FIREFOX 3.1 IS COMING...

^Clickie that^ :)
I simply love this welcome screen.

Yesh! FF3.1 beta2 is out for download and available for testing! :)
Read more about it here.

Check the features out at the official Mozilla webpage!

The list of features which included;
One-Click Bookmarking,
Instant Web Site ID,
Improved Performance,
Full Zoom,
Password Manager,
Smart Location Bar,
Platform-Native Look & Feel.

The list now extends with the beta2:
This beta is now available in 54 languages.
Added functions to make it easy to clear recent history by time as well as remove all traces of a website.
New support for web worker threads.
Improvements to the Gecko layout engine, including speculative parsing for faster content rendering.
Removed the new tab-switching behavior based on feedback from users
Support for new web technologies such as the

Nokia N97 - A cellphone on steroids!

Nokia had kept all gadget enthusiasts guessing with the mysterious countdown timer that they had put up the Nokia website for quite awhile now. Nokia promised a true 'mobile computer' like we've never seen before but refused to give out any more details to the prying media!

On 2nd December Nokia ultimately revealed the spanking new Nokia N97 at the Nokia World Conference 2008, leaving everyone thrilled! The N97 is the first N-Series device to enjoy the new Symbian Series60 5th Edition OS introduced to us first by the Nokia 5800 a.k.a. the Tube. Well, I'd say, Nokia came through with its promise!



The Nokia N97 has got a ton of features crammed into its little 150g body! It combines a dazzling 16M color 3.5" touchscreen display that has a resolution of 360 x 640 pixels with a full slide-out QWERTY keyboard which is a boon for heavy texters! It sports a cool 5MP camera with high-quality Carl Zeiss Tessar optics which deliver complete DVD quality videos.

The 16:9 wide home screen of the N97 is completely customizable with widgets. You can access news feeds, social networks & friends at the touch of a button...oops!...I mean screen! The N97 makes it convenient to update social networking sites on the go. It also supports all Ovi features making it easier to share and stay connected with the world.

This smartphone is high on connectivity. Its got every form of mobile connectivity that exists...GPRS, 3G, HSDPA, Bluetooth, Wi-fi. It also has full support to display flash videos on the web. It is like a browser that always online!

The N97 is the first Nokia phone to introduce the concept "social location". It has integrated A-GPS sensors so that it intuitively understand where it is. The system works on the Nokia mapping technology with a built-in virtual compass that points the user the direction he should go when using turn-by-turn navigation. One thing's for sure...with this phone, you will never get lost!

Gaming fans can rejoice as the N97 has full support for the N-Gage platform. Widescreen gaming on a Nokia phone has now become a reality. With the built-in accelerometer, touch and tilt based gaming will soon be on the cards.

The N97 has a whopping 32 GB internal storage and can further be expanded with a 16GB microSD card adding up a nifty 48GB which is more that enough to store all sorts of media- photos, videos, songs, docs....just everything! The battery life is pretty impressive. The BL-4C provides about 400 hours of standby time, 320-400 hours of talk time, 4.5 hours of video playback and over 37 hours of audio playback...so you can blast songs on the stereo speakers for 1.5 days! That's enough to bring the house down, I must say!

This phone definitely contends for the top spot of the iPhone killer!!

Here's the official video of the N97 to get you drooling!


The N97 is expected to start shipping in the first half of 2009 with a price tag of around €550.

ObjectDock - Must-have desktop utility!

If your someone who likes customiszing your desktop for maximum productivity and easy access, you'll adore ObjectDock! ObjectDock is a nifty little desktop enhancement for Windows quite similar to the taskbar in the Apple Mac.

UPDATE: 11/19/2009:

I recommend using RocketDock over ObjectDock for this same purpose since it is freeware and has support for several themes and addons.

Basically, it contains a little dock which can be placed anywhere on the screen. The dock contains shortcuts to application programs, folder locations as well as websites. It is completely customizable and the interface is super smooth! You can place the dock on any edge of the screen- top, bottom, left or right. Adding items to the dock is literally a piece of cake! You just got to drag and drog the application or folder to the docklet & it'll create an icon for that applet. To remove shortcuts from the docklet, simply drag them off from it. They simply vanish into thin air!



ObjectDock acts as a handy utility especially if you access some specific folders or websites or programs on your computer very frequently. Instead of browsing to that folder every time, you can directly access it from the dock. Also, if that folder contains subfolders, you could directly go to that subfolder by customizing the dock icon to produce a drop-down menu. It really does cut down effort and saves time! It also contains useful little applications called docklets which display weather, clock etc.

The standard installer comes with the ObjectDock library of icons. You can even use you own icons for the docklets. The dock can be customized for various animation effects when you move your mouse over it. It is completely skinnable & with over 100 hundred skins available for download online, you can make the dock look supercool as compare to those ugly Windows icons!

ObjectDock can be customized to display all running applications in the dock as well. It can almost replace the standard Windows taskbar! Also, it has a smaller memory footprint as compare to other Windows dock softwares...still if you find the system taking too much load, you can reduce the number of animation effects and quality to increase speed.

The best part is that this software is available completely free of cost!
Download from HERE

Of course, the paid versions contains added features like tabbed docks, multiple onscreen docks, support for system trays etc., but you'll have to shell out a cool $20 for that!
You can check out the official site here - Stardock ObjectDock

Here's a screenshot of the ObjectDock on my desktop with not much frills-


Give ObjectDock a try! You'll love this functional super sleek software!

Image to text converter

Ever wondered how those bits of text were written to look like an image?

For examle:

Well its very easy using TIM Text to image Converter!

This neat little bit of code developed by the coders at donationcoders.com works great at this purpose!

You can check out the original page of this software here.

The download link in the previous link requires you to download two separate files and then extract the contents of one into the other for it to work.

I've simplified that for you by already doing the extraction part and hosting the ready product.

You can download it from here. UnRar and run Tim.exe to use!

The program converts an image (jpg or bmp) to a text, which looks like the image in grayscale. You can choose any monospaced font and any font size you want to format the text with, and also any set of allowed characters. The result can be saved as text and then you can format it correctly in a text editor, or you can save the image of the text already correctly formatted.

You could also save your converted results in an image format (jpeg, gif) just as I have done in the above image.

If you are unsatisfied with the result of your converted image;

Try to change color mapping so that the line is more steep, it improves contrast. Look at the histograms to decide where the line should lie. You could also play with the color sliders.

What works best for me is, bloating up the source image to a higher resolution and then converting the enlarged image.

Another very impressive converter is an online one;  TEXT-IMAGE.com

You can choose between HTML, ASCII and Matrix output results for your image.

Again, if you are unsatisfied with your result, enlarging the image will help.

If you do happen to know of any other more efficient converter, I'd be pleased to know. Do leave details in the comments for this post. Thanks and keep coming! :)

My list of 11 must-have applications!

Here is a list of 11 must-have applications for your computer! The list includes applications that are required for system-maintenance, security and better functionality.
I personally recommend the following and if you look around on the net, you'll find many others agreeing with the same. However, if you've got more effective applications do let us know and we could feature it here!
Attached, are direct download links and also the respective websites of each of the applications.

So lets get going..
In no particular order..



1. CCleaner
CCleaner is a freeware system optimization, privacy and cleaning tool. It removes unused files from your system - allowing Windows to run faster and freeing up valuable hard disk space. It also cleans traces of your online activities such as your Internet history. Additionally it contains a fully featured registry cleaner. But the best part is that it's fast (normally taking less than a second to run) and contains NO Spyware or Adware! :)

The best part about CCleaner is that it works as Disk Cleanup, Registry-cleaner, uninstaller and Startup items remover, all in one! Just run this nifty application around once a week or whenever your feel your PC has slowed down and stay clean! :)
Website | Download

2. Firefox
Why use FireFox when you've already got IE installed on your pc?
Well maybe going through the definitions for IE on urbandictionary.com would help.
Clickie here to view them!
The first one reads:

	"A simple Windows XP tool which allows the user to browse to Mozilla.com and download Firefox, a web browser."

I could only go on and on and on as to why one should use Firefox.
There are just so many that I'd rather just post a link here mentioning the same:
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/features/
Also, with Firefox you could use the tweak I've mentioned in earlier posts to get your webpages to load faster!
Website | Download

3. MozBackup


MozBackup is a simple utility for creating backups of Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, Mozilla Sunbird, Flock, SeaMonkey, Mozilla Suite, Spicebird and Netscape profiles. It allows you to backup and restore bookmarks, mail, contacts, history, extensions, cache etc. It's an easy way to do Firefox backup, Thunderbird backup ...

As mentioned in my earlier post, this nifty little application is very useful when you need to carry your bookmarks from one pc to another. Also, backing up your bookmarks can be very important if you bookmark a lot. I regard this app as a lifesaver since I'm always bookmarking stuff and I've got around 200bookmarks already. :P

Website | Download

4. Flashget

FlashGet is a leading download manager and has the highest amount of users on the internet. It uses MHT(Multi-server Hyper-threading Transportation) technique, supports various protocols and has excellent document management features. FlashGet is a freeware without any adware or spyware.

I do most of my downloads from torrents so I rarely need a download manager. But whenever I do, its FlashGet. Fast, Efficient, Light and Easy. No Ads, thats another blessing with this download manager. Also, the tiny download-stat-box that you can move around your desktop looks neat. :)

Website | Download

5. uTorrent
uTorrent is a powerful and efficient BitTorrent client for Windows. Most of the features present in other BitTorrent clients are present in uTorrent, including bandwidth prioritization, scheduling, RSS auto-downloading, and Mainline DHT. Additionally, uTorrent supports the protocol encryption joint specification and peer exchange. Unlike many torrent clients, it does not hog valuable system resources--typically using less than 6MB of memory, allowing you to use the computer as if it weren't there at all.

Undoubtedly, the best torrent client. Very light weight and its got all the necessary features that any client should have. If you look around, you'll see that almost all teh pirates on teh net use utorrent.

Website | Download

6. 7-Zip/WinRar
7-Zip
7-Zip is open source software. Most of the source code is under the GNU LGPL license. 7-Zip works in Windows 98/ME/NT/2000/XP/Vista. There is a port of the command line version to Linux/Unix. Compression ratio results are very dependent upon the data used for the tests. Usually, 7-Zip compresses to 7z format 30-70% better than to zip format. And 7-Zip compresses to zip format 2-10% better than most of other zip compatible programs.
Website | Download

WinRAR
WinRAR is a powerful archive manager. It can backup your data and reduce size of email attachments, decompress RAR, ZIP and other files downloaded from Internet and create new archives in RAR and ZIP file format.
Website | Download

I currently use WinRAR. I've only rarely had to use 7zip for extracting some files that WinRAR couldnt. Anyway, since 7zip extracts more file types and compresses them better, its the clear better recommendation. But since I've been using WinRAR for the past several years now, I wouldn't give it a thumbs-down either. They're both win-win for me. :)


7. VLC

VLC media player is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network. It doesn't need any external codec or program to work.

To impatient to see the video that hasn't even completed downloading? Well no worries, VLC would play that as well! No Codecs hassles. Watch incomplete-downloaded videos, improper-file-extension-name videos and any shit you wish to with VLC.

Website | Download

8. Total Video Converter
Total Video Converter is a piece of extremely powerful and full-featured converter software that supports almost all video and audio formats. The software is designed to convert video for your mobile video player as 3gp, mp4, PSP, PS3, iPod, iPhone etc and also VCD or DVD player, XBOX360.

Total Video Converter is hands-down the best video converter I've ever used. I've never had the problem of unrecognized file formats since it offers just so many options! You can also edit the audio bit rate and the video frame rate etc. Add black-bars to the horizontal or vertical edges and convert video files to audio samples. TVC owns. The only downside is that its not freeware. However cracks/serials are freely available on the net, all you've got to do is search. And trust me, it's worth the effort.

Website | Download

9. Daemon

DAEMON Tools is CD & DVD emulation software which allows users to make CD/DVD disc images, create a virtual CD / DVD drives and play CDs & DVDs without the need for the physical disc. It supports more CD / DVD image types than any other CD emulator. It is able to emulate nearly all CD / DVD image types on the market today.

Easy to use and efficient. I've never had to go looking for any other emulation software.
Website | Download


10. Spybot
Spybot - Search & Destroy detects and removes spyware, a relatively new kind of threat not yet covered by common anti-virus applications. Spybot-S&D can also clean usage tracks, an interesting function if you share your computer with other users and don't want them to see what you have been working on. And for professional users, Spybot-S&D allows you to fix some registry inconsistencies and extended reports.

Simple and excellent Spyware remover. Recommended by millions all over the net, Spybot owns all. Just run this application every once in a while and stay spyware-free.

Website | Download

11. Avast/AVG/Avira









Start here.

Avast:
avast! antivirus Home Edition includes ANTI-SPYWARE protection, certified by the West Coast Labs Checkmark process, and ANTI-ROOTKIT DETECTION based on the best-in class GMER technology. With over 50 million users of avast!, you can rest assured that you are using one of the most tried and trusted products in Windows security.
Website | Download

AVG:

AVG Free offers very good (and very free) protection against viruses and spyware... As a bonus, its real-time LinkScanner technology keeps you from clicking search links to dangerous sites. It's an excellent choice if you need free protection against both viruses and spyware.

Website | Download

Avira:

Avira AntiVir Personal - Free Antivirus is a comprehensive, easy to use antivirus program, designed to offer reliable free of charge virus protection to home-users only. Avira offers: Extensive Malware Recognition of viruses, Trojans, backdoor programs, worms, etc. Automatic incremental updates of antivirus signatures, engine and entire software.
Website | Download

There are a lot of good anti-viruses to chose from that are freely avaialable on the internet. But the above 3 make my list for the top 3. I currently use AVG and it's worked fine for me. However, it's important that you regularly update the virus-definitions. Run a scan every once in a while and you'll do good.

That's it for my list. All of the above applications are freewares except for Total Video Converter.

I'd rather you download these softwares and try them out for yourselves instead of deciding to use them or not by only reading their reviews.

Do let me know here if theres any application for Windows which you think is essential to be added to this list.

*Boom**Bang**Smack!*Google Chrome is here!

After just minor rumours about a certain Google Chrome browser that Google were planning to release, Google have officially announced the release of the beta version of Google Chrome!

Check it out people! I won't bother writing the 5832349439th review of Chrome on the internet. There are plenty of those already!

The funny part is, Google had actually first announced the arrival and outlined the features of the browser through an online comic book!
Yeah! Lookie here

I can tell you though, that I've gone through the browser and most of the features are simply kickass!
I'd even go on to say that, in time, it could well overtake Firefox3 as well!

Here's the link to the official site mentioning the features of the same.

Blogoscoped reviewed the browser and it outlined the following features:

1. Google Chrome is Google’s open source browser project.
2. The browser will include a JavaScript Virtual Machine called V8.
3. Google Chrome will use special tabs. Instead of traditional tabs like those seen in Firefox, Chrome puts the tab buttons on the upper side of the window, not below the address bar.
4. The browser has an address bar with auto-completion features. Called ’omnibox’, Google says it offers search suggestions, top pages you’ve visited, pages you didn’t visit but which are popular amd more.
5. As a default homepage Chrome presents you with a kind of “speed dial” feature, similar to the one of Opera.
6. Chrome has a privacy mode; Google says you can create an “incognito” window “and nothing that occurs in that window is ever logged on your computer.”
7. Web apps can be launched in their own browser window without address bar and toolbar.
8. To fight malware and phishing attempts, Chrome is constantly downloading lists of harmful sites.

Download it and check it out now!

Avoid system-formats to save your PC! Please Backup!

I've seen a lot of my friends saying that they had to format they're computers (and thus lose important data) because some virus/trojan had infected their PC. They say they need to re-install the OS altogether to fix the problem and there wasn't any solution.
However, more often than not this isn't true. Windows itself provides several ways to fix the mistakes you made or get your pc back to an earlier normal state.
If you happened to try to edit some important Windows files (intentionally or unintentionally via some program) and screwed your system up causing it to not boot or pop up several message boxes talking about errors, well then a system-format isn't the only solution.
There are simple ways you can fix this without losing out on important data!
You can just use a Windows Component called System Restore to restore your computer to an earlier date, when your system was stable. You can even try reverting your registry to an earlier state if registry-editing has caused you problems. Or there also are other backup programs like Norton Ghost that restore your windows files to a predefined stable state.
I'll explain these backup methods right away.

Backing up Registry.
I've already mentioned in the article before this one how to backup and restore your registry.
This is especially useful when you've edited values in your system registry and it has caused your PC to become unstable.
Check the article out here.

Using System-Restore.
This could well be one of the easiest and quickest ways to get yourself out of a mess you just got into.
What system-restore does is, it restores your computer to an earlier predefined date, just like taking your PC back in time, sometime when your PC was stable.
All you've got to do is regulary set system checkpoints whenever your system is stable so that you can effectively restore to those points in times of trouble!
Using System Restore won't affect newly created or deleted files. It only reverts back to a previous system state wherein it will disregard any newly installed software or application.
Anyway, lets get down to business on how to make a Checkpoint.
Click Start>Programs>Accessories>System tools>System Restore.
Check the "Create a Restore point" radio button and click Next.
Here, give your restore point a suitable name. If your doing this after a fresh install of your OS, name it something like "Fresh OS install"!
Then click Create!
Your done! Your system restore point is created! :)

Now to restore your computer to an earlier date, follow the following steps.
Again navigate to Start>Programs>Accessories>System tools>System Restore.
This time choose "Restore my computer to an earlier time"
A calendar will then be displayed featuring all the system restore points that are available to you.
Note that, windows creates system restore points on it's own whenever certain programs are installed and you can choose to restore to these points as well.
Anyway, navigate to the date you created your desired restore point and on the right window you will see a list of restore points that were created on the day.
Choose the appropriate one and then click Next.

Here you've got to confirm your restore by clicking Next again.
On clicking next, your pc reboots and the system-restore process initiates itself.
However, a system-restore isn't always successful. If the restore is unsuccessful try another restore point.
Remember, the best way to keep your pc and your documents safe is by regulary making restore points. The more the better.

Using Norton Ghost.
Norton Ghost is another wonderful software that quite literally saves your ass when Windows Components/files get corrupted and even System-restore doesn't work.
What it basically does is that it creates a virtual image of your disk and saves it another disk on your computer. So when the disk gets corrupted, all you've got to do is replace the corrupted disc with the content from the virtual image! :)
You can simply create an image of your C: or wherever your OS is installed and then in times of trouble, just replace the entire C: with an earlier, stable state of the drive.
I'll provide links here to some wonderful tutorials/guides made on using Norton Ghost.
Creating Images: http://www.symantec.com/techsupp/tutorial/nghost_10/2005100407425562.htm
Restoring from images: http://ghost.radified.com/ghost_3.htm

Other backup.
Well for frequent bookmarkers like me, it's disastrous when I lose all my Mozilla Firefox bookmarks after a format or unprecedented error.
What I do is, I use MozBackup! :)
It's a simple freeware utility that allows to create and restore backups for your browser.
It's a tiny 1mb file. You can download it from here.

Apart from these backup methods, you should also always backup important files on a drive apart from where your OS is installed i.e. usually C:.
Better yet, if you've got more than one HDD, save a copy on the other one or even on a USB stick if needed.

Remember, formatting isn't always the solution. Even try google if its a specific application-related problem your facing. You could save yourself the trouble of losing out on important data!
Keep backing up! Ciao! :)