An apple a day, says the doctor,
Obey or disobey, they have the final say;
You eat the fruit and you get the sugar,
They get you finally, one way or the other!

Where there is a will, there is a lawyer,
There is a way, they will always say;
You win or you lose, it doesn’t matter,
End of the day, they are the ones richer!

Make hay in sunshine, says the banker,
When in trouble, they point to the bubble;
Going up or going down, they always have an answer,
Come rain or come shine, only their bonus is fine!

Time and tide, wait for no engineer,
Every problem, they jump up to conquer;
By design or not, no invention is perfect,
What they make sure, is to have questions after!

Image Credit: Sophiea

Popularity: 21%

The 1990s saw a humongous rush to secure an attractive and promising domain names. ‘Squatting’ was more pronounced for domain name registrations which went on to became a lucrative business opportunity.

Hoping that a worthy buyer will come along and make good the exorbitant price tag they carried. Quite a few did, like business.com, which went under the hammer for $7.5 million in 1999. More recently creditcards.com found a buyer at $2.75 million. Most of these were sold before the dot-com burst in 2001. Most of the domains names registered worldwide are under .com suffix, while .net comes a distant second.

This low investment, effortless business opportunity for several wannabe entrepreneurs across the globe has seen it charm fade away. This received a further blow, when last year the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which regulates top-level domain names, announced that it would open up the system to allow any suffix.

More recently, in Feb 2009, the “.tel” (touted to be world’s largest phone book ) was launched where this was available on first come first served basis, which meant registration of domains under the nose of popular establishments, vis-a-vis bmw.com etc. For those of you beginning to rush to check on the more recognisable names, NASA, FBI, Microsoft, IBM, Google and so on, don’t fret, as they have already secured their “.tel” addresses, earlier this year, while some of the popular Indian names, like “rediff.tel”, “ndtv.tel”, etc. are still up for grabs!

However, this needs to be bought for a minimum of 3 years initially costing $327 to $375 based on the country and domain registrar you register from. From 23rd March, .tel domains would be registered at $20 a year.

“.tel is your place on the internet, which will act like a switchboard.” said Kash Madhavi, the chief executive of Telnic, the London-based company that runs the .tel registry. “You can say, ‘Here are my Facebook details, here is my mobile number, and people will always be able to find you.” In the near future these will become more valuable when the need for mobile content increases further and a stripped-down web pages made available through mobile phones such as Blackberry, Apple iPhone etc.

Happy buying, if you foresee a big moolah, in this.

Image Credit: Existentist

Popularity: 18%

Ovi, which means door in Finnish, is the new service from Nokia for all its users.

Ovi, helps you manage your phone by providing a host of features. This service signs that Nokia clearly wants to keep its hold on the mobile market and realizes that it will be in competition with likes of Microsoft, Google and Apple.

Nokia recently conducted a survey and mentioned that Indian population is now fast becoming top in mobile internet usage therefore needless to say that this service is open to India as well.

Ovi provides the following features which for any users would be very handy:

• Calendar, Contacts, Notes Sync: This will help backup all entries of Contact, Calendar and notes on your Nokia phone to the Ovi website. What this means is even if you lose your phone, you still have all your important details safe. The experience to sync is seamless and easy. The website provides good features to edit the contacts and calendar entries. One thing I wish this site has was ability to import calendars from say Outlook, Hotmail or Gmail. I am sure they will add it as the time passes. Overall this takes away the worry about keeping your contacts in sync.
• Photos and Videos: One of the best feature. This site provides unlimited storage and sharing options for Photos and Videos. You can upload as many of videos and photos as you want, either from your computer or from your mobile directly. There is integration with Flickr available to share you pictures directly to Flickr. Overall a very nice service.
• Files: This service is similar to Mobile Me service from Apple. This one is not free, but has some good features to give it a try. This enables you to access files on your computer through your mobile. Microsoft already is ready to launch My Phone service which is specifically for Windows Mobile Phone.

Other services include, the Nokia Maps, N-Gage and Nokia Music store. It looks like the rumoured Nokia App Store will be an addition to this site.

Overall Ovi is a very good service and sure will set some good competition for Apple Mobile Me and upcoming My Phone.

If you own a Nokia phone, then this is a service that you must use. Give it a spin @ http://ovi.com

Popularity: 21%

Blogosphere is full of news about Nokia planning to launch an application store on the lines of Apple. As a Nokia user I was happy to hear  this. I have been using Nokia N95 for over a year and am very happy with it. Needless to say my next phone would be Nokia.

On hearing this news, I decided to take a look around and see what apps are available for Nokia. I then reached for Nokia Beta Labs and took a look around.

While I evaluate rest of stuff that I wanted to share one of the app I found interesting.

Step Counter

An interesting application, while counts steps (pedometer) that you take in a day. The following are the features that this application offers:

• Step counter to track number of steps taken
• Time and distance spent walking
• Track of day wise steps
• Set a daily step limit etc.

After looking at the features I was keen to understand how it worked. I was surprised to know that Nokia N95 has an embedded accelerometer, a device which helps identify the orientation. The same helps iPhone to switch view when turned sideways.

I can only imagine how many more applications will developers write to use this feature. While I evaluate a few more and come back. Take a look at the step counter and start getting fit.

Don’t you think it is time for Nokia user can rejoice again?

Popularity: 10%

In my earlier posts I have introduced you to the Windows Live Applications Family and have reviewed Windows Live Writer.

In today’s post I would like to write my views on Windows Live Sync (WLS).

WLS was earlier called Windows Folder Share in its Beta. WLS uses a Windows Live ID and helps keep folders in sync between different computers. This is especially useful when you have multiple computers at home and need few files to be available on all of them, especially photos, videos and your CVs perhaps in these turbulent times .

What particularly enticing about WLS is that none of the biggies Google, Apple, Yahoo or others have a similar service available at this time and it is available for both PCs and Apple MACs.

Anyway, what WLS does is, helps you configured folders on each computer that can be shared and synced with other computers. What’s more, it also allows you to access these files from Internet, if the selected computer is online and you have granted the permission to do so. Cool ain’t it?

So, here’s how you can configure it:

1) Go to WLS software from Live Sync

2) Install it on the PC or MAC, once installed you will be prompted to enter your Windows Live ID. Enter it and you are set. You need to do this on all computers that you want to sync.

3) Go the sync website

4) Select a folder from the computer to sync

5) Then add computers which need this folder to be synced

You can also enable remote folder access, which means you can access contents of your hard drive from anywhere via Live Sync .

Sounds very simple and cool. Yes it is. As it stands I have 3 of my home computers on sync and web access enabled.

But is there a catch? Not really but a few limitations.

• Can sync up to 20 folders
• Each folder can only have 20000 files
• Max file size 4GB

Now I don’t exactly call those limitations for personal use.

Happy syncing!

Popularity: 18%

Microsoft just announced Windows 7, a successor to Windows Vista. It has been about 2 years of unpopular time for Vista and Microsoft is quickly readying its successor to cleanup its tarnished Image.

Windows XP is touted as most successful operating system ever. It has been in use since October 2001 and continues to dominate as the PC Operating System. Microsoft perhaps was a victim of its own success; yes I am talking about Windows Vista.

As a successor to XP, Vista had huge expectations. While it delivered on Security, Refined Interface, Ease of use and Application Compatibility, many users felt the same to be issues with the system, which made it unpopular:

> Security – Annoying User Account control

> Resource Intensive Aeroglass Interface

> Updated Menus – Confusing at times

Apple thrived on this fact with its “I am a Mac” campaign. Result, Vista disaster. While Microsoft is trying hard to revive the image with “I am a PC” campaign, it has quite some ground to cover.

Enter Windows 7. I have just downloaded the 64 Bit Beta and have installed it on my HP Laptop running AMD Turion. For a Beta version, I am pleasantly surprised with the way it has been performing:

Installation time was 20 minutes and was exactly 6 clicks (Thought it restarted couple of times, it did not require my intervention. As soon as the OS loaded, it prompted me with my wireless connection and I quickly configured.

The moment I logged in, it suggested installing an Anti-Virus solution and took me to a recommended page. I have however installed my favourite, Avast. It ran with no issues at all.

Quickly I added my favourite applications; Windows Live Applications, Google Picasa, Skype, Google Talk, Flock and Firefox. All of them functioning very well with no compatibility issues. It also downloaded drivers for my latest nvidia card and gave me a preview of its slicker interface than Aero of Vista.

For the User account control, Microsoft seems to have now incorporated different levels so that you can customize, unlike Vista, which seemed a very nice move.

Another striking feature is the new taskbar, which replaces miniature icons with giant ones. Even the applications current running would be minimized into icons on this task bar.

I strongly recommend you to give it a try; however as this is in beta, please do take full backups of your systems before you install it. If you have a spare laptop or desktop on which you can try it, even better.

You can download a copy of Windows 7 Beta from here.

For now, it looks like Microsoft seems to be very much in control and would take every step to avoid repetition of Vista debacle, and from what I have seen of Windows 7 so far. It looks like they will succeed.

Popularity: 15%

History

You must have heard about this or read about this. Well it is some word coined by the media to describe the competition between Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer in early 2000’s. Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 (IE6) is dubbed, final nail in Netscape Navigator’s coffin. After IE6, the scene was pretty much silent with IE6 ruling the roost with over 90% market share (including Macintosh).  Opera had it’s own share and no major competitor to was on the scene for IE6.

Enter Safari (Jan ‘03) and Mozilla Firefox (Nov ‘04). While Safari was primarily targeted at uprooting Microsoft’s hold on Macintosh platform, Firefox was a open source project targeted at improving the web experience for users, an it succeeded big time! It got Microsoft working, which slipped into a slumber on development of a new browser. By the time Microsoft woke up to the new challenge in the browser arena and readied IE7, Firefox already developed a huge following and chipped about 12% of market share, therefore successfully initiating the browser wars yet again.

Today

Today IE is at 72%, Firefox enjoys about 20% of market share, Safari (sneaked into most of Windows systems through Apple software update) is at about 6% and Opera a humble 1%. Read in more detail about the percentage shares at this Wikipedia article.

The browser wars today have reached it’s peak with a new entrant, Google Chrome. Google has launched its new browser built on top of Webkit framework used also by Apple Safari. It is a instant hit with the Google fans and is yet to woo hardcore Firefox fans. Chrome is a little more than browser, it is sort of an Operating system which is optimized for all Google Web Apps, try running any Google applications on it and you will agree.

On a feature to feature basis, IE8 and Chrome almost match each other. Safari and Firefox have almost every feature and just lack the crash control (which they claim they will never require )

Do a quick search with the title of this article and you will have a bunch of articles, giving their own views on what’s better and what’s not. I am not going to go into all those details for you. As I believe you can test for yourself and decide.

For now, I run all of the above and give them their respective share of my CPU time

Happy surfing.

Popularity: 32%

Ok, now that you have read the posts on Ubuntu and other OS (Open Source) OS(Operating System) alternatives, it is time to introduce a few more alternatives.

While I am not advocating use of Open Source (or Free Software), I am certainly advocating against use of pirated copies of any commercial software. Agreed that Free Software may not often meet all of your requirements, hey but that is why the commercial software companies charge you money. More than any thing, these will give you peace of mind of not using illegal software (remember, “Piracy is stealing”). 

If you wish to read more about Open Source & Free Software Foundation click here. Again please remember not all Open Source software is Free to use. As they define “Free as in free Speech, not as in free beer”.

Have I clarified things enough or at least confused you further? Good, now back to our topic. Here are top 5 most used softwares and their alternatives.

1) Microsoft Office:

This is number one single most used software on many PCs and Macs too. If you wish to retain the full functionality and familiarity of office, you may purchase this at prices starting 2500 rupees; you might get a good deal if you buy it bundled with PC. 

Now for the alternative, single most famous alternative is Open Office.org. This Open Source, free office is a fairly good alternative to MS Office. Provides most of the features, while there may be some compatibility issues, it is more than enough for home use. What’s more the built in PDF maker helps you do away with Adobe Writer/Distiller’s need. I am not a big fan of browser based Office Suites, but if that’s your liking then you have Google Docs. 

2) Adobe Photo Shop:

Number 2 on our list, again quite pricey to commercially buy. While many use this for working on their Digital media assets, few free alternatives can help you deal with most of what this offers. Go for Gimp and top it up with Gimp Shop, which is a hack, which makes it closest to Photoshop.

3) Nero Burning ROM:

Very easy to use software for burning DVDs and CDs, unless packaged with your PC Bundle, quite often used in “other” ways. Want to break free? Two options, stick to Windows standard burning options, which have gotten better with Vista, but again lack full control. A very good alternative is Infra Recorder. Does the job almost as well as Nero (other than burning Blu Ray discs).

4) Adobe Premiere:

Again for those enthusiasts working with home video and adding some effects etc. The famous iMovie of mac does a good job and so does the Windows movie maker for basic work. To get some extra you might want to look at Cinelerra. Mind you this works only on Linux. For Windows folks you could try Jashaka. This offers some solid features.

5) Norton Anti Virus:

Again for Windows guys a bit favourite. You could switch to Avast. It offers very good, non intrusive protection for your system. And is free for non commercial use.

 So that’s our top 5 list. Let us close this topic here and let you play around with these. And reiterate the importance of using legitimate software….  Well well, let me not start again!

 Have fun!

Popularity: 17%

Nokia N79 & N85

Nokia has unveiled two new high-end phone models, the N85 and the N79, and declared its battle against increasing competition in the market. The news lifted share price of Nokia by more than two percent as it signalled the investors that the company was on track of giving tough competition to its business rivals Apple and Samsung.

The N79 and N85 models will go on sale in India in late October. The N79 has a 2.4-inch screen, a 5- megapixel camera and comes with a 4GB Micr, o SD card and the N85 has a 2.6-inch LED screen, a 5-megapixel cam and 8GB Micro SD card.

Both these phone also have 10 pre-loaded N-gage games and have FM transmitters for streaming your music over a nearby radio.

Nokia currently holds 40 per cent of the global cellphone market and approximately 60% of the Indian market. It has even higher market share among the expensive phones, helped by the success of its flagship N95.

The company is expecting higher profit margins from these new phones but with the release of iPhone in India, I have my doubts on Nokia being able to skim the Indian market.

Popularity: 44%

Firstly before I go over the IPOD NANO I would like to give you a brief history about what made me opt for an Apple product (of all the myriad choices available in the market). The choice of the Nano went through enough deliberation as my previous purchase of the IPOD shuffle was one which left me smiling for 4 years. This also meant that I needed a player which could handle my appointments (outlook synchronization), my podcasts, and also have the time to show me some pictures and movies with crystal clear sound (tall order eh?).

Though there are a lot of Apple fan-boys out there, I don’t think Apple makes the best hardware (audio) as Iriver. Creative can beat them on pricing and very good sound. I went for the Nano as I needed reliability which I had found in my earlier purchase of the shuffle. I was lucky that I got this as a gift – a gift when unwrapped was beautiful to say the least. I can’t blame Apple for holding the market to ransom with their products. Their presentation has always been impeccable.

Anyways, I unpacked the package and there are the usual accessories USB dongle/charger (charging for some reason for Apple has always been through the USB though there are chargers which are available in the market which allow you to use the standard Power Socket to charge your pod), Nano Quick Start Guide, Apple Earphones, Nano Dock Adaptor and of course the Nano 3G.

On the first look (I got a black pod) it looks a beauty. Simplicity pervades every part of the Nano experience. May it be just going through the menu or transferring your songs onto the Nano (through ITunes). On a more detailed note let me break down all aspects of the IPOD NANO Xperience (XP is integral

Look and Feel

Smooth finish. Though prone to smudges due to the glossy finish, with the core being the touchpad which is core to the Nano and allows you to access all menu functions. The screen has a 5 cm wide screen (color) supporting a resolution of 320 * 240 pixels. The best thing is that the small size of the screen is not an impediment to viewing small movies (long movies might be a bit too tough on the eyes).

Sound  

Music/Photos/Videos (post conversion) are transferred through ITunes. I don’t use ITunes personally as I find it easier to use Winamp to manage my music collection and also manage the POD (Winamp plug-in).

Though there are some things where it is inevitable that you use ITunes, like managing your podcasts, videos and of course to use your POD as a drive. What you use is per your convenience.

Headphones

The standard pair of headphones needs to be discarded and you would need to invest in a good pair of head/ear phones to love the sound that the pod delivers. I use a Creative EP-630 which augments the aural response and is also a snug fit. The sound is impeccable with correct highs, mids and lows and I love listening to the podcasts, music and movies with the pod. I am not a music connoisseur so I can’t comment on the perfection of sound

Overall the pod 3G experience has been wonderful. Will give a more in-depth coverage in the 2nd part of this article.

Popularity: 17%