Apple, Starbucks Team Up To Give Away Free iPhone Apps

Since April 2008, Starbucks has partnered with Apple for the “Pick of the Week” program. The “Pick of the Week” program provides users with iTunes Music Store content via cards. Previously, the promotion only allowed*customers access to a free song each week, with tracks priced up to $1.29. Now, CNET reports that these cards are now also offering free downloads of paid iOS applications.



The first application made available for free is Shazam Encore, which usually sells for $5.99 in the App Store. Starbucks has not commented on whether the free applications offer will replace music tracks for good, or if both will be offered in the future. Judging by the first free app offering, it seems they’re serious about providing quality apps because Shazam Encore is a very popular music app costing $5.99.

Customers who visit Starbucks can pick up the free “Pick of the Week” cards at the register that contain codes*redeemable in the App Store towards the purchase of iOS apps.*Last year, Starbucks also did something similar by partnering with Apple and Yahoo to offer digital content to in-store customers.

Android owners, are you jealous yet? Anyways, Apple’s evil.

[image credit: CNET]


Author: Parth Dhebar

Parth Dhebar has written 63 articles for us.

Is Facebook Blocking Google Plus Invite Links?

Facebook is irked about the growth of Google Plus. Google Plus now has over 25 million users, and ever since it was launched, it has had a tremendous growth. Despite that Google Plus is in field test and new registrations to the site can be done via “invite only“, and the fact being that Google had to shut down the invite system because of high demand, it somehow still managed to achieve enormous popularity.

Now that Google allows its Plus users to invite (more people) their friends to experience the new social network, its rival Facebook, seems to be overwhelmed. Of course, currently the best way to interact with friends on the Internet is via Facebook, and thus users are making use of this means by sharing Google Plus invite links on their walls. Users are not just getting themselves a Plus account, but are also attracted to the new social network and slowly migrating from Facebook.

Facebook appears to be piqued about this and is reported to be blocking Google Plus invites from the users’ Facebook news feed. This came into light when the Senior Vice President of social business, Vic Gundotra posted a video on YouTube demonstrating that Google+ invites that have been shared on Facebook did not show up in the news feed of other Facebook users.

The video was posted after which the company had gotten reports of this unusual behavior. “I wonder how widespread this problem is?” Gundotra asked.In response to Vic Gundotra’s statement, Facebook (obviously) has denied the fact that it is stopping users from sharing the Google Plus invite URL. Facebook noted that they have a display-filtering technology that help prevent spam and thus could exclude certain links from re-appearing on a user’s news feed if it had previously been posted several times.

“Newsfeed is an automated system that is designed to deliver the most relevant content to you and your friends. The technology evaluates hundreds of factors, including your relationship to the poster, the type of content, the click-through rate (where appropriate), and people hiding similar posts from their feed.

In real time, it decides what to display to you and what to filter for both Top News and Most Recent. It also includes systems that attempt to identify and block spam. Links have a history of the most abuse and are given the most scrutiny. As a result of all of these factors, a given link may be shown or filtered to people differently at different times.”

Facebook, are you sure that you truly “attempt” to “identify” and “block” spam messages? Well, there are several scams that are out there on Facebook, and practically a new one is born every day. As a matter of fact, scams that were reported months back are still spreading on Facebook.

Nevertheless, after watching the video, I tried the same by sharing a Google Plus invite on Facebook and simultaneously checking with another account if it had updated or not? The results? Well, it successfully posted the invite link in the news feed of the other account.



Now the question is whether Google tried to drive attention towards its social network by creating this gimmick or did Facebook really block the invite link? Vic Gundotra, edited his original post and added – “they appear to have stopped on Friday”


Author: Joel Fernandes

20yrs young and is a passionate Blogger, Web Developer, Photographer, Gamer and an Entrepreneur. Not a professional in anyway!My Twitter handle - @joelfernandesHe owns a tech blog TechnoBitez Joel Fernandes has written 136 articles.

Google Celebrates Fermat’s Birthday With An Awesome Doodle

In keeping up with its tradition, Google has come up with an awesome doodle today to honour the birthday of the great Pierre de Fermat (kindly pronounce as “Ferma” . The ending ‘t’ is silent.) Hailed as a genius in the world of mathematics and physics, while being virtually unknown to the world outside, Fermat’s fame rests on two basic pieces of mathematical wizardry he presented to the world – Fermat’s principle and Fermat’s Last Theorem.

The doodle

The doodle looks like a board in the room of a mathematical genius. Maybe, if Fermat had a board on his wall, it would’ve looked something like this. Strangely though, out of the mathematical mess of seemingly random squiggles, emerge the letters “G-O-O-G-L-E” in that order, while also maintaining complete mathematical harmony by spelling out the statement of Fermat’s Last Theorem. This is a masterstroke from the Google artist, unnamed as yet. Try a mouse-over and see the comment. Have patience – the explanation of the mouse-over comment is delicious.

The mathematician behind it

The life of Fermat is, however, way more awesome than the doodle. Starting off as a lawyer, he learned arithmetic, largely by himself. After shedding off the tag of being an amateur mathematician by discovering a method to calculate slopes of curved lines (which we regard as differential at a point), without having any knowledge of differential calculus (which came later), he moved onto things far greater. Newton would come half a century later and would develop calculus into a branch of mathematics.

Insight
A copy of Arithmetica containing Fermat's comment. (No, I don't read Latin either!)


Fermat’s great insight led him to discover the Fermat’s principle. This, in the garb of the language of modern optics, said that light always takes the path that lets it take the least time when it propagates from one point to another. Huygens, nearly two century later, would boldly propose the wave theory of light using Fermat’s principle to derive observed phenomenon of reflection and refraction. Now every branch of physics – Classical mechanics, Relativity or even Quantum Mechanics – uses this principle, in one form or the other.

Lasting legacy

But this was for technicians in the field. Fermat left behind a delicious puzzle for future generations. He conjectured (and never proved) that three positive integers, x, y and z, cannot possibly satisfy the equation xn + yn = zn, for any n>2 (For n=2, you’d recognise it as the Pythagoras theorem). Fermat supplied a proof for it for n=4, for not a general proof. In his copy of Arithmetica, a book written by the Greek Diophantus, he scribbled on the margin something which said that he had a proof but it was too big to fit in the margin.

Mouse over the doodle, and you’ll see that it says that the discovered proof is too big to fit in the doodle.

The general proof of Fermat’s last theorem is a stuff of legends now, with Andrew Wiles’ proof and his struggles to get to it have been made into TV shows, documentaries and books.

Fermat, pot-bellied and round-nosed, left behind a legacy too big to fit into this one article.


Author: Debjyoti Bardhan

Is a science geek, currently pursuing some sort of a degree (called a PhD) in Physics at TIFR, Mumbai. An enthusiastic but useless amateur photographer, his most favourite activity is simply lazing around. He is interested in all things interesting and scientific. Debjyoti Bardhan has written 130 articles for us.

The author of this post can be contacted at debjyoti@techie-buzz.com


Google Releases Google Catalogs for iPad

Google is continuing to release new projects aimed at the mobile market. They previously released Google Shopper which helps users find local deals and online prices for popular products. Now, they have brought the experience of catalog shopping to the iPad. their newest product is called Google Catalogs, and it’s exactly what it sounds like it is.

This app brings digital versions of many popular catalogs to tablets. They cover the categories including fashion and apparel, beauty, jewelry, home, kids and gifts. They have hooked up with many top brands including Crate and Barrel, L.L. Bean, Lands’ End, Macy’s, and Sephora.


These digital versions bring a number of unique features to catalog shoppings. You gain the ability to zoom, tap on tags to get more information, or even look at cool pictures or videos. You can then look up products in in nearby stores or find it to purchase it online. You can then share your favorite products and catalogs with your friends via email.

Another really cool feature of Google Catalogs is the ability to create your own catalog to share. You can collect your favorite products and pages from various catalogs and compile them into one set. Then, you can send that catalog to family or friends. I see this being a great way to establish a *gift list for loves ones to shop off of.

If you want to check out Google Catalogs, it is available for the iPad now. Google promises that an Android version of the application is coming soon. Check it out and let us know what you think. Leave us a comment to have your voice heard.

Microsoft Products Steer Clear of Vulnerability Leaderboard

In its latest quarterly malware report, Kaspersky Labs has released key trends after analysing vast numbers of IT threats during the second quarter of 2011.

Software Makers

The top 10 rating of vulnerabilities includes products from just two companies: Adobe and Oracle (by virtue of Java vulnerabilities). With great improvements in the Windows updates mechanism and several Windows XP users moving to a more secure Windows 7 experience, Microsoft is no more featured in the list. Incidentally, seven of the top 10 vulnerabilities were found in Adobe Flash Player alone!

Web-surfing

Navigating the web remains the riskiest activity on the Internet. 87 per cent of the websites used to spread malicious programs were concentrated in just 10 countries, with the US leading the pack.

Local infection

The number of fake antivirus programs detected globally by Kaspersky Lab has increased and also the number of users whose computers blocked attempts to install counterfeit software increased 300 per cent in just three months of the last quarter.

India was among the top 10 countries with highest risk of local infection on computers. Every second computer in the country was at risk of local infection at least once in the past three months.

Botnet controllers see India as a place with millions of unprotected and un-patched computers which can remain active on zombie networks for extended periods of time.

- Yury Namestnikov, Senior Virus Analyst at Kaspersky Lab

Hacking

Interestingly, 2011 can go down in the technology history as the year of services from several major organizations like Sony, Honda, Fox News, Epsilon, and Citibank were hacked and disrupted

Mobile

The number of mobile threats targeting different mobile platforms has increased exponentially. In the second quarter of 2011, the detected threats running on J2ME doubled while those on Android nearly tripled. Malicious programs continue to be detected in the official Android Market.

360 for Android – Click and Share Panorama Images with Your Friends [Review]

Panorama images are clicked with an elongated field of view. In laymen term, it basically means stitching or joining multiple images to make one giant ‘wide’ image.

Below is an example of a panorama image-:



In today’s world, camera phones are the primary image capturing device for a majority of people. Irrespective of the poor quality of images, and the lack of detail, everyone prefers camera phones because of their portability factor, and mainly because we carry our cellphones with us everywhere.

2-3 years ago, it would have been impossible to click a panorama image from your handset. However, with advancements in technology and handsets featuring faster 1 GHz processors, and oodles of RAM, capturing panorama images is not a big task for modern age smartphones. Many quality apps exist for iOS to click panorama images. However, the same cannot be said for Android. The problem with panorama images is that they are very hardware centric, and since every Android phone has a different hardware configuration, it is tough to make one app which works on a range of hardware, especially on low-end ones.

360 for Android is one slick app to click and share panorama images with your friends. The app is made by TeliportMe, which consists of only 3 highly talented people. This same team was awarded by Nvidia as the Emerging Technology Company in 2010. The app has been available in the Android Market for quite some time now, and has a pretty big user base of around 45,000+ users.

Recently, a new version of 360 was released on the Android Market which has many under-the-hood changes. I gave the app a try, and I must say I have been pretty impressed by it.

Below is a video of 360 in action –:

360 uses the various sensors found in today’s high-end Android handsets, and the powerful CPU+GPU combo to click panorama images. The app makes use of the GPU instead of the CPU to stitch the images together, and because of this the images are stitched together in a very short span of time. The best part about 360 is its ability to share your panorama images online with other fellow 360 users, or your friends on Twitter or Facebook.

360 also has a public timeline which shows you the panorama images clicked by other 360 users. I spent a lot of time in seeing all the panorama images clicked by other 360 users. Thanks to the image being panoramic, you get a feeling of being physically present in that place. This one feature is what makes 360 stands out from other panorama apps on the Android Market.


Sadly, not all is perfect with the app. The images are not stitched properly all the time. However, the team behind 360 is working on this, and in the latest version the stitching errors are definitely less. Another problem with the app is the 3D image viewer. It is a bit buggy, and sometimes one light flick will be registered as a full swipe.

Thankfully, I have been in constant touch with the developer, and they have assured me that they are working hard on improving the stitching process. That said, these couple of small bugs do not deter me from recommending 360 to all Android users out there. Install the app, and have fun by just watching panorama images of unknown places, a stranger’s room or car. 360 for Android can be downloaded for free from the Android Market (link).

Twitter Launches HTML 5 Version of Twitter.com Aimed at iPad Users

As time goes on, we see more and more companies embracing the fact that the iPad is a force to be reckoned with. They spend there time developing apps for Apple’s tablet, redesigning content for its form factor, and even creating special versions of their sites for it. We can now add Twitter to the list of sites that have versions specifically for the Apple iPad.

Announced by @twittermobile, there is now a HTML 5 version of Twitter’s website, twitter.com, aimed specifically for the iPad. While Twitter has had an iPad app for a while now, this new user experience is designed to be used in the tablet mobile browser. It appears to be a hybrid of the desktop site and the HTML 5 based app. It features a dual column design that is very reminiscent of the current desktop web experience.

If you prefer to use your iPad’s browser over using an app, then this is a great update for you. It is also a great example of how good a mobile web experience can be. I think other companies (Google+) could take a few notes from Twitter. The iPad offers a greater screen real-estate than the typical mobile phone, and it should be taken advantage of.

The timing on this release is pretty interesting. Facebook announced their own HTML 5 web app initiative, Project Spartan, a few months ago. While nothing has come out of that project yet, it is expected to show fruit any day now. Its possible that Twitter felt it was necessary to beat Facebook to a launch, and they have done just that.

According to Twitter, the new version of the site is not currently available to all users. I know that I could not access it just yet, but some users can. It is said to be rolling out to all users over the next week. When I manage to access the site, I will take some screenshots and post them (or someone could send me some.)


Author: Tony Price

Tony A. Price is a Nutrition and Dietetics Student from Louisiana in the United States. He has a deep passion for high end technology, mobile devices and applications, Mac hardware and software, and video gaming. His website is Tony's Brain, and his Twitter handle is @tony_price. Tony Price has written 41 articles for us.

Facebook Jumps into the Deals Battleground, Bad News for Google and Groupon

Facebook Deals is no secret. We have all seen a Deals page at Facebook for a month now. Finally, Facebook is launching deals as a service in Atlanta, Austin, Dallas, San Diego, and San Francisco. The difference with Facebook Deals, is that it integrates with the social aspect of Facebook. There are individual deals as usual, but you will also find deals that relate to group activities like live concerts.

Facebook has a massive audience, something that neither Groupon nor LivingSocial has. This Deals offering from Facebook is also a reply to Google’s deals offering. Another update that has come with Deals, is that Facebook will use its Credits system to offer the deal to its users. However, these credits can be used once a deal shows up in the user’s newsfeed.

It was speculated earlier that Facebook is trying to be different here by keeping only 30% of the total credit revenue. Though, Facebook has made it clear that the split will not necessarily be a 30/70. Additionally, this deal service finally brings the Facebook virtual currency into the real world.

Facebook has already gathered some partners to go ahead with the Deals offering.

Facebook will rely on its own sales force to find businesses interested in offering Deals. It will also tap other services that offer deals, including OpenTable, which focuses on restaurants, PopSugar City, which tailors offers to women, and Zozi, which focuses on outdoor activities like kayak excursions or wine-tasting tours.

Google and Facebook are fighting head on in the deals space and the parallel launch of their services gives immense competition to this field. Though, as I have always said, more the competition, more the companies are forced to deliver. At the end of the day, the user is the one who benefits.

YouTube Transcodes All new Videos to WebM Format, Re-Encodes Existing Ones



YouTube has already worked on transcoding all videos with the highest views on YouTube to the WebM format. This transcoding covers nearly 30% of all YouTube videos and makes up for 99% of the total views on YouTube. As a rule, YouTube will now transcode all uploaded videos to WebM format too, thereby making the web more open when it comes to video content.
WebM is an open media file format for video and audio on the web. Its openness allows anyone to improve the format and its integrations, resulting in a better experience for you in the long-term.


The entire video catalog of YouTube is massive, given the fact that YouTube adds nearly six years’ worth viewing time of videos every day. The announcement post also boasts of a new processing infrastructure that effectively manages the load between existing YouTube videos and new user uploads, for transcoding and re-encoding to WebM. This ensures a fail-proof method of encoding all new videos, and updating existing videos in the background as well.

Apart from webM, Google also promises to continue supporting the H.264 encoding for videos. Additionally, it has expressed its wish to develop an HTML5 video player as well. You can opt-in for the HTML5 video player here.

This is a big step for YouTube as it tries to unify all its videos into a single codec. Now that Google videos is shutting down, YouTube can be Google’s focus for video content.

Firefox 4 Officially Released, Crosses One Million Downloads Within Hours


After a dozen betas, and two release candidates, Mozilla has finally released the public build of Firefox 4. It took nearly a year to come, but now that it’s here, expect it to break all records. With well over five thousand downloads per minute, at the moment, Firefox seems well poised to go past the ten million mark. You can tack Firefox 4 downloads in realtime from glow.mozilla.org.



Although, several planned features were dropped from Firefox 4, as it struggled to stay on schedule, Firefox 4 is a meaty update, which boasts of some pretty significant enhancements.

The user interface has been refined to give the website higher priority. Tabs are now on top (as they should be), and the menu bar has been replaced with a single “Firefox” button.

Firefox 4 is significantly faster than its predecessors, courtesy of the new JagerMonkey JavaScript engine, and should be able to hold its own against the likes of Opera 11, Chrome 10 and Internet Explorer 9. Also new to this build is hardware (GPU) acceleration and WebGL support. Unfortunately, hardware acceleration is currently not supported in Linux. WebGL compatibility means that Firefox is ready to meet the demands of the new age, graphics intensive web-applications and games.

Other new features in Firefox 4 include in-built synchronization option, “Panaroma” tab organization, app tabs, multi-touch support, DNT (Do Not Track) header support, WebM video playback, crash protection for popular plug-ins (Flash, QuickTime, Silverlight etc.), HTML 5 parser, and open type fonts support. The full changelog for Firefox 4 is available here.

Firefox 4 for Windows, Mac and Linux is available in more than seventy languages from firefox.com.

Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 Announced; Is Thinner Than The iPad 2

Samsung has just announced two new Galaxy Tabs at their on-going event in CTIA. One Tab will come with a 10.1-inch screen, while another one will come with an 8.9-inch screen.

Samsung did announce the Galaxy Tab 10.1 at the Mobile World Congress last month, but the company has actually improved the product since then in a bid to make it an iPad killer. The Galaxy Tab 10.1 is thickness is virtually the same as that of the Galaxy S II (8.6 mm), making it thinner than the recently announced iPad 2.


The 10.1 Tab has a PLS display with WXGA (1280×800) display. It is powered by a 1 GHz dual-core processor and packs 1GB of RAM. The back of the tab features a 3MP camera with Auto-Focus and an LED flash, while there is a 2MP camera in the front for video calling.

The usual GPS with A-GPS, Bluetooth, Accelerometer, Digital Compass, Ambient Light Sensor and a 3.5mm audio jack are all present.* The tablet supports HSPA+ for speeds of up to 21Mbps.

The Tab 10.1* has dual-Wi-Fi antennas and supports both 2.4GHz and the 5GHz bands. The tablet has a whopping 6800mAh battery for up to 10 hours of video playback and weighs in only 595grams.

The Galaxy Tab 10.1 will run on Android 3.0 Honeycomb with Samsung’s TouchWIZ 4.0 UI on top of it. The tablet will be released on June 8 in some regions of the world. The 16GB Wi-Fi version will cost only $499 while the 32GB version will cost $599.

Best Mobile Apps Of The Week for Android And iOS

Welcome to the eighth edition of Best Mobile Apps of the Week for Android and iOS. Starting this week, I am going to list two apps each for Android and the iOS platform. Sadly, I will not introduce our readers to new Symbian apps from this week as well.

In this edition of BMATW, Android owners will be introduced to an app which will monitor their sleeping habits and an app which will help users create their own Android avatar! For iOS owners, there is a very popular Hindi news channel application and a RSS reader app.

Sleep As An Droid (Android)

Ignoring the grammatically incorrect title of the app, Sleep as an Droid helps a user to track his sleeping habit.



Track your sleep and wake up gently with nature sounds in optimal sleep phase

Alarm clock with sleep cycle tracker. Wakes you gently in light sleep for pleasant mornings. Features: sleep graph history, sleep debt stats, sharing (FaceBook, email), nature alarms (birds, sea, storm…) with gradual volume up, music volume down when asleep, captcha, sleep talk/snoring recording.

The app uses the inbuilt accelerometer of your Android handset to track your movement while sleeping, and wakes you up when you are in a ‘light sleep’. Users can also set mathematical puzzles as captcha codes, so as to completely wake them up from sleep!

Sleep As An Droid can be downloaded for free (2 weeks trial version) from the Android Market.

Androidify (Android)

Androidify was released by Google a couple of weeks ago on the Android Market. The app allows a user to create their own ‘Android’ flavored avatar just for fun! Users can customize each and every aspect of their Android avatar including its height, width, clothes and hairstyle etc.


Androidify yourself by customizing the little green Android as yourself, your family, your friends, anyone! Stretch it , shrink it, add a hoody, style its hair, throw on some shades, or even give it a parrot and a pirate hat. Arrrgh!

Once you’ve personalized your Android, share it with your friends, set it as a photo in your contact book, or use it in some inventive way we haven’t thought of yet. Have fun, and we can’t wait to see what you come up with!

Sadly, the application does not allow users to create an animated avatar which is a letdown. Hopefully, Google will introduce this feature in a future update. Android users can download Androidify for free from here.

Reeder (iOS)

Reeder is one of the most successful RSS reader apps available for the iOS platform. The app has a very slick UI and with some nice and smooth transitions. Reeder supports syncing with Google Reader and allows users to browse their feeds either via feed or folders.


Users also have the option to share a given piece of news with their friends on popular social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook.

Reeder also supports Instapaper, ReaditLater, Readibility, state saving and Image caching. The app is available for the iPhone as well as for the iPad. The mobile version of Reeder costs $2.99, while the tablet version costs $4.99.

NDTV (iOS)

The NDTV app for iOS brings the latest news and videos from the NDTV newsroom to the users. The app also allows users to watch the live stream of some popular NDTV channels including NDTV India and NDTV Profit. The video streaming works on Wi-Fi as well as on 3G/EDGE.


The NDTV Social section allows users to read and know more about the NDTV anchors and news reporters. The app is available as a free download for the iPhone as well as for the iPad.

WordPress 3.2 Plans Revealed : Faster, Lighter, Drops PHP4 and MySQL4 Support And Will

WordPress 3.1 has been out for almost a month now and is pretty much stable. Now, that the last major release of WordPress is out of the way, the developers have already started to focus on the next version; WordPress 3.2.


According to a blog post by the lead developer at WordPress; Mark Jaquith, the plans for WordPress 3.2 include several new and exciting changes which will make WordPress more faster and lighter than ever before. WordPress 3.2 will also have a faster release cycle than WordPress 3.1 and include several other changes.

Dropping PHP4 and MySQL4 Support – Welcome PHP5 and MySQL5

For starters WordPress 3.2 will drop support for PHP4 and MySQL4 and will require users to use PHP 5.2 and MySQL5. However, the developers have been asked to refrain from using PHP5 specific code in this build.

IE6 Nagging

In addition to that WordPress 3.2 may also include a nag for IE6 users and ask them to "use a real browser". This change is related to the BrowseHappy campaign.

Distraction Free Writing in Admin Panel

The Admin write panel may get a major overhaul with WordPress 3.2. The Full screen editor may get a overhaul similar to WriteRoom where users can focus on writing and avoid distractions. It will be interesting to see how this shapes up. One of the developers is actively working on this and may release a plugin for distraction free writing well before WordPress 3.2 comes out.

Improvements in Auto Upgrading

WordPress 3.2 may have better support for upgrading your installation. The developers will focus more on upgrading just the updated files rather than upgrading the entire installation and core files.

Speed Improvements

WordPress can slow down a website, specially with a large database. Also the admin menu loads a bit slowly at times. WordPress 3.2 will address the speed issues by introducing PHP lazy loading and disabling certain things which leads to the slowdown.

The new features in WordPress 3.2 have not been revealed yet, but from the WordPress 3.2 plans definitely look interesting. Speed and stability are a major part of any platform and outdating older versions of PHP4 and MySQL4 should help with adding more features in the future.

WordPress 3.2 is just a stepping stone towards adding more speed, stability and features to the best blogging platform in the world.

How to Run Windows Live Writer in Linux

Last week, an online buddy of mine told me that he’d use Linux more often if he could run Windows Live Writer in it. I had to agree, there are many different blog editors in Linux, but once you’ve gotten used to using Live Writer, you’ve been spoiled and won’t want to use anything less satisfying.

After a bit of searching around online, I finally figured out that the best solution might be to run a full copy of Windows inside a virtual machine. Then I’d have the best of both worlds within easy reach. After trying it, I discovered that it works quite well. In fact, this article was posted from Xubuntu Linux, using Windows Live Writer.


I decided to use VirtualBox as the virtual machine server, because it’s open source, but mainly because it’s already in the Ubuntu Software Center. Installing it was as easy as searching for “VirtualBox” and marking it for installation.

An old, unused copy of Windows XP was my choice for a guest operating system. I was familiar with the steps needed to set that up, but if you need help, you can find a great tutorial on installing XP in VirtualBox at Linux Journal.

After I had XP running the first time, I did have a few problems. I kept receiving warnings that I didn’t have the Automatic Updates enabled. Since this was virtual machine, I really didn’t want it to update. If I had any problems, I could always use VirtualBox’s snapshots to return to an older state when needed. I finally opened XP’s Services manager and turned off the “Automatic Updates” and the “Security Center”.

You can launch the Services manager by clicking “Start”, “Run” and then typing “services.msc” into the run box (without quotes).



I also noticed that I couldn’t copy and paste between Linux and Windows. I found out that I needed to install the “Guest Additions” in XP. You can find these in the VirtualBox “Devices” menu while the virtual machine is running.


There are two versions of Windows Live Writer. One version is for XP, while the most current version is for Vista and Windows 7.

Once you have Live Writer installed this way, you are ready to blog with ease, no matter what flavor of Linux you’re using. If you have your own favorite blog editor, let us know in the comments below.

Twitter Age is 5 Years

Despite Twitter acting like a dick this past week, pissing off both developers and users in the process, no one can deny that Twitter is a revolutionary (literally!) communication tool which has been one of the most popular web services on 2010.

Well, guess what?! Twitter is now exactly 5 years old. It was exactly 5 years ago, on this day that Twitter was born.

In these 5 years, Twitter has exploded in terms of users and tweets.

Here are some interesting statistics about Twitter.

           #tweets
3 years, 2 months and 1 day. The time it took from the first Tweet to the billionth Tweet.

1 week. The time it now takes for users to send a billion Tweets.

50 million. The average number of Tweets people sent per day, one year ago.

140 million. The average number of Tweets people sent per day, in the last month.

177 million. Tweets sent on March 11, 2011.

456. Tweets per second (TPS) when Michael Jackson died on June 25, 2009 (a record at that time).

6,939. Current TPS record, set 4 seconds after midnight in Japan on New Year’s Day.

#accounts

572,000. Number of new accounts created on March 12, 2011.

460,000. Average number of new accounts per day over the last month.

182%. Increase in number of mobile users over the past year.

#employees

8. 29. 130. 350. 400. Number of Twitter employees in Jan 2008, Jan 2009, Jan 2010, Jan 2011 and today.

Jack Dorsey, the creator of Twitter just tweeted this out and also posted an interesting conversation with Biz Stone which describes the creation of Twitter.
IM with @Biz about starting work on twttr, March 13th 2006, 12:22PM Pacific

me: Biz! How goes? We’re starting work on the twttr implementation today.

Biz: really?! NICE

me: yeah, i roped florian in. i think we’ll be able to get most of it up and working by the end of this week. then i’ll do the sms and style side next week. along with ajax stuff.

Biz: two weeks and we’ll have twttr.
yay!

me: yeah! should be pretty quick. have all of florian’s time and all of mine.

Biz: oh man that’s awesome

Biz: i’ve looking longingly at my empty sms on my phone throuhout the panels

Biz: sucks that teen people has the shortcode

me: i know! that’s going to be tough. doesn’t help that the code also spells TXT

Biz: hmm

yah

Facebook Brings More features to The “Like” Button

Facebook is all set to change the way users share content and links using the “Like” and “Share” buttons. The sharing functionality of Facebook’s like button has been slightly overhauled which might trigger a retiring door for Facebook’s share button.

Before this update, the “Like” button was kind of a recommendation while the share button was “Sharing” in it’s true sense. Liking a webpage would post a mini update on your Facebook profile while sharing a webpage would bring additional details e.g thumbnails, excerpt, personal comments and so on.

The newer update rolled by Facebook changes how the “Liked” story is shared on your Facebook profile or news feed. Unlike before, a thumbnail and excerpt is returned, an example is shown below:


The next major update is that now users can “Like” updates within a Facebook application. You can “Like” and share content or updates from an application which your friend is using, hence expect some heavyweight Facebook liking cluttering up your News feed, “Mr X likes your daily horoscope” and stuff like that.

Why Facebook’s Share Button Shouldn’t Retire

There is a major difference between Facebook’s share and like buttons. It’s “personal commentary”.

When you are sharing a webpage using the “Share” button, you have the ability to add a personal note or comment to the update. Whether you hate the page, whether it’s funny, you can express it. But such is not the case with Facebook’s like button. The moment you hit “Like” it’s dumped to your profile, no second chance at all.


You can always post a comment to the “Liked” story and express your views but this is kind of boring for two reasons. First, you have to open your Facebook profile and then comment on the “Liked” link. Second, your close friends might get annoyed when you keep liking and commenting on the same link over and over again.

For Facebook, The Like Button Makes More Sense

But if you think from Facebook shoes, pushing the “Like” button makes perfect sense for two reasons.

First, content sharing is much more rapid, instantaneous and lucid. No popups or any other confirmation as such, all the user needs to do is hit the “Like” button on any website, blog, app and the page is shared instantly on his news feed.* Second, the “Like” button is much easier to implement and has a powerful branding attached to it. “Hey I have 12K Likes on my Facebook page while you have only 4K”, you get the idea.

Facebook Spokeswoman Malorie Lucich told Mashable that they will continue to support the Share button, Like is the “recommended solution moving forward.”

What’s your take on the newer features of Facebook’s “Like” button? Do you think it’s useful enough and worth ditching the share button from your website ?

Related: Check out Techie Buzz’s Facebook app

BlackBerry Testing Android Apps on Its Devices

Last month, BGR presented an exclusive report on Android apps being tested on the Blackberry PlayBook tablet. BlackBerry has done some considerable work over the last one month and ShopSavvy has seen its app running on three more BlackBerry devices. The data was available to them through the Flurry analytics service.

*The devices running this app were:

BlackBerry 8300 ran Shop Savvy on January 31, 2011
BlackBerry 8600 ran Shop Savvy on January 17 and 24, 2011
BlackBerry 8520 ran Shop Savvy on February 7, 2011

The access was made from Waterloo, Ontario in Canada where RIM headquarters lie. The blackberry OS has support for a JVM and this is probably being made use of to run these apps on BlackBerry devices. Shop Savvy has also presented the analytics for some apprehensive users.


According to some rumors, BlackBerry was planning to use the Dalvik Virtual Machine to run these apps. However, it dropped the plan later, to develop an internal solution.

With Android having a considerably large number of apps in the market and growing faster than any other mobile OS, BlackBerry has every reason to hook on to the Android ecosystem. This will be a groundbreaking development, thereby bringing cross-platform app support for Android. Android app developers will have better scope for revenues and BlackBerry will emerge stronger in this competition where it is pitted against platforms from Android and Apple.

Samsung Galaxy S NOT To Get Android 2.3 Gingerbread Update In March (Officially)

Rumors are floating around on the Internet that the Samsung Galaxy S will get Android 2.3 Gingerbread update sometime in March. The rumor of this source is this tweet from @m4gic. Apparently, the guy went to the Sammy’s European headquarter in Frankfurt where he got this piece of news.

Now, I know rumors spread like fire on the Internet but this is a bit too much. I own a Samsung Galaxy S and am a more than frequent visitor of the Galaxy S sub-forum over at XDA. Now, firmware leaks are a very common thing over the Galaxy S forum on XDA. In fact, the first Android 2.2 based firmware for the Galaxy S leaked nearly 8 weeks before the ‘official’ firmware was released by Samsung.


If Samsung does intent to roll out the Android 2.3 Gingerbread update for the Galaxy S by March then at least one Gingerbread based firmware for the handset must have already leaked. Sadly, that is not the case here! Many people may argue that firmware leaks are no big deal and it may happen that a Gingerbread based firmware for the Galaxy S won’t leak.

However, I personally feel that Samsung does intentionally leak some of these firmwares so that it can get the feedback of the modding community about the firmware. Samsung has in fact incorporated some of the changes which the modding community suggested it!

So according to me, the Samsung Galaxy S won’t get the Android 2.3 Gingerbread update in March. If by any means it does, it will be either via CM7 (unofficial), which is progressing very nicely and can be easily used on day-to-day basis, or via a leaked Gingerbread firmware.

Preorder Battlefield 3 and Get Expansion Pack For Free

Well it’s about time if you ask me. Electronic Arts’ successor to the 2005 hit Battlefield 2 has just posted the the pre order incentives. Pre ordering Battlefield 3 gets you the first digital expansion pack Battlefield 3: Back to Karkand absolutely free! The expansion features a lot of the old, beloved, maps from Battlefield 2:-

 


Pre-order Battlefield 3 to receive the digital expansion pack Battlefield 3: Back to Karkand at no extra charge! This themed multiplayer expansion pack includes four legendary maps from Battlefield 2 boldly re-imagined with Frostbite™ 2 physics, destruction and visuals. Completing the package are classic Battlefield 2 weapons and vehicles, unique rewards, new achievements/trophies, and more.

The Frostbite 2 is the new game engine that is powering Battlefield 3. The visuals introduced by the Frostbite 2 engine along with the physics (as detailed above) give quite the realistic feel of a battle being fought around you. I can only imagine how this game would be if I were to play it on one of those high-end rigs:-

Battlefield 3 introduces Frostbite 2, the incredible technology that takes animation, destruction, lighting, scale and audio to new heights.* Built upon this powerful game engine, Battlefield 3 immerses players physically and emotionally to the world around them like never before.

To find out more about Battlefield 3 and its immersive engine, do check out the EA UK site.

Google Rolls Out An Algorithmic Update To Remove Spam Sites From Search Results

In recent times, Google has been pretty busy trying to save it’s face from the raising eyebrows on search quality, spam sites infiltrating Google search results and content aggregators dominating the SERP’s. We told you how messy the entire Google experience can get, even Google News is not free from junk sites and content aggregators.

It’s not that Big G wasn’t listening to the appeals, they announced a big algorithmic change in January 2011 followed by announcing domain filtering in search results.

In fact, Google also released a Chrome extension which allows the user to block specific sites on Google search result pages.

Today Google announced that the Google search quality team has rolled out a major algorithmic change in their ranking system. This change will impact almost 11.8 % of search queries made on Google search and the “algorithmic change” is designed such that they will reduce rankings for low quality sites which don’t add value to a subject or scrap content from other sites.

At the same times, Google confirms that the new algorithm will make sure that readers can find more original content in search results. Sites who post original stories, write detailed reports and publish thoughtful analysis or research work are surely going to rank higher in the search results for a given query.

“We can’t make a major improvement without affecting rankings for many sites. It has to be that some sites will go up and some will go down. Google depends on the high-quality content created by wonderful websites around the world, and we do have a responsibility to encourage a healthy web ecosystem. Therefore, it is important for high-quality sites to be rewarded, and that’s exactly what this change does.” says Google in an official blog post.

Google says that the algorithmic update does not entirely rely on the feedback received from the Personal Blocklist Chrome extension. However, the web spam team did consider the data received from the extension and compared it with the sites, which were marked as “SPAM” by the “new Algorithm”. In fact, the algorithmic change addresses 84% of the spam sites, which other users have also blocked in the Personal blocklist chrome extension preferences.

What are those sites ? Google hasn’t disclosed the list.

The algorithmic change is launched in U.S only and will be rolled out on other locations over time.

New Snapshot of Opera 11.10 Released: Makes Speed Dial Fluid

Speed Dial is undoubtedly one of the most loved features in Opera. It’s also probably the most emulated. Opera first added speed dial back in 2007, to provide a convenient and quick way to access the most frequently visited websites. Since then we have seen Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer and others implement variants of this feature.

In the meanwhile, Opera worked on improving speed dial by adding support for background images, customization options, and wide-screen resolution support. Now, the veteran browser maker says that it is ready to take speed dial to the next level. “We are going to make Speed Dial more fluid, dynamic and easier to use”, Cezary Ku?akowski from Opera Software wrote on the Desktop Team blog.

The just released snapshot of Barracuda (Opera 11.10) provides a first look at the planned changes by introducing the new “flow layout”. To be honest, as of now, the new flow layout doesn’t do anything earth-shattering. It just makes the speed dial behave a lot more like a webpage. If the browser window is resized, then instead of your speed dials being shrunk, a scrollbar will appear. Also the cap on number of speed dials is gone. Now, it seems that you can have as many visual shortcuts as you want.

The new snapshot also introduces a new “Discoverability” feature that will subtly encourage users to try new features. If done right, this can turn out to be a really smart move, as Opera has scores of awesome features, that even many old-timers aren’t aware of. Opera promises that discoverability will not be annoying or frustrating. However, I couldn’t check it out as till now I haven’t managed to figure out the three features that were added to discoverability. Let me know if you guys fare better.

The snapshot is available for Windows, Mac and Linux. However, don’t forget that this is an early preview build, and is likely to have stability and performance issues.

Opera Software’s Revenue Surges On the Back of Operator Tie-ups

Earlier in the week, Opera Software released its quarterly financial report. The final quarter of 2010 saw Opera increase its user base to 170 million, out of which 53 million belonged to Opera for desktop.

The past year also witnessed Opera Software going from being the the red to recording record revenues. One of the most significant contributors to its turnaround was operator tie-ups, which Opera had been focusing on during the past few quarters.

Opera’s partners include several big names like Vodafone and MTS. While mobile service providers benefit from the partnership by being able to provide its users a customised version of Opera Mini, which reduces bandwidth costs, highlights their web-properties (through speed-dial), and encourages mobile surfing, Opera Software profits from the licensing fee.

The number of operator-branded Opera Mini users jumped from 2.1 million in Jan 2010 to 11.5 million in Jan 2011. Other than that there were approximately 90 million Opera Mini users last month.



Although partnerships with operators helped Opera generate a significant amount of revenue, the Norwegian browser maker credits stronger than expected desktop and device revenues (chiefly gaming consoles and connected TV) for the higher than expected total revenue. AdMarvel also made a significant positive contribution.



As expected Opera’s profits also saw a sharp increase. However, one-off expenses like closing of Czech offices, and shifting of Opera’s server park from Norway to Iceland pulled down the profit percentage.

In the near future, Opera aims to refresh its mail offering by leveraging the previously acquired Fastmail, develop Open Mobile Ad Exchange to generate revenue from mobile browsers, popularize Opera Mobile Store, and aggressively monetize Opera for desktop (see screenshot embedded below).



The Amazingly Awesome Angry Birds Birthday Cake

Almost everyone likes Angry Birds. The game is simple, delightfully easy to learn and atrociously addictive and incredibly hard at times to beat. This simple mix of great things has made the hit Rovio Mobile game the best-seller on the iPhone/iPad and Android mobile systems. Considering how quickly this game of catapulting suicidal birds at megalomaniacal pigs.


So when a geeky father decided to make an Angry Birds themed cake for his son, he also decided to go a little bit further. He made a playable Angry Birds cake, complete with destructible walls of wafer and birds and pigs made of icing.

Electricpig’s (how ironic) Mike Cooper’s son was a big Angry Birds fan. On his sixth birthday, Cooper wanted to give him a memorable birthday cake – and what else could be more memorable than a cake that also doubles as a real-life video game? On the video’s description, Cooper writes:-

It’s become a family tradition that I make increasingly ridiculous birthday cakes for my kids each year. So with my little boy Ben turning 6-years-old over the weekend, and appreciating his love of Angry Birds, I thought I’d have a shot a making him a playable Angry Birds birthday cake with working catapult and iced birds as ammunition.

100% incredible! He has also shared the how-to for making this cake on the Electric-pig website. Do check it out if you’d like to wear a chef’s hat and surprise your friend/spouse/child who is an Angry Birds nut!

Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread Update Rolling Out To Nexus One And Nexus S Handsets

Google has kept its words and has finally started rolling out the Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread update for the Nexus One and Nexus S owners, alike. When Google announced the Nexus S and the next version of Android – Gingerbread, the company stated that they will release the Gingerbread update for the Nexus One within “few weeks”.

However, nearly 2 months later, the company has finally started rolling out the OTA update for the N1 (Nexus One). Android 2.3.3 contains some major changes as well, including API level 10, NFC enhancements, improvements to the graphics department of the handset and bug fixes.


Nexus S users should also keep in mind that updating their handset to Android 2.3.3 will disable Facebook contact sync on their phone. The reason behind this as stated by Google is –:

We believe it is very important that users are able to control their data. So in the over-the-air update for Nexus S, we have a small change to how Facebook contacts appear on the device. For Nexus S users who downloaded the Facebook app from Android Market, Facebook contacts will no longer appear to be integrated with the Android Contacts app. Since Facebook contacts cannot be exported from the device, the appearance of integration created a false sense of data portability. Facebook contact data will continue to appear within the Facebook app. Like all developers on Android, Facebook is free to use the Android contacts API to truly integrate contacts on the device, which would allow users to have more control over their data. We are removing the special-case handling of Facebook contacts on Nexus S and future lead devices. We continue to believe that reciprocity (the expectation that if information can be imported into a service it should be able to be exported) is an important step toward creating a world of true data liberation — and encourage other websites and app developers to allow users to export their contacts as well.

Hopefully, Facebook will soon update its Android app to use the Contacts API.

The Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread OTA update will take a “few weeks” to complete so N1 owners need to wait patiently for the update to be pushed to their handset.

Google Gets A Sweet Tooth for Honeycomb

The newest Google mobile operating system was released to developers at the beginning of this month. The OS, called Android 3.o and nicknamed “Honeycomb”, is geared towards securing a hefty portion of the tablet pc market, which has been dominated by the Apple iPad as of late.

Unlike earlier versions of the Android OS, Honeycomb does not produce a mixed experience by being magnified by the tablet device. On the official Google blog, the new OS was designed from the ground to be used on mobile devices with bigger screens. The devices fitted with Honeycomb will be able to use tabbed browsing, auto-fill forms, sync with Google Chrome bookmarks, and private browsing. The OS also features the latest Google Mobile Maps 5 and Google Talk, supporting both video and voice chat.



The Android software development kit, or SDK, has already been released. This allows developers to already begin tinkering with the first tablet-only Android operating system. Still the SDK doesn’t have any finalized APIs and is for testing only for the time being.

After some playing around with the SDK, the new features in the developer realm are clear:


  • UI great for creating new apps for larger screen wireless devices
  • 3D graphics: Renderscript
  • Dual-core processor capability
  • HTTP Live streaming support, DRM framework, and file transfer ease for rich content development
  • Audio streaming and headset control through Bluetooth A2DP and HSP
  • Encrypted storage and password expiration
End users will enjoy:

  • Customizing home screens
  • Menu area from the phone now become the Honeycomb Action Bar
  • Notification bar from the phone now become the Honeycomb System Bar
  • A Recent Apps button
  • New keyboard features like reshaped buttons for better targeting as well as the addition of a Tab button
  • Copy-&-Paste upgrades with a press and hold option, drag and resize, as well as web search and find with the Action Bar
  • Media/Photo Transfer Protocol support
  • Google sites auto-sign in & bookmark sync with Chrome
  • Camera with front-facing option for video conference
  • Card-like contacts
  • Two-panel email app with multi-select as well as home screen widget
The technical lead for Google’s SDK team, Xavier Ducrohet, stated in a blog post that, “Besides the user-facing features it offers, Android 3.0 is also specifically designed to give developers the tools and capabilities they need to create great applications for tablets and similar devices, together with the flexibility to adapt existing apps to the new UI while maintaining compatibility with earlier platform versions and other form-factors.”

Though the tablet market is the seemingly new frontier in mobile devices and the market will soon be saturated, Honeycomb tablets will be a huge step in the way of tablet computing. It stands to correct a number of issues (i.e. lack of USB) the 15 million iPad buyers stood to overlook.

==== About the author ====

Jon Ryan is the Marketing Manager for CellPhoneNumber.com, a site that helps users find facts and ask questions about cell phone numbers. He has a background in copywriting, journalism, promotions, blogging, design work, drafting, website design/coding, ad design, and creative directing.

Firefox 5 Concepts Revealed; More Site Specific Features For Apps

Mozilla will be releasing Firefox 4 in the next few weeks. Firefox 4 sports a complete overhaul from the previous versions and is very similar to Google Chrome. However, Mozilla is now working on the next version of Firefox 5 which might be released in late 2011.



CNET got hold of some concept pictures which show the future of the browser. The concept pictures can be seen at http://areweprettyyet.com/5/. One of the big focus of Firefox 5 will be desktop apps which will contain site specific features in them.

For example, if you use the Twitter app, you will see options such as creating a new tweet, checking your direct messages and more. This feature will also be available for other sites like Facebook and IMDb.



Internet Explorer 9 has a similar feature where they allow websites to define tasks when a website is pinned to the taskbar. It is now known yet whether the site specific features in Firefox 5 will have their own tasks or rely on websites to define those tasks.



In addition to the site specific features, Firefox 5 will also have a new visual appearance for the search box, where the color of the button would change based on the search engine the user is using. This color could either be specified by the search engines themselves or will be fetched from the favicon of the search engine.

Firefox 5 will also promote the Firefox Sync option to users so that they can sync their passwords, bookmarks and more in the cloud and use it on any mobile device or PC.



Mozilla will also be revamping it’s add-on manager which is used to install and manage Firefox add-ons in the browser. Firefox 4 introduced a new add-on manager, but it looks like they will be revamping it again in Firefox 5.

These are just some of the key features from Firefox 5 which are available as concepts. It looks like Mozilla will continue building on Firefox 4 and add these new features to it, so the look and feel of Firefox 5 may not be any different than Firefox 4.

So what do you think about the new Firefox 5 concepts? Do you like them? What else would you want to see in Firefox 5? Do share your opinions and views about it.

Introducing the Google Translate application for iPhone

Speak to translate
The new app accepts voice input for 15 languages, and—just like the web app—you can translate a word or phrase into one of more than 50 languages. For voice input, just press the microphone icon next to the text box and say what you want to translate.



Listen to your translations
You can also listen to your translations spoken out loud in one of 23 different languages. This feature uses the same new speech synthesizer voices as the desktop version of Google Translate we introduced last month.


Full-screen mode
Another feature that might come in handy is the ability to easily enlarge the translated text to full-screen size. This way, it’s much easier to read the text on the screen, or show the translation to the person you are communicating with. Just tap on the zoom icon to quickly zoom in.


And the app also includes all of the major features of the web app, including the ability to view dictionary results for single words, access your starred translations and translation history even when offline, and support romanized text like Pinyin and Romaji.

You can download Google Translate now from the App Store globally. The app is available in all iOS supported languages, but you’ll need an iPhone or iPod touch iOS version 3 or later.

Advanced sign in security for your Google accounts

 Has anyone you know ever lost control of an email account and inadvertently sent spam—or worse—to their friends and family? There are plenty of examples (like the classic "Mugged in London" scam) that demonstrate why it's important to take steps to help secure your activities online. Your Gmail account, your photos, your private documents—if you reuse the same password on multiple sites and one of those sites gets hacked, or your password is conned out of you directly through a phishing scam, it can be used to access some of your most closely-held information.

Most of us are used to entrusting our information to a password, but we know that some of you are looking for something stronger. As we announced to our Google Apps customers a few months ago, we've developed an advanced opt-in security feature called 2-step verification that makes your Google Account significantly more secure by helping to verify that you're the real owner of your account. Now it's time to offer the same advanced protection to all of our users.

2-step verification requires two independent factors for authentication, much like you might see on your banking website: your password, plus a code obtained using your phone. Over the next few days, you'll see a new link on your Account Settings page that looks like this:




Take your time to carefully set up 2-step verification—we expect it may take up to 15 minutes to enroll. A user-friendly set-up wizard will guide you through the process, including setting up a backup phone and creating backup codes in case you lose access to your primary phone. Once you enable 2-step verification, you'll see an extra page that prompts you for a code when you sign in to your account. After entering your password, Google will call you with the code, send you an SMS message or give you the choice to generate the code for yourself using a mobile application on your Android, BlackBerry or iPhone device. The choice is up to you. When you enter this code after correctly submitting your password we'll have a pretty good idea that the person signing in is actually you.


It's an extra step, but it's one that significantly improves the security of your Google Account because it requires the powerful combination of both something you know—your username and password—and something that only you should have—your phone. A hacker would need access to both of these factors to gain access to your account. If you like, you can always choose a "Remember verification for this computer for 30 days" option, and you won't need to re-enter a code for another 30 days. You can also set up one-time application-specific passwords to sign in to your account from non-browser based applications that are designed to only ask for a password, and cannot prompt for the code.

How I Nearly Doubled The Battery Life Of My Android Phones

Last year, I purchased my first Android phone – the Samsung Galaxy S. Before the Galaxy S, I had no previous experience with the Android OS. However, after I got the Galaxy S, my love for the OS and its ‘openness’ grew. Since the Galaxy S, I tried many other Android based devices including a HTC Legend, a HTC Desire and the Samsung Galaxy 5. Recently, I got the HTC Desire Z.


On my suggestion, many of my friends also purchased an Android based phone and they have been simply loving the OS. However, one complaint all my friends have is the poor battery life of their Android phone.* In fact, the majority of Android owners complain about the poor battery life of their handset. Until late last year, the battery life of even my Galaxy S was very poor. If I used the phone heavily, it would be totally out of power by evening.

I tried many tips, found all over the Internet, but the increase in battery life was hardly noticeable. Then one day, I came across an application on the Android market called Juice Defender. The description of the app says that it will help ‘Reclaim your battery’. Out of pure curiosity about the efficiency of these kind of apps, I installed Juice Defender on my phone. I ran the app on my phone and was surprised to see that the app checks if your phone is rooted or not. After that, I enabled the app and used the ‘Aggressive’ profile.



Since then, the battery life of my Samsung Galaxy S has improved considerably! Before using Juice Defender, the battery of my phone would go down to 30% by night on moderate usage. My ‘Moderate’ usage scenario includes an hour of phone calls, 30-40mins of fiddling around with the phone, around 30 messages and some tweeting via TweetDeck with Auto Sync enabled for my FB, GMail and Twitter account.

After installing the app, I can squeeze out nearly a full day and a half of battery life from my Galaxy S with the usage pattern defined above. Even under heavy usage, I can get a full day of battery life from my phone. I seriously never expected this app to have such a big impact on the battery life of my phone. I installed this app on the Android phones of all my friends and relatives. After a week of using the phone with the app running in the background, even they reported substantial improvements in the battery life.



When I shifted to the HTC Desire Z, I did not install Juice Defender for a couple of days. The battery life of the phone was pathetic. Even on light usage, the battery of the phone hardly lasted me a single day. However, after I installed Juice Defender, the scenario again changed. The battery life of my Z increased substantially.

For people who think that this app may slow down your phone or may disable some features of the phone, I am pleased to say that this is not the case. There is absolutely no performance hit or anything. Your Android phone will continue to function as it was.

For all Android phone owners with poor battery life, I will highly recommend you to try out Juice Defender on their phone. Users always have the option to uninstall the app if they don’t like it.

Windows 7 SP1 RTM Released Coming to Windows Update on Feb 22nd

Microsoft has officially announced and made available the Windows 7 SP1 RTM and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 to their OEM partners. Windows 7 Service Pack 1 will be available to MSDN, TechNet and Volume License customers on February 16th and to general public on February 22nd through the Microsoft Download Center and Windows Update.

Many of the updates available in Windows 7 SP1 has already been previously delivered through Windows Update, so there wouldn’t be much changes for users who have already applied those updates.

Windows 7 Service Pack 1 has been in development for a long time now and it is finally making it’s way out to the users. This could also mean the impending release of Internet Explorer 9 is around the corner.


Samsung Galaxy Indulge LTE Android Smartphone Coming to MetroPCS

Remember the Samsung Forte, the phone which we posted some leaked information about, a few weeks back? Well, it’s actually called the Samsung Galaxy Indulge, and it will be launching in a week.

It was leaked again on the MetroPCS website, and is priced at $399 for the contract free version. It is one of the first LTE devices which will be launched in the US. It comes with two plans – the $50 plan offers 1 GB data while the $60 plan offers unlimited data. Both plans offer unlimited calls and text messages.

The Galaxy Indulge seems to be a smaller version of the Epic 4G. It has a smaller 3.5 inch touchscreen HVGA display and comes with a sliding keyboard. It also has a 3 MP camera and comes with Android 2.2 Froyo with the TouchWiz 3.0 UI. It is powered by a 1 GHz processor and will have 512 MB RAM. It comes loaded with the Iron Man 2 movie on a 4 GB microSD card. It also has all the basics in place – Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and GPS.

The Galaxy Indulge seems to be a nice LTE smartphone option for Android fans. It will likely launch by the end of this week, and might beat the Verizon HTC Thunderbolt to become the first LTE smartphone in the US.

Sprint Unveils The Android Powered Kyocera Echo

Kyocera Communications recently announced the world’s first dual-touchscreen Android smartphone, the Kyocera Echo. This handset runs on the Android 2.2 operating system and it will be exclusively available on the airwaves of Sprint in the US. Kyocera Echo features two high-resolution 3.5-inch WVGA touchscreen displays connected by the “pivot hinge” feature, that enables the two displays to operate independently.

“For years Kyocera has provided handsets to Sprint’s Prepaid Group and MVNOs, as well as to Sprint under the Sanyo brand,” said Eiichi Toriyama, president of Kyocera Communications Inc. “We value greatly our relationship with Sprint and we are thrilled that they have chosen Echo as the standout product with which to reintroduce its customers to the Kyocera brand. With Kyocera Echo, we are proud to give Sprint an iconic, industry-changing device that delivers an entirely new experience for smartphone users.”

Kyocera Echo features a dual 3.5-inch LCD WVGA with 800 x 480 pixels resolution, 4.7 inches diagonally and 800 x 960 pixels resolution when opened, Android 2.2 (FroYo) operating system, 1 GHz Snapdragon processor, 3G Connectivity, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, 5 megapixel camera with flash, autofocus and 2x digital zoom, HD (720p) video recording and more.

Other features include a 3.5mm headset jack, Digital compass, accelerometer, proximity sensor, light sensor, GPS, 1GB memory, 8GB microSD card included, 32GB expandable memory, Full HTML Web browser optimized for dual-screen experience, GPS, Wi-Fi hotspot capability and a 1370 mAh battery.

Kyocera Echo comes with the VueQue app, which allows you to watch a YouTube video in one display, while browsing, queuing and buffering additional YouTube videos on the other. This handset measures 115.0 x 56.5 x 17.2mm and weighs 193g. Kyocera Echo comes with a price tag of $199.99 after a $100 mail rebate and a two years service agreement. This handset will be available for purchase from this spring.

LG G-Slate handled on video, looks like a giant Optimus 2X

The wonders you can find on YouTube, eh? LG's G-Slate (to be known as the Optimus Pad outside the US) has made yet another appearance on Google's video repository, this time giving us a whirl to show off its slender body and port and speaker arrangement. The integrated 3D cameras also get a demo, as you can see above, though we're much more excited to be able to churn out 1080p video with this device thanks to the Tegra 2 SOC it's built around. Its smartphone buddy the Optimus 2X delivered some very smooth output and we can't see any reason why the G-Slate should do any worse. Make your way past the break for all the intimate video action.

Last.fm radio app goes 'premium' on home and mobile devices, web and desktop streamin

Last.fm radio app goes 'premium' on home and mobile devices, web and desktop streaming remain free




Last.fm has decided to tweak its offering on the app front, where it is now introducing a new subscription requirement for most mobile and home entertainment devices. From here on out, you'll have to pay for the privilege of streaming music through the company's software on devices like the iPhone and Squeezebox, though the blow is nicely cushioned by the news that there won't be any ads to dilute your aural pleasure. Windows Phone 7 won't be subject to the new fee for the remainder of 2011 in the US and UK, while Sonos devices will continue to stream freely until this summer, but eventually it seems like all these apps will cost a little bit of cash to use. And "little" is the operative word here, as Last.fm is asking for only $3 / €3 / £3 per month. If you really can't stomach the outlay, however, just stream via the web or desktop application... you tightwad.

Dell Streak gets Honeycomb SDK port, starting to look like a real tablet



Dell always told us the Streak was a tablet and not a phone, so it makes perfect sense to see Android's latest version, the tablet-friendly Honeycomb, ported over to its 5-inch slate. As usual with these builds, we're still at a very early stage, with the chap responsible for the hack noting that "no way is this close to release," but it's still rather exciting to see that brand new interface freshening up familiar pieces of kit. And hey, it's not like Dell itself is going to be delivering Android 3.0 anytime soon either, right? Click the source link to keep yourself updated on how this community port progresses.

Increase Internet Speed

Microsoft reserves 20% of your available bandwidth for their own purposes like Windows Updates and interrogating your PC etc

To get it back:

* Click Start then Run and type "gpedit.msc" without quotes.This opens the group policy editor.

* Then go to: Local Computer Policy GO TO Computer Configuration GO TO Administrative Templates GO TO Network GO TO QOS Packet Scheduler and GO TO to Limit Reservable Bandwidth.

Double click on Limit Reservable bandwidth. It will say it is not configured, but the truth is under the 'Explain' tab i.e."By default, the Packet Scheduler limits the system to 20 percent of the bandwidth of a connection, but you can use this setting to override the default." So the trick is to ENABLE reservable bandwidth, then set it to ZERO. This will allow the system to reserve nothing, rather than the default 20%.It works on Win 2000 as well

Butt out for 10 years, Asif 7 and Amir 5

The three players under scrutiny may never play again if found guilty


Salman Butt gets ten years of ineligibility, five years of suspended sentence. Mohammad Asif gets a sanction of 7 years, two years of which are suspended. Mohammad Amir gets a sanction of five years' ineligibility.

Hotmail Brings Multiple Accounts, Extends Beyond Temporary Email Services

Hotmail has announced a feature similar to temporary email services with multiple additional advantages. With the new Hotmail feature, users will now be able to read email from multiple accounts within the same account. This can be potentially helpful in balancing work and play, all within the same email account and eliminates the need for multiple email accounts.

Currently, Hotmail has set the limit to 5 email accounts but will extend it to 15 accounts in future. Dharmesh Mehta, the Windows Live director of product management at Microsoft tells CNET,

One of which is that I don’t want to give my real address out to any site in the world. I might be worried they’ll spam me with newsletters, or they might resell it to other marketers. Who knows what can happen?

Well, this can be one of the reasons to use this service. However, we can make use of this feature to manage our work easily. Say for example, we create 5 email IDs each for a specific purposes like office work, freelancing, personal and family contact, professional contacts and newsletters. Out of these five, if we use only our newsletters ID in public, we can eliminate a significant amount of spam activity in our inbox.

Other than that, the feature also prevents us from mixing up contacts with same names (was it Kevin the nephew or Kevin the HR Manager?) and has innumerable usages. However, the ability to segregate each of these alias IDs into separate folders night lead some of those IDs to be ignored over time.