The New Twitter: A Cooler Facebook?

There was always a thing with the loyal Facebook users that Facebook rocks and Twitter Sucks. The fact is that Facebook and Twitter are totally different things and you cannot compare them. Facebook is for social networking with multimedia etc., while twitter was for micro-blogging and status updates only (even though dependent multimedia is allowed).
But with the New Twitter can we call them the same again? I think yes. Twitter has just released the preview of the New Twitter which has a complete social networking framework now. First, check out the official video for the New Twitter Preview (This promo alone is pretty cool… would love to direct something like this myself)

The ‘new’ things that will make you stick to twitter (if you aren’t using it yet):

• I love the top vertical bar that we used to find in desktop applications till now. With the new twitter I think its time to bid farewell to all our desktop-twitter-clients.
• The main tweet stream is smooth, faster and very flexible. Not only that, the right hand column is not locked anymore and with just spanning your tweet stream with the cursor, you can watch/view your twitpics, videos and other media files too!
• Now, it’s easy to see embedded photos and videos directly on Twitter, thanks to partnerships with Dailybooth, DeviantArt, Etsy, Flickr, Justin.TV, Kickstarter, Kiva, Photozou, Plixi, Twitgoo, TwitPic, Twitvid, USTREAM, Vimeo, Yfrog, and YouTube. THAT’s one point which will make the New Twitter like a ‘Fast-Facebook’.
• I don’t think I will be needing Firefox addons like Power Twitter any more. New Twitter will be a big blow to most twitter addons that are presently breathing easily. Echofon, Lu.ly and Yoono are sure to lose worth.
• You can easily follow the related tweets, or the history of the conversation-tweets just by clicking on a tweet and viewing its info in the right column. The flexibility and smoothness added to the left and right columns together makes it more better.

If you aren’t on twitter yet, then please get on board! If you have thoughts in your mind that Twitter isn’t like Facebook, well then your rite. It isn’t! Once new twitter rolls out, Twitter will probably be better than facebook, as far as ‘staying in touch’ is concerned. I’m not saying that Facebook is sad, it rocks and will be so forever! But do join twitter… it’s a whole new social networking experience and c’mon… Facebook and Twitter are the stone-age-basic recognitions that you need to have on the web today.

The New Twitter rolls out in a few weeks :-) I can’t wait. Please join Twitter at least when the new version rolls out. Click here for updates.

Tech Review: Microsoft LifeCam With 1080p HD Sensor

I don’t know why I end up giving only Microsoft Tech Reviews but I just can’t help it. I will surely be writing more variety soon. But for now, behold the Microsoft LifeCam. The name will do justice to itself if Microsoft’s claims come true.

This Webcam's main feature is the sharp high-definition (HD) video with a true 1080p sensor and LifeCam Studio is the perfect HD video calling companion for Windows Live Messenger 2011. It will offer HD video calling in a 16:9 widescreen. Microsoft claims that LifeCam Studio delivers the closest thing to life, as if one is there at that moment itself, and hence the name. With the technology used here, the camera adjusts itself perfectly to very sunny, very dark or even any unusual condition!

As I have already told many times before, and even in my previous Tech Reviews, the first thing for me whether is gadgets or cars or bikes is… Good Looks! And oh my god does this one look good or not!! It looks, pretty cool an casual, but professional at the same time! Well here are other amazing features of this beauty:

• 360-degree view range, which means that users can easily point the camera at themselves or around the room.
• Elongated hood modeled after a high-end camera to help protect the lens from stray light to avoid washed-out colors.
• As I told above, TrueColor Technology automatically adjusts itself to any lighting conditions. Now that’s not needed so much for me, because I don’t carry my laptop in the sun or anywhere unusual! But this webcam offers detailing to the deepest extent possible, even in low light!
• Improved Auto Focus and high-precision glass lens for outstanding clarity.

LifeCam Studio will be available exclusively at Best Buy stores later this month for the estimated retail price of $99.95 and is already available on BestBuy.com starting today for just $71.99 i.e. about `3300. Microsoft backs this product with a worldwide three-year limited hardware warranty. More information about these and other Microsoft Hardware products can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/hardware. Click here to know more about Microsoft LifeCam.

4 Stars for the best Webcam I’ve ever seen!

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Movie Review: Piranhas 3D

Just came back from watching Piranhas (in 2D) and I’m feeling sick! This movie is completely meant ONLY for adults because even some adults may find it too much to handle! So all below 18 don’t watch this, and all below 15 don’t read this review!

Gist: After a sudden underwater tremor sets free scores of the prehistoric man-eating fish, an unlikely group of strangers must band together to stop themselves from becoming fish food for the area's new razor-toothed residents!

First things first! This movie is made for 3D. So please watch it in 3D if possible. Some people watch movies in 2D first and then it 3D, but trust me, most of you may not want to watch this movie again!!! BUT, that doesn’t mean this movie is bad… confused?? Let me give you the clear idea.

As I said, this is an adult movie. From the start of the movie till almost the end, you will see boobies, bikini’s and babes (hunks for the girls too)! But you won’t be drooling all along, may be only for the first 20-30 min. Once the Piranhas make their gross presence felt, the film goes into GORE mode. There’s flesh, meat, blood, human organs all around the place as the deadly fish bring havoc with their teeth of destruction! Now, judging from an adult, gore and thrilling genre, this film is good!!
Note: Christopher Lloyd makes a special guest appearance in the movie. If you remember he played Uncle Fester from the 1993 Addams Family.

So what is so bad about this film then? The biggest thing that hit me is that the fish look like some kind of robot-of-sorts, but fish nonetheless. Needed better editing and the characters other than the main leads were somewhat cardboard figures. Also, when some (especially girls) may say that this film is bad, they mean to say that this film is good! This is gore movie, and it is supposed to make you feel bad and sick!

Should you watch it? Yep! If you’re a Biology student, you won’t have a problem :-) You may also take your girlfriend along with you. Ya… I’m serious! She’ll be hugging you all throughout the movie while the film freaks her out! Just hope that she’s not a bio-student! Having said all this, the ‘gore’ness of Piranhas is nothing compared to that of Saw!A neat ‘gore’ movie, simple story, sexy and a nice thriller. Watch it in theatres ONLY, especially try for 3D! I will give an extra half-star for the added effect in 3D. 

3^1/2 Stars

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Will Historious eat Delicious?

As a response to my previous post on Web Bookmarks Delicious is Tasty! Historious is boring! the historious team had replied to me long back and after waiting and testing, I think I’m beginning to like Historious more than Delicious! In my previous post, I said that Historious was boring, non-responsive and it is not arranged or sorted! If you check the comments on that post, Stavros from the Historious Team itself had contacted me and requested me to state any complaints. I did and they fixed the bookmarklet within days! Since then, I have been trying and testing Historious and its working fine! Here’s why I think Historious is on in process to eat up Delicious soon:

• No Addon needed: No need for installing any addon at all and is totally irrespective of your web browser! Just drag and drop the Historious Bookmarklet onto your browser bar anywhere and your done! You better also add a FireFox Historious Search bar with just one click. Just click here and your ready!
• Least effort: If your bookmarking your site, all you need to do is just click the Bookmarklet button! That’s it! :-) Your page gets saved in Historious and you thus create your own custom Google-Like Search world… a search world with only pages you want! All with just one click!

• Tag or Publish: You can also add tags to your bookmarked page or even publish it. Since this creates a search world of its own, you wont be needing tags. But if you are like me and want everything arranged perfectly, then yes, tags will help you out. You can publish, delete or view the cached version of that page as well.
• Easy Search: With your custom search world created you can search your bookmarks on either the Historious site or use the search bar like how I do. Either way everything is simpler.
• Import and Bookmark in Bulk: You can historify sites in bulk by just adding their URLs to the site. Click here to see how. You can also import all the bookmarks from your browser by uploading the browser bookmark file.

So will Historious eat Delicious? At the moment no. Why? When you historify a site, even though its just a click of a  button, you need to go to the Historious site and then tag them! That’s the same with Delicious (with or without the addon!) Also with Historious you can bookmark only 3000 sites!

Historious offers a free account and a paid account with just $19 or `900 subscription per year. This paid account lets you add your own tags in the first click itself! Now THIS is when Historious automates everything!!! Plus, the number of pages that can be bookmarked is unlimited! You can also filter by date, check RSS feeds, PDFs and more. If Historious can at least add the on-click-tagging feature in the free account, then it will undoubtedly be the best Bookmarking mechanism ever!

Historious is the innovative concept brought by a Stochastic technologies project. By their site and Twitter account they seem to be quite new! I congratulate them for coming up with simple and cool innovations like this and wish them good luck.

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Tech Review: New Xbox 360

My first Tech Review on this blog. We behold the new Xbox 360. Also called as Xbox 360 ‘S’. Now, what does this ‘S’ stand for… slim, small, sexy, sleek? I think it can any of these except slim! Yep. The ads may say that the new Xbox is slimmer bla bla… it is surely slimmer than the previous model, but not quite. Anyway, there are some amazing features which will force many to buy the new Xbox 360 and some mistakes as well. The tagline of Xbox is “Here today, ready for tomorrow”. Its surely here today… but is it ready for tomorrow? Let’s check it out:

Merits:

• Looks damn good! The first quality that I look for in my gadget, car or any device is the looks! It HAS GOT TO look good. and Xbox score full on this! With a brand new, leaner body with and all-over black gloss touch to it. Looks sexy, sleek, trendy and cool just like how a gaming console should be. You can create some stick art over it too, if you let your imagination go crazy enough!
• Built-in Wi-Fi: The most important aspect for nay device today is being compact! With the 802.11n Wi-Fi built-in we have easy internet connection, Xbox LIVE, where you can try out new games, watch HD movies and TV stream all in an instant!
• 250GB Removable Hard Drive: The best part I like about this is the REMOVABLE 250 GB hard drive which is like a pen drive... pop it in, pop it out! Save and store your games, movies, tv episodes, music, pictures, etc. You can also store stuff from the Xbox LIVE Marketplace
• Xbox 360 Wireless Controller: This award-winning, high-performance wireless controller features the Xbox Guide Button for quick, in-game access to friends and music. It has a range of up to 30 feet and a battery life of 30 hours on two AA batteries.
• Ports: The new Xbox comes with HDMI port, Standard AV port and 3 USB ports apart for the network and other ports. Use your Xbox 360 on standard-definition televisions using this connection over traditional composite connectors. Play high-quality audio with the included stereo connector.
• Kinect Ready: Kinect is the Xbox Technology where you don’t require any controller or joystick! You are the game!! Kinect makes YOU the controller. With a dedicated, specialized port, the Xbox 360 is built to connect seamlessly with the Kinect sensor and have you up off the couch and into the world of Kinect in no time.
• Greener: Being a go-green person, I just love it when new upgrades come with the green-touch added to it. The Xbox works with only 135W of power as compared to its previous 175W. It doesn’t get over heated too much and also the power button is all green! :-)

Demerits:

• When we say ‘new’ Xbox that doesn’t mean anything is going to happen on screen. Its just that you’re only going to have a far better console than your previous one.
• No Blu-Ray!!! Yep! You heard it right! No Blu-Ray at all! I don’t know whether it’s Microsoft’s ego to ignore Sony’s Blu-Ray or whether it was plain business though process… but as a regular gamer… I don’t care what’s going with Microsoft! All I need is that my console is up-to-date wit the latest… and Xbox suffers here!!!

So then should you just go and buy the new Xbox 360? Yep! If you don’t have an Xbox yet, go and grab one! If you already do, then wait for the Xbox Kinect that’s going to release soon! That will through a few more options to you and you can then decide to go for it or not! On site, it’s priced at $300, but here in India I feel it may be around `20,000 to `24,000.

All said and done, the new Xbox is a thing to fall in love with, but I cannot part ways with my first love… The Sony Play Station! Plus, Sony is coming up with another upgrade soon! Can’t wait for that too! :-)

I give 3 stars for the new Xbox 360.

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Inspirers: Karthik Kastury

I wanted to write this post long back but I’m glad I kept this for the month-end closure posts. To start with, Karthik Kastury is the reason why I’m writing this post, why I’m blogging and most of all and why I have become such an Internet addict over the past three years! Without his influence, I think I would be an Internet-illiterate by hanging only to Facebook! He’s not only an inspiration when it comes to cyber technology, but also to life’s outlook as a whole.

I came to know Karthik in my first year of engineering but I came to know the Cyber-Crazy-Karthik only in the second year. He currently owns two smash blogs which have a name for themselves on the Internet: his tech blog, DailyApps and his personal blog Karthik.Kastury.in. Most of you bloggers might have already heard his name, but for those who haven’t here’s Karthik.

He began DailyApps on July 26th, 2007 and there was no stopping since. DailyApps silenced all his former critics and ‘dA’ went onto to establish Karthik’s stronghold in the Blogging community. DailyApps has managed to get the attention of leading blogs such as Technorati, Lifehacker, DownloadSquad, Problogger, LaughingSquid and many more. It’s one of the most read tech blogs in India, with over 2000 RSS Subscribers. DailyApps is a blog where posts are read half a million times a month at its peak! It’s a part of the India Technology Blogs Network. To know more on dA click here. Off late, he’s been silent on dA but only to get busy with other endeavours like his new personal blog Karthik.Kastury.in.

Karthik.Kastury.in is just about 45 days old now with 4000 visits so far. To date, it has got about 7000 page views and about 60 RSS subscribers, creating a buzz in the Blogging world. Some of his personal posts have run into debates and discussions, only reconfirming his influential presence on the net.

Karthik is a decade old on the Internet and his passion for technology pushes his boundaries further. For his final year project, along with his project team, Karthik created MobSpot. This is a location-aware social networking site, the technology that is now seen in Facebook Places. Unfortunately, he did not get much of a heads-up from his faculty that was needed. Still, MobSpot may be a ‘thing’ of the future.

His creations don’t stop there. For the PayPal Developer Challenge, Karthik is on his way to release the beta version of SocialPay tomorrow! Stay tuned for its release here! SocialPay is a service that let’s you send money to your friends with just a tweet or an update of your facebook status! Money is transferred from your PayPal account to your friends. Wow! Talk about speed and ease!

Karthik has not only been an influence to me, but also to many others in my college and around. In our college of NMAM Institute of Technology, Nitte, Karthik was the first person to lead the brigade to host inter-collegiate technical and cultural fests. Following his initiative, his branch, other branches and the college as a whole woke up to the new flavour infused in college life. Until then, I regret to admit that other than academics, there was hardly anything to immerse in our college. He hosted the first Dumb Charades competition in our college, the format of which became tremendously popular in the entire Mangalorean belt and was copied in other colleges as well.

As a noted batch-mate, Karthik had several other medals up his sleeve. He was the Vice President of our college’s Information Science Department, a key member of ‘Pride of NMAMIT’ and a renowned Microsoft Student Partner. Currently, he is employed by Tata Consultancy Services as a Software Engineer. For a 21 year old, Karthik is quite a person. You can find him on LinkedIN, Facebook, Twitter and Friendfeed.

”Inspiration is a strong force” – Mario D’Cunha :-) and Karthik occupies one very HEAVY place there... quite ironical to his weight! LOL.

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Pee for Petrol… simplified!

This is the simplified and Easy-Read version of Pee for Petrol. To read the descriptive original post click here. This has come from the views and suggestions expressed by most of you. So here’s the simplified version of PFP^TM.

This idea and innovation is copyright and trademark protected and is the exclusive property of Mr. Mario D'Cunha and Mr. Pramod Kamath. Any violations will be strictly taken into task.
© 2010 Pee for Petrol. All Rights reserved.

Bought a new bike? New car? Don’t have enough pocket money for fuel? Don’t you just hate shelling out money at petrol bunks? You can avoid that... but can you avoid going to the toilet? Haha... never rite! Hmmm... now what if every time you went to take a leak, you actually get fuel???!!! Confused?? Watch our promotional video:

 

 

At the rate we’re going today, all our petroleum deposits will last only for 42 years!! So is it really possible to preserve petrol for all our future generations?? No!!! Pee for Petrol is here to save the day! My friend and I tried to simulate this process in the laboratory for over five years, and after all that hardcore research we finally found THE MAGICAL REACTION... A reaction that uses the by-product of human metabolism, urine... colloquially called as “Pee” and converts it to Petrol. Hence, the technology Pee for Petrol (PFP™) was born!!! The petrol thus generated is a high octane, eco friendly, green petrol which works perfectly with all the existing petrol engines. The speed of conversion and creation of a resource which is exhaustible from an arguably inexhaustible resource is a revolutionary modern concept!

Watch the entire MUTHRA-PETRO Conversion process in the following video. Here’s how it works:

If you turn the Piss-ton to the right PFP™ is activated, else the toilet is for your crap. The Analyzer analyses the source liquid (your Pee). PFP™ loves diabetic users. More the sugar, more carbon thus more the petrol generated. The source liquid moves into the Pee-Buffer, where a minimum level is required for the PFP™ to work best. Upon reaching the level, the liquid is pumped into the reaction unit.

The first part of the reaction unit is the Fractional Distillation chamber where the source liquid is separated into fractions of urea, dissolved salts and water. The distilled proportions are mixed with a catalyst, Creatinine (a top-secret compound created by our research team during those 5 years of hard work) in the Mixture-Fixture. This mixture is then compressed to 400k Pascal in the Come-Press-Soon unit and sent to the next chamber.

This chamber is the revolutionary MUTHRA-PETRO CONVERSION CHAMBER where the actual magic happens. Lets see how these elements of your Pee give us Petrol:

• Some salts pass through the Semi-Permeable Double-Layered Osmotic membrane and some don’t.
• Urea has Nitrogen, Oxygen, Carbon and Hydrogen. Carbon and Hydrogen pass through the membrane.
• Oxygen in urea forms oxides with the non-permitted dissolved salts and the Creatinine catalyst. This is eliminated.
• A powerful beam of electricity is made to hit the nitrogen atoms, which decomposes it into Carbon and Hydrogen atoms. Atomic No. of Nitrogen (7) = Atomic No. of Carbon (6) + Atomic No. of Hydrogen (1)
  The Carbon and Hydrogen atoms thus formed are again permitted into the cooling unit through the membrane.

The cooled mixture is then filtered to remove any unwanted substances and then we obtain the readily usable, high octane and NATURAL Petrol. Hence, you have Pee’ed for Petrol! :-)

Advantages:

• People will drink more water to produce petrol, save money and drinking lots of water is very good for health.
• Heavy import burden of petroleum will stop and India will be a “self reliant”, powerful nation which will progress to be a developed country soon!
• Production of refined quality and natural fuel will bring down the pollution levels drastically.

Disadvantages:

• Requires power for heating and electricity (but that’s a household utility)
• Converts only a part of the source liquid to petrol and requires a minimum amount; Not a problem in joint families!!!

So go on people, leak out and save your money, save your health and save the earth! Remember… from now on... when Nature calls, Petrol falls!

This technology is the joint venture of my friend Pramod Kamath and myself. Pee for Petrol has won the first place for a at IIT Techfest, Bombay, Jan 2010  for the most innovative idea and also at Impulse 2010 (a State Level Technical Symposium, Karnataka). In both cases here, I’m not joking… trust me!!!

If you like this post and the idea please show your support and vote here. You may also click here for free updates.

This idea and innovation is copyright and trademark protected and is the exclusive property of Mr. Mario Dcunha and Mr. Pramod Kamath. Any violations will be strictly taken into task.
© 2010 Pee for Petrol. All Rights reserved.

 

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My Favourite Application Mascots

It’s so cooler when you have an animal or some cute animated character as a mascot for your software. If you don’t get what I'm saying, then read on. Some may take it as a logo, but a logo can be anything, a sign, symbol or just stylized font. It adds that little extra “brand”ness to your product when you have a mascot. Here are my favourites:

1. Twitter: The tweet bird goes so well with the name twitter and embeds itself perfectly with the actual working concept of twitter. But with the enormous popularity of this tweet bird has anyone forgotten their childhood favourite Tweety?

2. Digsby: This is my favourite IM, mail and social networking client and I have also written Why Digsby is the best. I like the Digsby green egg-guy for two reasons. One, its cool… just like how an IM client should be. Second, and the most important point, unlike Twitter and the following apps, Digsby has given a face to itself without having the application named after the cartoon creature.

3. Seesmic: This is another IM client which I don’t like so much even though it’s pretty well known and used by many. Here too, the mascot has taken the face of this application which nowhere mentions that this application is related to a Raccoon. It took time for me to figure out whether this guy was a Raccoon and I hope I’m not wrong

4. Pidgin: This is also an IM client and is pretty good too. I used to use Pidgin before Digsby, and until now its only Digsby all the way. Notice the stupid look on the Pidgin’s Pigeon :-) Just like a pigeon, but not like Pidgin!

5. eMule: is one of the biggest and most reliable peer-to-peer file sharing clients around the world. Many developers contribute to the project, so the network gets more and more efficient with every new version. The mascot is pretty cool but nothing great since the general picture is obvious by the name itself.

6. MailChimp: This monkey makes it easy to send email newsletters to your customers, manage your subscriber lists, and track campaign performance. Chimp uses tools like segmentation, a/b testing, and ROI tracking), and its accessible to anyone. The mascot picture is too detailed and is more of a picture than an icon. If you to their home page, you just can’t see the mascot anywhere! What a waste!

Last but not the least, you surely recognize the Firefox Icon, but here’s one mascot which is just too cute to ignore! This is a special animated version of the Fire”Fox” and I first saw this on the twitter account of FirefoxCares. Adorable isn’t it? Do you know of other Application Mascots? Share it with us.

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Create Stunning Websites with Wix, without any code!

 

I came across Wix just a few months back when I was searching for Flash and Flex projects for my engineering course. I was amazed to see that a thing like Wix existed but never heard many talk about it. Wix is a small but growing start-up, and it continues to evolve! Wix is the easiest way I’ve known so far, to make a stunning website of your own with your own images, own templates, own colours and own design! For the amazing websites generated from Wix, the work that goes into making them is almost negligible!!

Check this video out from YouTube which is a Quick and Simple demo to design an stunning Flash website all by yourself… of course with the help of Wix.

Here are the features of Wix which will force you to design your site there:

• Its free! Yep. Choose your template from a huge collection of great flash templates!
• Customize it the way you want! You can change the pictures, colours, fonts, style, ANYTHING!
• Photography Websites can have their online portfolios; Musicians too.

With their Premium Account:

• You can have your own domain
• Choose to have Ads with Google Analytics
• 14 day free trial! Absolutely no setup fee!
• The cheapest yearly package costs about $48/year i.e. about `2200/year
• The best configuration would cost about $150/year i.e. about `6750/year

All in all this is one good space of going creative with the least effort. Do try it especially if you have personal blogs, design blogs, interior designing, photography, etc. Everyone always try to buy the Wordpress and Tumblr themes and all I see on every application blog is updates only for Wordpress or Tumblr themes. Try this out for a change. I’m sure you’ll like it.

Remember these are only Flash and Flex websites, unlike the HTML ones from Wordpress or Tumblr. Check out the Wix Blog to keep track of their latest news & features or visit Wix.com.

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10 ways to Jazz up your Twitter Account

 

You might be a new user of twitter or have been using it for quite some time. Some of you may wonder why you still don’t have enough followers, or some are just getting followed by spam. Here are some tips which will help you keep track of you account statistics and how you can make yourself look good on Twitter.

1. Username: First of all, have a nice twitter handle or a username! Avoid underscores, 000’s etc… it should easy to type, easy to remember and most importantly it should NOT be something totally unlike you.
2. Profile: Do the basics first. Fill in your profile properly. Update your location and your website. Most Importantly, write a good Bio for yourself, which in a few words will attract people to follow you. Don't just write some quote copied from somewhere or even worse, leave it blank!
3. Background Picture: Yes. This is another point than just your profile. You need not have super duper ‘photoshoped’ picture as your background, but try as much as possible to keep you twitter screen attractive, pleasant and above all unique. Also take care of the colours, don’t be gaudy!
4. Following: This is a key point. Don’t just follow any Tom Dick and Harry expecting that they will follow you. Follow only those whose tweets you really want to follow and others who you would really like on your profile.
   Here’s a warning! Don’t follow a huge number of random people with an intention they will follow you back and once they do, you want to un-follow them! If they find out that you are in this habit, they are sure to block you! Plus, your twitter reputation will take a good beating.
5. Followers: Here you can be liberal. Just be careful of spam followers. But don’t forget, take care of your followers. They are following you for a reason that they like you or your tweets in one way or the other. So thank them for mentions, re-tweets, tweet something to them, have a chat, etc. Don’t ignore them.
6. Don’t Tweet Nonsense Please!: Unless you are followed by a million people, a celebrity or some superstar please don’t tweet things like Good morning, I’m awake, I’m drinking coffee, I'm tired, going to sleep, I am combing my hair, I’m bored, I’m happy… Well you can tweet that. I do it too! But don’t do it TOO MUCH! You will irritate all your followers.
7. Retweets: There are two things to this. Retweeting other’s tweets and getting others retweet your tweets. Both ways should and will happen only the tweets are sensible. Don’t retweet just about ANYTHING that you think is nice. You will simply crowd people twitter timelines! And don’t tweet crap! Only if your tweets are really funny, have a strong message, nicely written, something unique… it will be retweeted. By RT’ing you can spread your twitter reach to so many others. So take care here.
8. Publicize: Don’t only aim for publicity only on twitter. Try in other spaces as well. For example, add your twitter contact to you personal and business websites, add it in your email signatures, make a mention of it on your Facebook profile and even in your non-internet-spaces like public SMSs, business cards, etc.
9. Unfollowed?: Want to know who un-followed you on twitter? I suggest you forget this. Those who really like your tweets will still follow you, those who don’t won’t! So there’s no need to run behind them and ask them to follow you again! However, if too many people unfollow you at once, then there might be something wrong that you may want to correct. Use sites like this to track down who has unfollowed you.
10. Use it: Finally use twitter because you want to use it! Don’t just come on twitter and beg people to follow you, and retweet stupid tweets because you have no other work. Use it for its purpose, to build your friends network, your contacts and for your business or work purposes.
    P.S.: For heaven's sake please don’t compare it to Facebook. They both are two different things!

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If you can type, you can make Movies!

“If you can type, you can make Movies” is the tagline of Xtranormal. This is a site where you can choose already created flash movies and just type in your dialogues. If you dialogue delivery and scripting is good, you can make a brilliant movie… and i f its good enough then you can post it on YouTube and get a good number of views too!

Xtranormal’s mission is to bring movie-making to the people. Everyone watches movies and they believe that everyone can make movies. Movie-making, short and long, online and on-screen, private and public, will be the most important communications process of the 21st century. Our revolutionary approach to movie-making builds on an almost universally held skill-typing. You type something; they turn it into a movie, on the web and on the desktop. But again, its only animated and nothing like a real movie.

The minimum requirements stated by Xtranormal are these: Windows XP Service Pack 2, 1GB of RAM, 64 MB 3D Video Card with DirectX 9 and Vertex Shader 1.0 support, 1.8 Ghz Single Core Processor

And their Recommended Configuration is: Windows XP Service Pack 2 or Windows Vista, 2GB of RAM, 128 MB 3D Video Card with DirectX 9 and Vertex Shader 1.0 support, 3.0 Ghz Single Core Processor or 1.5 Ghz Dual Core Processor. Their minimum requirements would be fine.

With Xtranormal you can make a movie with one of their show packs as shown in the images above, with 1 or 2 actors in it, use their free version on PC called State, on desktop or web. You may read their TnC and you can follow them on Facebook and Twitter too.

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Car, Care and Software

 

Man’s needs are endless, and this has brought him from inventing the wheel, to animal driven carts; from steam powered cars to internal combustion engines; and from electric cars to software powered controls. Man has come a long way in improvising with his land transport needs.

The world's largest software company, Microsoft, is on its way to be the largest supplier of software to car manufacturers, with a custom version of Windows CE controlling everything from in-vehicle entertainment to satellite navigation.
General Motors says software and electronics already are responsible for more than one-third of the cost of a typical automobile, the figure closing in to upto 90 percent in five years. A lot of suitors are lining up with entertainment systems and such, hoping to turn tomorrow's cars into GPS-tracked living rooms on wheels.

Since 1998, Microsoft the company has been selling Windows-based navigation systems that show overhead maps on LCD screens in the dashboard. Also, computerization in in-car entertainment, which is still dominated by CDs, is gaining market. Vehicles powered with artificial-intelligence software and sporting the ability to "see" the road with external sensors supposedly, will be a staple in the U.S. military within 10 years.

The autonomous vehicle could be heavily armored and could take GPS (Global Positioning System) coordinates of the road and create a map of obstacles and pass that data back to the semi-autonomous truck. All this could assist war-operations greatly and keep soldiers out of the line of fire.

Carmakers are headed toward total drive-by-wire systems; that means they take the physical actions of the driver, and turn them into digital messages for the car's central control system. Sensors measure how far the driver turns the steering wheel, for example, and translate that to a message to turn the wheels the appropriate amount.

"Lane keeping" is another benefit of radar and laser sensors. The technology maintains a path down the center of the road and alerts the driver when the car begins to drift into another lane. The feature has been used in the trucking industry, and lately for cars too!

Machine-learning technology has already touched industries like drug discovery, e-mail processing and financial forecasting. But technology is still a long way from allowing an autonomous machine to handle every unpredicted situation that pops up. The robot must be able to learn from a situation and think it's way through the problem. But there are other problems they have to solve, like dealing with contingencies. What if a computer dies?

Well, everything comes with benefits and drawbacks. You would never know when a virus gets into the computer, causing the car to run over people!!!

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The OzuPad Air: Solution to Dumbness!

Did you hear about the Ozupad before? It’s a Japanese creation that promises to replace the good o’l Mouse… at least in certain areas. Its a new method between human and the computer, and it claims to be the best for Multi Media Instrument and mobile computers. Its called “OZUPAD” for the reason that it’s the Japanese "The Wizard of Oz". Ozupad is a computer input device with the function of the joystick with the mouse. It wraps in the palm, and it operates by the thumb and the index finger. Because the flat surface such as desk is not needed, it is possible to use in a free air space.

Now, I had received the Ozupad 3-Way device for the first place in one of the competitions held at IIT TechFest Bombay, January 2010. This was a 3-Way device… an input device that can be used as an optical mouse, a joystick and as a pointing device… that too without the surface! But within a day… I got fed up with it and hated the sight of it! Here’s why:

1. I’m very used to the mouse being on a surface, and I’m very fast with it than holding it in my palm, off the surface and going slow! Plus, my hand starts paining after a while!!! Who is going to hold it for so long! Even if you keep the Ozupad on the surface, clicking it with any of your fingers is irritating!
2. It can be used as a joystick. Hmmm now this is one good thing, but again… it will be pretty slow to handle while your playing your game.
3. The most dumbest use of it above all… pointing device! Now don’t forget, this is just like any other USB mouse, with a chord attached. So if I’m using it as a pointing device for a presentation, then I can go as far as the wire reaches!! And the wire is not that long either!! So its as good as sitting close to my laptop and lifting my mouse off the surface and pointing at the presentation slides!!! How Dumb!!

But as a sensible solution to this, the company has come out with Ozupad Air! Finally!!! Now this is a proper use of an Ozupad. This is why it’s the “AIR” version is a good gadget:

• 2.4GHz Wireless with a reach of 30 feet!
• You can use it on the surface (again irritating because its not meant for the surface) and you can use it in… AIR! Yep… an AIR mouse! A mouse with no surface required. Same like the 3-Way version, but no wires!! So stand wherever you want and control your computer!
• You can still use it as a joystick (like the 3-Way) without worrying about the wire!
• The Pointing Device in it has finally got proper meaning! I think it’s the perfect pointing device. You can stand anywhere and control your presentation slides along with using it as a mouse for other purposes too!! Damn good!
• Plus the Ozupad as always, is very tiny, compact and hand-friendly.

You can check here on how to the Ozupad is used. Finally, just want to say that Ozupad Air is the sensible solution to the dumbness that was shown by the previous Ozupads! Phew! Have you used the new AIR version?

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Caution! Disguised Firefox Virus??

I was just doing my normal internet surfing when suddenly this tab opened involuntarily! The link of this page is this, but please don’t bother clicking it. It opens to the following window. I have circled in red key things which show that this is not from Firefox.

1. The link itself doesn’t seem anything like that from Firefox. If you check the icons on the tabs, there is no Firefox tab with the Firefox symbol! It has always been the Mozilla symbol (as shown in the last tab in line)
2. As far as I know, there was a 3.6.6 release, and then there was 3.6.8 release publicly. My browser is already 3.6.8… so why is it showing me an update to 3.6.7???
3. What the hell is that red symbol doing there??!!! First when I saw this window, it was without the red symbol. But after I refreshed it again and again to check whether it was actually a spam link, the red symbol suddenly appeared. That red symbol is a warning from my antivirus software (Kaspersky).
4. If you click on ANY link on this page, or even when this tab opens, it prompts you to download an EXE file called ff-update.exe. None of the Firefox releases EVER has this kind of name. Every time it prompts me for download (caught by my Internet Download Manager), my antivirus (Kaspersky 2011) quickly blocks and prevents its download. Kaspersky has termed it as a malicious URL and has denies the download each time.
5. It also tells me that I need to install the latest Adobe Flash Player… I already have the latest installed ages ago!!!

 

Please please avoid this page and don’t bother about it. I’m not sure what harm this may cause to your system. It doesn’t look authentic at all!!! Please take caution and tell your friends about it too.

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