Saturday, September 20, 2008

Blog Feeds inside Gmail ... No you don't have to click on Reader

At one time I'd asked about seeing Google reader feeds from within Gmail? This might be useful:
http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2008/08/tip-customize-your-web-clips.html

Thanks to Hari.

Tried it for a start with Ramnath's blog.
Sits cutely above your Inbox, where you usually find feeds from news sites etc. There should be a way to color them, no ?

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Doubt Gmail dots

All of us know of Gmail dots as a feature which helps us creating multiple pseudo gmail ids for fun, for security, for avoidance of Spam. But for last few days (to be precise, 5 days), my gmail id is giving trouble.

Has anyone seen such type of a message box while emailing??? Ofcourse, hats off to Google to have even thought of a scenario when its From: address was in doubt. But why suddenly it started giving this trouble no idea.

Plus, while loading one particular gmail id (not all gmail ids, only this ONE), it is getting stuck at the Loading Page with Done status. After changing http:// to https://, it is going through. For other mail ids, it is automatically adding the S-part of the secure SSL, but not for this mail id. I thought may be because of the option under Settings 'Always Use https' or 'Dont always use https'. But not finding any difference with change in these options...any views?

Update 1: Observed that in Google Chrome, even with http:// Gmail is loading completely, whereas it was not in Firefox. Still it does solve the mystery why it was happening for one gmail and not for any other gmail id. Though today, it has loaded properly, completely, do not know when again it might crop up unless the bug is fixed.

Friday, September 12, 2008

Google Chrome features

Here are few more Google Chrome features - some known, some unknown

1. Show the list of recently visited pages from the current tab: right-click on the "Back" button. This also works for the "Forward" button.

2. Undo closing a tab: press Ctrl+Shift+T or open a new tab and check the "Recently closed tabs" section.

3. Focus on the default search option in the address bar: type ? before entering your query.

4. Perform simple calculations and unit conversions using Google Calculator by simply typing the expression in Google Chrome's address bar (or "omnibox"). To copy the answer, select the suggestion.

5. If you need more space in a textarea, resize it by dragging the lower right corner.

6. Monitor the resources used by a web page - right click inside the page, select "Inspect element", switch to the "Resources" tab and reload the web page. You'll see a list of images, scripts and objects loaded from the web page and you can sort them by size or by loading time.

7. Detach a tab and open it in a new window - just drag the tab outside the active window. You can also add it back to the original window using drag and drop.

8. After downloading a file, you can copy it to the desktop or to any other folder by using drag and drop directly from Google Chrome.

9. If the search engine of a site supports OpenSearch, you can add it to Google Chrome's search box by simply visiting the site and performing a search. The domain name automatically becomes a keyword and you should only type the first letters from the URL until you see "press Tab to search example.com". Then press Tab and type your query.

You can also manually add search engines, by right-clicking on the address bar and selecting "Edit search engines". Here's one example, where you can see that you need to find the URL for the search results page and replace the query with %s:

Name - Wikipedia
Keyword - wiki (that's what you need to type in the address bar)
URL - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Search?search=%s

You can also use the keywords for other kinds of services: for translating web pages, for bookmarking pages online or simply as aliases for web pages (omit "%s" from the URL).

Name - Google Translate (English)
Keyword - trans
URL - http://translate.google.com/translate?u=%s

10. Do you want Google Chrome without Google's branding and with an open source license (BSD license)? Check Chromium, the open source project created for Google Chrome. You can install the latest snapshots for Windows or download the code and build it in Windows, Mac, Linux.

To install Chromium in Windows, go to the most recent directory from this page (it should be at the top) and download mini_installer.exe. Note that these snapshots could be less stable than the version available at google.com/chrome and you may need to manually update Chromium.

Source: http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/09/google-chrome-tips.html

Downloading Google Help files

Passwords or Passfaces?

Instead of entering Passwords (characters), one enters password through faces ('characters' ;-) )
Details here...

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Increased security on mail ids in Google Groups

Today I happened to go to Google Groups to see if there was a possibility of uploading videos or photos. It does give an option on uploading files, but need to find out if explicitly there is a way to upload photos and/or videos.

What in the process was observed is that Google Groups has added increased security in not letting anyone see mail id of any member. In Yahoo Groups, one can see the mail id of a member directly. Whereas in Google Groups, it shows first few characters, then replaces the rest with elipsis '...' appended with @domain name.com. If one has to see the mail id completely, a screen to enter CAPTCHA appears [WHAT IS A CAPTCHA] [HOW STRONG IS GOOGLE'S CAPTCHA]. After the verification here, complete mail id is shown.

Impressed with added security implying extra work for spammers...

Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Myth, Mystery & Truth

There is a website hosted by Barbara and David Mikkelson, a married couple from California called Snopes.com.

It's a website you can visit to find out if something is true or not. It's 100 percent dedicated to finding out the truths and falsities of urban legends, modern day myths and any other stories that travel around the Internet and the realistic world. They provide references wherever possible.

This read should be educative as is many other stuff found other. Have fun going through it.....

Blogs I'm Following...Face Recognition on PicWeb

Blogger:
Sure, its been missing our eye for quite sometime. Unsure when it was introduced, but today discovered it.

One can display on the Blog, who all are following that Blog.

Its like, if I am fan of the contents of a blog, and I want everyone in the world (or only myself) to know that I am following all the proceedings, new posts at that blog, then I have to just click on the link 'Follow this Blog', and I will be added to the display-list of all the bloggers who follow that blog.

This feature has to be enabled at an individual blog level so that 'Fans' show to the world (or themselves) that they are fans of the particular blog. When one becomes fan of a blog, it is at the Blogger Profile level...quite obvious though :)

What exactly have they done? They have integrated RSS feeds....If I am subscribed to RSS feeds of a particular site (either through Google Reader or any other FeedReaders), I am becoming 'fan' of the content of that site. By adding this feature, they are just making the identity of all those people who have subscribed to their blog (willing the subscriber wants to reveal his/her identity) known to the world. FeedBurner just displays number of subscribers, where this one shows the profile pic with link to their profile on that site. This is a step towards integration of Blog and Google Reader. I can easily mark myself as a fan of a feed in Google Reader. Vice-versa, a particular site gets subscribed automatically to Google Reader when I mark myself as its fan.

What is Following?
How do I add Following gadget to my Blog?

You can see me following Google Student Blog :)
And I need to see, how many follow my blog! :o)

Update 1:
In Google Reader, it gives option to "hide blogs you follow" under Settings -> Preferences -> Misc -> Show followed blogs from Blogger (check or uncheck it)

Picassa Web:
Addition of Face Recognition into PicWeb has taken globe by a storm (officially called 'Name Tags'). There are multiple forums, blogs, sites talking about it, reviewing its credibility, durability, and usefulness. Let me give my own comments on it.

I have tagged about 340 photos (agree, the count does have some duplication). Stunning thing is, it groups similar faces and tags them in one go. It has kind of solved one of the biggest research problem on generic face recognition and their grouping (Raghu sir to confirm and authorise). This grouping is irrespective of a person wearing a cap or not! :)

Okay, so one part is it is: groups images together (ofcourse, not 100% of pics are grouped in one go. Might be due to difference in the angles of face, complexion, light balance, etc.). After we tag few pictures, it provides suggestions for tagging a new pic(face) / group of pics(faces). If I have tagged name 'Raghu sir' (this name/mail id comes from the contacts list of Gmail) against a pic(face) of his (which was framed by internal process of PicWeb which takes few minutes to finish its processing), then if there comes another pic or group of pics of Raghu sir, then one of the three name suggestions for the pic is invariably Raghu Sir. When I observed this, I had to appreciate the brain behind this working.

It first identifies a face, then continuously it compares with already tagged face and suggests that name which closely fits it. For one of the pics, it gave me only one suggestion and that was 100% correct!!!
Link to read up. Theres a lot to it, no doubt. But these things, were something I could not stop myself from appreciating.

People are welcome to share their experiences...

Saturday, September 6, 2008

Vulnerabilities in Google Chrome

GChrome does have promising features which are not part of any browser till date like Task Manager (which shows each open window as a process, the way it deals with each tab. This helps when a window/website crashes since each Tab/NewWindow is a separate process and crash of one window/website will crash only that process saving all other tabs. It displays the memory taken by each site apart from CPU usage implying 'blame where blame belongs'); drag tab out to a window; defining which all sites to be opened on startup; incognito browsing; creating own Desktop, Menu, Quick Launch icons reserving the whole window page for this application; added heavy Java engine compatible for all heavily loaded Web Applications.

Before its launch, a 38-page online comic book was released discussing Google Chrome

This article talks about Five best features of Google Chrome

A article to not get carried away with GChrome: Dont get hooked on Google Chrome hype

Vulnerabilities GChrome are discussed here. Indeed a good read
DoS vulnerability hits Google's Chrome, crashes with all tabs
Google Chrome vulnerable in carpet-bombing flaw
Google Chrome, the security tid-bits

Microsoft has incidentally released, as expected, buggy next IE, IE8.
Details here: A look at Microsoft's release of IE8 beta 2

.

Friday, September 5, 2008

Office Hair by Chrome Window

GChrome: Sure all have heard already about Google's release of yet another product - Google Chrome, its new browser. Few highlights are there, but it still has quite a long way to go to become best. But we do know it will live upto it.

Few things that I liked hearing about it are: Non empty blank page on New Tab or Window, Thumbnails preview of most visited sites, Contents of this page, all-in-one search box...

HairCare: Who does not want to look good with hair on top of our scalp. But its always the lack of info that leads to that situation or maintains us there or worsens as expected. Dr. Reddy's has come out with a site to popularize the facts of this Hair Loss and its treatment. Went through the site. Was impressive. Here is the link (Hair Aware). Worth a go.

Web Windows Office Live: Ah! Microsoft's answer to Google Docs - Web based access to Microsoft office utilities. Folder Explorer UI looks similar to GDocs. Did not work out any documents on it. They claim one can have 1000+ documents online. Arent we happy with unlimited documents online with GDocs! Here is the link. For logging-in, you do not have to have a Windows LiveID, any mail id can be used as a log in.

Thursday, August 14, 2008

Mashups

Very few are people who did not hear about Mashups, another Web 2.0 terminology.

Mashups is a web application which combines data from multiple sources into a single tool [SOURCE]
There are different types of Mashups: Consumer mashups, Data mashups, and Business mashups. [DETAILS HERE]
Ex. Google Maps

Difference between Mashup and Portal: There are quite a few, all listed diligently on Wiki here.
Never knew that individual content on Portal is called Portlets!

Google has got a editor which will help quick creation of web applications and Mashups. It is called Google Mashup Editor. Currently, it is given out only to developers. So all do not have ready signup as yet. One needs to request for a spot, which is given when next available, by signing up here.

Art of Travelling Light

Shockingly there is a site which details the art and science of travelling light with just one bag, no matter where and for how many days. Have a look

Portable Apps

All Portable Apps at this site: http://portableapps.com/
List of Apps: http://portableapps.com/apps

The list goes something like this :)

Applications

Accessibility

Firefox Accessibility Extension - Make Firefox more accessible
On-Screen Keyboard Portable - Easily access an on-screen keyboard
Virtual Magnifying Glass Portable - A full-featured screen magnifier

Development

Notepad++ Portable - A full-featured text editor with syntax highlighting
Nvu Portable & KompoZer Portable - The easy-to-use Nvu web editor
XAMPP - Apache, mySQL, PHP, phpMyAdmin, etc in one package

Education

Stellarium Portable - portable planetarium

Games

DOSBox Portable - classic DOS games to go
Jooleem Portable - simple and addictive puzzle game with great music and visuals
LBreakout2 Portable - breakout-style arcade game similar to Arkanoid
Mines-Perfect Portable - a classic hunt-for-mines game with advanced features
PokerTH Portable - classic Texas Hold Em style poker at its best
Sudoku Portable - the wildly popular and addictive puzzle game

Graphics & Pictures

GIMP Portable - Photo and Image Editor

Internet

FileZilla Portable - the full-featured FTP client
FireFTP Extension (for Firefox) - a lightweight extension
Miranda IM Portable - chat with AOL, MSN and Yahoo users in a customizable interface
Mozilla Firefox, Portable Edition - the award-winning web browser that's safe and secure
Mozilla Thunderbird, Portable Edition - the handy email client
Nvu Portable & KompoZer Portable - the easy-to-use webpage editor
Pidgin Portable - chat with AOL, MSN and Yahoo users in an easy-to-use interface
PuTTY Portable - lightweight telnet and SSH client
Sage Extension (for Firefox) - A full-featured RSS extension
WinSCP Portable - SFTP, FTP and SCP client

Music & Video

Audacity Portable - A simple audio editor and recorder
BonkEnc Portable - extract, convert, and encode audio
CoolPlayer+ Portable - Lightweight, fast, easy-to-use audio player
MPlayer Portable - Full-featured movie player with support for most video formats
VirtualDub Portable - video processing and capture utility
VLC Media Player Portable - An easy to use media player that plays most audio and video formats

Office

AbiWord Portable - a lightweight word processor compatible with Microsoft Word files
GnuCash Portable - accounting, expenses and financial management
Lightning Extension (for Thunderbird) - A lightweight extension for your calendar and tasks
Mozilla Sunbird, Portable Edition - Calendar and task management with a familiar interface
Mozilla Thunderbird, Portable Edition (Address Book) - Email client's built-in address book with import/export functions
OpenOffice.org Portable - word processor, spreadsheet, presentations with Microsoft compatibility
PDFTK Builder Portable - split, collate, watermark and password protect PDF documents
PNotes Portable - stick notes to go
Sumatra PDF Portable - a lightweight PDF viewer
Task Coach Portable - to do list and task manager