Your tech navigator

It’s no mystery that social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter offer vast opportunities to spread your word quickly, efficiently and without any hard labor. When you upload a video to Youtube, you obviously want the world to see. You go about manually putting links to your videos in your Facebook status, email them or tweet them. Well, Youtube now offers a feature that can simplify the job of sharing your uploaded videos and it’s completely automated. If you want, to autoshare your videos uploaded to Youtube to Facebook, Twitter or Google reader, here’e how you go about it:

1) Login to your Youtube account and go to your ‘Account' settings.

2) In the left pane, click ‘Sharing’.

3) In the right pane, you will find the ‘AutoShare options’. Click on the service on which you wish to autoshare your uploaded videos. Authorization on respective services will follow.

4) Finally click ‘Save Changes’. Here after, whenever you upload a video, it will get autoshared on the connected services. (Videos marked ‘private’ won’t be shared.)

Liked this post? Grab feeds.

I must make it clear that this little tip is for beginner’s only. You must have experienced that many of your contacts have multiple email accounts and its quite irritating to see your address book filled with multiple entries of the same person. The reason is, Windows Live Hotmail treats every email address as a unique contact and this makes your address book unorganized and cumbersome to use. However, Windows Live Hotmail offers a feature to counteract this issue.

Here’s how you can either merge multiple email IDs of the same contact or delete all but one of their email IDs:

1) In your Windows Live Hotmail account, click ‘Options’ > ‘More options’.

2) Now, under the ‘Customize your contacts’ category, click ‘Clean up duplicate contacts’.

3) Then click the ‘Clean up duplicate contacts’ button and select a contact from the list.

4) Now you can either select all but one contact details and delete the rest or you can select all and merge them.

There you are. You just made your address book much more clean and well-organized.

Liked this post? Grab feeds.

Today’s technological scenario is all about integration and making every task simpler and every information easily accessible. Well, similar are the thoughts of UXLabs at Microsoft. They have created a very sleek Facebook client application that brings the complete Facebook experience right on your Windows desktop – Fishbowl.

Although in a ‘trial’ (beta) stage, Fishbowl offers some features that surely will excite Facebook power users. Apart from the seamless integration with Facebook, here are some of the plus points of Fishbowl:

» Fishbowl offers mini-mode which is more fun and less obtrusive.

» Smooth user interface and sleek navigation. It supports drag n’ drop pictures to publish them on Facebook. Furthermore, it can go full screen and play a slideshow of your albums.

» You can update your status, view your friends’ albums, their updates, news-feeds and other notifications.

» “Interest Level”, my favorite feature, helps you filter your stream anonymously in order to avoid boring updates from friends.

» If you are a Windows 7 user, you can monitor your Facebook stream right from your taskbar using jumplists.

If you want to give it a try then click the link below.

Download Fishbowl / 6.6mb

Enjoyed your read? Grab feeds.

In PDC ‘09, Microsoft unveiled a prototype called Pivot, created by Microsoft Live Labs that claims to revolutionize the way we search the web by introducing a new dimension called ‘visual search’. Redmond company explains that Pivot lets users experience the web in a more subtle and ‘visual’ way, instead of series of pages.

Powerful, informative and fun – this is what Pivot is, in it’s classical sense. The introductory paragraph of the official Pivot website reads, “We tried to step back and design an interaction model that accommodates the complexity and scale of information rather than the traditional structure of the Web.”

Currently available to a handful of people, you can request for an invite in order to use Pivot. I was lucky enough to get an invite. Upon installation, I was represented with, what seemed like, a homepage:

Pivot can be used in two ways:

» As a regular browser to surf the web

» As a visual search tool to browse collections.

When used as a regular browser, Pivot is just a clone of Internet Explorer, only a bit less customizable. When it comes to rendering pages, it uses the same Trident layout engine used in IE.

The beauty of Pivot is in its ability to browse specially created collections which are infact massive information clusters. As of now, the Live Labs have offered sample Pivot collections to mingle with. Ofcourse users can create their own collections and share it with others. However, understanding the basic architecture and the three types of collections is a bit too nerdy. That is why, Microsoft has challenged developers to create custom collections based on existing web services.

Minimum requirements:

» Windows 7 / Windows Vista with ‘Aero’ enabled. (Pivot is not compatible with Windows XP and Windows Server Editions as of now.)

» Internet Explorer 8.

» .NET Framework 3.5 SP1

» 2-GHz 32-bit (x86) or 64-bit (x64) processor.

» At least 256 MB of video memory.

Note: Pivot does not support Intel integrated video chipsets without additional acceleration hardware.

The road ahead...

Considering the strong foundation on which Pivot is built, one can expect it to be helpful in these scenarios:

» Create collections from data in existing online services.

» Use collections as a front end to desktop search.

» Display data sets from academical studies.

» To visualize stock market data.

» Using Pivot for personal photo galleries, or social networks.

Finally, here is a demonstration video of Microsoft Pivot in action.

Demo video:

Download Pivot / 28mb

Note: You are required to enter an installation code without which Pivot won’t install. You can either wait for your installation code or get one from me. I have 2 codes which are good for 19 more installations. Just leave a comment with your e-mail address and I shall give it to you.

Enjoyed your read? Grab feeds.

Google is known for continuously optimising the already simple services from time to time. First it was the image search, then the web search, now comes Google Translate. Google recently introduced some really useful features to Google Translate like real-time translation of the entered text into 51 languages that represent over 98% of internet users and the ability to play the sound-clip of the translation. The features of the revamped Google Translate can better be explained using a 3 pointer.

Real time translation: You can now translate between 2550 language pairs instantly as you type. No need to click the ‘Translate’ button. This really helps forming a sentence in other languages rather quickly. Moreover, it’s like a boon to the learners as it helps you understand the exact translation of every word as you type them.

Text-to-Speech feature: The new text to speech feature helps you pronounce the translated text. However, this feature currently works for English language only. Just click the ‘speaker icon’ to listen to the translation.

Romanization feature: Problem arises when you want to read text that’s written in a script you don’t know. For example, how do you read something that’s written in a Devnagri or Han script when you know only Roman script? That’s where ‘Romanization’ feature comes in. For all non-Roman languages (except Arabic, Hebrew and Persian), you can read the phonetically translated text in English.

Dictionary: Google Translate also offers a detailed dictionary too to assist you further.

Here’s a quick demo from Google Blog showing the new features of Google Translate:

Enjoyed this post? Grab feeds.

Instead of exploring new things all the time, sometimes I dig into what I have already got and I always come up with something new. Very few of us might know that Microsoft also offers lots of free games to its users. ‘The Games’ section in Windows Vista and Windows 7 is often listed in the feature lists but rarely anyone plays the games offered. And if you have checked the link in the ‘Game providers’ subsection lately, then you will find that Microsoft now offers 100+ free games to its users. So if you think you’ve had enough of solitaire and minesweeper, I’d say you do the following:

Click Start > Games. In the ‘Game Providers’ subsection, click ‘More Games from Microsoft’.

Alternatively, you can click here: Microsoft "Play Your Game"

And guess what, that’s it. Just click “Play Now” button to play your favorite games. You can also download trial versions of these games. Enjoy!

Liked the post? Why not grab the feeds.

While slideshows are easier and fun to watch, it is equally tough to make them appealing. Not all who think they can turn those vacation pictures into a stunning slideshow can actually do so. And displaying one photo after the other at a regular time intervals is not what I call a slideshow. So if you are agreeing with me on this and want to make stunning and spectacular slideshows for free, then you might want to check out these online slideshow generators.

7 awesome online slideshow generators:

Slideroll

» Lets you create flash photo and video galleries and allow other users to comment on them.

» You can embed the slideshow on your website.

» Optional downloadable desktop editor available.

Imageloop

» Easy. Recommended for beginners.

» Many presets to choose from.

» Intuitive interface.

Kizoa

» Easy to use.

» Creates flash based slideshows.

» Can get a little rough at times.

Moblyng

» You can add text, skins and music tracks to the slideshows.

» Embed code is available.

» Nice interface.

Smilebox

» Easy and quick.

» You can add captions and music to your photos and videos.

» Hundreds of templates to choose from.

Slide

» Various music and design options to glorify your slideshow.

» Designed specially for sharing slideshows to social networks.

» Easy and intuitive interface.

Animoto

» Creates extremely professional and stunning slideshows.

» You can add predefined music to your slideshow or you can upload your own.

» Very efficient and quick slideshow generator.

Use any of these awesome slideshow generators and let us know your experience with them. If you have found any other online slideshow generators, let us know in the comments.

Enjoyed your read? Grab feeds.

I love simplicity and I think that’s what really trending these days. Many new services that are popping up on the world wide web are getting simpler and simpler. And some of them are so simple that people usually give them an eye-squirming first look. It happened with Twitter when it started but now we know what an epic Twitter is! Now that I am done with a usual philosophical introduction let me introduce you to – SeedPond, a fast and simple torrent hosting (such goes its subtitle).

Keeping the ‘torrent’ word aside for a while, SeedPond is basically a file hosting platform that stands different just because of its speed and simplicity. And I have tested it. It is ‘simple’ in a way that the SeedPond site has just a big water-drop like ‘Upload’ button and that’s all it has got. You upload any file and get a unique link to your uploaded file.

The link to the uploaded file can be shared and the file can be downloaded a ‘reasonable’ number of times. (Yes, the terms and conditions of SeedPond explicitly uses the word ‘reasonable’). The best think about SeedPond is that there is no mystery, no confusion, no mess. Just pure file hosting. It’s definitely recommended for beginners.

Coming back to the word ‘torrent’, I really have no idea why they used it. I even tried to upload a torrent file to see if it can display the individual files but it showed a plain vanilla description as expected.

Pros:

» Really fast and simple file hosting.

» Excellent for beginners and can be equally helpful and quick hosting solution to professionals.

» Unlimited and free file hosting.

Cons:

» Uploaded files cannot be kept private.

» SeedPond states that the file can be downloaded for a ‘reasonable’ number of times which is little annoying.

» Bulk upload not possible.

If I were to sit and write every bit of detail, I would fill up the ‘Cons’ section and that would definitely kill the very purpose of SeedPond. It’s all about simplicity, right? So go ahead and check it out.

Recent news is coming by that Facebook has been hijacked by some rogue organization called ‘Control Your Info’. As of now, it has attacked a particular feature of social networking site called Facebook Groups. The thumbnail picture of the attacked groups have been changed to a unique and symbolic logo and the group 'name' and ‘type’ have been manipulated to show some vague text.

However, the organization states that they are just bringing out a major flaw in Facebook. As mentioned by this website, the Facebook groups that were attacked were having administrators who have stepped out of their rights and thus creating a void at the administrator level. The organization clarifies that when the administrator position becomes void, anyone can take over the group and can control it the way they want. ‘Control Your Info’ says it just wanted to bring this into everyone’s attention so that Facebook can take some serious steps to iron out the flaws.

[Thanks to CNET]

Blogging is amazing when it is unrestricted and hassle-free. And to make blogging a smooth experience, there are many desktop blog-publishing applications available but most of them are ‘typical’ softwares that you need to install. Some might require you to download a suite in order to get a simple blog-publishing application. Here is something for those who love blogging on Blogger and hate installing a blog-publishing software – Blogger Buddy.

Blogger Buddy is a Windows Vista/Windows 7 Gadget that lets you create new posts and publish them to your Blogger blog. It also lets you preview the content before you publish.

Although a mere 120kb download, this small utility has full fledged text editor where you’ll find everything you need.

Features of Blogger Buddy:

» Unlike a typical blog publishing software, Blogger Buddy is a Windows Vista/Windows 7 Gadget.

» Just 120KB download size and low on resources.

» Rich text editor.

» Post previews are available before publishing to Blogger blog.

So, if you are a Blogger user out there, I would recommend you to use thisgadget for posting to your blog just because it is too hassle-free and has a footprint of an ant.

Download Blogger Buddy / 120kb

Enjoyed this blogging tip? There’s more. Grab feeds to get more blogging tips.

There are many services out there on the web which are just ‘a violet by a mossy stone’. Hidden from the world, yet very useful. Google Pack is one such service where you can download software in, well you guessed it, packs. Though currently in beta, things are pretty neat.

What’s Google Pack?

It is a bunch of very useful software (especially for Windows 7 users) that includes a salad mixture of utilities like – Google Chrome browser, Firefox, Google Earth, Spyware Doctor, Picasa, Skype, Adobe Reader, Google Desktop, Google Talk, Google Apps like Calendar, Docs etc and Real Player – All packed in one suite called Google Pack.

So if you are too lazy to download all these utilities one by one, here is a blessing for you. Just head over to pack.google.com and select the programs you wish to download and click ‘Download now’.

Features of Google Pack:

As Google states it: Google pack is a bunch of free and ready-to-use software selected by Google. Adding to that, it saves time to download software from a one stop shop. Almost all software provided in the Google Pack are must-have for a Windows 7 user.

Enjoyed your read? Grab feeds.

I haven’t used offline mail clients to an extent that I could actually write a post about them. I never felt the need to have one because I am always connected to the internet and Gmail does the best job for me. Such was a scenario until yesterday when I had to use Outlook. While using it I felt the need to sync my Gmail contacts with Outlook and one of my friend suggested a really helpful piece of software that does this precise job – Go Contact Sync.

Go Contact Sync is a perfect synchronization tool to manage contacts between Gmail and Outlook. It’s a free, open-source tool that supports contact categories and their photos so that your address-book (contacts) look exactly the same on both. Finally I can get rid of entering the contact details again and again.

Features:

» Smooth synching of contacts between Gmail and Outlook.

» Multiple sync options, categories and contact photos are supported.

» Automatic synchronization feature.

» Choose one-way or two-way sync according to your preference.

You can also use Go Contact Sync to backup your contacts too.

Download Go Contact Sync / 1.1MB

If you enjoyed your read, grab feeds.

Want to make your wired connection a wireless one but don’t have a wireless router? Wish to share your wired internet connection when your friends come over with their laptops? Well, how about turning your own laptop into a WiFi Hotspot to which other laptop computers can connect to and share the internet connection? ‘Connectify’ does the precise job of transforming your laptop to a secure WiFi hotspot.

The setup is simpler than you think. Just follow these steps:

1. Go to Connectify website and download the installer. It’s a painless 1.4 MB download.
2. Install the software and click its icon in the notification area.
   
   
3. Everything is pretty intuitive. Give ‘WiFi Name’ which will be the SSID of the wireless network and the ‘Passphrase’ for security. Choose the internet connection and click the red ‘Hotspot Off’ button. The devices that connect to your laptop are shown in the box above.

Once done, your laptop will now act as a red hot WiFi Hotspot! Let other WiFi enabled devices to connect with internet using your laptop computer as a WiFi hotspot.

Features of Connectify:

» Easy to setup a WiFi Hotspot within seconds.

» Secured WiFi connectivity.

» Eliminates the need of a wireless router for internet sharing if you have a WiFi enabled laptop.

» It is a software based wireless router that takes any type of internet connection (wired or wireless) and lets you share it wirelessly.

» Runs on Windows 7 32bit (x86) as well as 64bit (x64).

Connectify website explicitly states that the Beta version of Connectify is built for Windows 7. However, if you find any problems with Connectify in Windows Vista or Windows XP, mention it in the comments.

If you enjoyed your read, grab our feeds.

I am sure this will excite the hell out of you especially if you are a beginner and have just started a blog or a website. There are a lot of statistical analysis tools for websites available out there that does pretty much the same job so I am not going to discuss the charts here. I want to show you how you can get ‘real-time’ notification when somebody views your blog or website right on your desktop. Something like this:

To set it up, you’ll need ‘Woopra’ client (available for Windows, Linux and Mac). Here is the step-by-step procedure involved.

1) Go to Woopra.com and signup for free. Provide required information about your website/blog on the site.

2) Download Woopra client and login using your credentials. The details of the website you submitted at the site will get displayed within the application itself.

You will find charts and figures which might very well interest you but here we’ll just discuss how to setup real time notification when somebody visits your website. So once you are done looking at the charts, proceed along.

3) In the left pane, click ‘Notifications’ option.

4) In the right pane, click ‘Create a new Event Notification’ button.

5) In the window that appears, first enter an appropriate label to the notification you are about to create. Click ‘Next’.

Note: You will find loads of options you can set a notification for. As far as this tutorial goes, we won’t be needing them.

6) Click ‘Next’ a couple of times till you get the ‘Edit Notification’s look and feel’ option as shown below.

7) Here, set ‘Country Flag’ as the Notification’s Icon and write a ‘custom notification message’ below. Use ‘Tags’ for extra information like page URL, page title, etc. in the notification.

8) Finally, click ‘Apply Notification’ and wait for someone to visit your site. When your website is viewed, you will get a notification like this:

Once you click the notification you will be able to see the stats of visitor and based upon such information, you can know which part of the information or which posts interests your audience. The best part is, you get all the information real-time.

If you enjoyed your read, grab feeds.