writer. It handles Unicode Hindi beautifully and blog publishing through it had become a child’s play. I wish, some day it had built in Hindi Spell check. Then I will completely dump my MS Word in favor of WLW. :)

Technorati Tags: google search, msn search, Windows live writer, WLw

del.icio.us Tags: google search, msn search, Windows live writer, WLw

How to work in Unicode Hindi at Cyber Café's Windows 98 PCs

2007-06-22T01:59:00.000-07:00

Due to many unforeseen reasons, in India, almost all Cyber Café still use Windows 98 extensively.

By default, Windows 98 does not support Unicode Hindi. That is why, you simply cannot work with Unicode Hindi in Windows 98 without arranging some extra tools and applications - and that is real difficult for a user using Windows 98 computer at Cyber Café.

Now with some beautiful online Unicode Editing tool, you can work with Unicode Hindi in Windows 98 computers without much pain. Here is step by step guide for you to how to do this:

First step - Download this ready to install this Unicode Hindi Font from BBC Hindi site. This is free Unicode Hindi font provided by BBC Hindi. This file is in exe format, that you can install by double clicking on it. You can install this through your browser also - as described in this picture -

Now reboot your computer.

Your Windows 98 computer is ready to show you Unicode Hindi. If you browse any Hindi site such as this - then you can be able to see Hindi in your browser.

Now the Big question is - How to type in Unicode Hindi. This, again is very easy. Here is how -

Second Step - To type Unicode Hindi, you need to use Online Hindi Keyboard. Online keyboard are best and easiest way to type Unicode Hindi on Windows 98 computers at Cyber Café. You do not need to install any thing and no extra settings required.

There are many Online Hindi Keyboard available as of now, but online keyboards built by Raman Kaul are intuitive, really usable and best and easiest in my opinion. They work in most browser and do not need Java or Flash. More over, you can get FOUR keyboard options here - namely, Phonetic, Inscript, Shusha and Remington. You can get another online Hindi keyboard based on KrutiDev and Devlys fonts here that also works well which you can also use if you are fluent in these fonts.

Now you can use Hindi matter that you have typed in any of theses Online Hindi Keyboard. Just use copy and paste among different Browser windows .

Remember, you can use typed Unicode Hindi matter on Windows 98 only for online applications that supports Unicode - such as writing and publishing Blog, writing and publishing Comments on blog posts, Sending email and storing your documents online. If you try to save your contents in local Windows 98 PC with local, non-unicode compliant application,, then your data may get corrupt. Therefore, it is strongly recommended that use online storage facility and applications only in such situations.

Third Step (Optional) - At most Cyber Café, you will find only the default browser - Internet Explorer 5 that is supplied with Windows 98. This browser is old, obsolete, very insecure and does not have facility like tabbed browsing. To get advanced facilities and to secure your browsing, You must use either Opera or Firefox. You can download and install Firefox or Opera easily as these were about 5 MB in size and installs in Windows 98 computers without any hassle. Hindi may not look well in Opera or Firefox, but then it remain usable any how and are more secure too.

I have used theses methods to write this blog from a Windows 98 PC from a Cyber Café.

So, next time when you encounter with a PC with Windows 98 whether at Cyber Café or at your friend's place, please do not make gestures and simply follow these steps to read and write Unicode Hindi.

**-**

(picture courtesy : BBC Hindi)

Tag cyber cafe,unicode hindi,windows 98 unicode,online hindi keyboard

I have all the joost invite

2007-06-21T03:28:00.000-07:00

Want to try out Joost - the ultimate TV experience on your PC?

I have all the invitation with me! So, if you want one, just mail me or leave your email address as comment.

Here is the mail I received from Joost which I want to share with you:

Subject: Now you can invite all your friends to Joost
Hello Ravishankar,
We hope you're enjoying your Joost experience.
We'd like to share some good news and celebrate the launch of the new Joost beta - Now For Friends. This means you can now invite as many friends as you want to try out Joost. To access your invites, log onto Joost, go to My Joost and fill in your friends' details in the Invite Friends widget box.
If you're running out of friends, you can make new ones by letting people know you've got invites. To help with this, we've made a few goodies especially for you, which you can find at http://www.joost.com/share/goodies.html.
Last but not least, we invite you to enjoy the variety of new shows we're introducing each week. This week we bring you a host of new channels from Universal Music, great science fiction like Earth Final Conflict, and Creature Comforts from Aardman Animations.
We've also got swimsuit models and snowboarders, anime and animals, and much more. But that's just the beginning. Each week we'll launch new channels - making sure you can watch what you want, when you want. So stay tuned...
If you've got any questions, feel free to check out our forum http://www.joost.com/forums, and don't forget to send us feedback on what you like and things we could improve.
Enjoy, and see you on Joost!

The Joost Team

Obviously, I now have all the Joost invitations with me. You can mail me or leave your e-mail address as comment if you want one.

Tag joost,invite,television,joost tv

Joost's greatest joke!

2007-06-16T23:36:00.000-07:00

Joost - the new kid on Internet - that is all set to redefine your habbit of viewing telivision had played a game on me.

In fact, it played a joke on me.

Today, when I tried to view some TV through Joost, it asked me to upgrade to a newer version of Joost, which I obediently followed.

After a few screen, what I saw was un-expected. It was a practical joke! You can see it yourself. This is the screenshot of the practical joke Joost played on me!

It says-

We have detected that your PC may not have enough resources to run Joost(tm) correctly.

..........................MINIMUM ..................YOUR PC

CPU.........................500 MHZ ...........................2994 MHZ

RAM........................ 512 MB............................... 1007 MB

VIDEO .....................48 MB ..................................64 MB

MEMORY

WINDOWS .................XP ........................................VISTA

VERSION

DIRECTX ....................9.0C .......................................9.0C
VERSION

Obviously, my PC has MORE resources than Joost had detected, yet it said exactly opposite. Yet, it is another matter that Joost runs flawlessly after ignoring this message. :)

Apple Safari can't display Unicode Hindi font either!

2007-06-15T23:22:00.000-07:00

(Above screenshot courtesy - Apple Safari)

The best and fastest Browser till today in the world - Apple's Safari is useless for Unicode Hindi pages like this .

It simply does not display Unicode Hindi font correctly. It simply fail to render Unicode Hindi font properly.

(Above Display : by Safari)

(Above display by Opera)

Come on, Safari, you may be the fastest and the best among browser. But, until you weed out this bug, you will remain useless for us.

Tag safari,apple safari,safari font problem,safari windows

Welcome to the world of Online Desktop

2007-06-15T05:52:00.000-07:00

You install and manage applications in your PC, decorate your desktop with themes and wallpapers. But it remains confined with your PC. Even in case of your Laptop, it remains with your particular Laptop - and you have to carry it everywhere to use it.

Well, there were some online services available now that can provide you Desktop like environment (some call it WebOS) through a web browser - with applications and storage spaces - that you can customize and access anytime from any computer and from any where in the world!

Two such popular online applications - ajaxWindows and Desktoptwo

are review here.

You need to register and create an account for using these services. Registration to both is simple process, but require a valid e-mail ID.

ajaxWindows looks and feels just like your own PC's desktop or mobile PC. It has a start button, a task bar, a desktop, icons, programs, widgets, a control panel and a file browser. The ajaxWindows works within a browser and it looks as your regular PC, but, with one BIG difference - everything is online! And the best part is you can access your ajaxWindows Desktop from anywhere, and from any computer with an Internet connection. ajaxWindows lets you have your files, your bookmarks, your documents and pictures, your music, everything you need to get some work done or have fun on a PC!

ajaxWindows, lets you do these and many more:

Run web applications - for example, you can write document, create graphics or make presentation with applications such as ajaxWrite, ajaxSketch and ajaxPresent.
Launch widgets
Browse to your favorite web sites
Listen and organize your own music through mp3 music player
Personalize your desktop with your favorite wallpapers, sounds and bookmarks
Make free phone calls to your friends or coworkers
Create a slide show with your pictures
Instant Message
You can store your documents, pictures, music and other files (up to 1 Gigabyte) for FREE

In ajaxWindows personalizing your desktop is real easy. ajaxWindows has an easy to use control panel where you can change and configure your wallpaper or themes to your own likings. There were several background images to choose from, or you can add your own. ajaxWindows supports full drag and drop hence you can place your icons where ever you want them, and move widgets and windows to where ever you think they need to be.

You can also add widgets and other web services and applications in ajaxWindows Desktop. For this, either go to [Start] -> Add Widgets or [Start]->Add Programs, or double click on the Add Widgets or Add Program icons on your ajaxWindows desktop.

You can synchronize your document folder from your PC to ajaxWindows Desktop. Upon first login, you will be asked if you want to copy your documents, pictures, music, wallpapers, bookmarks and more from your local PC to be stored in your personal ajaxWindows space. ajaxWindows provide 1GB free storage space. That you can enhance for an annual fee.

In actual usage condition ajaxWindows simply failed to work with Opera browser. Though it worked in Firefox with some hiccups. It worked well in Internet Explorer. However, the online document editor - ajaxWrite was terribly slow and not worth trying. It simply does not worked in either Opera or Firefox.

*********

Desktoptwo is also a free web-based desktop that mimics the look, feel and functionality of a local computer, all contained within one browser window and fully accessible from any Internet-connected device.

Desktoptwo works as your free mobile home on the Internet with all of your personal information, programs and applications in one easy-to-use, feature-rich location and, because all you need is a web browser to access your account, even the simplest web device (whether yours or someone else's such as cyber café's PCs) can become your personal space.

What's more... no local installation of anything is require means that Desktoptwo leaves no trace behind, that is why Desktoptwo says that "wherever you go, whatever you do, you can bring your desktop too."

Desktoptwo also provide you 1 GB free online storage where you can store your files. 3MB MP3 file was uploaded and played it with its built in mp3 player. The experience was marvelous and trouble free.

Desktoptwo provides you OpenOffice 2 as your document creator. Due to this, the online document creation become sluggish. However, OpenOffice 2 is a full fledged Office suite where you can create word/Excel/presentation online.

Similar to ajaxDesktop, Desktoptwo also have many online program built in, and are really useful.

Some day, it appears - we will completely rip off our PC/Laptop with local program and only use Online Application/Desktop.

Tag Desktoptwo,ajaxWindows,WebOS,online application

Blogger in Draft - Rain of features in Blogger!

2007-06-14T00:14:00.000-07:00

Blogger in Draft - Blogger going feature rich!

We may expect torrential rain of features in Blogger some time soon. Or, at least, it seems. Google Blogger had started embedding all kinds of web application and web services in its blogging platform - Blogger. There is a buzz about an all new Blogger in Draft - available to select few early adopters for test purpose.

Blogger in Draft - appears as beta release of an all new Blogger. In Blogger-in- Draft, you can login with your existing Blogger account for test post. Blogger in Draft has an all new feature - you can directly upload your video on your blog post. There is a Video Upload button similar to picture upload button you see while publishing a new post. With this button, you can directly upload a video and publish it in your Blogger Blog without the need of services like YouTube or Blinks.

The video upload test failed in Opera Browser. In Firefox, initially some error occurs but finally I was able to upload the video. The rate of upload was very slow. And it appears that the problem was not with the network. 30 seconds video of about 17 MB had taken more than 30 minutes to upload.

Presently, as it is available only for test purpose, we may hope that everything will be looked upon before its final release. There were Digital camera and Digital Cam-carder embedded in every gadgets now-a-days, it can safely be speculated that in future, more than half the blog posts may contain some kind of Video content in it. And, that is why in-built video upload facility was the need of the hour.

Tag blogger,blogger in draft,video upload in blogger,video upload

How to access Windows Vista partitions without a Password

2007-06-13T00:19:00.000-07:00

How to login and access Windows Vista partitions without the need of any Password

Well, you can access not only Windows Vista, but all kinds of Windows Hard Drive without a Password and that too with full Administrator level access.

For this, all you need is Windows Vista installer DVD.

Here is step by step guide for you:

Step 1

Put your Windows Vista Installer DVD in to your PC's DVD drive and Boot your PC through Windows Vista installer DVD.

Select Repair Your Computer Option.

Step 2

Further, Select Command Prompt option.

Instantly, you will be logged in to your computer with full administrative control without any password.

So, if you have real concern about security, PLEASE do not fail to Physically Lock your PC!

Further Details and pictures courtesy - Fsecure Weblog

Tag windows vista tips,computer security,login without password,access without password

World's Bottom 5 Products

2007-06-03T03:08:00.000-07:00

There were 5 funny videos from CNET TV which tells you about worst 5 products in 5 different categories.

And, They are:

Top 5 Apple flops:

5 - Apple 3

4- Newton

3- John Scully

2- G4 Cube

1 - Puck Mouse

Top 5 crapware apps

5- Store brand utilities

4- Trial ware Quicken

3- Toolbars on Browsers

2- ISPs

1- Antivirus

Top 5 worst download of 2007

5- Healing Stress

4- Driving

3- Soda Tracker

2- Harold search network YouTube browser

1- USA green card lottery simulator

Top 5 Most embarrassing Gadgets

5- Third Generation iPod

4- PDA

3- Spot Watch

2- Original Nokia N-Gage

1- Over Size cell phone head set

Top 5 worst product of the decade

5- Furby

4- Pocket Mail

3- DigiScent iSmell

2- CueCat

1- Microsoft BoB

And, what are the top 5 product in the respective category?

For that, and the reason why these were rated as best or worst product, watch the respective video by clicking these links:

CNET TV: Top 5 bottom 5s

1. Top 5 Apple flops
2. Top 5 crapware apps
3. Top 5 worst downloads of 2007
4. Top 5 most embarrassing gadgets
5. Top 5 worst products of the decade

But, at least this I can tell you - according to CNET TV, the best top 5 product in a decade are-

1 iPod

2 TiVo

3 Google

4 Napster

5 Firefox.

What do you say? Do you agree? Or, do you maintain a different list?

Tag desitoons,desitoonz,humour,desicartoons

Tumblr - a new, better equipped blog platform for you.

2007-05-29T01:08:00.000-07:00

Curiously enough, I had created a Tumblr in Hindi and another one in English for me. What about you? Haven't you? I have gone a step further now and had created a Widget with the first Tumblr that you can see at the right column on my Hindi blog.

What is Tumblr? There is an official FAQ that you can refer, but obviously, Tumblr is an innovative kind of blog platform that lets you post blogs dirt-easy. And, as most things in Internet are free, Tumblr too is free for personal use.

On a first glance, Tumblr looks like a blog platform having some features of Blogger and Wordpress both. Some extra are added and some unnecessary ones were scrapped.

I especially liked the Tumblr's capability to import and display almost all kinds of RSS feeds. You can set to display an unlimited number of feeds on your Tumblr. But, beware, you must have rights to display them in your Tumblr.

For example, If I add the feed of http://narad.akshargram.com in my Tumblr, then it will populate itself automatically as blogposts by pulling feeds from the said URL.

To test this feature, I created a Google Blog search for NEW HINDI BLOGS and added this search's feed in my Tumblr.

The result is astonishing. Google is constantly searching for new Hindi blogs according to the given parameters and the search result is feeded in to my Tumblr, which is finally displayed here. The process is automatic, and once I set things, I had to do practically nothing to manage this Tumblr.

Not only that, you can integrate other web services like Flikr, YouTube, PodCast etc seamlessly and effortlessly in your Tumblr. For example, whenever you upload a photo in your Flickr account, it will get published as a blog post in your integrated Tumblr.

Registering on and using Tumblr is easy. In Less than 30 seconds flat, really! Perhaps, Spammers have not eyed Tumblr so far.

People behind Tumblr are saying that this ain't a blog platform. Instead, they say, it is a kind of scrapbook in which you can publish any scrap, and that too with equally easy. They say in their FAQ -

"Blogs are great, but they can be a lot of work. And they're really built to handle longer-form text posts. Tumblelogs, on the other hand, let you easily and quickly post and share anything you find or create."

Well, may be. But, I think, Tumblr's main use will remain publishing rich, multimedia blogs because of its intuitive integration with feeds and other web services.

So, what are you waiting far? Go ahead and create a Tumblr for yourself. And let the world now - you too own a Tumblr!

Tag Tumblr,blog,scrapbook,blogger

I tried to dirty my hands on OpenSolaris Belenix 0.6

2007-05-27T01:34:00.001-07:00

Ever since Sun Solaris had gone open source, I had desperately wanted to try a hand on it. I tried to install Solaris Express Developer Edition in my multiboot-multi-partitioned machine but nothing worked. Recently I learned that OpenSolaris new live CD version had been released. I simply could not stop myself to download the ISO image of OpenSolaris Belenix 0.6 live cd.

At first, I tried to run it in MS Virtual Machine environment. My machine's hardware spec is quite new and good - 3.2P-4 with HT, 1GB RAM. The OpenSolaris Lice CD refuses to boot in to my Virtual Machine and it keeps rebooting automatically after initial splash screen and a few dialogues. I tried to change various settings of both virtual machine as well as OpenSolaris Belenix 0.6, but it simply failed to boot, and that too, without giving any reason.

Then I tried to boot My PC through OpenSolaris live Belenix 0.6 CD. In initial dialogues I had chosen KDE as my desktop. Here again, the OpenSolaris live Belenix 0.6 failed to boot in to graphics mode. I tried different types of X configuration in its initial X-11 configuration dialogues but it failed every time. Even, selecting SVGA failed - and strangely enough, its initial VGA splash screen worked well. I had in my machine - hugely popular, basic, medium end Graphics card - Intel i-845.

This reminds me of my initial days with Linux - about 8-10 years ago - when we were forced to configure each and every aspect of Linux configuration to simply work out things. Today, most Linux distribution do not require any advanced tweaking during their initial installation - most things work out-of-the-box and distributions like Xandros have simple, 4 click install options.

It looks like OpenSolaris needs to travel a real long way, and journey has just begun.

Tag opensolaris,belenix,sun solaris,solaris

World's cheapest PCs

2007-05-25T23:03:00.000-07:00

Suddenly everybody is talking about cheap PCs. The OLPC created the debate and now Intel's Classmate had brought the cheap PCs come full circle.

While OLPC's pricing has been increased to about $150-176, Classmate's pricing to stick around $100 will make it more acceptable.

While OLPC claims that its XO laptop has a screen resolution four times better than a normal laptop with a 12-hour battery life Classmate's specification says it has 7" screen with approx. 4-hour battery life.

Meanwhile, due to many obvious reasons, many individual and companies were forced to upgrade their hardware. Windows Vista, for example can not run on older computers having less than 512MB RAM. These hardware remain in working condition and are being re-sold at a fraction of a price at many places. You can get a an old yet with full multimedia capable P3 class complete desktop PC for about $100 at any local computerwala. In India, Big-apple is one such company that deals in used computers - and you can find many used PCs are being sold at a fraction of original PCs.

We will see a further reduction in pricing of PCs. Who knows, some day you will have a brand-new PC for free - the way you get your mobile phone now - all you have to do is to commit yourself to use their web services for a specific period of time.

Tag worlds cheapest pc,olpc,classmate,pc price