Download any music for free!!!

Grooveshark.com is a famous web application which allows you to listen to ANY music and ANY song in the world. That's what they claim. And to a certain extent its true. I have found ALL the songs I was looking for and I think is actually has ALL the songs! Imagine if you could download this for free... that means you will be able to get any music of your choice any time, for free!!! Here's how you can do that:

Step 1: Go to Grooveshark.com and check out the site first. You can search for your song and play and listen to it online. If you have download managers to assist you, you can download the song with them. But the site however, does not allow you download more than once, or even once because of the usual HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request Error! You may attempt to correct this or follow the easy next steps.

Step 2: If you have Mozilla Firefox (uptil 3.6* version only) then you can install the Video DownloadHelper addon. With this, while the song is playing on Grooveshark, the addon button on the navigation bar in firefox will glow on (Encircled in Blue in the figure below Step 3).You will need to click it and download it. But again, this may give an error. If it does, you can try the next step.

Step 3: If you have Mozilla Firefox (uptil 3.6* version only) then you can install the Orbit Downloader which looks like its designed just for Grooveshark. Once you download the setup file, run it and install Orbit Downloader on your system (its a very small software). Then, when you restart firefox now, it will prompt you automatically to install an addon called OneClick YouTube Downloader which you will not find among the addons in firefox. It installs only with Orbit. Once done, you can see it on your firefox panel (Encircled in Red in the figure below). Click on it and say "Download" or "Record" while the GrooveShark song is playing.

Step 4: This may still not work because of incompatibility of your Firefox version and Orbit Downloader Version. Now, what is going to work for sure is this. Install the latest version 4 of Orbit Downloader from here. During installation, Enable Grab-Pro on Internet Explorer and complete the installation. Thats it! Your done! It has to work now for sure. Go to Grooveshark.com and play a song. Grab-Pro will be highlighted and you can view the (music) files to be recorder perfectly. Now your just a click away to have the music of your choice!

I know IE is very irritating to many. But hey... when you have all the music for free just there, I think its worth it... isn't it??

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Mangalore's City Centre: Reality or Rumour

Today we all are witness to the undoubtedly most marvellous man-made structure in the city of Mangalore, Karnataka, India. Never did Mangaloreans ever see such a location in this small city before. City Centre is that one more feather in Mangalore's hat! But there are certain realities or rumours that one must know while there is a great part of the world that still lives in poverty and they cant afford to even look at such structures.

City Centre and buildings like these don't stand up on their own and with straight ways. This is known truth and in India many kinds of such "truth" go unnoticed for a long LONG time. But I want to shed light on certain things that at least all Mangaloreans must know:

• 
  
  There was a big furore and quarrel on the land sharing or land acquisition before the construction began. Built close to Lighthouse Hill in Mangalore, posed a risk to acquiring more land than given. Now this was a danger to the buildings near by, apartments and houses that stand on the Lighthouse Hill and have been there for years. By 'digging the land' below for the mall, could have loosened the ground and could have led to the collapse of the nearby buildings. We don't know how this case was pushed under the table, or how did the nearby residents keep silent later, or whether the case is still pending!
  
  


• 
  
  There were rumours that the management of the mall did not submit the completion report on time and hence the Municipality did not approve of electricity to the building. Yet, the mall was opened without it and supposedly is running on diesel ever since using electricity generators! What a waste of fuel!
  
  


• 
  
  The disputes did not stop there. There are sources from the Mangalore Corporation who have said that City Centre was supposed to have three more floors above those of the parking lot. If that had been done it would have been the 5th biggest mall in India. Currently its at 10th position. The reason being that the corporation again did not give the necessary permission to build those additional floors. Hmmm so do we have a strict Corporation here? I hope so.
  
  

Mall culture is increasing at a rate that is just not necessary at times. If it adds to the economy without hampering anything else and eating through other important resources like land, etc... then we need more malls! Mangalore is a small city and there seems to be race of "mall building" and its crazy! Currently there are 3 malls open (including City Centre) and 3 (or more) under construction! Here is how we stand in Karnataka:

1. Mantri Square Mall, Bangalore, 1,625,000 sq ft


2. City Centre, K S Rao Road, Mangalore, 800,000 sq ft


3. The Forum, Bangalore, 625,000 sq ft

The Plama Mall, Kulshekar, Mangalore is under construction with an estimated area of 900,000 sq ft which will make it the second largest in the State and thus Mangalore will be that city having two of its malls in the state's top 3! Here are the stats for the malls across India:

All said and done I love malls and its the best place to meet up with friends or spend time when you have no other place to decide on, especially in this "busy" world today. My concern is to the incredible speed of just 2-3 years that change the faces of small cities, States and India too. And while we're at the topic of malls, Mantri Mall is not going to be the biggest by the end of next year, because its position will be taken by the upcoming Mall of India, in the National Capital. Check out the list of malls in India.

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Why Digsby is the best...

Today, even though every email site, every social network site has its own chat application embedded within, we still prefer a desktop application, so that we have one universal access to all our friends on all our chats across Yahoo, Hotmail, MSN, Gmail, Facebook, etc. And how can we forget Twitter! Now which is THAT application which can combine all of this? Digsby it is! Digsby combines all your email accounts, IM accounts, multiple facebook and twitter accounts!! It also manages your LinkedIn, MySpace, AOL accounts, etc. What better reason do you want to use Digsby! I have been using Digsby for more than a year now and my green pal just getting better! Well, here are the merits and demerits and "possible upgrades" of Digsby:

Merits:

• Brilliant and simple UI for all your IMs


• Can organize and reorganize all the chats and IM accounts, friend lists, etc


• Notifies new mails, can delete or mark them, even without reading!


• Pops the new tweet (with sound) at the corner of your screen, without you even bothering to open twitter!


• Pops all facebook updates (with sound), on which you can comment and "like" immediately just there, without opening the site!


• You can keep account icons in digsby panel, in the task bar or both! :-)


• These are just the basic ones. To know more go the official site of Digsby and its free!

De-Merits:

• For Facebook, it has got a bit-cluttered space


• The Twitter space is cluttered too, but it also has another UI which is the best and most simple! There's only one column for tweets, mentions and directs and you can also see a separate view of them.


• No Keyboard Shortcuts (especially needed for Twitter)

Improvements:

• Keyboard Shortcuts!


• 'Facebook Notification' Alerts (Not just status updates, application updates, other wall updates etc)


• Better and clearer UI for Facebook and LinkedIn. Twitter UI is good... just need a keyboard shortcut (than the double click!)


• Do not re-shorten the already shortened URLs

Why is it better than Seesmic , HootSuite , Sobeez , and the rest?

• For me, desktop clients are better than those on the web! Plus, HootSuite is comparatively much slower than any of these apps. So HootSuite is out of the window!


• I don't want to install two-three applications for various account types. Digsby manages EVERYTHING! Emails, IMs, Twitter, FB and many others!


• Seesmic and Sobeez are very good. I haven't used either of them extensively, however I have tried them once! Both are pretty good for what they have to offer.


• But they only manage Twitter and FB accounts, while digsby manages so many.


• Also, digsby is FASTER than all! The refresh rate is pleasant and whole functioning is smooth! The crude AIR interface of Seesmic Desktop and Sobeez is pretty slow!


• If we only compare the Twitter and Facebook accounts, then Seesmic can be better than Digsby! But as I said, I'm looking at the entire package here.


• Adding and managing of accounts is so simple and fast! All just in one window! No confusing multiple windows!


• Everything from font, to theme, to pop-up sound, to individual screen names are customizable!

These are my views. Its not that I have completely ignored the other apps. I have given a fair chance to all. But ever since I've started using Digsby I've never stopped loving it! Do try out Digsby and tell me what you think.

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Google doesn't "look good"...

If you ask me, Google is one big brand which does not seem to care about looks. It gives a good gift, but not so much with a good gift-wrap! Be it Gmail, the Gtalk desktop-client, Google buzz, iGoogle or the "simple" Google search itself. The best example which has become a victim of Google's boring and "simple" UI is Orkut. Facebook has completely crushed Orkut and Orkut is practically on its way to extinction! But recently, after the revamp of the Google Image Search Engine, it made me happy to note that Google has taken some effort to dress well!

The "new look" of Google Images displays only the image thumbnails (which is what we want) ignoring the links, image size, etc which it used to display before. The hover of the cursor over any image will give us a quick (larger) view of the image. Not only that, in the first search page itself, we can get up to 300 or even more images without having to check them page by page (depending on image size), which wasn't the case before.


On clicking an image, we go to a next page where we get a bigger image, but still not the actual image size itself!!! Why was that needed??!!! There again, from the sidebar, we click a link which FINALLY gives the full and actual image size! Phew! Now when they had to revamp all this, why three clicks?? Couldn't they have stuck with just two?!!

Now if you have heard of or used the GreaseMonkey script "Greased Lightbox" (Joe Lencioni's Greased Lightbox is a user script that enhances browsing on websites that link to images) before... then you will agree with me, that the old Google interface was better since you could view the entire image in the first click after the search itself. Not only that, once a particular image was clicked, you could surf through the other images present on that page, by just pressing the Navigation Keys. So now that Google has changed the Image search format, GreasedLightbox also needs to adapt to that. Hope we get an update soon or rather Google should make the required changes themselves. I'm sure they can show the image details (site, size, etc) within two simple clicks, along with the full-size image!

If you want to check out Greased Lightbox, which can also be used to easily surf through other image sites like Flickr, etc... then you can get it from one of these: http://shiftingpixel.com/lightbox/ or https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/reviews/display/12545

You will need GreaseMonkey addon first to install the script. Do post your comments about this and what do you think of Google's Image Search otherwise? Now if you also note the irony, that though Google's products don't "look good" enough... I'm sure you must have heard that Google's offices are the best looking workplaces in the world. If you want to see them... check it out on Google Image search :P I've just put one pic here.

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The New Look of Kaun Banega Crorepathi

"Kaun Banega Crorepathi" the Indian version of "Who wants to be a Millionaire?" is now taking a new face yet again. The host for the new season 4 is again the irreplaceable Mr. Amitabh Bachchan. I'm a little disappointed that the series did not flow with the Big B all the way... we had SRK mid way for season 3. He was good in his own respects, but... by the time ALL people got adjusted, the TRP's had already taken a tumble and the show wasn't going anywhere either.

It's so hard to believe this series of coincidences when it comes to the Big B and Sharukh Khan. SRK is the new Don and took Big B's place in Season 3 of KBC too. Reports also say that SRK was approached to be the host of Big Boss (Indian version of Big Brother) but has rejected it, since he has confirmed shooting dates for Don 2 (sequel to Don)! Wo!! What a connection of stories! Also rumours say, that Aamir Khan was approached for the new season 4 of KBC, but he rejected the proposal. I'm not sure if it's right to say that the producers had to "settle" for Amithabh Bachchan, but personally, I believe he's undoubtedly the best... at least for this show! Do you think we will have SRK's thinking cap again? and will it remain "Freeze kiya jaay?" or will it be the return of "Lock Kiya jaay?" And I wonder if and what new rules are brought to the show...

With the recent launch of the new rupee symbol, KBC has changed its logo and has incorporated the Rupee Symbol. Check out the old and new logos above and tell me what you think. If you can remember KBC season 1 which was a Indian TV revolution then, that came as a huge relief amidst the boom of Hindi Soaps, won't be anywhere close again. While we're in the age of "reality shows", we have to appreciate a show with such elegance, class, hosting, prize money and the ONLY noticeable show to keep Quizzing alive on TV, here in India. So will you be glued to KBC again? Yes or No? Phone a friend? :P

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It's good to be back!

Finally after four long months my blog rolls out again. This time with a different theme and style altogether. Special thanks to Karthik Kastury for keeping me inspired. These four months have improved me a lot in all aspects, if u may say so... I'm more in love with the web and I can't get enough! I will try my best to post as much as I can and as good as I can.

This time after putting good thought into it, I thought I could post my personal views as well as writing posts for the information of all. One thing that you might not know about me is that I love debates... not because you get to yell at each other and try to prove another wrong... but to prove something right... or at least figure out the best alternative. We'll have good ones here and your participation is always welcome. The rest is as it is and as it comes... I'll be writing on various topics and can "choose your taste" by checking the categories to your left. My dance blog dancetrance.wordpress.com still exists and will re-open soon with a new look and feel. Stay tuned!

I'm very excited to be back in the blogosphere again and there's so much to discover... Cya around...