Dosas and paranthas made the breakfast surreal,
Now the entire focus is on the cereal;
Chai was drunk with glass or tumbler,
Latte has transformed it to cup and saucer;

All that came with the meal was a pickle,
Now a missing salad deems you fickle;
A sumptuous dessert followed the meal,
Calorie counting now just gives the look-and-feel.

The scooter of choice was a Bajaj,
Now everyone’s thinking of a two-car garage;
The whole household had one telephone,
Cell phones are now being handed down.

Sharing photos was by showing the picture,
Now it’s all done using the Flickr;
Letters used to be mailed from the post office,
Using the e-mail will now suffice.

Fashion and style were last on the mind,
Now ignoring it won’t even make the wife kind;
Bermuda was only known as an island,
Not owning one will banish you to no man’s land.

Buying a TV was a big discussion,
Now the size of LCD is the main contention;
How did you buy it was never a question?
The credit crisis has changed the equation.

Image Credit: Sashwat Nagpal

Popularity: 15%

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: 17%

Ok, now it’s Windows Live Photo Gallery’s (WLPG) turn. Read my views on other Windows Live Apps here.

Firstly, WLPG is a very refined photo management software. It’s interface is familiar to the Windows Explorer and let you perform most of the functions that you can perform on a folder through explorer.

Second, WLPG’s online uploads land in Windows Live Sky Drive, which means you have 25GB of online storage at disposal.

I am trying to compare it to Picasa, which is currently very popular and see where it stands:

So that’s a quick feature to feature comparison of WLPG, Picasa and Shutterfly. Lack of ability to upload to third party sites in Picasa needs to be plugged as soon as possible. I just wish it had a shorter name like Picasa. Anyway, there are few unique features that I want to highlight.

The photos uploaded on Sky Drive can be downloaded at one go, like Picasa. However with many other tools you need to download every photo separately. You can either download the entire album or download them as a ZIP file. Also the feature  to sync the whole library, will make it even simpler to keep your photos synced with Sky Drive. The Sync Library option is disabled right now and should open up soon, in the meanwhile you can publish pictures to Sky Drive using Publish option. While Picasa offers a similar functionality, it is a bit crippled by low free of cost space.

Talking about the online storage you have the standard share features and ability to order prints via HP Snapfish.

Finally I would say that, Windows Live Photo Gallery is a very good addition and is a must have on your PC for the ease of use and host of other features. Also, keep Picasa for those cool collages it can make.

Popularity: 83%

It’s time to review another product of Windows Live, after my previous reviews.

I have been using various online storage options for quite sometime. Before Yahoo shutdown its photos service and moved to Flickr, I was using Yahoo for my online photo storage. I later switched to Shutterfly, which offers unlimited photo storage.

For my document storage, I have mostly used my Hotmail and Gmail accounts. But sharing those documents stored there with someone actually meant forwarding them.

Windows Live Sky Drive (WLSD), might just help addressing such problems.

To begin with WLSD, like all Windows Live applications needs a Windows Live ID. As you soon as you have your ID, you already have access to 25 GB of online storage, free of cost.

You can visit WLSD at Sky Drive . The following are the features that WLSD provides.

• 25 GB of Storage
• File sizes up to 50 MB
• Folders, Permissions at folder levels
• Permissions at file levels
• Shared Folders
• Public Folders
• Access permissions within people network
• Photos Can be added directly from Windows Live Photo Gallery
• Order prints Directly from Sky Drive through HP Snapfish.

You can add files to the folder on Sky Drive Share them as single files, folders or for photos you can share them as album. The online slide show rendered in Microsoft Silverlight is excellent.

The best reason to switch to Sky Drive is its integration with Windows Live Photo Gallery. You can pick any photos folder on your computer and upload it to the Sky Drive directly. I will write more about Windows Live Photo Gallery in a separate post.

If you have multiple Windows Live IDs, you can link them all to avoid logging in and out multiple times and keep viewing all the files.

So say if you have two Windows Live IDs then you already have 50GB of online storage. Definitely worthwhile, while rest of the services like Picasa and Flickr are offering paltry 1GB and 100MB Monthly limits.

Go Explore!

Popularity: 21%