Reviews of web hosting services to reduce your dilemma

Blogspot, wordpress, etc are nice platforms if you are blogging for fun and you are not serious about blogging. They are free and easy to use and you don't have to bother about hosting,etc.
But the problem is that they do not create a brand image of your blog. It will always remain another blogspot or wordpress blog. You might get good traffic but not to the full potential of your blog.

So, you have decided to buy your own domain and host it. It will be daunting task to choose the hosting company as there several companies and all are out to confuse you. Buying domain is easy but choosing the hosting service is not.

Enter Web Hosting Geeks , a website which reviews the hosting service providers. The web hosting reviews on their site is impartial and complete.The need for such website is that as there are dozens of companies offering the “same” packages for different prices,you wouldn't know which offers of the hosting service provider would suit you the best. The reviews on this website is based on every aspect ie. tech support , software,customer support, traffic, space, price, quality, etc.

They also have great articles regarding web hosting. Check out their web hosting guide.

Trick to get out of a bad date

I have stumbled across a interesting site called Getmooh. It helps you, as it tagline says, "Get me out of here". The site makes free call to your phone at a pre-determined day and time. There are several recordings like baldwin to a girls voice,etc. You cn use this as a reason to leave whatever you are doing.

How it works?

Getmooh is an automated call back service. It is designed to help you escape a variety of situations by calling you automatically on your phone at a pre-specified time and playing you a recording which will either instruct you on what to say to elude your tormentor(s), or which will simply give a convincing sense of you being on an important call.

Creating a Call

To use Getmooh take the following steps:

1. Select the international dialling prefix of the phone you want to call.

2. Enter the local number of the phone you want to call

3. Specify the time at which you want to be called. Use the calendar icon () to select a time. (For notes on time availability see notes below).

4. Select the recording you want played to you during the call. You can listen to the full recording in advance by selecting it and then clicking "play sample". This will give you an idea of what to expect and let you hone your acting skills.

5. Click "Continue". (If Getmooh recognises you it will say "Add Call" and the process will complete). Otherwise....

6. Enter your email and your password. (See Getting a password below).

7. Click "Add Call".

8. That's it!

Getting a Password

To get a password so you can Create Calls:

1. Click on "Get one now" which appears by the password field.

2. Enter your Name, Email, Intl' Prefix and Mobile Number

3. Your password will be texted to you! So ensure the number is right.

4. Click "Send me My Password by SMS"

5. When you get the password go back to the Main Window and enter it.

6. Anytime you return you can use the same password!

Retreiving your password

To get your password again:

1. Repeat the same steps for signing up

2. Your password will be re-texted to you

Notes

1. Caller ID Policy: Getmooh run a very simple Caller ID policy. At the end of every call, the mobile number of the person who placed the called is read out very distinctly by a computer generated voice.

2. Availability of minutes: Getmooh can only make a certain number of calls a day. As people add calls, the minutes available get used up. Select the closest time to when you want a call. If the time you need is completely booked out we apologise...we are working to increase the number of calls we can make all the time.

3. Number of Calls: You can only use the service for a maximum of two calls a day! If you need more than that you should consult a health professional.

4. Prank or Crank Calling: If you are going to set a call for a friend be sure that if they call us and identify themselves as the owner of the number we can happily verify who gave them the call.

5. Why is Getmooh free?: Because Google exists.

Will Google Chrome be a hit in browser market?

Google announced that the launch of it's browser or OS for the internet Chrome. This is a direct shot at Microsoft's IE as well as desktop dominance. However, surprisingly, this decision shocks me as it's partnership with Mozilla's Firefox was going well. Maybe the top brass at Google did not like the idea of depending on other company to extend it's Internet dominance.

What does this mean for Firefox long term? Google is one of the biggest supporters of Firefox. It has contributed financially and in terms of development talent. According to PaidContent, "just last week Google extended its support of the Mozilla foundation until 2011".

At CNET, Matt Asay writes

Nor can I imagine web developers getting excited about developing for yet another browser. It took years for anyone to start developing for Firefox, and no one got excited about developing for Flock or other spin-offs of Firefox. Google has the brand equity to make people pay attention to Chrome in the way start-up Flock never did, but could Chrome be Google's Zune moment?

In the media player world, the iPod reined despite Microsoft coming out with a good-but-not-good-enough alternative. Firefox has managed to gain a 20 percent market share after years of fighting: 72 percent of web users still slum with Internet Explorer. Are these magically going to dump Internet Explorer just because Google showed up to the party? Unlikely.

Google had many failures in the past. Google desktop, Videos,etc. Hope this does not becomes the same. However, Google has created enough buzz to ensure considerable amount of downloads on the first day.

I don't think the web developers of websites will be happy as they have to create websites suitable for several browsers and their several versions.

UPDATE: Download Chrome Here(windows XP and Vista only. No version for mac and Linux yet)
Chrome Features
Chrome's Code

Google PageRank Patent May Go

New criteria for restricting the scope of what the US Patent Office considers patent-worthy poses a threat to numerous software patents, including Google's famed PageRank.

Google climbed past a morass of ineffective search engines when it arrived on the Internet. Its devotion to the most relevant possible solution for a given query quickly made it the de facto search choice as millions of people shifted their browsing habits from walled garden content to the broader World Wide Web.

The essential and much-discussed PageRank technology holds a patent, a common legal protection sought by software developers small and large. Some have claimed software patents affect far too broad a scope of potential innovation, leading to lawsuits where a patent owner claims damages by multiple companies.

Those on the losing end of such suits end up paying for what they argue are obvious and non-original concepts. That could change with a shift in the way the USPTO looks at software patents, the Patently-O blog on patent law said.

A series of cases may remake the software industry, all the way to the top where Google and other companies reside:

In the most recent of these three (cases)—the currently pending en banc Bilski appeal—the Office takes the position that process inventions generally are unpatentable unless they "result in a physical transformation of an article" or are "tied to a particular machine."

Patently-O sees Google's PageRank, the patent for which is owned by Stanford University, as failing the first part of the test, as generating scores isn't a physical transformation. The second part proves troubling given recent decisions made by the USPTO in a couple of other cases, not only for PageRank but other Google patents too.

"Google might have thought that the patent system would surely protect new technological developments that are highly creative and socially valuable. The PTO’s new position proves that view mistaken," Patently-O said.

Scan any suspicious file online for virus

Suppose your antivirus apps detects virus in a file ,but you are not sure about it then there are various sites which will help you verify.

All you have to do is to upload the file to these sites and they will scan it using different antivirus scanners and give the results of each.

But remember these services are by no means 100% safe. If these scanner says 'OK', it does not necessarily mean the file is clean. There could be a whole new virus on the loose. NEVER EVER rely on one single product only even though it utilizes several products like A-Squared,avast,AVG Anti Virus,Avira,AntiVir,BitDefender,Kaspersky,Panda and many more.

These Antivirus sites include jotti , virustotal , scanner.

If you know any more site please tell me via comments.

Mozilla's servers are down !!!!

Mozilla as finally released Firefox 3 at some US time. I have been visiting mozilla's website yesterday but there was no link about the download. Today it is 18th in India and now wen I am trying to download, it seems that their servers are down. So much for the world record.

Please do not forget about the download day

Tomorrow is the big download day for Mozilla Firefox 3. Mozilla is aiming to enter Guiness world book of records as the most downloaded software in 24 hours. Make sure you help the achieve that. I have tried the beta versions and the work great. Most of your favourite add-ons will be compatible with it.

Why you should download it?

More Secure

* One-click site info: Click the site favicon in the location bar to see who owns the site and to check if your connection is protected from eavesdropping. Identity verification is prominently displayed and easier to understand. When a site uses Extended Validation (EV) SSL certificates, the site favicon button will turn green and show the name of the company you're connected to.
* Malware Protection: malware protection warns users when they arrive at sites which are known to install viruses, spyware, trojans or other malware.
* New Web Forgery Protection page: the content of pages suspected as web forgeries is no longer shown. (Try it here!) * New SSL error pages: clearer and stricter error pages are used when Firefox encounters an invalid SSL certificate.
* Add-ons and Plugin version check: Firefox now automatically checks add-on and plugin versions and will disable older, insecure versions.
* Secure add-on updates: to improve add-on update security, add-ons that provide updates in an insecure manner will be disabled.
* Anti-virus integration: Firefox will inform anti-virus software when downloading executables.
* Vista Parental Controls: Firefox now respects the Vista system-wide parental control setting for disabling file downloads.
* Effective top-level domain (eTLD) service better restricts cookies and other restricted content to a single domain.
* Better protection against cross-site JSON data leaks.

Easier to Use

* Easier password management: an information bar replaces the old password dialog so you can now save passwords after a successful login.
* Simplified add-on installation: the add-ons whitelist has been removed making it possible to install extensions from third-party sites in fewer clicks.
* New Download Manager: the revised download manager makes it much easier to locate downloaded files, and you can see and search on the name of the website where a file came from. Your active downloads and time remaining are always shown in the status bar as your files download.
* Resumable downloading: users can now resume downloads after restarting the browser or resetting your network connection.
* Full page zoom: from the View menu and via keyboard shortcuts, the new zooming feature lets you zoom in and out of entire pages, scaling the layout, text and images, or optionally only the text size. Your settings will be remembered whenever you return to the site.
* Podcasts and Videocasts can be associated with your media playback tools.
* Tab scrolling and quickmenu: tabs are easier to locate with the new tab scrolling and tab quickmenu.
* Save what you were doing: Firefox will prompt users to save tabs on exit.
* Optimized Open in Tabs behavior: opening a folder of bookmarks in tabs now appends the new tabs rather than overwriting.
* Location and Search bar size can now be customized with a simple resizer item.
* Text selection improvements: multiple text selections can be made with Ctrl/Cmd; double-click drag selects in "word-by-word" mode; triple-clicking selects a paragraph.
* Find toolbar: the Find toolbar now opens with the current selection.
* Plugin management: users can disable individual plugins in the Add-on Manager.
* Integration with Windows: Firefox now has improved Windows icons, and uses native user interface widgets in the browser and in web forms.
* Integration with the Mac: the new Firefox theme makes toolbars, icons, and other user interface elements look like a native OS X application. Firefox also uses OS X widgets and supports Growl for notifications of completed downloads and available updates. A combined back and forward control make it even easier to move between web pages.
* Integration with Linux: Firefox's default icons, buttons, and menu styles now use the native GTK theme.

More Personal

* Star button: quickly add bookmarks from the location bar with a single click; a second click lets you file and tag them.
* Tags: associate keywords with your bookmarks to sort them by topic.
* Location bar & auto-complete: type in all or part of the title, tag or address of a page to see a list of matches from your history and bookmarks; a new display makes it easier to scan through the matching results and find that page you're looking for. Results are returned according to their frecency (a combination of frequency and recency of visits to that page) ensuring that you're seeing the most relevant matches. An adaptive learning algorithm further tunes the results to your patterns!
* Smart Bookmarks Folder: quickly access your recently bookmarked and tagged pages, as well as your more frequently visited pages with the new smart bookmarks folder on your bookmark toolbar.
* Places Organizer: view, organize and search through all of your bookmarks, tags, and browsing history with multiple views and smart folders to store your frequent searches. Create and restore full backups whenever you want.
* Web-based protocol handlers: web applications, such as your favorite webmail provider, can now be used instead of desktop applications for handling mailto: links from other sites. Similar support is available for other protocols (Web applications will have to first enable this by registering as handlers with Firefox).
* Download & Install Add-ons: the Add-ons Manager (Tools > Add-ons) can now be used to download and install a Firefox customization from the thousands of Add-ons available from our community add-ons website. When you first open the Add-ons Manager, a list of recommended Add-ons is shown.
* Easy to use Download Actions: a new Applications preferences pane provides a better UI for configuring handlers for various file types and protocol schemes.

Improved Performance

* Speed: improvements to our JavaScript engine as well as profile guided optimizations have resulted in continued improvements in performance. Compared to Firefox 2, web applications like Google Mail and Zoho Office run twice as fast in Firefox 3, and the popular SunSpider test from Apple shows improvements over previous releases.
* Memory usage: Several new technologies work together to reduce the amount of memory used by Firefox 3 over a web browsing session. Memory cycles are broken and collected by an automated cycle collector, a new memory allocator reduces fragmentation, hundreds of leaks have been fixed, and caching strategies have been tuned.
* Reliability: A user's bookmarks, history, cookies, and preferences are now stored in a transactionally secure database format which will prevent data loss even if their system crashes

Google to provide internet protection to your employees

Protecting employees from Internet threats is tough enough when they're at work, much less when they're on the road. Off-network users are particularly vulnerable to web threats because they must remember to connect via VPN for protection when they're away from the office.

Today we're making Internet security easier for people, wherever they may be working. Google Web Security for Enterprise, powered by Postini, provides real-time malware protection and URL filtering with policy enforcement and reporting. An additional feature extends the same protections to users working remotely on laptops in hotels, cafes, and even guest networks without requiring any action on their part.

Read more

Visitors deleting cookies increases your unique visitors count

According to Comscore, Visitors deleting cookies can increase your unique visitors number by 2.5 times. Click here to request whitepaper.

IPL cricket twenty20 web resources

Official IPL site- iplt20.com
BCCI site- BCCI.tv (not yet fully launched)
Exclusive online partner- cricket.com (not yet launched)

MumbaiIndians - Mumbai
Knightriders - Kolkata
RoyalChallengers - Bangalore
Superkings - Chennai
DareDevils - Delhi
Royals - Jaipur
DeccanChargers - Hyderabad
Kings X1 - Mohali

Tickets- Ticketpro.in ( except for matches in mumbai )
for mumbai matches kyazoonga.com

Google to store web software in it's server

Google plans to launch a service called App Engine Monday evening that the company hopes will attract programmers and eventually companies needing an expandable foundation for online applications.

App Engine, free to the first 10,000 people who sign up, offers a combination of several online Google services for those who want a place to host software, said Pete Koomen, a product manager on the Google developer team. Those include the BigTable service for data storage and processing--as expected--along with authentication to let people sign on to services and e-mail to let the system handle communications, he said.

At an event called Campfire One Monday night, Google plans to show off some internally developed Web applications written with the service. One of them lets people sign up for carpools, joining the service, declaring whether and when they want to drive or be driven, and then being matched to likely partners.

The company is pitching App Engine as an easy way for programmers to build software without having to worry about rebuilding it once it gets too big for its original hardware or software britches.

But Stephen Arnold, author of "Google Version 2," sees grander ambitions in the App Engine plan. Google's BigTable software and accompanying Sawzall technology for analyzing huge quantities of data offers big companies a way to tackle data-mining tasks they currently can't manage, such as American Express plumbing five years' worth of credit-card transactions to determine the merits of Father's Day promotions.

App Engine programs can be written in the Python programming language, Koomen said, though Google is seeking advice on what other languages to support. With App Engine, programmers can use a Google software development kit to write the software on their own computer, then upload it to App Engine when desired.

Google's App Engine initially will have limits of 500MB of storage, 10GB of daily data transfer bandwidth, and 200 million daily cycles of processor use. That should be enough to power a Web site with about 5 million page views per month, Koomen said.

After the preview period ends, all comers will be able to use that amount of capacity for free, and using more will cost pay-as-you-go fees that Google isn't yet announcing.

Google expects to generate some revenue from the service and from AdSense if developers incorporate that service into their Web applications, said Tom Stocky, another Google product manager. But the real payback from the service is indirect, Koomen said.

"The primary motivation is to enable the Web as a platform and move it forward," Koomen said. "If it's easier for developers to build Web applications, (that) means more applications. That attracts more users to the Web and helps Google as well."

Future features will include mechanisms for storing files larger than 1MB, billing users for computer use, and support for offline applications, Koomen added.

Cost of Google's April fool's prank-Few million dollars

Google's April Fool day pranks have achieved legendary proportion. This year, some pranks were quite evident while some cleverly done. The most evident prank was, of course, the Virgle prank. It was so obvious that even a 10 year old would understand that it is a April fool joke.

So why would the brilliant guys at Google cook up such pranks which goes this way "Earth has issues, and it's time humanity got started on a Plan B. So, starting in 2014, Virgin founder Richard Branson and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin will be leading hundreds of users on one of the grandest adventures in human history: Project Virgle, the first permanent human colony on Mars."

The answer is money. It is quite evident that Virgin inc. has paid Google to play this prank. With it's pay per click revenues wavering, Google has ventured into new territory almost like "get paid to blog". Just think about the number of links made by other site to this virgle page and amount of visitors due to this. It is easy advertising. This kind of unique advertising leaves a lasting impression of the brand on the users mind.

With Virgin inc. trying to enter eastern markets, this kind of advertising will help Richard Branson gather enough publicity for his company as Google is used by most internet users or because of the links made to the page by blogs and website.

At&t enters browser war

Pogo works like a regular browser, but it manages pages more visually (see screenshots below). Instead of tabs, it has a scrollable strip on the bottom that shows a thumbnail image of each site you’ve visited during your session. A “Springboard” button on the top left takes you to a grid view of your favorite sites—akin to what you might put on your bookmark toolbar. You can also view the rectangular cells in various Coverflow-like animations. You can do the same with regular bookmarks, which are treated as “collections.” You can drag Website images into each collection or associate a collection with a tag. Then any page you tag going forward gets automatically placed within that collection. Your browsing history is also represented visually, as is your search history. For any particular search, every page you click through to gets saved as part of yet another collection—although you can only see one search set at a time.
For the foreseeable future, Pogo will only be available for Windows machines.

Blogging is not a waste of time

I finally could satisfy my consciousness that blogging is not a waste of time after reading this blog at daily blog tips. Here is the summary.

The knowledge that a university will give you is available for everyone, anywhere in the world. Sure, there is a difference between knowledge and information. but with the right motivation and some help from other people even a kid in Sri Lanka can absorb the information available online and transform it into knowledge.

Consider two different men, John and Mark, working for a financial services company. Both of them are eager to succeed so that they spend lots of time trying to grow professionally.

John uses his time gaining as much knowledge as possible: he studies balance sheets, financial reports, accounting practices and the like. He even takes related courses on the local university.

Mark, on the other hand, gets only the knowledge that is necessary to carry out his job. Other than that, he uses his time to improve his writing skills, his ability to solve problems, his ability to understand and empathize with other people and so on.

Should the financial services sector enter a downturn some day forcing both men to find another job, who do you think will have a harder time? Yeah, I am sure you have guessed it.

Rescue WiMax

WSJ reports that Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and Bright House Networks are contemplating close to investing $1.6 billion in a new company that would be operated by Sprint-Nextel and Clearwire. This is in addition to $1 billion that Intel is rumored to put into the new company, along with hundreds of millions of dollars coming from Google. The new company is aiming to raise about $3 billion. Here is how the total rumored funding for the new company breaks down:

Comcast: $1 Billion
Time Warner Cable: $500 Million
Bright House Networks: $100-$200 Million.
Intel Corp.: $1 Billion
Google: Undisclosed Millions.

News on map- Metacarta

MetaCarta Inc. is the leading provider of geographic intelligence solutions. MetaCarta’s unique technology combines geographic search and geographic tagging capabilities so users can find content about a place by viewing results on a map. MetaCarta’s products and OnDemand services make data and unstructured content "location-aware" and geographically relevant. These innovative solutions make it possible for customers to discover, visualize, and act on important location-based information and news.

piclens - a great mozilla addon

Piclens is a great mozilla addon. It helps you to view images of Google Images, yahoo images, photobucket,in slides. It has very futuristic look and you can browse through all the images with your mouse or arrow keys. The selected image gets magnified. Just search for "beautiful fireworks","gods own country","coral reefs",etc
Download here

Ebay changes listing price

Under the old rules, for example, selling a purse at auction for $25 would have cost the seller $1.91, including 60 cents for listing the item plus eBay's commission of $1.31. Under the new structure, the seller would pay $2.74, including 55 cents to list the item plus a higher commission of $2.19.
EBay's commissions will rise on items auctioned for less than $1,000 or sold at fixed prices lower than $100, while eBay's cut on more expensive auction items will remain 1.5 percent. It will take less off the top of higher-end fixed-price sales - 2 percent or 4 percent, rather than 3 percent or 5 percent.
One of its main rivals in fixed-price sales, Amazon.com Inc., charges no fee at all to list an item, though it charges a commission as high as 15 percent.

ICL future of Indian cricket? Update your website first!!!

Due to increase in my anticipation of the launch of ICL, I thought of logging on to its website. I found it pretty good. But on clicking on the latest news I was taken to the 404 error page. Not a great omen for the league which takes pride in saying that it is trying to bring professionalism in Indian Cricket. And with a google pagerank of zero this blog and the website are on the same level.
And I still maintain that they should have thought of a better name for its teams