Archive for April, 2008
WiFi detector on your t-shirt
New duty for t-shirts?
Interestingly another job for t-shirts, detect wifi strength around you, its an anomaly. But this is true, it will show the wifi signal strength to you and people around you.

The glowing bars on the t-shirt will display the signal strength. So we don’t need to carry a laptop for wardriving. The product will show signal strength’s for 802.11b or 802.11g. Interestingly we can remove the wifi gadget when we need to wash the cloth. The t-shirt is black in color and 100% cotton. Battery pack is concealed in a small pocket inside the t-shirt. The battery conception is about 3 hours for a AAA battery. Hopefully I will buy one soon
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Mooflair - Adobe AIR application for viewing off-line and on-line flash videos
Adobe AIR is getting its fair share of attention among developers and many cool applications are being developed daily. The applications are light weight and runs of all OS platforms. Mooflair is one of such applications for viewing flash videos from various video websites also flash videos stored on your computer.

Mooflair comes packed with some really cool features. You can search for videos and then create play lists and save them for later viewing. As every other player provides you can download videos using this tool.
Download Mooflair from here.
Coolest Periodic Table Ever
I wish technology had progressed this much while I was in school. I had a huge periodic table hung on my rooms wall.
Now check this out.
This is the coolest periodic table I have ever seen. The interface is neat and wonderful. Any person will get interested in chemistry after seeing this.
Analytics Reporting Suite on Adobe AIR
If you have an analytics account and you are into the habit of using it quite extensively then you will surely like this application. This is a desktop version of the google analytics application, made on the Adobe AIR platform. You need to have Adobe AIR installed on your machine.
The software is particularly useful for those with multiple analytics accounts. You can configure any number of accounts into this software and review all of their performance without having to login and logout.
The software has a really neat interface which is very much similar to the online version. Its also much faster than the browser based analytics version. Check out the software here.

Make your contact email address spam proof using javascript
This topic might be interesting for blogger’s / tech geeks. Are you get annoyed by spam mails, because you published your email address on your blogs / contact page of your site. Here is a workaround for it, you can simply use some client side scripting to print the email address on the site document.
<script type=”text/javascript”>
var your_email_address = ‘your address’ + ‘@’ + ‘your domain.com’;
document.write(’<a href=”mailto:’ + your_email_address + ‘”>Contact me</a>’);
</script>
Any change for email address display in user perspective?
Absolutely No! Since we are printing it into the document.
What we gain?
We can make the document spam proof.
You know how the spam bots works? It simply crawl your site and parse your document, during the parsing programs grabs all email addresses in source document. Spam doesn’t bother about the client side programs normally, moreover it need a client side virtual machine to execute the client side javascript code.
Thus your email address won’t displayed in the document. It is cool idea right?
Another workaround to make spam proof is adding your email address as image !!!
Google movie search
Are you crazy about movies? If yes good news for you peoples. Google search will assist you to find your favorite movies respective to your location. Just go to the google movies.

You can even include some keywords, like “director” , “cast” etc. If you need to search which all movies are there at New york. Type keyword New York or New York zip code on the change location field and click on the button change location. The search will results the movies that are running on theaters at New york along with the user ratings and show timings. Attractive thing is that Google movie search is also live in India.


Unlimited international calls from skype
Good news Skype users!!!, they have recently introduced a unlimited plan for just $9.95. User can call internationally to 34 countries world wide. I am sure this will spurn all providers in this arena. You can now call to your relatives all over the world by spending $9.95.
Hold on, like all other providers, Skype also have some hidden things in the unlimited plan. It is not actually unlimited, restricted around to 10000 minutes. I think its more than enough for international calls for a month. Actually the cost is $12.25/month, but if you purchase a package for 3 or 12 months you will offered a 33% discount. The offer is valid till June 1’st 2008. So hurry up and grab this offer.
Skype already merchandised their products all over US and Canada. How ever still lagging very much behind in Indian markets, where the real tech geeks and internet enthusiast resides. Yes this plan is not applicable for Indians
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Check your Microsoft Vista updates regularly

I am genuine Windows vista user, however, I am also using ubuntu, both seems very friendly for me. As far I know a lot of memory issues and bugs are available with vista that widely affects its performance. Even while the vista booting, a sluggish process, it will take more than 10 minutes, my laptop is with 1GB RAM. Anyway whatever issues available the compulsion factor to use Microsoft products are far far better as compared to others. Windows vista’s bugs created a lot of ominous with Microsoft. They have recognized the issues during their beta release itself, from that time onwards they started fixing issues with Vista. Microsoft recently released a low foot print version that reduced the memory requirements.
As a matter of fact, I would suggest all of the Vista users to check your updates regularly. If your automatic updates turned on, don’t bother about this topic. Anyway I have turned off my automatic updates, cos that save some memory of mines :-( . Let me explain how to check out updates manually.
Step 1)
On the start menu click on the All programs, and select “Windows update“.

Step 2)
On the left top of the Updates window, you can see link ‘Check for updates’, click on the link.

Step 3)
It will start searching for updates. After sometime the window will show the updates available.

Step 4)
Click on the Install updates button, it will start downloading, and will automatically install the components into your system.
Microsoft Vista service pack is now available for download.
How to setup google docs for offline access?
Hurray….when I opened my google docs today morning I got offline functionality enabled for my account. I was looking for this, couple of days back. I got some information from a forum that only limited people got functionality available for the time being. Anyways I am happy that I got access for it now.
Let me explain the steps to enable offline access for your google document and spreadsheets.
Before going to this process if you haven’t install google gear install it.
Step 1)
Click on the link ‘offline’ on the top right of your google docs. You will get a pop up like below. Click on the check box and mark google doc as a trusted site.

Step 2)
Click on the enable offline access button. After clicking the button you will get another pop up

Step 3)
Create desktop shortcut for google doc. After allowing this it will start synchronization, that is a sluggish process. Don’t worry it will complete in some minutes.


After some time you will get a tick mark on the top right, that means your google doc is downloaded to your local machine. Disconnect your internet connection and go some place where you don’t have a internet access. Click on the google docs icon on your desktop.
Some basic tips.
The offline access is system dependent. If you need to access from different system you need to repeat the same process in all the system.
The offline access is browser dependent. You can’t share it with IE, mozilla, since data are saved in different folder.
The offline access is operating system dependent. You can’t share between operating system.
Now why should I care for desktop office? Google overcomes the main drawback with desktop office.
Anyways the google doc offline access does lack some more. I think for offline access, should be selective. What I meant was I can select file from the docs and only those file need offline access there by the syncing time can be drastically reduced.
Working of SLR(D) camera.
SLR Camera
How does it work?

SLR is short for ‘Single Lens Reflex’ (denoting Reflection). A SLR camera uses a single lens through which an image is focused or targeted. A mirror is used to reflect the light emitted by the target/body, through the viewfinder, to our eyes. There is a penta prism (prism with 5 sides) on the path of rays to view finder, inside which internal reflections take place to deviate a straight light to view finder. This is the mechanism inside a camera. Lenses used are mostly biconvex. This lens inverts the image rays, twice inside the camera and hits the sensor, So that we get the actual image.
Film Vs Sensor
Now a days only few people mind to use a film to capture pictures. In the D-SLR’s and other digital cameras, a sensor is used instead of films, on which the image is let to fall. While capturing image, the camera shutter opens which lets the image rays hit the sensor (instead of a film) in a D-SLR, whereas film in normal SLRs.
A negative on a film is replaced with pixel(s) which stores the image information on a sensor.
Image Format
A SLR camera captures the exact image as we see through bear eyes, no filtering or any kind of image loss takes place here. The exact light rays reach the storage medium, whereas in Digital camera, the digitizing makes loss to the captured image.
The image format taken in SLR mode is termed as RAW, which can be converted to any other standard formats using external tools or any internal tools that camera introduces.
Role of Megapixel
In the present day world, there are people, who choose cameras rating the Megapixel. A megapixel matters only for those who take pictures for posters (large sized). For others who want normal photographs, megapixel is never an issue. A standard SLR camera often requires a minimum of 5-6MP.
A megapixel is the count of pixels by which image/image details is been registered. In a digital camera, Megapixel counts to the size of image, clarity is the same on a 6MP camera or taken in a 10MP camera.
So what really matter in SLR imaging?
Lens and CMOS sensor!!! J
Don’t jump out for Megapixel if you really don’t bother the size of image. Choose proper lens for your camera, as per your requirement (provided the camera has good CMOS sensor), produces the image as you see and as you expect to see. A good lens and a good sense of photography along with a good knowledge of your own camera (which is more important), always brings the best of your imagination. J


