Article Depository

Zap Technologies -Mobile Training Center

2011-01-29T12:08:00.000-08:00

www.zaptechnologies.org
Zap Technologies is one of the leading mobile phone training centre in India located in Bangalore. We have trained mobile phone repairing to thousands of people fhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifrom all the parts of India and also from other countries.

Most of our candidates after finishing the course have been placed in reputed service centres or have setup their own business.

We have designed the computerized chip level servicing of mobile phone repairing course in such a way that a person with or without the electronics background can also confidently repair the mobile phones after finishing the course in our training centre.

How to write HTML code for your blog or website

2010-02-14T22:56:00.000-08:00

How to write HTML code for your blog or website

Encode / Decode HTML Entities

http://centricle.com/tools/html-entities/

Fixed cell width in table

2010-02-14T22:45:00.000-08:00

7 Ways To Become More Productive With Firefox Tabs

2010-02-14T21:09:00.000-08:00

I remember the very first reason why I started using Firefox which was its “tabbing” feature (it was long ago and Internet Explorer didn’t have tabs then). It seemed so handy that I was amazed.

Now I still use Firefox (even though all other browsers have tabs now) and I am still pretty excited at the ability to open links in new tabs. Sometimes I have dozens of them opened and this is when it stops being handy (and usable).

Luckily Firefox is awesome and there are plenty of addons that make it even more awesome, so this post lists 7 most useful (for me) ways to get productive with Firefox tabs.

1. “Tabbing” Shortcuts

The best way to navigate through your open tabs is to learn related Firefox shortcuts. I am listing them below in a somewhat easier-to-digest way:

The Shortcut	The Action
Ctrl + 1	Select the leftmost tab
Ctrl + 2-8	Select each of the tabs in order from left to right
Ctrl + 9	Select the rightmost tab
Ctrl + F4	Close active tab
Ctrl + T	Open new tab
Ctrl + Tab	Select the next tab within the current Firefox window
Ctrl + Shift + Tab	Select the previous tab within the current Firefox window
Ctrl-W	Close tab
Ctrl-F4	Close tab
Ctrl-Shift-T	Undo close tab

2. App Tabs

This is an amazing productivity enhancer: this addon allows you to “app tabs” you want to refer to a bit later. “Apping a tab” means moving it to the left side of the tab bar and shrinking it to the size of its favicon.

Note: for some reason the addon is not on official addons resource, I got it from here and have had no problems with that version so far.

I’ve been actively using the addon ever since I discovered it. The only issue with it is that the number of “apped tabs” is hard to control (like the number of regular open tabs), and sometimes they become too much.

3. Find In Tabs

Find In Tab is another great Firefox addon that I am constantly using. It adds an alternative option to the CTRL+F command to search through all open tabs:

Clicking the “Find in Tabs” button on the find bar will search for text in all open tabs, and show a list of search results.
Clicking any of the results will jump to the tab on which it was found, and scroll directly to the highlighted text.

4. Next Tab

Next Tab is another time-saving Firefox extension that adds another option to your right-click menu allowing you to open the link right next to the current tab. This way, if you have multiple tabs open you won’t have to scroll to the last one to find your new tab. The link will open in the next tab to the current one:

5. Tab Preview

No more clicking through dozens of open tabs looking for the one you need: Tab Preview shows you the preview of the page in each tab on mouseover for you to find the one you are looking for.

I’ve been using the addon for quite some time now and never noticed it slow down the browser performance. In fact, it works amazingly fast:

6. Tab Navigator

TabNavigator is a Firefox addon that allows desktop style tab navigation. What it basically means is that you can navigate between your active tabs using a shortcut {ALT+R}. Moreover, it allows you to guess the target tab by showing you the domain favicon.

7. Rights To Close

This addon saves time immensely by making closing tabs really fast and easy: just right double-click anywhere on the webpage to close the current tab.

More FireFox Tab Productivity Tips To Enjoy:

Preview Firefox Tabs as Thumbnails with Showcase.
The Must-see “New Tab King” Addon for Firefox (Windows).
Too Many Tabs? Firefox Add-ons to manage a TAB JAM.
How To Remove The “Open In New Window” Option In Firefox (by keeping “open in new tab” only).

What productivity tips do you have for more effective Firefox tabbing? Please share them in the comments!

Myiris news - News - Top sector bets for pre-budget trading

2010-02-11T04:49:00.000-08:00

Myiris news - News - Top sector bets for pre-budget trading

CSS Dock Menu

2010-02-10T02:01:00.000-08:00

http://www.ndesign-studio.com/blog/mac/css-dock-menu

If you are a big Mac fan, you will love this CSS dock menu. It is using Jquery library and Fisheye component from Interface and some of my icons. It comes with two dock position: top and bottom. This CSS dock menu is perfect to add on to my iTheme. Here I will show you how to implement it to your web page.

CSS dock menu screenshot

Update: I no longer support the questons regard this dock menu. If you like the HiGloss icons used in the demos, you can get them as stock icons at IconDock.

View Demo | Download

1. Download Source Files

Download the CSS dock menu zip package.

2. Insert Code

In between the HTML tag, add the following code

The first part is the Javascript, second part is CSS stylesheet, and last part is the PNG hack for IE 6.

3. Configuration

Don’t forget to add the following code to anywhere within the tag:

4. Add or Remove Items

To add menu item to the top dock (note: span tag is after the img tag):

Home

To add menu item to the bottom dock (note: span tag is before the img tag):

Home

Browser Compatibility

I have tested on IE 6, IE 7, Opera 9, Firefox 2, and Safari 2 (although there are some minor rendering issues with Safari).

6 Tools to Help You Analyze a Web Host

2010-02-10T01:19:00.000-08:00

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Eva Vesper who works with Web Hosting Search – a small, independent hosting review site. She’s here to share some insights on how to evaluate and analyze your hosting provider.

You have a website. You are satisfied with the web hosting provider but you still think it could be better. What to do? There are fortunately a few excellent tools that will help you monitor how web hosts are performing. We will cover 6 popular tools to help you analyze your hosting provider.

1. DNSstuff

One of the better tools is the one that is provided by DNSstuff. They have tools that cost a small fee or that are free of charge. Some of the free DNS tools are Traceroute, Country IP Range, Wake-on LAN, RFC Lookup and others. They also offer a free trial for the Standard and Professional Tools. Whether you think you really need the service is up to your website needs and demands. If you want convenience, the toolset is the best option.

2. Who is Hosting This?

At Who is Hosting This? you are able to check out what hosting provider is hosting a particular website. Simply type in the domain name and get immediate results. This might seem like a simple website tool but if you know of a website that never has any problems with down-time, for example, it could be a good thing to partner up with this hosting provider. As of August 5th, 2008 from the official WHT blog, there is a new owner so we can expect changes in the upcoming months.

3. Netcraft

Screenshot of Uptime.Netcraft using w3c.org as an example

Netcraft is a data and analytics company. They provide a wide range of services from anti-phishing to hosting provider server failure. They also have an uptime monitor for websites where you can type in any website domain and find the server information, ip address and a reboot graph in some instances. The downside to Netcraft is that the data provided in some articles are extremely outdated, as old as 2001 or 2002. You will have to peruse documents and information given on the site.

The latest performance report can be found on the uptime main page. Do be careful as the results are the 50 hosting providers that paid to be included in the report, not necessarily the 50 best performing providers.

4. YouGetSignal.com

At YouGetSignal.com you will find a proper collection of useful tools when you are analyzing a hosting provider. Use reverse IP domain check to find other hosted websites, WHOIS lookup to find out who owns a domain, Visual Trace Route to see where a website’s host server is located and other useful tools. With its own in-house network tools YouGetSignal.com is a great place to get more knowledge about a web host.

5. SamSpade.org

It is similar to WhoIs.com but with more detailed information. SamSpade allows you to find out who is hosting a certain website by simple typing in its domain name or IP address. It also gives you access to contact information, name servers, domain expiration date, and more juicy tidbits geeks love.

6. GeoTool

Some of the tools on the internet do not seem to have been designed with the user in mind, but Geotool is not one of them. With Geotool you can check up where all online businesses (from Amazon to your neighbor’s home business) have their hosting situated. In an instant, you can see details of the city where the server is situated, its IP Address, ISP and the region of the server. It is important information to know since websites should have their servers located where most of their traffic comes from.

Conclusion

There are many more web hosting related tools up for grabs on the net and the more information you have about how a web host is performing, the better for you and your website. Ask for advice, do your research, and use services that are convenient for you.

Browser Tests, Services and Compatibility Test Suites

2010-02-10T01:16:00.000-08:00

Cross-browser compatibility is still one of the most complex issues when it comes to web-development. Web standards usually guarantee a (relatively) high degree of consistency, however no browser is perfect and particularly older browsers have always been quite good at surprising web-developers with their creative understanding of (X)HTML/CSS-code. Still you need to make sure that (at least) most visitors of your web-site can use it, navigate through it and find what they’re looking for as quickly as possible.

[Offtopic: by the way, do you know the Smashing Network has its own Smashing Network RSS Feed? Only excerpts are displayed in the feed.]
Browsers Tests Are Necessary

The truth is that a) you never kn

Cross-browser compatibility is still one of the most complex issues when it comes to web-development. Web standards usually guarantee a (relatively) high degree of consistency, however no browser is perfect and particularly older browsers have always been quite good at surprising web-developers with their creative understanding of (X)HTML/CSS-code. Still you need to make sure that (at least) most visitors of your web-site can use it, navigate through it and find what they’re looking for as quickly as possible.

[Offtopic: by the way, do you know the Smashing Network has its own Smashing Network RSS Feed? Only excerpts are displayed in the feed.]

Browsers Tests Are Necessary

The truth is that a) you never know who might type in your url in his/her navigation toolbar and b) the browser-environment is still very quirky and the risk of inconsistent presentation is simply too high to ignore it. For instance, different browsers and operating systems use different techniques for rendering fonts (Win vs. Mac on handling fonts). The font size isn’t identical on different platforms and some fonts might not be installed on the user’s system.

Worldwide browser usage: IE6 dominates; IE 7 has already more users than Firefox 2. Stand: 01.10.2007. Source.

Firefox on Linux doesn’t display web-sites as Firefox on Windows does. As bonus web-developers have to cope with dozens of versions and, of course, Internet Explorer 6 — 46% of browser usage share, which is a true godsend for hardcoders and hackers. It’s almost impossible to keep all possible problems in mind — a detailed test helps you to identify the critical issues — also and particularly if these are the smallest details of your layout.

Browsers Tests: What Can You Do?

In fact, browser inconsistencies are hard to deal with, and to be able to deal with them you have to know what the problems are and what browsers render your site in a quite creative way you probably haven’t expected. To ensure the (more or less) identical presentation in browsers you need to verifiy its consistency in a number of browsers — before going live with your project.

And to do just that you can either install a number of web browsers or use web-based browser test services; the latter provide you with an instant remote access to the browsers (via Virtual Private Network (VPN)) or instantly deliver the screenshots of your site

in different browsers (Mozilla family, Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari, mobile Browsers),
in different screen resolutions (usually 640×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1200×800)
and on different operating systems (Mac OS, Linux, Win).

The effect of your changes can be observed instantly — although you don’t have the browser installed on your PC.

Let’s take a look at some useful services, web-tools and applications you can use to keep an eye on the cross-browser presentation of your site in older, current and new browsers.

Problem Case #1: Internet Explorer

By default you can install and run only one version of Internet Explorer on your PC. However, usually you need at least two versions (IE 6 and IE 7) to cover the most quirky bugs in the most used browsers out there. You can use Microsoft’s Virtual PC to run multiple browsers simultaneously. But it doesn’t have to be that complex — alternatively you can use TredoSoft’s Multiple IE’s package.

It is not difficult to follow the instructions and get any version of Internet Explorer (IE3, IE4.01, IE5, IE5.5, IE6) running in standalone along side other versions. All versions are included in the installation package (10 Mb). Please notice that the package doesn’t always work properly; for instance, sometimes IE5, IE5.5 and IE6 crash unexpectedly. Still the tool is useful and better than nothing. The installer works in Windows XP, Windows Vista users have to use Microsoft Visual PC 2007.

If you’d like to test your site in Internet Explorer 7 without installation you can use ieCapture. (Usually) no queue, instant results — and for free.

Problem Case #2: Safari

Also only one version of Safari can be installed under Mac OS X. The current version of the Web Kit Framework determines the rendering of web-sites. Multi-Safari offers 10 Safari-versions (1.0 to 2.0.4), which can be installed along side other versions.

Multi-Safari offers a dozen of Safari versions.

Problem Case #3: Linux

If you need to test your web-sites in browsers which run under Linux — for instance for your intranet — you might want to check out Knoppix or Ubuntu. With Knoppix you can run Debian GNU/Linux in 5 minutes. In both cases you can start Linux from your CD-ROM. No setup and no installation is required.

Smashing Magazine in Ubuntu’s Firefox

Knoppix has Konqueror and Mozilla already preinstalled; Ubuntu has Firefox 2.0 already “on board”. The free download is possible via BitTorrent or FTP (in both cases 700 Mb); you can also order a free CD.

Browser Tests: Online-Services & Tools

If you have critical issues with your sites you might find it extremely useful to install multiple versions of web browsers on your PC. However, if you need to find your way through some minor inconsistencies you might use web-services and web-tools instead. The choice is quite big, however most services aren’t free.

IE Web Renderer
IE NetRenderer allows you to check how a website is rendered by Internet Explorer 7, 6 or 5.5. The Mixed- und Difference-Views instantly display the differences in site presentation (IE6 vs. IE7) overlaying both screenshots upon each other.
Browsershots
The tool lets you test your web-sites not only in Firefox, Opera, IE and Safari, but also in some exotic and not so popular browsers (Dillo, Epiphany, Flock, Galeon, Konqueror, Seamonkey) — they can be relevant for intranet. You can adjust the width of the screen size (640 – 1600), color depth (8 – 32 bits per pixel) as well as the JavaScript-, Java- and Flash-support.
When you submit your URL, it will be added to the job queue; so it depends on the server load when you can observe the taken screenshots. Therefore it’s useful to set a bookmark and visit the site later — the tool offers neither e-mail- nor RSS-notification. You can also download all screenshots in a .zip-file. And there is some nasty advertising. We’ve got a fake security message (pop-up) on load.
Litmus
Formerly SiteVista, this web-based application doesn’t only provide you with the screenshots of your web-sites, but also offers you the management of your compatibility tests. The screenshots are created in 30 different browsers within seconds; you can also see your entire page from top to bottom, not just the area visible above the fold which is similar for other services. The service also includes a version management tool, and a bug tracking system.
The tool currently generates screenshots for 17 browsers under Windows and 6 browsers under Mac OS X — more browsers will be added shortly. The tool isn’t as comprehensive as other services, however the price is quite high – 39$ per month for an individual license. What is interesting is that you can also generate screenshots of your email newsletters as they appear across email environments Outlook 2007, Outlook 2003, Outlook 2002, Outlook 2000, Gmail, Hotmail and AOL Mail.
Browser Photo
The service offers screenshots of Internet Explorer, Opera, FireFox and Safari under Windows, Mac, and Linux. This results in 24 possible combinations. Price: 15$ for one time use, $150 per domain/year for unlimited use.
Browsrcamp
Browsrcamp generates Safari 2.0.4-screenshots (full size) in five screen resolutions (800 – 1600 px width). The tool itself is free, but Browsrcamp also offers the OS X Live Test — a service which gives you the possibility to test your websites by taking full control of a Mac OS X system. You only need to have a VNC client (Virtual Network Computing) and a fast connection. Thus you can control your presentation on Camino, Firefox, Flock, iCab, Mozilla, Netscape, OmniWeb, Opera, Safari, SeaMonkey and Shiira remotely. The price range: between 3$ for two days and 99$ per year.

Of course there is a fullsize screenshot – full page length
Browsercam
Browsercam, probably the master of screen capture services, also offers an extensive browser remote control via a virtual network client. The number of available browsers, versions and operating systems is permanently growing. 70+ browsers, Linux, Win, Mac and even the presentation in different versions of browsers on mobile devices (BlackBerry, Win Mobile) can be tested. You can also adjust the screen resolution (640×480, 800×600, 1024×768), set up the access to password protected sites and download all screenshots in a .zip-archive.
The service offers everything you might ever need. Browsercam has different price plans; the price varies bettween 20 and 1000$ per month. There is also a 24 hours free test evaluation which requires the registration on Browsercam.
The choice is huge……
…and there are even more screenshot options!
BrowserPool
Browserpool offers a number of possibilites and screenshot options – probably everything you ever might come up with. Hundreds of combinations, dozens of browsers, thousands of screenshots. This screenshot-service also offers a remote access via a VNC-client. The price range: $40 (per month) und $477 (per year). This package includes 40 free hours per month. You can hold the connection to several dedicated servers at the same time or use the account together with other colleagues simultaneously. To use BrowserPool you need to download a viewer program. Using it you can directly work with a remote browser. There is a free limited test account.

Articles, Resources

How to Check Your Website with Multiple Browsers on a Single Machine (Cross-Browser Compatibility Checking)
The number of extant browsers we need to check with are enormous: Internet Explorer (IE) 7, 6, 5.5 and 5.0, Firefox 2.0 and 1.5, Opera 9 and 8, and so on. And then there are the different platforms: Windows, Macintosh (Mac), Linux, etc. The problem for most people is that multiple versions of certain browsers cannot co-exist with each other, the most notable example of this is IE for Windows. Unless you are privileged to have multiple computers, this presents a certain difficulty for the average webmaster. This article suggests some ways for you to run multiple versions of multiple browsers on one computer.

What can your browser?

New browser versions offer new techniques for web-developers; for instance, Safari offers the support of some CSS 3 attributes. You can also test what your browser can and what other browsers are capable of. For instance to find out which attributes you really should use in your projects. And which attributes you shouldn’t use.

Acid 2 Test
A modern browser should be able to render this complex image, generated with CSS. Most browsers fail.
CSS 3 Selectors
Is your browser compatible?
CSS2 Test Suite: Prototypical Pages
by Eric Meyer
Acidic Float Tests
The following tests show a floating logo that should stick out of its parent header, a DIV. Subsequent boxes should respect this float.
CSS Test Suite
These test pages test every aspect of CSS 2.
CSS Tests and Experiments
A number of examples check what the browser supports and what it is capable of.
Cascading Style Sheets Test Suites
Test suite for Cascading Style Sheets level 2 revision 1 by W3C
PNG Test
The suite of PNG icons for testing PNG decoder engines, PNG viewers, and PNG browsers. Most of the icons are 32×32, and they run the gamut from 1-bit to 64-bit depth; grayscale, colormapped and truecolor; interlaced or not; and with or without simple transparency, full transparency (alpha channel), background chunks, histograms, gamma or chromaticity data, comments, time stamps, and physical pixel dimensions. There are even three invalid PNG images included, one 0×0 in size and the other two corrupted by non-binary transfers.

ow who might type in your url in his/her navigation toolbar and b) the browser-environment is still very quirky and the risk of inconsistent presentation is simply too high to ignore it. For instance, different browsers and operating systems use different techniques for rendering fonts (Win vs. Mac on handling fonts). The font size isn’t identical on different platforms and some fonts might not be installed on the user’s system.

W3counter in Browser Tests, Services and Compatibility Test Suites
Worldwide browser usage: IE6 dominates; IE 7 has already more users than Firefox 2. Stand: 01.10.2007. Source.

Firefox on Linux doesn’t display web-sites as Firefox on Windows does. As bonus web-developers have to cope with dozens of versions and, of course, Internet Explorer 6 — 46% of browser usage share, which is a true godsend for hardcoders and hackers. It’s almost impossible to keep all possible problems in mind — a detailed test helps you to identify the critical issues — also and particularly if these are the smallest details of your layout.
Browsers Tests: What Can You Do?

In fact, browser inconsistencies are hard to deal with, and to be able to deal with them you have to know what the problems are and what browsers render your site in a quite creative way you probably haven’t expected. To ensure the (more or less) identical presentation in browsers you need to verifiy its consistency in a number of browsers — before going live with your project.

And to do just that you can either install a number of web browsers or use web-based browser test services; the latter provide you with an instant remote access to the browsers (via Virtual Private Network (VPN)) or instantly deliver the screenshots of your site

* in different browsers (Mozilla family, Internet Explorer, Opera, Safari, mobile Browsers),
* in different screen resolutions (usually 640×480, 800×600, 1024×768, 1200×800)
* and on different operating systems (Mac OS, Linux, Win).

The effect of your changes can be observed instantly — although you don’t have the browser installed on your PC.

Let’s take a look at some useful services, web-tools and applications you can use to keep an eye on the cross-browser presentation of your site in older, current and new browsers.
Problem Case #1: Internet Explorer

By default you can install and run only one version of Internet Explorer on your PC. However, usually you need at least two versions (IE 6 and IE 7) to cover the most quirky bugs in the most used browsers out there. You can use Microsoft’s Virtual PC to run multiple browsers simultaneously. But it doesn’t have to be that complex — alternatively you can use TredoSoft’s Multiple IE’s package.

Iealle in Browser Tests, Services and Compatibility Test Suites

It is not difficult to follow the instructions and get any version of Internet Explorer (IE3, IE4.01, IE5, IE5.5, IE6) running in standalone along side other versions. All versions are included in the installation package (10 Mb). Please notice that the package doesn’t always work properly; for instance, sometimes IE5, IE5.5 and IE6 crash unexpectedly. Still the tool is useful and better than nothing. The installer works in Windows XP, Windows Vista users have to use Microsoft Visual PC 2007.

Iecapture in Browser Tests, Services and Compatibility Test Suites

If you’d like to test your site in Internet Explorer 7 without installation you can use ieCapture. (Usually) no queue, instant results — and for free.
Problem Case #2: Safari

Also only one version of Safari can be installed under Mac OS X. The current version of the Web Kit Framework determines the rendering of web-sites. Multi-Safari offers 10 Safari-versions (1.0 to 2.0.4), which can be installed along side other versions.

Safari in Browser Tests, Services and Compatibility Test Suites
Multi-Safari offers a dozen of Safari versions.
Problem Case #3: Linux

If you need to test your web-sites in browsers which run under Linux — for instance for your intranet — you might want to check out Knoppix or Ubuntu. With Knoppix you can run Debian GNU/Linux in 5 minutes. In both cases you can start Linux from your CD-ROM. No setup and no installation is required.

Ubuntu in Browser Tests, Services and Compatibility Test Suites
Smashing Magazine in Ubuntu’s Firefox

Knoppix has Konqueror and Mozilla already preinstalled; Ubuntu has Firefox 2.0 already “on board”. The free download is possible via BitTorrent or FTP (in both cases 700 Mb); you can also order a free CD.
Browser Tests: Online-Services & Tools

If you have critical issues with your sites you might find it extremely useful to install multiple versions of web browsers on your PC. However, if you need to find your way through some minor inconsistencies you might use web-services and web-tools instead. The choice is quite big, however most services aren’t free.

* IE Web Renderer
IE NetRenderer allows you to check how a website is rendered by Internet Explorer 7, 6 or 5.5. The Mixed- und Difference-Views instantly display the differences in site presentation (IE6 vs. IE7) overlaying both screenshots upon each other.

Webrenderer in Browser Tests, Services and Compatibility Test Suites
*

Browsershots
The tool lets you test your web-sites not only in Firefox, Opera, IE and Safari, but also in some exotic and not so popular browsers (Dillo, Epiphany, Flock, Galeon, Konqueror, Seamonkey) — they can be relevant for intranet. You can adjust the width of the screen size (640 – 1600), color depth (8 – 32 bits per pixel) as well as the JavaScript-, Java- and Flash-support.

Browsershots in Browser Tests, Services and Compatibility Test Suites

When you submit your URL, it will be added to the job queue; so it depends on the server load when you can observe the taken screenshots. Therefore it’s useful to set a bookmark and visit the site later — the tool offers neither e-mail- nor RSS-notification. You can also download all screenshots in a .zip-file. And there is some nasty advertising. We’ve got a fake security message (pop-up) on load.

*

Litmus
Formerly SiteVista, this web-based application doesn’t only provide you with the screenshots of your web-sites, but also offers you the management of your compatibility tests. The screenshots are created in 30 different browsers within seconds; you can also see your entire page from top to bottom, not just the area visible above the fold which is similar for other services. The service also includes a version management tool, and a bug tracking system.

Litmus in Browser Tests, Services and Compatibility Test Suites

The tool currently generates screenshots for 17 browsers under Windows and 6 browsers under Mac OS X — more browsers will be added shortly. The tool isn’t as comprehensive as other services, however the price is quite high – 39$ per month for an individual license. What is interesting is that you can also generate screenshots of your email newsletters as they appear across email environments Outlook 2007, Outlook 2003, Outlook 2002, Outlook 2000, Gmail, Hotmail and AOL Mail.
*

Browser Photo
The service offers screenshots of Internet Explorer, Opera, FireFox and Safari under Windows, Mac, and Linux. This results in 24 possible combinations. Price: 15$ for one time use, $150 per domain/year for unlimited use.
*

Browsrcamp
Browsrcamp generates Safari 2.0.4-screenshots (full size) in five screen resolutions (800 – 1600 px width). The tool itself is free, but Browsrcamp also offers the OS X Live Test — a service which gives you the possibility to test your websites by taking full control of a Mac OS X system. You only need to have a VNC client (Virtual Network Computing) and a fast connection. Thus you can control your presentation on Camino, Firefox, Flock, iCab, Mozilla, Netscape, OmniWeb, Opera, Safari, SeaMonkey and Shiira remotely. The price range: between 3$ for two days and 99$ per year.

Browsrcamp in Browser Tests, Services and Compatibility Test Suites
Of course there is a fullsize screenshot – full page length
*

Browsercam
Browsercam, probably the master of screen capture services, also offers an extensive browser remote control via a virtual network client. The number of available browsers, versions and operating systems is permanently growing. 70+ browsers, Linux, Win, Mac and even the presentation in different versions of browsers on mobile devices (BlackBerry, Win Mobile) can be tested. You can also adjust the screen resolution (640×480, 800×600, 1024×768), set up the access to password protected sites and download all screenshots in a .zip-archive.

Browsercam in Browser Tests, Services and Compatibility Test Suites

The service offers everything you might ever need. Browsercam has different price plans; the price varies bettween 20 and 1000$ per month. There is also a 24 hours free test evaluation which requires the registration on Browsercam.

Br1 in Browser Tests, Services and Compatibility Test Suites

The choice is huge……

Br2 in Browser Tests, Services and Compatibility Test Suites

…and there are even more screenshot options!
*

BrowserPool
Browserpool offers a number of possibilites and screenshot options – probably everything you ever might come up with. Hundreds of combinations, dozens of browsers, thousands of screenshots. This screenshot-service also offers a remote access via a VNC-client. The price range: $40 (per month) und $477 (per year). This package includes 40 free hours per month. You can hold the connection to several dedicated servers at the same time or use the account together with other colleagues simultaneously. To use BrowserPool you need to download a viewer program. Using it you can directly work with a remote browser. There is a free limited test account.

Pool in Browser Tests, Services and Compatibility Test Suites

Articles, Resources

* How to Check Your Website with Multiple Browsers on a Single Machine (Cross-Browser Compatibility Checking)
The number of extant browsers we need to check with are enormous: Internet Explorer (IE) 7, 6, 5.5 and 5.0, Firefox 2.0 and 1.5, Opera 9 and 8, and so on. And then there are the different platforms: Windows, Macintosh (Mac), Linux, etc. The problem for most people is that multiple versions of certain browsers cannot co-exist with each other, the most notable example of this is IE for Windows. Unless you are privileged to have multiple computers, this presents a certain difficulty for the average webmaster. This article suggests some ways for you to run multiple versions of multiple browsers on one computer.

What can your browser?

New browser versions offer new techniques for web-developers; for instance, Safari offers the support of some CSS 3 attributes. You can also test what your browser can and what other browsers are capable of. For instance to find out which attributes you really should use in your projects. And which attributes you shouldn’t use.

* Acid 2 Test
A modern browser should be able to render this complex image, generated with CSS. Most browsers fail.

Acids2-reference in Browser Tests, Services and Compatibility Test Suites
* CSS 3 Selectors
Is your browser compatible?
* CSS2 Test Suite: Prototypical Pages
by Eric Meyer
* Acidic Float Tests
The following tests show a floating logo that should stick out of its parent header, a DIV. Subsequent boxes should respect this float.
* CSS Test Suite
These test pages test every aspect of CSS 2.
* CSS Tests and Experiments
A number of examples check what the browser supports and what it is capable of.
Css in Browser Tests, Services and Compatibility Test Suites
* Cascading Style Sheets Test Suites
Test suite for Cascading Style Sheets level 2 revision 1 by W3C
* PNG Test
The suite of PNG icons for testing PNG decoder engines, PNG viewers, and PNG browsers. Most of the icons are 32×32, and they run the gamut from 1-bit to 64-bit depth; grayscale, colormapped and truecolor; interlaced or not; and with or without simple transparency, full transparency (alpha channel), background chunks, histograms, gamma or chromaticity data, comments, time stamps, and physical pixel dimensions. There are even three invalid PNG images included, one 0×0 in size and the other two corrupted by non-binary transfers.

15 Essential Checks Before Launching Your Website

2010-02-10T01:12:00.000-08:00

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/04/07/15-essential-checks-before-launching-your-website/
ur website is designed, the CMS works, content has been added and the client is happy. It’s time to take the website live. Or is it? When launching a website, you can often forget a number of things in your eagerness to make it live, so it’s useful to have a checklist to look through as you make your final touches and before you announce your website to the world.

This article reviews some important and necessary checks that web-sites should be checked against before the official launch — little details are often forgotten or ignored, but – if done in time – may sum up to an overall greater user experience and avoid unnecessary costs after the official site release.

Favicon

A favicon brands the tab or window in which your website is open in the user’s browser. It is also saved with the bookmark so that users can easily identify pages from your website. Some browsers pick up the favicon if you save it in your root directory as favicon.ico, but to be sure it’s picked up all the time, include the following in your head.

`1`	`<link` `rel="icon"` `type="image/x-icon"` `href="/favicon.ico"` `/>`

And if you have an iPhone favicon:

`1`	`<link` `rel="apple-touch-icon"` `href="/favicon.png"` `/>`

Titles And Meta Data

Your page title is the most important element for SEO and is also important so that users know what’s on the page. Make sure it changes on every page and relates to that page’s content.

`1`	`<title>10 Things To Consider When Choosing The Perfect CMS \| How-To \| Smashing Magazinetitle>`

Meta description and keyword tags aren’t as important for SEO (at least for the major search engines anyway), but it’s still a good idea to include them. Change the description on each page to make it relate to that page’s content, because this is often what Google displays in its search result description.

`1`	`<meta` `name="description"` `content="By Paul Boag Choosing a content management system can be tricky. Without a clearly defined set of requirements, you will be seduced by fancy functionality that you will never use. What then should you look"` `/>`

Cross-Browser Checks

Just when you think your design looks great, pixel perfect, you check it in IE and see that everything is broken. It’s important that your website works across browsers. It doesn’t have to be pixel perfect, but everything should work, and the user shouldn’t see any problems. The most popular browsers to check are Internet Explorer 6, 7 and 8, Firefox 3, Safari 3, Chrome, Opera and the iPhone.

Proofread

Read everything. Even if you’ve already read it, read it again. Get someone else to read it. There’s always something you’ll pick up on and have to change. See if you can reduce the amount of text by keeping it specific. Break up large text blocks into shorter paragraphs. Add clear headings throughout, and use lists so that users can scan easily. Don’t forget about dynamic text too, such as alert boxes.

Writing for the web

Links

Don’t just assume all your links work. Click on them. You may often forget to add “http://” to links to external websites. Make sure your logo links to the home page, a common convention.

Also, think about how your links work. Is it obvious to new users that they are links? They should stand out from the other text on the page. Don’t underline text that isn’t a link because it will confuse users. And what happens to visited links?

W3C Link Checker

Functionality Check

Test everything thoroughly. If you have a contact form, test it and copy yourself so that you can see what comes through. Get others to test your website, and not just family and friends but the website’s target market. Sit back and watch how a user uses the website. It’s amazing what you’ll pick up on when others use your website differently than how you assume they’d use it. Common things to check for are contact forms, search functions, shopping baskets and log-in areas.

Silverback – guerrilla usability testing

Graceful Degradation

Your website should work with JavaScript turned off. Users often have JavaScript turned off for security, so you should be prepared for this. You can easily turn off JavaScript in Firefox. Test your forms to make sure they still perform server-side validation checks, and test any cool AJAX stuff you have going on.

Validation

You should aim for a 100% valid website. That said, it isn’t the end of the world if your website doesn’t validate, but it’s important to know the reasons why it doesn’t so that you can fix any nasty errors. Common gotchas include no “alt” tags, no closing tags and using “&” instead of “&” for ampersands.

RSS Link

If your website has a blog or newsreel, you should have an RSS feed that users can subscribe to. Users should be able to easily find your RSS feed: the common convention is to put a small RSS icon in the browser’s address bar.

Put this code between your tags.

`1`	`<link` `rel="alternate"` `type="application/rss+xml"` `title="Site or RSS title"href="link-to-feed"` `/>`

Analytics

Installing some sort of analytics tool is important for measuring statistics to see how your website performs and how successful your conversion rates are. Track daily unique hits, monthly page views and browser statistics, all useful data to start tracking from day 1. Google Analytics is a free favorite among website owners. Others to consider are Clicky, Kissmetrics (still in closed beta yet), Mint StatCounter. and

Sitemap

Adding a sitemap.xml file to your root directory allows the major search engines to easily index your website. The file points crawlers to all the pages on your website. XML-Sitemaps automatically creates a sitemap.xml file for you. After creating the file, upload it to your root directory so that its location is www.mydomain.com/sitemap.xml.

If you use WordPress, install the Google XML Sitemaps plug-in, which automatically updates the sitemap when you write new posts. Also, add your website and sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools. This tells Google that you have a sitemap, and the service provides useful statistics on how and when your website was last indexed.

Defensive Design

The most commonly overlooked defensive design element is the 404 page. If a user requests a page that doesn’t exist, your 404 page is displayed. This may happen for a variety of reasons, including another website linking to a page that doesn’t exist. Get your users back on track by providing a useful 404 page that directs them to the home page or suggests other pages they may be interested in.

Another defensive design technique is checking your forms for validation. Try submitting unusual information in your form fields (e.g. lots of characters, letters in number fields, etc.) and make sure that if there is an error, the user is provided with enough feedback to be able to fix it.

404 error pages reloaded

Optimize

You’ll want to configure your website for optimal performance. You should do this on an ongoing basis after launch, but you can take a few simple steps before launch, too. Reducing HTTP requests, using CSS sprites wherever possible, optimizing images for the Web, compressing JavaScript and CSS files and so on can all help load your pages more quickly and use less server resources.

Besides, depending on the publishing engine that you are using, you may need to consider taking more specific measures – for instance, if you are using WordPress, you may need to consider useful caching techniques to speed up the performance.

Back Up

If your website runs off a database, you need a back-up strategy. Or else, the day will come when you regret not having one. If you use WordPress, install Wordpress Database Backup, which you can set up to automatically email you backups.

Print Style Sheet

If a user wants to print a page from your website, chances are she or he wants only the main content and not the navigation or extra design elements. That’s why it is a good idea to create a print-specific style sheet. Also, certain CSS elements, such as floats, don’t come out well when printed.

To point to a special CSS style sheet that computers automatically use when users print a page, simply include the following code between your tags.

`1`	`<link` `rel="stylesheet"` `type="text/css"` `href="print.css"` `media="print"` `/>`

[Offtopic: by the way, did you already get your copy of the brand new Smashing Book?]

Download the Ultimate Website Launch Checklist!

Just recently Dan Zambonini has published a very detailed checklist that covers both the pre-launch and the post-launch phase of the web site life cycle. Among other things his Ultimate Website Launch Checklist contains checks related to content and style, standards and validation, search engine visibility, functional testing, security/risk, performance and marketing.

The pdf-version is available as well. The checklist is a very useful reference that may help you in your daily projects and will help you to prevent errors and mistake once the site is released.

You may also want to consider the Quick Usability Check List by David Leggett that highlight some of the more common problems designers should address on their own sites in a Usability checklist of sorts. Not all of these items will apply to every website, these are just suggested things to look for in your own site design.

What other checks would you list?

Make yourself a to-do list and keep it handy to check over before making any website live. Are there any other points you would add? Share them in the comments!

Web-Based Tools for Optimizing, Formatting and Checking CSS

2010-02-10T01:09:00.000-08:00

Stylesheets can get large real quickly, both in terms of length and file size. To ensure that your web pages render correctly and quickly, here’s a compilation of some of the best free, web-based CSS optimizers/compressors, code formatters, and validation services. Check them out and pick the ones that work best for you.

Optimizing and Compression

CSS Optimizer

CSS Optimizer is a simple online optimizer that processes your current CSS and outputs the compressed version. You have the option of linking to the URL of your stylesheet, uploading a CSS file, or directly inputting your styles. It’s a simple tool that’s "plug-and-chug" – there are no options, so the optimization procedure will remain the same for all your inputs (great if you’d like to standardize compression settings).

Clean CSS

Clean CSS is based on the popular CSS minifier, CSSTidy. You can set your desired compression level (the trade-off to higher compression is more difficult readability) and customize compression options. It prints out a line-by-line report afterwards to show you exactly what’s been changed. Also check out CSS Formatter and Optimiser, which uses a more recent version of CSSTidy (1.3dev).

CSS Drive Gallery- CSS Compressor

CSS Drive’s CSS compressor has two modes, Regular mode and Advanced mode (which has a few more options that you can set). You can remove the comments (strip comments option) or specify to strip comments that exceed a certain character limit, thus retaining comments that are short. Regular mode is perfect for those that aren’t picky – just choose between Light, Normal, and Super Compact compression and you’re ready to rock.

Online CSS Optimizer

Online CSS Optimizer is another simple CSS optimization tool based on the CSS optimizer command-line application for OS X and Linux. You have two ways to input your CSS: either via the text box provided on the page or directly linking to your stylesheet. Sometimes you’ll find that you need to reverse the compression – you can do so by using the Uncompress CSS application on the site.

CSS Compressor

Another popular web-based CSS compression tool is Robson’s open-source CSS Compressor, (check out the CSS Compressor PHP source code). There are plenty of compression options you can set that deals with colors, measurements (units), rules, and CSS properties. CSS Compressor also provides a useful Combine utility for simultaneously combining and compressing up to three separate CSS files.

flumpCakes Style Sheet Optimizer

The flumpCakes Style Sheet Optimizer is another optimizer and formatter with a few options. It gives you the choice of automatically combining background, font, list, and border attributes into short-hand notation and a Pretty Print option that standardizes code format. One cool feature is the Backlink feature which provides you a URL that you can bookmark and return to anytime to view your stylesheet’s compressed state.

Formatting

FormatCSS

FormatCSS allows you to paste your valid CSS code, correcting and standardizing your source code. There’s several available settings and rules that you can apply to achieve the type of format you desire – including ordering your CSS alphabetically, de-capitalizing your code, and some options for dealing with styles.

prettyprinter.de

prettyprinter.de isn’t limited to CSS – it also formats PHP, Java, C++, C, Perl and JavaScript – so it’s a terrific "one-stop-shop" for your formatting needs if you happen to work with any of the other supported languages. It has a total of 13 different options you can set including "Reduce Whitespace", "Remove empty lines", and automatically adding new lines after curly brackets.

Tabifier

Tabifier is multi-language web-tool specifically designed for standardizing indents in source code. It supports HTML, CSS, and C Style. It’s a simple tool, excellent for quickly formatting your indents.

Validating and Checking

The W3C CSS Validation Service

Perhaps the most common web-based validation service for CSS is the W3C CSS Validation Service. It’s very simple to use, just enter the URL of your stylesheet and it will output the status of your stylesheet and point out errors, warnings and other issues.

Juicy Studio: CSS Analyser

Juicy Studio’s CSS Analyser combines the W3C validation service with additional checks of color contrast (helpful for vision-impairment accessibility issues) and units of measurement used in your source code. You can input the CSS either via the URL or copying your code onto the text box provided on the page. The result is a very detailed breakdown of errors and warning about your CSS, similar to the W3C CSS Validation Service.

CSS Redundancy Checker

CSS Redundancy Checker is a simple tool for checking to see if you have redundant styles that can be combined together. This reduces unneeded styles and is a good way to check your work. It’s a three-step process: simply link to your stylesheet, put a few pages that use the stylesheet, and press the "check" button. The output is a detailed list of suggestions and places where you can reduce code by combining redundant styles.

If you’ve used any of the tools above, please share your experiences (good and especially bad) with us in the comments.

Since these are automated and have standard processing methods, please exercise caution and use your own judgment when using the outputs – things can get badly broken so do thoroughly test the results!

6 Exceptional Web-based Image Editors

2010-02-10T01:08:00.000-08:00

Web-based image editors have several advantages to its desktop counterparts. The most obvious benefit is that they allow you to work on any computer (that has a browser). In most cases, you can save your work online, avoid having to install desktop software, and interface with other web based services such as Flickr or Picasa. This article shares 6 of the finest, free online image editors that are capable alternatives to desktop applications like Adobe Photoshop and GIMP.

1. Pixlr

Pixlr is a very robust, Flash-based image editor that shares a similar user interface to Adobe Photoshop. The Pixlr API – which is still in its early stages of development – opens up possibilities of mash-ups an integration of Pixlr into your blog, web application, or website. It has a smart Wand tool to help you automatically select similar and adjacent pixels (which is equivalent to Photoshop’s Magic Wand tool).

2. Splashup

Splashup is feature-packed online image editor that integrates with popular photo sharing services like Flickr, Picasa, and Facebook – allowing you to access your photos remotely. Some of the cool features that Splashup has are layers with blending modes, the ability to interface and capture images from your web cam, and a nice variety of filters and layer effects.

3. Phoenix

Phoenix, a powerful web-based image editor by Aviary, rivals the capabilities of desktop image editing applications. Check out this list of tutorials to fully appreciate the potential of this excellent image editor. You have to sign-up for an account to access Phoenix, but it only takes a few seconds and also gives you access to other Aviary tools and services such as Peacock ("Visual Laboratory") and Toucan (color and swatch tool).

4. pixer.us

If you’re looking for an application to meet your simple photo-editing needs, check out pixer.us – a free, web-based photo editor. It has an intuitively simple interface and useful photo-editing features like cropping, resizing, and rotating. It also has some color adjustment options such as Saturation, Brightness, and Contrast adjustments. You can save your work as one of the four popular digital image files (PNG, JPG, GIF, or BMP).

5. FotoFlexer

FotoFlexer is a free, web-based photo editor that has tons of features but is still simple to use. Check out FotoFlexer’s demo page to see some of the useful capabilities of the application. FotoFlexer certainly does an excellent job for common photo-editing needs such as cropping, resizing, and rotating. It also integrates with popular web services such as Flickr, Picasa, Photobucket, Facebook, MySpace and more.

6. SUMO Paint

SUMO Paint is a free, online image editor that allows you to edit and create images. It has a Shape tool that gives you the ability to draw unique shapes, a Brush tool with a surprisingly high-quality set of brushes, a Transform tool to help you scale, move, and rotate objects, and much more.

What’s your favorite?

10 Promising Free Web Analytics Tools

2010-02-10T01:06:00.000-08:00

Web analytics is the process of gathering and analyzing your web content’s data in order to glean meaningful information about how your site is being utilized by your users. There are plenty of Web analytics applications out there, and you probably already know the big guns such as Google Analytics, Crazy Egg, and remote-site services such as Alexa and Compete.

We go off the trodden path and explore a few lesser-known Web analytics options. In this article, you’ll find 10 excellent and free tools and applications to help you gather and analyze data about your web content.

1. Piwik

Go to Live Demonstration of Piwik.

Piwik is an open-source Web analytics application developed using PHP and MySQL. It has a "plugins" system that allows for utmost extensibility and customization. Install only the plugins you need or go overboard and install them all – the choice is up to you. The plugins system, as you can imagine, also opens up possibilities for you to create your own custom extensions. This thing’s lightweight – the download’s only 1.9MB.

2. FireStats

Go to Live Demonstration of FireStats.

FireStats is a simple and straight-forward Web analytics application written in PHP/MySQL. It supports numerous platforms and set-ups including C# sites, Django sites, Drupal, Joomla!, WordPress, and several others. Are you a resourceful developer who needs moar cowbell? FireStats has an excellent APIdisplaying the top 10 most downloaded files in your WordPress site) based on your FireStats data. that will assist you in creating your own custom apps or publishing platform components (imagine:

3. Snoop

Snoop is a desktop-based application that runs on the Mac OS X and Windows XP/Vista platforms. It sits nicely on your system status bar/system tray, notifying you with audible sounds whenever something happens. Another outstanding Snoop feature is the Name Tags option which allows you to "tag" visitors for easier identification. So when Joe over at the accounting department visits your site, you’ll instantly know.

4. Yahoo! Web Analytics

Yahoo! Web analytics is Yahoo!’s alternative to the dominant Google Analytics. It’s an enterprise-level, robust web-based third-party solution which makes accessing data easy especially for multiple-user groups. It’s got all the things you’d expect from a comprehensive Web analytics tool such as pretty graphs, custom-designed (and printable) reports, and real-time data tracking.

5. BBClone

Go to Live Demonstration of BBClone.

If you’re looking for a simple, server-side web application that doesn’t rely on third-party services to monitor your data, check out BBClone – a PHP-based server application that gives you a detailed overview of website traffic and visitor data. It supports language localization for 32 languages like English, Chinese, German, and Japanese. It easily integrates with popular publishing platforms like Drupal, WordPress, and Textpattern. Since it’s logfile-based, it doesn’t require you to use a server-side relational database.

6. Woopra

Woopra is a Web analytics application written in Java. It’s split into two parts which includes a desktop application for data analysis/exploration and a web service to monitor website statistics. Woopra has a robust user interface, an intuitive management system that allows you to run it on multiple sites and domains, and even a chat feature so that you can gather non-numerical information by talking to your site users. Woopra is currently in beta and requires you to request for a private beta registration.

7. JAWStats

JAWStats is a server-based Web analytics application that runs with the popular AWStats (in fact, if you’re on a shared hosting plan – AWStats is probably already installed). JAWStats does two things to extend AWStats – it improves performance by reducing server resource usage and improves the user interface a little bit. With that said, you can’t go wrong with just using AWStats either if you’re happy with it.

8. 4Q

A large part of Web analytics deals with number-crunching and numerical data. Raw numbers tells only part of the story and it’s often helpful to perform analytics by way of interacting with actual users. 4Q developer Avinash Kaushik puts it perfectly when he said: "Web analytics is good at the ‘What’. It is not good at the ‘Why’".4Q is a simple surveying application focused on improving your traditional numerical Web analytics by supplementing it with actual user feedback. Check out this YouTube video on how easy it is to set up 4Q.

9. MochiBot

MochiBot is a free Web analytics/tracking tool especially designed for Flash assets. With MochiBot, you can see who’s sharing your Flash content, how many times people view your content, as well as helping you track where your Flash content is to prevent piracy and content theft. Installing MochiBot is a breeze; you simply copy a few lines of ActionScript code in the .FLA files you want to monitor.

10. Grape Web Statistics

Go to Live Demonstration of Grape Web Statistics.

Grape Web Statistics is a simple, open-source application geared towards web developers. It has a clean and usable interface and has an Extensions API to extend and customize your installation. It uses PHP for the backend and you can run it on any operating system that runs PHP.

Unleashing the Power of Website Analytics

2010-02-10T00:57:00.000-08:00

Most people use web analytics—you’d have to be crazy not to—especially with such powerful free solutions out there. However, for many people, analyzing their stats goes no further than rejoicing at having a few more visitors and repeating the figures to potential advertisers.

But analytics, used properly, is so much more – it’s a marketing tool, an error checker, a usability tool, an ROI calculator, an eCommerce tracker, an ad tool and the list goes on.

So we’re going to take a look at the basic ways of getting more from your analytics.

Analytics Software

First things first, if you haven’t got an analytics software set up, then for god’s sake what are you doing man(/woman)!

Personally, I use Google Analytics, one of the most well known and best packages available with the added bonus of being free.

But if you feel more comfortable using something else, there are many options out there to check out (you can start with this list of web analytics tools).

Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is important. Very important. Don’t fool yourself into thinking that having a high bounce rate is fine because "it’s just a human choice thing".

Having a high bounce rate can be an indicator of serious problems with your site. It could be the web content or your calls to action that are ineffective in captivating and engaging your visitors.

"What the hell is he on about?" some of you may be asking. For those who don’t know what bounce rate is, it is the number of people who, after arriving on your site, don’t look at another page and leave straight away. You’ll normally see this statistic represented as a percentage of your visitors.

Now there is, as mentioned, a certain element of human choice about the figure; people will sometimes land on your site by accident or click a search result and find your site isn’t quite what they were after. That’s fine, and I’m sure you’ll be happy to accept that you’ll never get a 0% bounce rate – not without cheating anyway, and that’s no good.

Some common causes of high bounce rates:

Badly placed calls to action
Non-engaging content
Broken links
Site errors
Badly targeted ads

Combining this figure by looking at individual page bounce rates and bounce rates for different referring sites can open up your eyes to a large number of problems.

A low bounce rate often shows a site that has content people want to read more of, and effective ways and site features that draw people in further such as a "related content" list of articles on landing pages or invitations to try the product with no strings attached.

But fear not, bounce rates aren’t the beginning of the end for some types of websites. For example, blogs often have high bounce rates as people click through from RSS feeds and tweets with the intention of reading only that one web page.

eCommerce sites though are a good example of sites that benefit from low bounce rates; they can draw people into looking at other products, reading more content on the site, and hopefully buying stuff.

You should generally find out what is suitable in your niche. For commercial sites, that may be difficult, as people may not be willing to share their information, but certainly within the design community, don’t be scared to ask around.

As a quick guide for most sites: a 30% bounce rate is a good figure, whereas over 50% could well be improved.

However, if you’re a blogging site and receive traffic from social bookmarking sites, then it may well be much higher due to the way people often dip in and out of your site reading articles and then leaving, in which case 60% could be considered a good figure and anywhere from 70% – 80% is alright. Over 80% and I’d be a bit concerned.

The best way to see if changes to your website’s design can improve bounce rates is by using A/B testing. The results can be seen for themselves with increased conversions.

Conversion Rate

All the analysis of people visiting your target pages leads to the second important figure after bounce rate: the site conversion rate.

If you have a clear goal for your site, then you should keep track of how many people fulfill that goal.

If you’re running an eCommerce site, then it’s normally a completed checkout. For websites that require you to register for an account (Twitter or Facebook, for example) it’s completing the sign up process. For business sites, it could be a completed contact form.

The conversion rate is another percentage, the amount of people visiting your site that are not just getting to your goal pages, but also carrying out the actions you want them to.

When people first start to look at conversion rates, they are often surprised by how low they are; 3% is good conversion rate for completing a transaction on an eCommerce site.

Yep, just 3% of new site visitors go through the checkout!

If you have a clear path to your goal (e.g. a certain process of clicks or a checkout process), then set up a funnel and see where people are falling off. Where are they dropping shopping baskets? Where are they encountering errors on your web forms?

It can be easy to highlight issues such as an overly complex form and other barriers to goal completion.

If you don’t have a single set path, then compare where people come from to get to your goal pages. If many people arrive from one page but not from another, then compare both pages and look at their difference. Hypothesize why another page is successful, while another is not. Use A/B testing to verify your assumption, rinse, and repeat.

Once you’ve established why people are (and aren’t) completing goals and you’ve fixed your issues and calls to action, then you need to look at where people are going after converting. Are they staying on your site or exiting? If they’re exiting, you may well be missing some huge opportunities (upselling, for example).

Percentage of visitors who view target pages

At first glance, tracking your target pages may seem to be the same as keeping track of conversions, and whilst they are similar, these two site analytics stats have different values to you.

We’ll use a hypothetical example for discussion: Mr. Smith and his online paint store.

His conversion pages are obviously completed checkout pages (where he does of course try and upsell some accessories).

His target pages, however, would be his product pages. For most types of sites, it should be quite easy to work out what your target pages are. For example, a blog’s target pages are its posts, and a business site will be its information pages.

In most cases, these pages are the first major steps on the path to goal completion. Viewing a product is your first step to a complete checkout, viewing a business service is the first step to getting in touch and asking about the service.

In order for Mr. Smith to convert site visitors to its completed checkout pages, he must first present his paint supplies in an enticing way.

You should know how many people are getting to these pages and if they are completing goals from these pages. If not, where are they getting lost?

It starts to become quite clear where a well-defined funnel can really help to benefit your analytics.

What people search for and what they do after searching

Tracking site search is something very few people actually do, let alone pay attention to. Yet it can be a massively valuable resource for finding out what your site visitors want.

Let’s look at Mr. Smith’s online paint store again. He stocks a huge variety of paints and a quick look at his search result reveals people are searching for "claret paint" that he doesn’t stock.

It’d make sense to start stocking Claret paint, wouldn’t it? Or at least offer alternatives to Claret paint.

The second part of site search analytics is determining what people do afterwards.

There are a couple of scenarios here:

Scenario 1: They search and find something you have

If they head to the page they are searching for and stay on your site, then well done, your search feature is working.

If they don’t, then there’s clearly a problem with your site search. It may not be returning the results it should be returning, or it isn’t displaying the search results in a useful way for the visitor to understand.

Scenario 2: They search and can’t find something

Now, many people would say that if these visitors leave, then that’s fine because you don’t sell what they need.

But we’re not most people are we?

If Mr. Smith sells paint supplies and somebody has searched for a yacht, then they’re obviously just in the wrong website.

However, if they’ve searched for "claret paint" and left because you don’t have it, then surely you could be offering them an alternative to Claret paint.

The "Did you mean" search suggestions on sites like Amazon and Google are good examples of this.

Amazon suggests related searches and products that closely match your search to keep you from leaving.

Put quite simply: your site search tells you what your visitors want without you even having to ask! How can you afford not to use that resource?

Where your visitors come from

A lot of time and money is spent on link building and ads on the web, and the easiest way to determine if they’re working is to see where your visitors are coming from.

Bloggers, for example, spend time writing for other blogs, commenting in various places, taking ads out on other sites and sharing things via social media. Therefore, it makes sense that you keep track of where you get the most returns to make a wise decision where to focus your efforts.

A properly set-up analytics account integrated with eCommerce tracking and adwords accounts can even show you a direct return on investment for your individual adword campaigns; a brilliantly useful tool for managing your pay per click ads.

Use your analytics properly

To track all of this and make your life easier, it really helps to set up your analytics software. Properly setting up funnels, site search tracking, eCommerce tracking and ad words tracking should be priorities.

15 Tools to Help You Develop Faster Web Pages

2010-02-10T00:56:00.000-08:00

Response times, availability, and stability are vital factors to bear in mind when creating and maintaining a web application. If you’re concerned about your web pages’ speed or want to make sure you’re in tip-top shape before starting or launching a project, here’s a few useful, free tools to help you create and sustain high-performance web applications.

I’ve tried to include a wide variety of tools that are easy to use, and have tried to keep them as OS and technology-independent as possible so that everyone can find a tool or two.

1. YSlow for Firebug

YSlow grades a website’s performance based on the best practices for high performance web sites on the Yahoo! Developer Network. Each rule is given a letter grade (A through F) stating how you rank on certain aspects of front-end performance. It’s a simple tool for finding things you can work on such as reducing the number of HTTP request a web page makes, and compressing external JavaScript and CSS files. A worthwhile read is the Ajax performance analysis post on IBM developerWorks that outlines practical ways of using YSlow in your web applications.

2. Firebug

Firebug is an essential browser-based web development tool for debugging, testing, and analyzing web pages. It has a powerful set of utilities to help you understand and dissect what’s going on. One of the many notable features is the Net (network”) tab where you can inspect HTML, CSS, XHR, JS components.

3. Fiddler 2

Fiddler 2 is a browser-based HTTP debugging tool that helps you analyze incoming and outgoing traffic. It’s highly customizable and has countless of reporting and debugging features. Be sure to read the “Fiddler PowerToy – Part 2: HTTP Performance” guide on the MSDN which discusses functional uses of Fiddler including how to improve “first-visit” performance (i.e. unprimed cache), analyzing HTTP response headers, creating custom flags for potential performance problems and more.

4. Cuzillion

Cuzillion is a cool tool to help you see how page components interact with each other. The goal here is to help you quickly rapidly check, test, and modify web pages before you finalize the structure. It can give you clues on potential trouble-spots or points of improvements. Cuzillion was created by Steve Saunders, the ex-Chief Performance at Yahoo!, a leading engineer for the development of Yahoo’s performance best practices, and creator of YSlow.

5. mon.itor.us

monitor.us is a free web-based service that grants you a suite of tools for monitoring performance, availability, and traffic statistics. You can establish your website’s response time and set up alerts for when a service becomes unavailable. You can also set-up weekly, automated benchmarks to see if changes you’ve made impact speed and performance either positively or negatively.

6. IBM Page Detailer

The IBM Page Detailer is a straightforward tool for letting you visualize web components as they’re being downloaded. It latches onto your browser, so all you have to do is navigate to the desired site with the IBM Page Detailer open. Clicking on a web page component opens a window with the relevant details associated with it. Whenever an event occurs (such as a script being executed), the tool opens a window with information about the processes.

7. Httperf

Httperf is an open-source tool for measuring HTTP server performance running on Linux. It’s an effective tool for benchmarking and creating workload simulations to see if you can handle high-level traffic and still maintain stability. You can also use it to figure out the maximum capacity of your server, gradually increasing the number of requests you make to test its threshold.

8. Pylot

Pylot is an open-source performance and scalability testing tool. It uses HTTP load tests so that you can plan, benchmark, analyze and tweak performance. Pylot requires that you have Python installed on the server – but you don’t need to know the language, you use XML to create your testing scenarios.

9. PushToTest TestMaker

PushToTest TestMaker is a free, open-source platform for testing scalability and performance of applications. It has an intuitive graphical user interface with visual reporting and analytical tools. It has a Resource Monitor feature to help you see CPU, memory, and network utilization during testing. The reporting features let you generate graphs or export data into a spreadsheet application for record-keeping or further statistics analysis.

10. Wbox HTTP testing tool

Wbox is a simple, free HTTP testing software released under the GPL (v2). It supports Linux, Windows, and MacOS X systems. It works by making sequential requests at desired intervals for stress-testing. It has an HTTP compression command so that you can analyze data about your server’s file compression. If you’ve just set up a virtual domain, Wbox HTTP testing tool also comes with a command for you to test if everything’s in order before deployment.

11. WebLOAD

WebLOAD is an open-source, professional grade stress/load testing suite for web applications. WebLOAD allows testers to perform scripts for load testing using JavaScript. It can gather live data for monitoring, recording, and analysis purposes, using client-side data to analyze performance. It’s not just a performance tool – it comes with authoring and debugging features built in.

12. DBMonster

DBMonster is an open-source application to help you tune database structures and table indexes, as well as conduct tests to determine performance under high database load. It’ll help you see how well your database/s will scale by using automated generation of test data. It supports many databases such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, MSSQL and (probably) any database that supports the JDBC driver.

13. OctaGate SiteTimer

The OctaGate SiteTimer is a simple utility for determining the time it takes to download everything on a web page. It gives you a visualization of the duration of each state during the download process (initial request, connection, start of download, and end of download).

14. Web Page Analyzer

The Web Page Analyzer is an extremely simple, web-based test to help you gain information on web page performance. It gives you data about the total number of HTTP requests, total page weight, your objects’ sizes, and more. It tries to estimate the download time of your web page on different internet connections and it also enumerates each page object for you. At the end, it provides you with an analysis and recommendation of the web page tested – use your own judgment in interpreting the information.

15. Site-Perf.com

Site-Perf.com is a free web-based service that gives you information about your site’s loading speed. With Site-Perf.com’s tool, you get real-time capturing of data. It can help you spot bottlenecks, find page errors, gather server data, and more – all without having to install an application or register for an account.

More Tools and Related Resources

Apache JMeter
a Java-based desktop application for performance testing Apache servers.
The Grinder
an open-source load testing framework that intends to make automated tests simpler.
OpenWebLoad
yet another excellent open-source load testing tool for web applications.
“Optimizing Page Load Time”
an article on improving page load time.
“What the 80/20 Rule Tells Us about Reducing HTTP Requests”
a blog post on the YUI blog explaining the precedence of front-end performance for optimal response times.

If you have a favorite web performance tool that wasn’t on the list, share it in the comments. Would also like to hear your experiences, tips, suggestions, and resources you use.

6 Tips to Help You Get the Most Out of Google Docs

2010-02-10T00:53:00.000-08:00

http://sixrevisions.com/tools/15-free-tools-for-web-based-collaboration/

There are many services out on the web for online collaboration, but there’s no doubt that Google Docs is rapidly becoming one of the more popular brands. Google Docs is free, web based (i.e. cross platform), and quite simple to use. But that doesn’t mean it lacks features.

Whether you’re a regular user or have just been thinking about trying it out, here are the top 6 tips and tricks to help you get the most out of Google Docs.

1. Chatting in Google Docs

To get the most out of Google Docs, you’ve got to be able to communicate in real time and with more efficiency than simply writing notes to each other on the shared page. Google Docs takes care of this issue with a built in chat client that hides easily in the top right corner.

When sharing a presentation, the chat client has the ability to share inline photos from Picasa or Flickr and videos from Google video and YouTube.

2. Organize your documents easily.

Google Docs uses a pretty clean interface, but any time you’re sharing with multiple people it pays to be as organized as possible. With Google Docs the best way to stay organized is by making use of colors and comments.

In a spreadsheet colors can be set to follow certain rules (such as turning the text of every cell with your name in it purple), and you can insert comments by right clicking on any cell to get your message across without taking up space.

In the overall Docs interface, folders can be color coded too in a manner similar to gmail labels.

3. Share with others

Google Docs is all about sharing, but you knew that. The key, however, is to know exactly how you can share. At the discretion of the owner, collaborators can be invited to edit or simply to view a shared document.

By default anyone who can edit the document has the ability to share the document with others, and if you really want to open the floodgates you can open the document for universal viewing or editing. Be warned though, there is a limit of 10 people for simultaneous editing of documents and presentations (for spreadsheets, the limit is a much safer 50).

4. Scale back (revision)

You already know Google Docs is autosaving everything you do, but you may not know that you can manipulate past revisions in order to see exactly what’s changed.

All Google Docs will keep a revisions history so you can track your changes and, if you want, revert to them at any time. In the document revision history, you even have the ability to look at two versions side by side to view color coded changes.

5. Draw

Just recently Google added a collaborative drawing feature to Google Docs. This opens up a whole new array of sharing options, as diagrams and charts can now be constructed and shared with ease. The options are obviously not comprehensive, but you have your choice of a variety of shapes, lines, arrows, or text boxes, and you can color and rotate and even layer the objects to a certain extent. The picture for this one is Google’s.

6. The rest

There are a number of other features located within Google Docs that you may or may not find useful.

Google gives you the ability to edit the html or even the css of your documents. In a spreadsheet, you can reference one sheet from the other, allowing users to stay on their own sheet while simultaneously updating others. There is also Google’s live lookup which can be used to have cells contain data gathered live from the internet, and much more. And yes, that html will put a marquee on your google doc.

Google Docs is currently in Beta and frequently changes. Google provides their own tutorial here and blogs about many of the changes they make here.

What’s your favorite Google Doc tip?

The Top 10 Gadgets of the Decade

2009-12-02T22:55:00.000-08:00

Ten years ago, we couldn't live without them. Today, they're inching closer and closer to obsolescence.

The past decade has delivered a bounty of consumer electronics that make our lives easier, keep us connected and ensure that we're endlessly entertained.

But a few have gone above and beyond, altering the way we organize, experience and share our daily lives.

Here are 10 of the gadget world's greatest hits from the past 10 years.

The iPod

The digital music player was already on the scene when Apple introduced the iPod in 2001. But it wasn't exactly hyperbole when Apple CEO Steve Jobs said, "Listening to music will never be the same again."

The iPod -- and its signature white earbuds -- quickly became a cultural icon. But its impact was hardly cosmetic. Along with iTunes, the iPod popularized the mp3 player and changed the music industry forever.

Stacks of CDs? Gone. Trips to the record store? Gone.

Apple made buying music, TV shows and videos as easy as logging on to your home computer and clicking your mouse a few times.

In 2007, the company announced that it sold its 1 millionth iPod unit, making it the bestselling digital music player of all time.

And the iPod has come a long way. Since the original iPod that could hold 1,000 songs, Apple has updated the model nearly every year, expanding the line to tiny workout-friendly Shuffles and Nanos and, of course, the iPhone-like iPod Touch. The current iPod classic (the model closest to the original) can hold 40,000 songs.

GPS Devices

Oh, those folding maps. For a time, they were a staple car accessory, not to mention a road trip necessity. But now, they're almost quaint reminders of a bygone era.

In 2000, the United States discontinued a feature that deliberately degraded GPS signals available to the public.

Overnight, civilian users of GPS devices could pinpoint locations up to 10 times more accurately than before. And in the years that followed, led by Garmin, GPS devices found their way on to dashboards across the country.

Drivers retired their maps, letting voice-enabled GPS devices (or in-car navigation systems) lead them to their destinations.

Now, turn-by-turn directions and information about the nearest gas station and other points of interest are available on car dashboards, iPhones and more.

The BlackBerry

They're known to be so addictive that they're often called "CrackBerries."

Research in Motion's highly popular BlackBerry mobile device was first introduced as a two-way pager in 1999, but the now-common BlackBerry smart phone was introduced in 2002.

The handheld devices, which were initially the gadget of choice for executives and jetsetters, let users send and receive e-mail, access the Internet, take pictures, make phone calls and more.

As the price dropped, their popularity surged, and BlackBerries found their way into the hands of everyone from urbanites to college students to stay-at-home moms.

When President Barack Obama ascended to the White House, he famously fought to keep his precious BlackBerry, despite national security concerns and a tradition of e-mail-free presidents.

Though the launch of the touchscreen iPhone challenged its share of the smart phone market, BlackBerry has held its own with an easy-to-use keyboard and sophisticated office applications and security features.

Digital cameras

Think back to 10 years ago. Did you get married? Graduate from college? Welcome a new child into the world?

Chances are, you didn't get to see images of those major milestones until at least a few days later. Now, thanks to the proliferation of the affordable digital camera, memories are captured -- and in many cases, shared -- nearly instantaneously.

Though the digital camera was introduced in the 1990s, it really came into its own in the 2000s, finding its way into the hands of millions around the world. Even little kids have their own digital cameras.

Unfortunately, the downside of digital photography's expansion is that your most embarrassing moments might live on the hard drives and Facebook accounts of countless family members and friends.

But the upside is that if you're fast enough, you can delete those pictures before they ever see the light of day.

TiVo Digital Video Recorder

Remember when you had to make appointments with your living room television? If you wanted to watch "Friends," "Lost" or "Monday Night Football," you had to adjust your schedule accordingly.

The TiVo Digital Video Recorder and its more recent competitors now let you record those programs and watch them at your leisure -- commercial-free

TiVo pioneered the device in 1997, but it was in the 2000s that the ad-skipping DVR really took off, sending advertisers and television programmers back to their drawing boards.

LG now offers a DVR-integrated television and some cable providers also provide DVR services.

Nintendo's Wii

When Nintendo launched the Wii and Wii Sports in 2006, it pulled gamers off the couch and into the action, revolutionizing video game play in the process.

Using a wireless controller, players actually simulate actions such as playing tennis, baseball and boxing.

But the game has had successes beyond gaming, including teaching school children music and helping people lose weight.

The USB Flash Drive

The memory disk, the jump drive, the pendrive -- or the USB.

It goes by many names but always serves the same crucial function: storing mountains of information on a miniscule device.

More durable and with more memory than its predecessor the floppy disk, flash drives help us carry documents, photos and more between work and home and school. They may be among the more humble items on this list, but simple can also be significant.

The iPhone

In June 2007, diehard Apple fans camped out on city sidewalks for days to be among the first to score the hotly anticipated iPhone. The first iPhones dropped on June 29, and within 74 days Apple had sold 1 million of its new devices.

Now it's said that the number of iPhone and iPod touch units sold has climbed to 40 million.

Whether it's with iPhones, BlackBerries, Android-powered phones or Palm devices, consumers increasingly send and receive e-mail, play games, watch video and access the Internet from mobile phones.

Thanks to the advent of the mobile application, like those in Apple's App Store and the Android Marketplace, consumers also look to their handheld devices for a host of other practical -- and frivolous -- functions.

Whatever our desire, be it finding the closest public toilet, tracking stocks or starting a car remotely, we now know that "there's an app for that."

What's behind the growth of the ever-smarter phone? Technologists say the answer is easy: the iPhone.

E-Book Readers

Bye bye, books? Maybe not quite yet, but as e-readers, such as Sony's Reader and Amazon's Kindle, gain in popularity, printed novels, textbooks and even newspapers and magazines are slowly retreating into the background.

Sony was the first this decade to offer an e-book reader in 2006 and Amazon's Kindle quickly followed in 2007. But since then, as prices fall and content options rise, the market has continued to grow.

This month, research firm Forrester said 2009 has been a "breakout year" for eReaders and eBooks. By the end of the year, sales will have more than tripled with content sales up 176 percent for the year.

Netbooks

Earlier this year, some analysts predicted that the PC industry would experience its sharpest shipment decline in history. But the industry's fate was changed largely because of one key new computing species: the netbook.

Smaller and cheaper than its cousins the laptop and desktop, the netbook has emerged as an increasingly popular PC option.

The netbooks, or mini-notebooks, can't compete with fully-functional laptops and desktops when it comes to memory, power and battery life. But they can be had for below $300, a price closer to that of some smart phones than traditional computers.

In addition to the price, their compact size and mobility make them attractive options for consumers.

Taiwan-based Asus introduced the first netbook of the decade in 2007 when it launched the Asus Eee PC (the three "Es" stand for "Easy to learn, Easy to work, Easy to play).

But its competitor, Acer Inc. (also from Taiwan), popularized the category with its 2008 launch of the Acer Aspire One. Analysts say Acer's version was the first to do well among retail customers, as its operating system and overall look more closely resembled traditional PCs.

In March, research firm Garter predicted that PC shipments would fall in 2009 by 11.9 percent. Now, boosted by netbook sales, the firm expects shipments to actually grow by 2.8 percent this year.

Source : abcnews

Chrome Detailing: Previewing Google's New Operating System

2009-11-30T20:05:00.000-08:00

Last week, Google open-sourced its Chromium OS project, more than a year before the operating system is scheduled for release. In doing so, Google hopes a variety of developers and companies will become involved in the project, and has pledged to release regular updates as well as a comprehensive log of bug reports and fixes. We've spent a few days playing with Chromium and exploring its design and come away impressed—but not without questions.

This article should not be considered a review of Chromium in any way—at most, it's a very early preview. We won't be discussing performance or spending too much time on the operating system's "look and feel." Google has stated up front that a number of UI changes are in the pipeline.

What we are going to talk about is Google's design vision for Chromium, the unique benefits it offers, and a bit of why Google is throwing its hat into this particular ring in the first place. Chromium, after all, is a Linux-based OS entering the smartbook/netbook market at a time when said product segment is already being served by a variety of Linux distros (some customized to the hardware, some not), XP, and Windows 7. In the midst of all these options, do we need another operating system?

We just might.

Understanding Chromium

Google has put together a 3.5 minute video that does a pretty good job of explaining Chrome's design philosophy. For those of you who don't feel like watching, we'll discuss it after the jump.

Chromium is designed around the premise that computers have largely evolved into boxes from which we access the Internet. If you've ever lost Internet service (but not electricity) for a protracted period of time, you've probably seen the company's point. Evaluated in terms of what a modern system is capable of doing, getting online is but one, minor feature. From a user perspective, however, Internet connectivity is a matter of tremendous importance—lose the net, and your system transforms from a communications platform/multimedia hub into a box for writing papers, gaming alone... or something.

Google's view, although the company doesn't say it in so many words, is that the lot of us—Linux, Mac, and Microsoft users alike—are using a device initialization and access platform designed nearly thirty years ago to access the cutting-edge capability of today. Imagine, for a moment, that we were shipping 1080P content on VCR tapes at 50 tapes per movie, and you get the picture.

On the left, old and busted. On the right, New Hotness.

If computers are basically Internet portals and almost everything we do takes place online, then why not cut out the middle man altogether? That's where Chromium comes in. The OS is very clearly based on the Chrome browser, but Google has already begun implementing the more advanced UI requirements that an OS requires.

Wherever You Go, Here You Are

Chromium simplifies the concept of an application the same way it simplifies the operating system i.e., by throwing most of it away. Chromium apps won't just interface with the web or contain web-based components, they'll exist there. The 'cloud' in cloud computing thus transforms from an abstract concept of computing resources or storage floating vaguely in space into something much more unique and personal. The cloud has literally become your cloud—your life, online. The OS is tied tightly enough to the cloud that online connectivity is vital in order to practically operate or make use of the device.

Google's version of a task manager. Note the amazing amount of goat teleportation...
We moved a herd last night (rounded up to the nearest full goat.)

All this focus on Internet connectivity and web applications may have you wondering what sort of local storage options are available, and the answer is currently up in the air. Several of Google's presentations imply that the system has no internal storage at all (at least none that is user-accessible). At other points the company states that no hard drives will be supported, but that systems will include varying amounts of flash memory.

To summarize the sales pitch: Chromium gets rid of all the crusty old legacy garbage, moves storage online where it's both universally available and backed up, provides a platform that finally integrates browser and OS, all while providing a fabulous, multimedia-rich online experience. Everything you currently do offline will be available online, seamlessly provided by a content platform that presents a universal, standards-based framework rather than a hodgepodge of browsers, security bugs, and broken standards support.

Chrome's memory manager

Rather than attempt to pass verdict on an OS that isn't out of beta, we've devoted this section to a few of Chromium's potential greatest strengths and accompanying challenges. If you've got a different list than we do, feel free to sound off below in the comments.

The Potential

A Genuine, Unified Windows Alternative: Linux holds part of the netbook market, but the majority of the space, particularly the higher-end models, have opted for a Microsoft operating system. Chromium is Linux-based and it'll be backed by the financial and technical assets of Google. If Google woos developers appropriately and develops the proper toolkits, Microsoft could find itself with a true head-to-head competitor, the likes of which it hasn't had to deal with in decades. Google, like Microsoft, can afford to take its time and get it right, even if it takes a few years to do so.
Competitive non-x86 Products: The overwhelming majority of netbooks currently in existence are based on Intel's Atom and powered by an Intel chipset. There's nothing wrong with that—the point is not criticise Atom—but a new, processor-agnostic OS could drive innovation in both processor and platform design across the industry. Currently, an x86 processor has a massive inherent advantage because it runs Windows—and so does everything else. Over a period of time, there's no reason Google couldn't simultaneously invest in whatever software tools are needed to ease the transition while providing OEMs with the information they need to make deploying a non-Windows product as easy as a Windows one. Indeed, the cost of 'transition' is designed to be nonexistent. If you're familiar with a browser window on Windows, you're familiar with a browser window in Chromium.
All Hail Our Corporate, Web 2.0 Overlord: This last advantage is more a gain for Google than it is for your average consumer, but it's a gain—and a corporate goal—worth talking about. It's no secret that Google wants to be more than just your search engine; if Chromium takes market share, it, and by extension Google, will be front-and-center of your entire Internet experience. Again, this isn't meant to be inherently evil-sounding, but if it works, Google's brand presence would expand immensely.

The Challenges

Making It "Just Work": If the browser is the operating system, the browser window has to be able to handle a lot of different types of content, and it needs to handle it well. Google has said it intends to use HTML5 to pull off quite a few of its planned features, but it'll need other capabilities, like direct access to the video card. From a technical perspective, there's a lot of things that need to happen under the hood in order for Chromium to present users with a smooth, stable, experience. The company also has to have a plan for what happens when something doesn't work.

Once upon a time, if a program or system driver crashed, it took your OS with it nine times out of ten. Then XP came along, and an application blowout didn't necessarily mean an automatic reboot. Vista and Windows 7 have further advanced the concept—if your display driver crashes these days, Windows will often freeze briefly, then resume normal operation (with a note of what occurred). If you kill an instance of Firefox within Task Manager, the app remembers the websites you had open, and offers to open them again. Chrome, the browser, offers this sort of functionality, but an OS needs layers of robustness that a browser can take for granted.
Offline Functionality and Local Storage: Google can talk all it wants about how the web has become synonymous with computing, and it sounds accurate until you stop and think about all the exceptions. These include, but are by no means limited to: Areas without free WiFi, areas with theoretically free WiFi with practically zero functionality. Hospitals, airplanes (without paying exorbitant costs), odd corners of the house, power outages, road trips, and pretty much the entire Louisiana Purchase.

Cellular cards could solve some of these problems but introduce others, especially if you don't live in 3G territory. To date, Chromium is being discussed as a web-centric operating system designed to put you in direct, lightning-fast contact with the content you want most. That's all to the good and it gives the company the chance to talk about what really sets its OS apart from those dull desktop types. A year from now, a lot of Chromium's appeal could be riding on what users can do with one when they aren't connected to the Internet or want to save content locally. There are occasions, after all, where 'the cloud' is the very last place you want certain information to reside.

One final bit of irony. Over ten years ago, Microsoft was sued for bundling a browser with Windows 98. Does it amuse anyone else that Google is bundling an operating system along with their browser

source : http://hothardware.com/News/Chrome-Detailing-Previewing-Googles-New-Operating-System/

How to Run Chrome OS From A USB Drive

2009-11-30T03:57:00.000-08:00

Have you already tried Chrome OS using a virtual machine, and were less than impressed? Well now you can get a feel for how Google's Web-centric operating system will run natively on your machine. The folks over at Engadget were able to boot Chromium OS -- the open source version of what will become Chrome OS -- off of a USB stick on a Dell Vostro A90 netbook. The USB bootable disc is based on the Chromium OS build of Twitter user Hexxeh, who set up a Web site where you can view all the instructions you need for getting your bootable USB up and running.

If you're ready to get your hands dirty and try out the new OS, here's what you need to know:

Get the Torrent

Before you do anything, you're going to need to download the Hexxeh's Chromium OS build. You can find a torrent link on Hexxeh's Website or you can use the mirror links found here and here courtesy of Engadget.

Set Up Your USB Stick

Hexxeh has some easy instructions for writing your Chromium OS image onto a USB stick. The instructions for Windows and Linux look pretty straightforward, but Mac users are going to have a slightly more complicated time.

Pick Your Machine

A major problem with Chromium OS right now is that its device drivers are in the very early stages of development. That means some parts of your computer may not respond when using Chromium OS. One of the most common problems being reported is the lack of Wi-Fi functionality. So you may have to use an Ethernet connection instead. You should also know there's no guarantee the OS will boot up at all.

If you're in the market for a netbook or laptop, and you plan on experimenting with Chromium, check out Google's list of devices that are known to work with the latest version of Chromium OS. The list is primarily for developers who want to work with the new OS, but there's no reason you can't use it as a buying guide. The device index features a sortable checklist that lets you know if the Wi-Fi and trackpad functions are working, as well as general comments and warnings specific to each device.

For example, you might want to stay away from the Asus Eee PC 900 if you plan to run Chrome right now. The netbook's Wi-Fi is supposed to work, but the device's fans may not run, which could cause your system to overheat. Other Wi-Fi-ready devices, according to Google's list, are the Toshiba mini NB205, and the Asus Eee PC 1008HA. The Lenovo ThinkPad T400 may also work after upgrading the Wi-Fi firmware. But before you go out and spend money on a new computer, read over Google's hardware list to make sure you are fully aware of the functionality and problems for the device you have in mind.

Booting From the USB

Once you've got your computer, and have gone through the steps of writing your bootable disc, you may find you can't get Chromium OS to boot on your Windows-based machine. If this happens, you may have to change the settings for how your machine boots up.

You can learn how to change the settings by checking out PC World's guide to installing Windows 7 on a netbook using a USB drive. The instructions are not Chromium-specific, but you should be able to figure out how to adapt this method for your purposes.

A word of warning: Changing the boot order means messing with your system's command prompt and BIOS. If that sounds scary, you might be better off picking up an official Chrome OS machine later next year. For the rest of you, let us know in the comments how Chromium is running on your netbook.

Google Chrome OS: Its Promises and Secrets

2009-11-30T03:55:00.000-08:00

Four months ago, Google announced it was working on an operating system for netbooks called Chrome OS. Today, at a press event at the Googleplex which I attended, the company demonstrated it in public for the first time and provided more details about its plans.

Nothing Google had to say came as a great revelation -- it largely confirmed and expounded upon the goals laid out in the initial blog post on the project. Google's Chrome OS will emphasize speed, simplicity, and security; it'll store everything in the cloud; it'll come preinstalled on netbooks. And it's an open-source product with a Linux heart beating deep inside.

[Relate: Google Chrome OS: Visual Tour & Google Chrome OS Unveiled: Speed, Simplicity, and Security Stressed)

After the jump, my first stab at collecting known and unknown details about the OS -- additions, corrections, and questions welcome.

What's the interface like?

That's easy: It's like Chrome the browser. Remarkably so. Pretty much, it looks like a version of Chrome that sprung little nubby legs and crawled out of the primordial ooze.

Chrome OS does have some interface aspects that Chrome lacks, such as a list of apps, the ability to pin apps in tabs so they stay around, and widget-like "Panels" that pop up in the lower right-hand corner of the screen. (Actually, that last feature reminds me of how the Tasks list works in Gmail.)

Google says that everything about Chrome OS is subject to change before the first netbooks using it ship, but for now, what's most striking about Chrome OS's interface is how unstriking it is. It's Chrome.

When will Chrome netbooks appear?

About a year from now.

What'll the specs be like?

Well, for one thing, these machines won't have hard drives. They'll use solid-state disks, which is one reason why Google can reasonably be telling folks that Chrome OS machines will boot in a few seconds. (Solid-state storage is expensive, but if Chrome OS systems store everything in the cloud, they should be able to get away with tiny disks.)

Google says it's working with hardware companies to determine spec guidelines for Chrome OS PCs -- and that it would like to see them have at least somewhat larger screens and comfier keyboards than most current netbooks.

How much will Chrome OS machines cost?

Don't expect any news until well into next year. They'll clearly be low-cost portables, but here's one question: Since Google, unlike Microsoft, won't charge for the operating system, will they be strikingly cheaper than similar Windows 7 systems?

Who'll Make Chrome OS Netbooks?

Google didn't talk about hardware partners today, but it has in the past. Acer, Asus, HP, and Lenovo are all involved with the project and will presumably offer Chrome OS machines.

I want to buy a Chrome OS desktop.

Um, that isn't a question. But Google said today that its focus for 2010 is on netbooks. Chrome OS on other types of computers might come later.

Will I be able to install Chrome OS on my own computer?

Officially, the answer we got to that today was "no." But at the same time, Google talked about developers installing it right now on netbooks. My guess is that nerds will create Hackintosh-like unofficial Chrome OS netbooks, sharing their knowledge about how to do the job. Google may not help, but it won't stop them, either.

Will you be able to use a Chrome OS system when you don't have an Internet connection?

Yes. Maybe. At least sort of. Google says that Chrome OS PCs will be meant principally for use when you're online, and that local storage is there mostly to cache data until the OS can push it up to the cloud. But there will be at least some capability to store local media such as music, and Google said that it'll support new HTML5 features designed to enable offline use.

I'm still hazy, however, about whether Google's Gears offline technology will be part of Chrome OS -- if so, it'll be a boon, since Gmail and Google Docs will have some degree of capability when you're not connected -- or whether a Chrome OS laptop would go into doorstop mode when you were on a plane without Wi-Fi.

One thing we do know: Google has no plans to let Chrome OS use traditional client apps, although, as a Linux variant, it could presumably do so.

What are the benefits of data living in the cloud?

It's available from any Chrome OS netbook, for one thing. And assuming that Google takes good care of it, you don't need to worry about backups. (I'm not clear on whether Chrome-the-browser will have access to a Chrome OS netbook owner's personal workspace, but it would be pretty neat if you could log into your Chrome OS desktop from a browser on a PC or Mac -- especially since Google says it sees Chrome OS machines as secondary computers.)

What makes Chrome OS so secure?

Apps are sandboxed, so they can't interfere with each other. The root system is read only. All user data is encrypted. And code is signed: The OS checks itself at boot time, and if anything looks fishy, it downloads chunks of itself on the fly and reinstalls them.

Will Chrome OS support Flash?

Yup.

Silverlight?

No comment.

Will Android apps work?

No -- they're client software. Chrome OS doesn't run client apps.

Will other browsers run on Chrome OS?

Depends on how you look at it, and how things transpire. Chrome OS won't support local applications, so you won't be able to download and install Firefox. But Chrome OS is an open-source project, so there's nothing stopping a Firefox fan from attempting to build a Chrome OS that somehow encompasses Firefox.

Will I be able to tweak my Chrome OS setup? I've made so many changes to my Windows machine it's unrecognizable.

Well, I assume Google will give you some ability to fiddle with color schemes, wallpaper, and the like. But as far as I know, you won't be able to install utilities that let you fiddle with the interface in ways that Google didn't intend or permit. That would be running local applications, and Chrome OS doesn't run local applications.

Will there be a Chrome OS app store?

Google said it's still figuring out the best ways to help users find useful tools they can use on Chrome OS netbooks. But the company did point out that when all your apps are Web apps, you've got millions of items to choose from -- not the iPhone's 100,000 programs.

Will my printer, scanner, phone, MP3 player, EVDO adapter, external hard drive, USB TV tuner, and smartpen work with Chrome OS?

Good question! Google made cryptic references to a nontraditional plan it has to let Chrome OS netbooks work, and says it's working with hardware companies to draw up a list of devices that Chrome OS will support. It seems like it's a given that a lot of stuff won't work, especially at first. And we don't yet know whether Chrome OS will be so wildly popular that Canon, say, will champ at the bit to write drivers for all its gadgets that let Chrome OS users buy and use ‘em.

Who is Chrome OS meant for, exactly?

You know, Google didn't quite articulate that today. But it would seem that it'll target users who (A) want an inexpensive second computer; (B) find Windows too complicated, slow, unsafe, and/or unreliable; (C) rarely go anywhere where they can't get online; (D) are comfortable with a machine they can't customize the heck out of; and (E) don't have any traditional client applications that they absolutely, positively can't live without.

Is the world ready for a 100% cloud-based computer?

That's the big question, right? I want you guys to discuss it in the comments. But my take is this: The idea will make more sense a year from now, but it'll still be very early to consider cutting yourself off entirely from local apps and storage. And Google was vague enough today that I'm still unclear about just how useful (or useless) a Chrome OS system is when the Internet is unavailable.

More thoughts to come. I'm already curious whether there's any chance I can figure out how to install the Chrome OS code that went public today on my own personal netbook, which happens to be an Asus EeePC 1000HE...anyone else out there contemplating trying to get the OS up and running?

Ganguly back as KKR captain, Whatmore to coach

2009-11-06T09:10:00.000-08:00

Kolkata Knight Riders re-appointed Sourav Ganguly as its captain on Friday and Dav Whatmore, who recently quit from the post of director of operations at National Cricket Academy in Bangalore, was declared the coach.

The decision to appoint a new coach for the Kolkata Knight Riders has been a much anticipated and speculated announcement but it was Whatmore, who was finally decided for the controversial post.

"I am optimistic about the season ahead and have the utmost faith in Sourav, the team, and KKR Management and look forward to a successful tournament. I will be working closely with the team to continue building KKR into a successful franchise both on and off field", said Whatmore.

The KKR management held several meetings over the past few weeks to discuss and plan the way forward for the franchise and the team.

Sourav Ganguly played a major role, whose experience and knowledge were key factors in the entire vision and decision-making process for the season ahead.

On his appointment, Ganguly said, "KKR is looking forward to an exciting and successful season ahead with the new appointments and strategies in place. I am excited at the prospect of working with Dav and the entire team closely in addition to playing at our home ground once again".

On being elected as captain of KKR, Ganguly said, "It's a good feeling. It's a responsibility. No matter who is the captain, we have to play well and perform well."

"I don't think there are too many strategies for this game. we just need to go and play. We just need to execute in the middle. That's what we need to do. I am not great believer in strategies, I believe on performance", said the former India skipper.

Ganguly also praised the newly appointed KKR coach.

"Dave is a nice man. He has been in sub continent for good 10 years now or probably more. He was part of Sri Lankan cricket for long, then with Bangladesh. So he is pretty much an Indian man."

Dav will be supported in his new role by Vijay Dahiya as Assistant Coach and Wasim Akram as mentor.

Andrew Leipus and Adrian le Roux have been appointed Physiotherapist and Team Trainer respectively.

When asked about the decision, The Management was very clear on their unanimous choice: "Dav has the right vision not only for the team, but for each of the players, and for the franchise as a whole. He is very aware of our current position in IPL and knows that there is only one way to go now - up" said Jay Mehta, co-owner of KKR.

10 things Google has taught us

2009-10-27T11:09:00.000-07:00

NEW YORK (Fortune) -- In researching his new book, Googled: the End of the World as We Know It, to be published next week by Penguin Press, author Ken Auletta had extensive access to the company's inner workings and reported widely on its impact on the media landscape.

In a Fortune.com exclusive, he offers ten enduring lessons drawn from his journey into Google's realm:

1.) Passion wins

Start with the words of advice -- "Don't settle" -- that Larry Page offered the Stanford graduating class in 2002. This intensity was revealed in the zeal with which he and Sergey Brin inspired the entire company to "serve the user," to take more risks, to radically improve search.

Or as CEO Eric Schmidt told me: while he assumed that "Google would be an important company; the founders always assumed that Google would be a defining company."

A moment after venture capitalist Michael Moritz finished describing Google as "a rare" company, I asked Moritz, an early investor in both Yahoo and Google (GOOG, Fortune 500), whether he felt the same enthusiasm for Yahoo (YHOO, Fortune 500).

He winced, hesitated, then finally said: "Yahoo is a company I've been close to for a long time and feel a lot of affection and loyalty towards. But within the first 18 months to two years of being associated with Google, I began to understand this was a very different company than Yahoo. It was rooted in the studies of the founders. Google was built on a foundation of Larry's and Sergey's intellectual pursuits. Yahoo was built on the foundations of Jerry's and David's interests. And there's a big gulf between those two."

That deficit of passion, he suggested, was a reason that Jerry Yang and David Filo chose not to be fully engaged full-time with the company they created.

2.) Focus is required

Passion without focus can lead you astray. Bill Campbell, chairman of Intuit and a Silicon Valley mentor who spends a couple of days each week at Google, thinks the key to Google's success is "focused passion." He credits Schmidt for bringing a focus to the founders.

In an interview with Betsy Morris of Fortune, Steve Jobs offered an interesting and, typically, upside-down perspective on focus: "People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the 100 other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I'm actually as proud of the many things we haven't done as the things we have done."

Media mogul Barry Diller, who had an unsettling session with Page and Brin in the early days of Google, when Page would not look up from his PDA to talk to him, now thinks what might be construed as rudeness was really focus.

"They had their own method of communicating and processing," Diller said. "They give much less quarter than other people do to common business courtesies. They've stayed true to this. It's a spectacular strength. It means you never get de-focused by the crowd."

3.) Vision is required too

Without vision, even the most focused passion is a battery without a device. "Don't be evil" is a vague incantation. But Page and Brin's effort to make "all the world's information available,"and to first and foremost serve users, is a vision.

It's one that successfully drove Google to index the Web, make news and books searchable, treat ads as information and to reject dollars if the ads were not "relevant," help users search for the best or cheapest products, find simple travel directions, store and search their e-mail, and share calendar information.

Such a vision does not come from survey research. In his 2005 speech to graduating engineers at the University of Michigan, Page told them they didn't have to go to business school. He said he had read an entire shelf of business books when he was younger, and among the lessons he learned was that "many of the amazing insights that happen in business actually come from people who really aren't in the business."

4.) A team culture is vital

Google's allocation of 20% of employee time to projects of their own choice give them a sense of proprietorship. True to its open-source, wisdom-of-the-crowd ideals, Google has created a networked management that functions from the bottom-up as well as the top-down. In both directions, it unleashes ideas and effort.

As Larry Page astutely observes: "There is a pattern in companies, even in technological companies, that the people who do the work -- the engineers, the programmers, the foot soldiers if you will -- typically get rolled over by the management ... you end up kind of demoralized. You want to have a culture where the people who are doing the work, the scientists and the engineers, are empowered. And that they are managed by people who deeply understand what they are doing."

5.) Treat engineers as kings

For most Valley companies, engineers are the equivalent of the television writer, the movie director, the book author. They are the creators. The 20% time Google grants its engineers gives them a sense that they are liberated to take risks, to follow their passions.

Innovation, as Bill Campbell told The McKinsey Quarterly, comes when "the crazy guys have stature, where engineers really are important.... empowered engineers are the single most important thing that you can have in a company."

It is no accident that Page and Brin and Schmidt spend so many hours each week in meetings with engineers. For most traditional media companies, the engineer is less central.

However, as digital is now part of the mainstream, and as older media companies struggle to master its challenges, they would do well to heed the advice Google's David Eun offers: Don't do what these companies traditionally do and stick "the geeks in a corner." Instead, CEO's should have at their elbow "a top Chief Technical Officer."

6.) Treat customers like a king

An important reason Google is usually listed among the world's most trusted brands is that it conveys a sense that the user comes first. Advertising may produce 97% of Google's revenues, but to a user it doesn't feel that way. Google services are free, and they're user friendly, just as an iPod is.

The lessons Larry Page took away from reading Donald A. Norman's The Design of Everyday Things while a graduate student at Stanford, helped shape Google's approach to its customers. Or as Page said, "Having an attitude that your customer or users are always right, and your goal is to build systems that work for them in a natural way, is a good attitude to have."

To understand how Google earned the trust of its users, go back to its 2004 IPO. Again and again it referred to the users as sacrosanct: "We believe that our user focus is the foundation of our success to date. We also believe that this focus is critical for the creation of long-term value. We do not intend to compromise our user focus for short-term economic gain."

By focusing on the user, Page and Brin provided an organizing principle for Google employees that echoed Sam Walton's adage: " 'If you don't listen to your customers, someone else will.'"

7.) Every company is a frenemy

What Lord Palmerston said of nations applies as well to corporations: There are no permanent allies, only permanent interests. A medium like the internet blurs the borders between companies, sometimes making it more difficult to sight a potential rival or to distinguish between ally and foe.

Google started as a search engine, but quickly realized it could efficiently sell ads or aggregate news or search books or use its infrastructure to create cloud computing or expand into video by acquiring YouTube or expand into mobile devices.

At the same time, Google's AdSense helps newspapers by supplying them with ad dollars; AdWords partners with ad agencies to sell products; YouTube is a coveted promotional platform for the television networks; Android software supplies an operating system for more than a few mobile telephone companies.

These horizontal ambitions, coupled with the fears aroused by the speed of technological change, inevitably frays the bond of trust among companies. Most companies become frenemies, both cooperating and competing.

8.) Don't ignore the human factor

As a journalist, the deeper one burrows, the more complicated narratives and the people who populate them usually become. Among the enduring truths I keep bumping into when there is the luxury of time to get to know people or institutions, is that their decisions are often made for what are not, strictly speaking, reasons of logic. These can be ascribed to human factors. How to measure wisdom, judgment, sensitivity, relationships?

Google has been wise in winning the trust of its users, in building a team culture, and in thinking long-term. But when you start from a blanket assumption that the old ways of doing things are probably wrong, as Google does, you're bound to make unwise mistakes.

Page was unwise to assume Google could immediately digitize all books, just as Google was wrong to assume that it could devise formulas to better sell ads for newspapers and broadcast radio, two efforts it has since abandoned. Google has not always been wise in avoiding battles, in being insensitive to copyright, or privacy, or the concerns of government.

9.) There are no certitudes

Today, Google appears impregnable. But a decade ago so did AOL, and so did the combination of AOL Time Warner.

"There is nothing about their model that makes them invulnerable," Clayton Christensen, the Harvard business historian and author of the seminal, The Innovators Dilemma, told me. "Think IBM. They had a 70% market share of mainframe computers. Then the government decided to challenge them. Then the PC emerged."

Seemingly overnight, computing moved from mainframes to PCs. "Lots of companies are successful and are applauded by the financial community," Christensen said. "Then their stock price stalls because they are no longer surprising investors with their growth. So they strive to grow but forget the principles that made them great -- getting into the market quickly, not throwing money at the wrong thing. When you have so much money you become so patient that you wait too long. Look at Microsoft. No one can fault them for not investing in growth ideas. But none of these have grown up to be the next Windows."

Maybe, Christensen added, we are now beginning to "see this at Google." The company has poured money into YouTube and Android and cloud computing, but has yet "to figure out the business model for each."

10.) "Life is long but time is short."

The words belong to Eric Schmidt, who explained: "Life is long in the sense that we have long memories. Time is short in that you have to move very quickly. But to me the most important thing to know is that life has a way of working things out. We forget so quickly what the problem was three or four years ago. So my personal view of life is that every problem is an opportunity."

This is a reason to think and act boldly, as Google has, to take risks, and not to be anchored down by "long memories."

Top 8 Programs That Can Make Your Computer Run Faster

2009-10-27T01:16:00.000-07:00

It’s a common problem among computer users: after a few months, our computers become weighed down by programs and all sorts of other junk, and inevitably become sluggish. For the less tech-savvy users, this may induce thoughts like “Why is my computer so terrible?” or “I guess I could always upgrade this… what-cha-ma-callit RAM thing”.

Regular maintenance is usually required to keep a computer optimized and running at its best. Here are four programs that will make your computer faster, and four trade-offs to help make the best use out of the amount of RAM that’s installed on your computer.

MSConfig

For those who despair endlessly that their computer lags too much at start up yet don’t know how to go about fixing that, taking a look through MSConfig would be the place to start. Msconfig can by accessed by hitting Windows-R, which brings up the “Run” dialog, and typing in “msconfig”. Under the “Start Up” tab, there is a list of programs and executables that are launched when the computer starts up.

Having a lot of programs that start up when the computer boots is one of the main reasons that boot times are so long, for most PC users. Thus, the remedy would be to go through the entire list and uncheck anything that is unnecessary to have on boot up. If there are any entries you are not sure about, be sure to check them thoroughly on the internet before messing with them, as unchecking the wrong entries could potentially mess up the functionality of some of your programs.

CCleaner

CCleaner stands for “Crap Cleaner” and that is exactly what the program is great for. Over time, temporary files bog down your system, and take up unnecessary space in your harddrive. Thus, it is good PC maintenance practice to go through your computer once every while, and delete all the temp files.

It is incredibly simple: just navigate to the Cleaner tab in CCleaner, check everything you want to clean up (it would be best to leave the “Advanced” section alone, unless you know what those entries refer to), and then clean Analyze. You’ll then see an overview of what CCleaner is about to clean up and delete, and how much space CCleaner will free up for you. To permanently erase the temp files off your computer, simply click “Run Cleaner,” and all those temp files will be history.

Temp files aren’t the only junk files cluttering up your computer, however. Broken registry keys also pose a huge problem when it comes to useless files clogging up your system. Fortunately, CCleaner also has the ability to keep your registry clean.

To do this, use the “Registry” tab in Ccleaner. Once again, select all the entries you want CCleaner to prune, and let it do its thing. The only difference between this type of maintenance and clearing temp files is that if you accidentally delete a key that is still being used by your system, your computer can begin to function strangely. With that said, you should back up your registry settings before you give CCleaner the go ahead to torch everything. When you click “Fix Selected Issues” to delete the faulty registry entries, CCleaner will prompt you to back up your registry, and you should always click ‘yes’.

CCleaner was also discussed by Stefan in his article How To Uninstall Applications Efficiently And Remove Obsolete Files.

Revo Uninstaller

Revo Uninstaller is like the on-steroids version of your own Add and Remove Programs option in the Control Panel, but it also scans your computer for any files that the default uninstaller doesn’t catch, and deletes them. Revo’s layout is pretty much exactly the same as the Add and Remove Programs dialog, so it should be simple to navigate.

Revo also has a panel that lists all of the clean up tools that are provided with Windows systems. This menu can be accessed by clicking the Tools icon, and then the Windows Tools tab on the left.

For a more in-depth review of Revo Uninstaller, check out Jimmy’s article Revo Uninstaller Will Hunt Down Your Bloatware.

Defraggler

So once you’ve cleared all of the unnecessary files from your computer, there are now a bunch of holes where the data for those files used to be. While this may seem like no big deal to most people, having random gaps of empty space can also slow down your computer, because the rest of your files are still splintered into many different pieces, and the newly generated empty space isn’t being used efficiently. The more pieces a file is split to, the longer it takes the computer to access that file, so it makes sense to put all these pieces back together, once space has been cleared up to store whole files.

Defraggler is one of the best free defragmentation tools on the market. The visual representation of the space on the computer as pieces of files are being reunited is extremely enlightening, because most people don’t realize the extent of file splintering on their systems.

But cleaning up your computer isn’t the only thing you can do to optimize how fast your computer runs. Believe it or not, the programs you choose to perform daily actions such as chatting, or opening PDFs, can also affect your computer’s running speed.

Best Program Trade-Offs

This section discusses several alternative applications that perform more efficiently and provides your computer with the speed boost that it needs. Especially on slower computers, the difference is quite noticeable. Try it them out for yourselves!

1. Pidgin vs. AIM

If you don’t mind the spartan interface, Pidgin is a great multi-protocol IM client with a light footprint. Unfortunately it doesn’t natively support video chat, but it does have a plug-in for Skype (although you’ll need to have Skype running to use it).

2. Firefox or Chrome vs Internet Explorer

I recommend this switch not just based off memory footprint, but also because both Firefox and Chrome trump IE when it comes to customization and start-up times.

3. Foxit Reader vs Adobe Reader

Adobe Reader is notorious for its slow load times, especially when it comes to huge documents. Being a student, I regularly load 500+ page PDFs (the digital versions of my textbooks), so having to wait ages for them to load would be severely detrimental to my productivity. Foxit Reader, however, is so snappy that a 500+ page PDF loads almost instantly, and the browser integration is much smoother and faster than that of Adobe Reader. Once again, the interface is a bit more spartan, but Foxit definitely packs more features, and is a very worthy switch.

Click here for Guy’s article on more light alternatives to Adobe Reader.

4. VLC Player vs Windows Media Player

VLC is like the Pidgin of media players in that it supports a multitude of different video formats, and has a quick loading interface. Another great, recently implemented feature of VLC is that it can now be skinned to fit in with your windows theme!

5. Foobar2000 vs iTunes

The great thing about Foobar is that it is so customizable: everything from the layout of the interface to the plug-ins to extend the program’s capabilities can be tweaked. Many people worry that without iTunes, they wont’ be able to sync their iPod or iPhone, but Foobar actually has a plug-in to support iPod syncing.

Today, I’ve covered eight of the best programs for de-crapping your computer and maximizing your available RAM. Hopefully you’ve found a few of these programs to your liking, and decide to trade out your slow, sluggish apps for something a bit more snappy. Here they are again:

CCleaner – Download
Revo Uninstaller – Download
Defraggler – Download
Pidgin – Download
Firefox – Download
Chrome – Download
Foxit Reader – Download
VLC Player – Download
Foobar2000 – Download

Try out our suggestions, and let us know if they help speed up your co

Google Wave: A Complete Guide

2009-10-27T01:07:00.000-07:00

Today has been dominated by news and excitement surrounding Google Wave, Google’s new real-time communication platform that will launch to the public on September 30th. In fact, there’s been so much buzz that you might just not have enough time to read the thousands of articles being released on Google’s biggest product launch in recent memory.

To make sense of it all, we have compiled key information, definitions, and links related to the launch of Google Wave. This in-depth guide provides an overview of Google Wave, discusses the terminology associated with it, details information on Google Wave applications, (i.e. the Twitter Wave app Twave), and goes over ways to keep yourself informed. We know you’re excited about Google Wave, so here’s what we think you should know:

What is Google Wave?

While we suggest reading our article on the launch of Google Wave for more detailed information, here’s the sum of it: Google Wave is a real-time communication platform. It combines aspects of email, instant messaging, wikis, web chat, social networking, and project management to build one elegant, in-browser communication client. You can bring a group of friends or business partners together to discuss how your day has been or share files.

Google Wave has a lot of innovative features, but here are just a few:

- Real-time: In most instances, you can see what someone else is typing, character-by-character.

- Embeddability: Waves can be embedded on any blog or website.

- Applications and Extensions: Just like a Facebook application or an iGoogle gadget, developers can build their own apps within waves. They can be anything from bots to complex real-time games.

- Wiki functionality: Anything written within a Google Wave can be edited by anyone else, because all conversations within the platform are shared. Thus, you can correct information, append information, or add your own commentary within a developing conversation.

- Open source: The Google Wave code will be open source, to foster innovation and adoption amongst developers.

- Playback: You can playback any part of the wave to see what was said.

- Natural language: Google Wave can autocorrect your spelling, even going as far as knowing the difference between similar words, like “been” and “bean.” It can also auto-translate on-the-fly.

- Drag-and-drop file sharing: No attachments; just drag your file and drop it inside Google Wave and everyone will have access.

While these are only a few of the many features of Google Wave, it’s easy to see why people are extremely excited.

Google Wave was the brainchild of a team based out of Sydney, Australia. The core team members are two brothers, Jens and Lars Rasmussen, and lead project manager Stephanie Hannon, all of whom were involved in Google Maps previously. Google Wave was announced today at Google’s I/O Developer conference, although the product will not be available to the public for several months.

We detail even more of these features in our article The Top 6 Game-Changing Features of Google Wave.

Terminology

Google Wave actually has its own lingo – yes, you have to learn a few definitions if you’re going to really understand this new communication platform. Having knowledge of these terms will help you understand more about Google’s newest project.

- Wave: A wave, specifically, refers to a specific threaded conversation. It can include just one person, or it can include a group of users or even robots (explained below). The best comparison I can make is that it’s like your entire instant messaging (IM) history with someone. Anything you’ve ever discussed in a single chat or conversation is a wave.

- Wavelet: A wavelet is also a threaded conversation, but only a subset of a larger conversation (or a wave). It’s like a single IM conversation – a small part of a larger conversation and a larger history. Wavelets, though, can be created and managed separately from a wave.

- Blip: Even smaller than a Wavelet, a Blip is a single, individual message. It’s like a single line of an IM conversation. Blips can have other blips attached to them, called children. In addition, blips can either be published or unpublished (once again, it’s sort of like typing out an IM message but not yet sending it).

- Document: A document actually refers to the content within a blip. This seems to refer to the actual characters, words, and files associated with a blip.

- Extension: An extension is a mini-application that works within a wave. So these are the apps you can play with while using Wave. There are two main types of extenisons: Gadgets and Robots

- Gadgets: A gadget is an application users can participate with, many of which are built on Google’s OpenSocial platform. A good comparison would be iGoogle gadgets or Facebook applications.

- Robots: Robots are an automated participant within a wave. They can talk with users and interact with waves. They can provide information from outside sources (i.e. Twitter) or they can check content within a wave and perform actions based on them (i.e. provide you a stock quote if a stock name is mentioned).

- Embeded Wave: An embeded wave is a way to take a Google Wave and the conversation within it and place it on your website. Users could use this as a chatroom, as a way to contact you, or for something more.

Wave Gadgets

A Wave Gadget is one of two types of Google Wave extensions. Gadgets are fully-functional applications. According to Google, gadgets are primarily for changing the look and feel of waves, although this seems to only scratch the surface of the potential of a wave gadget.

First: almost any iGoogle or OpenSocial gadget can run within Google Wave. That means thousands of applications that have been already created will work in Google Wave. Second: a gadget built within Google Wave can take advantage of live interaction with multiple users. This means something like a live online game with active participation from all users. In that way, it has similarities to Facebook or MySpace applications, which take advantage of your friend network to make games, quizzes, and applications more meaningufl and useful.

Gadgets are specific to individual waves, rather than to specific users. Thus, it’s not like having a Facebook app on your profile – the gadget belongs to everyone within the wave. They also do not have titles, to better integrate with the actual conversation. Some of the gadgets already built include a Sudoku gadget, Bidder (which turns your wave into an auction), and Maps (which allows for collaboration on a Google Map).

For a more technical explanation, be sure to check out Google’s Wave Gadgets Tutorial.

Wave Robots

Robots are the other type of Google Wave extension. Robots are like having another person within a Google Wave conversation, except that they’re automated. They’re a lot like the old IM bots of the past, although far more robust. Robots can modify information in waves, interact with users, communicate with others waves, and pull information from outside sources.

Because it acts like a user, you can define its behavior based on what happens in the chat. You could build one as simple as “change the word dog to the word cat” or one as complex as a fully-functional debugger. We’ll probably start seeming some very advanced robots in the near future.

Some of the robots already in service include Debuggy (an in-wave debugger), Stocky (which pulls stock prices based on stock quote mentions), and Tweety (the Twave robot, which displays tweets inside of a wave).

A more advanced explanation is available at Google’s Wave Robots Overview. We also have an inside look at Google Wave extensions and robots.

Wave Embeds

Wave embeds are a little more complex than embedding a YouTube video onto your blog, yet in the end, that’s really what Google Wave Embeds are: a way to take Google Waves onto a third party website. Embedded Waves support many of the functions of the actual Google Wave client, including dragging-and-dropping files.

While the Wave Embeds is still very early stage, Google has already built two: YouTube Playlist Discuss and Multiple Extensions Embed. The former allows you to discuss a YouTube video via a wave and the latter allows for interaction with multiple waves on the same page.

One possibility: Google Wave Embeds may be a real-time replacement to static comments. If Google perfects wave embeds, you could even see YouTube.com comments replaced with waves, although it is way too early to make any calls on the potential of this.

Google’s Wave Embed Developer’s Guide has more advanced information embedding waves

Akki regrets doing Blue

2009-10-24T22:45:00.000-07:00

It took him three months to accept that Kambakkht Ishq was a bad film but it took just a week for Akshay to regret doing Blue.

While Blue did have a good opening considering the hype created around the film, critics and audiences panned the film outright. It wasn’t worth all the hype and had several loopholes. Other than the soulful music, Blue had nothing to boast about. However, what’s most surprising is Akshay, who had high hopes from the film, commented on the numerous bad reviews in only a week's time, saying to the press, ‘It hurts to hear negative reviews about a film but, yes, Blue lacked soul. I did the film simply for the action.’ Still, what’s surprising is that pretty much most of the action sequences were carried out by stuntmen in the film and it was clearly visible when Akki would get switched with the stuntman, so what action is he talking about in the first place?

An industry source adds, “Akshay is always known to have pulled out the faults of his flop films, and he did so earlier with Tasveer 8*10 as well. Akshay had said that films such as these with no song and dance hardly work and that his fans would have been disappointed watching him in a serious role. This, however, didn’t go down too well with the producers of the film, who dissed him publicly about him being no superstar but a media-created one. Even after Kambakkht Ishq, for which he had a lavish success party, he went on to agree about the film being vulgar and mindless. Blue, for which Akshay was battling for the lead hero status along with having several tiffs with Sanjay, left him red-faced when Sanjay was laughing all the way to the BO with All The Best, which is surprisingly doing well in theatres. Akki was desperately waiting for a hit after the spate of flops, and considering that his upcoming films don’t show much promise as well, everyone’s advising him to make smart decisions and soon.”

Anthony D’souza himself agreed with StarBoxOffice, saying, “Yes, there were certain loopholes, which every director notices later on. However, it’s a part and parcel of filmmaking, and it only helps one to grow.” He, however, had no regrets in doing the film and is planning another action film with Akshay again. We won't be surprised if Akshay signs it, as he’s also doing Patiala House with Nikhil Advani, who made the disastrous Chandni Chowk to China with him. If only Akshay would bring a change in the choice of his films rather than crying over split milk all the time!

(source : starboxoffice )

Shah Rukh is a friend in (k)need

2009-10-11T07:10:00.001-07:00

Shah Rukh Khan played a hero in real life recently when he helped out a junior artiste to stand on his feet, literally. The man needed a costly knee-cap surgery on both his legs and Shah Rukh paid the entire expense of the operation.

A source from the workers body FWICE says, "The young man was going through a lot of trouble. It is a very costly operation running into lakhs and he did not have the money to do it. His family approached a lot of people he has worked with, including Shah Rukh. Shah Rukh was really moved when he heard this man's story and the kind of difficulties he was going through. He was bed-ridden for months without being able to move or do any kind of work."

The insider adds, "Shah Rukh immediately swung into action. He got hold of doctors and also got the man admitted to a hospital. The man got operated and all the expenses were borne by Shah Rukh. We never thought he would be able to stand up. He thanked Shah Rukh as soon as he started walking."

After a little bit of probing we found out that Farah Khan was with Shah Rukh when this person went to thank him. She said, "This man came running to Shah Rukh and fell on his feet. When I asked him what the matter was, he said that Shah Rukh had helped him get back on his feet again. Shah Rukh is a silent helper and we don't even know how many good deeds he does to help others."

Abdul Azeez Khan , Kavalande

2009-10-07T11:11:00.000-07:00

http://wikimapia.org/17375110/Abdul-Azeez-Khan

My Home - Kavalande

2009-09-15T12:56:00.000-07:00

My Home Place

Kavalande

10 record-breaking achievements in tech

2009-08-20T12:13:00.000-07:00

The fastest supercomputer in the world is part of the Roadrunner project at the Los Alamos National Lab in Los Alamos, New Mexico

Fastest runner, tallest building, fattest man – who cares about any of that when there are world records of technology just waiting to be broken?

Some of these records have stood for eons, a few are broken just about every year.

The greatest tech advancements are all about faster speeds and higher capacities, proof that the highest accomplishments of man are often silicon-based.

1. Largest wireless internet provider
DoCoMo in Japan, with 45 million subscribers
Guinness World Record: Yes, in 2006

In 2006, DoCoMO in Japan set – and has kept – the record for the largest deployment of wireless internet with 45 million subscribers. The service is called i-Mode, and is similar to the US Sprint closed network system that enables users to access a set number of web sites and check their usage plans.

2. internet land speed record
Record stands at 7.67 Gbps
Guinness World Record: No

This record, set in 2007 by the University of Tokyo, is interesting because it essentially maxed out the limit of a 10 Gbps connection, running at a real-world speed of 7.67 Gbps. The test requires that the participants use standard TCP/IP and a single IP address sent to another single IP address, so no clusters are involved. Since there are no higher 40Gbps network interface controller cards available yet, the speed test is essentially on hold until new hardware is available.

3. Largest virtualization deployment
Userful and ThinNetworks' 356,800 thin clients in Brazil
Guinness World Record: No

At just £30 ($50) per seat, the Userful and ThinNetworks deployment of 356,800 clients – which will be used for rural schools in Brazil this year – involves 18,750 workstations running thousands of desktop instances. Each workstation will run ten different clients in a classroom setting, with ten students using a screen, keyboard and mouse connected to a single thin PC. The deployment will save about 170,000 tons of CO2 emissions as well, and reduce power consumption by about 80 per cent. Impressive.

4. Most viewed internet concert
Madonna webcast on MSN in 2000 with 11 million virtual attendees
Guinness World Record: Yes

Way back in 2000, an online concert for Madonna attracted 11 million simultaneous visitors, even if it didn't attract a hugely positive reaction. The video ran on both MSN.com and MSN.co.uk. Today, online concerts are rare – they tend to cause server outages, congestion problems with ISPs, and mean a lot of frustration for fans.

5. Fastest desktop processor
Intel Core i7
Guinness World Record: No

The current record-holder for fastest processor is the relatively new Intel Core i7, running at 3.20 GHz and setting a record score of 117 in the SPECint_base_rate2006 test. It's the first CPU to perform better than a score of 100, and is ranked about 40 per cent faster than previous Intel processors. It's also worth mentioning that AMD broke a world record for the fastest overclocked CPU, with the Phenom II X4 running at 6.5GHz, cooled by liquid nitrogen and liquid helium.

6. Largest data warehouse
Sybase IQ analytics server
Guinness World Record: Yes, in 2008

The largest data warehouse in the world is the Sybase IQ analytics server running on a Sun SPARC Enterprise M9000, which holds one petabyte of input data. The data warehouse fits into just three server cabinets and emits about 500 tons of CO2 per year, compared to conventional data warehouses, which fit in about 30 cabinets and emit 5,000 tons of CO2. The data warehouse holds six trillion rows of transitional data and 185 million documents.

7. Highest capacity media switch
The Steelbox, used for surveillance, supports 512 simultaneous video feeds.
Guinness World Record: No

The Steelbox Digital Matrix Storage Switch 3000 can handle 512 simultaneous MPEG-4 video feeds at 1.5Gbps each – the device is used for video surveillance. The appliance, which fits in a data center cabinet, adjusts load balances automatically to make sure each stream stays smooth, handles multiple codecs, and can automatically change storage locations if a video feed taxes the appliance.

8. Fastest supercomputer
IBM Roadrunner
Guinness World Record: No

The fastest supercomputer in the world is part of the IBM Roadrunner project at the Los Alamos National Lab in Los Alamos, New Mexico. The supercomputer runs at 1.105 petaflops, or 444.9 megaflops per watt. For those keeping track of the top ten list, the Dawn supercomputer that went online this year at the Lawrence Livermore National Lab in Livermore, California, debuted at the ninth position. When the 20-petaflop supercomputer at Livermore goes online in 2012 it will likely take the number one spot. To understand how fast a petaflop is: it's the equivalent of having every human on the planet perform 150,000 calculations every second. At 20 petaflops, each human would do 3 million calculations.

9. Lightest mobile phone in the world
Modu (modumobile.com)
Guinness World Record: No

Forget the iPhone, which weighs a back-breaking 135 grams. The Moduphone weighs just 40 grams and measures only 72.1 mm (2.8 inches) x 37.6 mm (1.4 inches) x 7.8 mm – making it the world's smallest mobile phone as well. The device has 2GB of built-in flash memory and a 1.3-inch screen.

10. Largest communications satellite
TerreStar-1 satellite
Guinness World Record: Under review

Google to Launch a New Google Search Engine

2009-08-11T09:15:00.000-07:00

Google has a giant target on its back. Microsoft has been on a spending and deal-making spree to grow Bing , recently signing a huge search deal with Yahoo. And with Bing starting to steal some market share from Google, it’s proving to be a formidable opponent. Oh, and now you can’t count out Facebook either, which just launched a new realtime search engine.

Google’s not taking any of this lying down. Secretly, they’ve been working on a new project: the next generation of Google Search. This isn’t just some minor upgrade, but an entire new infrastructure for the world’s largest search engine. In other words: it’s a new version of Google.

Intel Core i5 750 CPU

2009-08-11T01:05:00.000-07:00

Intel may launch Nehalem architecture based Intel Core i7 750 and 850 processors on September 6, according to rumors doing the rounds. Codenamed Lynnfield, the images of upcoming Intel Core i5 750 were spotted on the web.
Intel Core i5 750 is quad-core processor with clock speed of 2.66GHz and 8MB L3 cache. This Core i5 CPU is actually based on Nehalem Core i7 design but the third memory channel has been removed and QuickPath Interconnect will be replaced by Direct Media Interface.

Some insiders in the motherboard manufacturing companies said that the 2.66GHz Intel Core i5 750 can be overclocked to 3.2GHz. This Core i5 750 CPU will support DDR3 1333/1066 memory and Thermal Design Power rating of 95 Watts. The Core i5 750 processors are expected to retail for $196 per CPU in a thousand CPU tray. We hope Intel will officially announce the release of these new Core i5 processors in coming months.

America Banks To Allow Check Deposits by iPhone

2009-08-10T20:53:00.000-07:00

The American banks will soon let allow people to deposit a check with your iPhone. Many banks have iPhone apps that allow online banking, but USAA, from its single branch in San Antonio, will be the first to dispatch with the decidedly old-school check.

Using the application, customers photograph the front and back of the check with the iPhone’s camera. Hit send and the check is whisked off into the clearing system. The paper check itself never needs to go to the bank, and you can just tear it up and toss it away (or, for the more paranoid, file it in a safe place). The service will be appear in an update to the already available iPhone app sometime this week. The application will also steer you to your nearest ATM, show you where the nearest car rental joint is and, weirdly, “record accident details to help you file a claim.”

What surprises us is that people still use checks. In Spain, cash is still king, but more and more people use debit cards that work just like checks, only without the dead trees. I almost never see checks, to the extent that when I do spot one being written, I stare and point. The app is free, and available now.

The juice on Shahrukh's My Name is Khan!

2009-08-03T01:32:00.000-07:00

The juice on Shahrukh's My Name is Khan!

Bollywood badshah Shahrukh Khan's latest flick My name is Khan is all set to take over the box office when it releases in 2010 - the gargantuan film has already made Rs 100 crore!

Fox Star studios have snapped up the film's distribution rights for the humongous amount and the film has now attained the status of being the hottest, most widely released Bollywood flick ever. No other movie in the history of Bollywood has been purchased at this high an amount. My name is Khan more or less obliterates last year's hurricane that was Ghajini.

Aamir Khan's Ghajini was purchased for Rs 90 crore, and while many thought those numbers would be unbroken for years to come, King Khan went the whole Rs 100 crore hog with My name is Khan. The film is produced by SRK's Red Chillies Films, but here's the juice - My name is Khan's minuscule budget was an estimated Rs 38 crore; so SRK and the rest of the cast and crew have made more than twice the money already!

Shahrukh Khan is a bonafide crowd puller - any movie producer is more than safe to have SRK as the film's lead as the film is bound to make at least twice the production budget. Just look at what happened to 'Don', 'Om Shanti Om' and last years 'Rab ne bana di jodi' - they were all box office Godzillas. Even the poorly reviewed 'Rab ne' made three times it's budget just because it starred the mega showman SRK.

Fox Star's Rs 100 crore buyout of My name is Khan proves that Hollywood is gathering more and more interest in Bollywood flicks, and studios are not afraid for a quick cash-in. And who better to set the transition in motion than King Khan? According to a certain film critic, "SRK is a colossal global entity who inspires confidence in buyers and excitement among the audience". I do not dare disagree.

My name is Khan's director Karan Johar was hunting for potential distributors at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival. He will bring the finished product to Cannes next year, quite like he did with his last directorial venture 'Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna'. In case you didn't already know My name is Khan reunites one of the most famous Bollywood screen couples after a gap of almost a decade - Shahrukh Khan and Kajol. The buzz is huge, the money is monstrous, the stars are the absolute A-list; unless it turns out to be like KANK, My name is Khan should certainly beat Ghajini for the all-time Box office top spot.

By: Mihir Fadnavis | India.com

Shahrukh's private life to be exposed

2009-07-31T08:30:00.000-07:00

The cameras will capture his private life and reveal it to the world

We all know of the superstar Shahrukh Khan who looks himself in the mirror every morning and proclaims himself as numero uno. We all know how SRK resorts to self-laudatory exclamations in the media in the days leading up to the release of his films. But how many of us know the man behind the superstar. True, many books giving us a peek into SRK’s life have been written. But a picture speaks a thousand words.

Now, in a first of its kind for Indian television, a series is being made in which cameras would follow SRK around and capture his day-to-day life for those interested.

“The idea of the series is both exhilarating and unique as it showcases aspects of my life that have seldom been seen in the public domain,” SRK told a Mumbai tabloid.

The cameras will be on the superstar’s trail for as long as six months. The series will be aired on a lifestyle channel promising a good glimpse into SRK’s private world.

Meanwhile, the superstar has been advised by his doctors to avoid doing any stunts for at least a month more. SRK has yet not recovered from the shoulder surgery he had a few months back. He’s lately been shooting for Karan Johar’s My Name Is Khan and is slated to work out in gym to develop eight-pack-abs for Farah Khan’s film. But given the doc’s advice, he may postpone it for some time.

Computer Hardware Chart

2009-07-19T21:30:00.000-07:00

Now, call him Dr. Shahrukh Khan

2009-07-01T06:59:00.000-07:00

Shahrukh Khan is set to add another feather to his already studded cap with an honorary doctorate from a prestigious university in London.

The Bollywood superstar has been chosen to receive an honorary doctorate in arts and culture from Britain's University of Bedfordshire.

The actor was nominated for the honour by ‘Routes to Roots’, a non-profit charitable organisation that aims to bring people and cultures together across the countries of South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc).

Expressing his gratitude at receiving the honour, SRK said in a statement: “I am delighted that Routes to Roots nominated me for the honorary doctorate in arts and culture from the Bedfordshire University UK and it will be my pleasure to receive it personally on 10th July in London.”

According to a co-founder of ‘Routes To Roots’, Shahrukh was chosen for the doctorate because he “has done immense work for the underprivileged and downtrodden and has always come forward for charities in case of natural disasters.”

Juhi Chawla and Mahesh Bhatt are among the patrons of ‘Routes to Roots’.

'It is the software equivalent of bijli-sadak-makan'

2009-06-28T10:57:00.000-07:00

A day after the government announced that Nandan Nilekani would head the Unique Identity Authority of India, Mr Nilekani said he believes the ID

More Pictures

project can have a transformational impact on India. It is the software equivalent for bijli, sadak and makan, he told ET NOW in an exclusive interview. Excerpts:

How are you feeling about moving out of Infosys, though of course your colleagues must be sad to let you go?

Actually, it is a gut-wrenching decision for me to leave Infosys after 30 years. But at the same time, this was an offer I couldn't refuse because I think if this project is done properly, it can have a transformational impact on India's economy and society and therefore, I have written a whole chapter on this in my book. So, I thought I should give it a shot.

How do you see the scope of this project? What will you be doing?

I think these are early days yet, but there are a few things beginning to coalesce in our thinking. One is you need to have a large single online database which has the basic records of all Indian residents, which adds up to over a billion records.

But ultimately, when we fill it up, part of that will be information about the person's name, his number, date of birth and so forth, and part of it will be the biometrics information... his fingerprints and maybe, a facial picture. There are two big issues here. One is enrolment and the other is authentication.

So, enrolment is how we add new people and authentication is how you verify who the person is. So, some elements of the architecture are beginning to fall into place, but we have a lot of work ahead, talking to all the government departments to come out with a standard interoperable way of doing this.

Give us an idea of how you are going to deal with potential conflict situations because of the fact that you are a shareholder in Infosys, and Infosys will be bidding for parts of this project?

I propose to put in place very robust and fool-proof procurement systems and processes which are transparent. I will recuse myself from any process where there is the possibility of conflict. I am even more concerned than you are about propriety.

Give us a sense of just how smart do you think this card will become?

Well, you know what I am really giving. What this body is giving is just the enrolment and authentication of individuals. That is a service that it will offer. Now, an individual department that is using this authentication system has to take its own business rules based on authentication.

So, this system is not going to do that because that will make it too complicated. That is the obligation of the agency which will use my authentication service.

You say in your book and I quote... 'Acknowledging the existence of every single citizen automatically compels the state to improve the quality of services and immediately give the citizen better access'. Now in terms of access, what is your priority here? Financial sector access? Is that the top theme here with the unique ID project delivering subsidies, targeting them better, making sure they reach the right person. Is that the priority?

I see this as dramatically improving access because we can have better targeting of subsidies with this access. We can have conditional cash transfers and other direct benefit schemes.

We can improve the quality of our security and, as Raghuram Rajan said in his report, it is an instrument of financial inclusion because we then start creating around this the credit history and financial condition of the poor to aid their access to loans, which will improve financial inclusion of the poor. To me, this is pro-poor because it will empower people and give them an identity vis-à-vis the government.

How will you address issues about loss of

privacy?

Many such initiatives in the western countries have floundered on the issues of privacy, Big Brother and all those other concerns. We will have to have a parallel track which will have to look at the legal and institutional framework and make sure that the citizens have their privacy and security. It is a balancing act.

We have to show the benefit of what we're doing for the people and create the necessary checks and balances. That's one more track I will have in this plan.

We are given to understand that you have already worked on a preliminary draft and how it is going to pan out. Can you share some of those details?

What I've done right now is a clean room approach which means I am thinking of it without seeing what is happening in the real world. I am visualising how it will work in an ideal world. As I meet actual implementation partners, we will resize that for the real world. It is a little premature to talk about it.

We can already see magazine covers saying India gets its chief information officer. So, how do you feel about that?

I am just doing one job. It's to make sure every Indian gets an ID.

The software industry has always faced this criticism that it is slightly parasitical in nature because it just keeps lobbying the government for more tax concessions, STPI benefits, etc. Politicians have come and accused you of being land grabbers and amid all this, you turn up and make a significant contribution to civil society. So, is it time for the critics to shut up?

I really don't want to comment on the noise in the system. The IT sector's contribution to India is understated. What NSD and NSDL have done on the national demat trading system is a remarkable achievement. What TCS has done on the e-governance system is very remarkable.

What Wipro has done in security and Infosys has done in banking is also exemplary. Financial technology has built modern commodity exchanges. There's a lot of good work done by the IT industry. They're getting a bit of a bad name if you accuse them of not doing these things.

Now that the outsourcing model seems to be in danger, maybe not in the short run, but perhaps in the long run when the rupee touches, lets say

20-25 (to the dollar), then do you think that projects such as these are going to create a robust domestic market for Indian software companies?

Clearly, India has a huge need for transformation solutions using technology. This particular project is one of the core foundational projects. To me, what is more important is the enabling infrastructure that we will create for enrolment and authentication of Indian citizens. It will then become a service that other people can use and build other applications. I see it as building infrastructure. It is the software equivalent of bijli, sadak, makan.

The reason I asked you is because there could be concerns about how soon it would be before you get de-spirited with the way babudom functions. It doesn’t exactly function like Infosys.

My office right now is me and my laptop. I realise I am changing worlds. I am going in with eyes open. I am enthused by the commitment and support shown by the prime minister. He has been extremely gracious and kind. Everybody I’ve met in the government has been very positive. The Cabinet secretary has been very supportive. I will give it my shot. I do hope that I will be able to succeed.

When the prime minister called you, what did he say that made it so compelling for you?

I knew from the work I had done on my book that this was a transformational opportunity. I knew that from my previous thinking of the issue. And this is the chance to take this project with a clean slate. It is a start-up in some sense. And over the next few years, to create the identity of millions of Indians, that's an opportunity you cannot refuse.

Have you started thinking about what you are going to do about the illegal aliens? Are they going to be given the same card, different card or no card?

This card is meant for the residents of India. I have to talk to the home ministry about it. It is very premature to talk about it now.

Should India now look forward to unique ID cards?

2009-06-28T10:55:00.001-07:00

In his book Imagining India: Ideas for the New Century, Nandan Nilekani, co-founder of Infosys, talks about how the future of India depends not just on simple economic growth, but also on reforms and innovations in all sectors of public life.

Today, he has the rank equivalent to that of an Indian Cabinet Minister to put many innovative ideas to practice.

A month after forming the new government, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has proved that he means business. Yesterday, his government announced that Nilekani would take over as chairman of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI).

Once implemented, the ambitious unique identification (UID) project would ensure each one of India's over 1.1 billion people have a unique biometric identity card.

"This demonstrates the commitment of the UPA government to fast-track the implementation of their election manifesto, which had UID as a key project," Som Mittal, president of software body Nasscom, said yesterday.

Nilekani has since resigned as co-chairman of Infosys, and was reportedly chosen by the PM himself.

Estimated to be worth nearly US$4 billion, the UID project will eventually become the basis of the Citizens Smart Card Project, recommended by the Second Administrative Reforms Commission, which would enable citizens to avail of subsidies on food, energy, education, etc.

The appointment of Nilekani has a lot of bearing on the Indian IT industry. Here are some of my thoughts:

• By appointing Nilekani, the government has signaled that public-private partnerships may well be the name of the game (at least, insofar as e-government projects are concerned).
• With Nilekani as its ambassador, the IT industry (and citizens) will look forward to speedier action on this project and smoother implementation. This should do a lot of good to the image of Indian IT.
• With Nilekani at the helm, India (in all probability) should have a state-of-the-art unique identification card program in place.
• This is a very critical project for India. It has significant transformational capabilities. If implemented soon and competently, this project can change the face of the country--by bringing about higher efficiencies and transparency, and reducing corruption (the biggest evil gripping Indian society today).
• This project can help reduce poverty by targeting schemes and subsidies toward those who really need it.
• The UID project will provide a huge database for planners to launch new schemes that can tackle several problems facing the country.
• If implemented properly, the UID can also bolster the country's security issues and curb terrorism and other threats to national security.

I think all Indians should now look forward to their unique ID cards and to days when we wouldn't have to stand in long queues, bribe officials and pay touts to get our work done. I hope it's not too early to imagine that India! Or is it, Mr. Nilekani?

source : zdnetasia

What Nilekani, and the new ID system, will do

2009-06-28T10:49:00.000-07:00

The Unique Identification Authority of India, to be headed by Nandan Nilekani -- who has decided to step down from the board of Infosys Technologies to head this body -- will have the responsibility to lay down plans and policies to implement the Unique Identity card scheme and shall own and operate the UID database.

The authority was notified on January 28 this year as an attached office under the aegis of the Planning Commission with an initial core team of 115 officials and staff. The scheme will be implemented in three years.

The UID project, however, has been in the offing for over six years.

For instance, in 2008, the government implemented a pilot project for a 'multi-purpose national identity card' in 13 districts of 12 states and one Union Territory wherein more than 1.2 million identity cards were issued to people above 18 years of age. Besides, to facilitate the project, Section 14A was inserted in the Citizenship Act, 1955 to issue a national identity card to every citizen of the country.

The MNIC project was initiated under the Vajpayee-led NDA government and continued by the current UPA government under Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.

The necessity for a centrally-issued ID was accentuated by the growing problems of illegal immigrants in various parts of the country. However, the events of November 26 in Mumbai accelerated the setting up of the UIDAI.

The body was set up on January 27, 2009. The initial phase of the project is expected to cover nine states and four Union Territories.

The UID will be issued to people living in the coastal villages of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa and West Bengal. The Union Territories of Dadar and Nagar Haveli, Lakshadweep, Puducherry and Andaman & Nicobar Islands shall also be covered in this first phase expected to deliver the identity cards by early 2010.

The government has earmarked Rs 100 crore (Rs 1 billion) in the interim budget to kickstart the UID project. This pilot is expected to be on the lines of the social security number in the US and will help in identifying and providing better services to below-the-poverty line residents.

Industry estimates indicate the entire project will be worth at least Rs 10,000 crore (Rs 100 billion). It's a transformational project for the country as it will overlay many underlying projects, creating huge efficiencies for the country leading to enhanced governance and reduced costs.

The project envisages assigning a unique identification number to each resident in the country to eliminate the need for multiple identification mechanisms.

Moreover, the project will eventually become the underpinning of the Citizens Smart Card Project, which will enable citizens to avail subsidies on food, energy, education, etc, depending on their entitlements, according to the 11th report of the Second Administrative Reforms Commission.

The unique ID will require creation of a database that links an individual to unique identifier that remains constant over his lifespan, like parentage, date and place of birth. The card automatically gets activated as a voter identity card at the age of 18.

The identification will act as a check against illegal immigration into the country as it is a serious threat to national security. The project lays special focus on the border areas of the country with illegal immigration in mind.

Almost all the firms with an India focus will be eyeing this deal -- players like TCS [Get Quote], Infosys [Get Quote], Wipro [Get Quote], HCL Technologies [Get Quote], along with smaller players like Spanco, Bartronics, Gemini Traze and NXP Semiconductors.

All about MNIC

The 'Multi-purpose National Identity Card' is a smartcard with 16KB of memory, designed to be in line with specifications laid out in ISO/IEC 7816 and Smart Card Operating System for Transport Applications. The cards are designed to retain data for at least 10 years.

The identity card has a microprocessor chip (imported) with a memory of 16 KB which is a secure card. Besides having several physical features in the design of the card, it is the cyber security using 'asymmetric key cryptography' and 'symmetric key cryptography' that has made the card secure against tampering and cloning.

The National Informatics Centre has made a major contribution towards developing the processes for database management and smartcard technology.

"A 16KB card will not hold much if the scope of data in the smartcard is humungous. An ideal memory would be around 64KB, which will help the government make the card have enough space to accommodate all service links," said Niju V, deputy director (automation and electronics), Frost & Sullivan.

Nevertheless, the project is certainly huge. Each card alone (the plastic and micro-controller chip) would cost around Rs 30. But if you add applications and other features, the cost almost doubles since it involves systems integration by IT companies, which accounts for a major part of the card's cost.

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Nilekani quits Infosys to head Unique ID project

2009-06-25T10:52:00.000-07:00

New Delhi (PTI): Infosys Technologies Co-Chairman Nandan Nilekani today stepped down from the board of the company after he was appointed head of a project to provide a Unique Identification Number to county's citizens.

Mr Nilekani was handpicked by the Government to head UID Authority of India (UIDAI). The Authority, under the aegis of the Planning Commission, is aimed at providing a unique identity to the targeted population of the Government's flagship schemes like the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyaan and Bharat Nirman.

As Chairman of the body, Mr Nilekani will have the rank and status of a Cabinet minister.

"The Authority shall have the responsibilities to lay down plans and policies to implement the Unique Identification Scheme, shall own and operate the Unique Identification number database and be responsible for its updation and maintenance on an ongoing basis," I& B Minister Ambika Soni told reporters here.

"We are glad that an extraordinary individual like Nandan has got an opportunity to add value to India through this position. As a company that has always put the interest of society ahead of itself, Infosys will accept his absence with a sense of duty to a larger cause," Infosys Chairman and Mentor N R Narayana Murthy said.

Mr Nilekani's resignation would be effective from July 9

Source : Hindu

Mullahs victimise SRK with fatwa

2009-06-23T07:39:00.000-07:00

A Mumbai-based businessmen has, on the basis of an interview published in a magazine, filed a case claiming that SRK had said things derogatory to Islam's prophet. The magazine has since apologised and corroborated Shah Rukh's statement that it was at fault.

However, this has not stopped the fatwas from being pronounced. After a police case, Khan faces a series of fatwas from Maulvis in Uttar Pradesh's Bareilly, who have apostatised him and have threatened to have his marriage to Gauri annulled. "It is a publicity stunt from these clergymen," said one cleric, "Nobody can be condemned to punishment on the basis of hearsay."

"If this was someone else other than Shah Rukh, they would not bother," said Shams-ur-Rahman Usmani, a cleric from Deoband. "This is a good way for Mullahsto get themselves on TV channels," said Usmani, "What they are doing is un-Islamic and it is victimisation of a good man who is not only a good citizen but has always shown his respect to religion."
The magazine that is causing Khan trouble is has alleged that Shah Rukh Khan is Time n Style.

Over the weekend, Shah Rukh has left no stone unturned to clarify that the comment was a mistake on the part of the reporter or a "writing error". He said that he had named Prophet Mohammad the greatest, most impressive personalities in history. SRK said that as a Muslim, it is his most important agenda to stand up for the tenets of Islam. He thinks Prophet Mohammad is the most important positive figure in history and Islam. The magazine also published a corrigendum on Thursday accepting the error.

IPL 2009 Profit

2009-06-11T23:43:00.000-07:00

Profit for franchisees

Revenue	Rajasthan Royals	Chennai SuperKings	Kolkata Knight Riders	Kings XI Punjab	Delhi DareDevils	Mumbai Indians	Royal Challengers Bangalore	Deccan Chargers Hyderabad
Broadcasting	67.5	67.5	67.5	67.5	67.5	67.5	67.5	67.5
Sponsorships	24	24	24	24	24	24	24	24
Other Income	14.2	18.5	18.9	14.3	14.7	14	13.5	13.5
Prize Money	0.7	1.2	0.4	0.8	1.2	0.5	2.25	4.5
Total	106.4	111.2	110.8	106.6	107.4	106	107.25	109.5

Expenses	Rajasthan Royals	Chennai SuperKings	Kolkata Knight Riders	Kings XI Punjab	Delhi DareDevils	Mumbai Indians	Royal Challengers Bangalore	Deccan Chargers Hyderabad
Franchisee Fees	30.8	41.9	34.5	35	38.6	51.5	51.6	49.2
Salaries	20	20	20	20	20	20	20	20
Other Expenses	20.5	27.5	30.5	25.5	25.5	27.5	27.5	25.5
Total	71.3	89.4	85	80.5	84.1	99	99.1	94.7

Profit	35.1	21.8	25.8	26.1	23.3	7	8.15	14.8

All figures are in Rs. Crore
Other incomes include gate receipts, in-stadia advertising, merchandise sales, and media tie-ups
Other expenses include stadia fees, travel, stay cost and team promotion
Winners got Rs. 4.8 crore, runner ups got Rs. 2.4 crore

Had tournament been played in india, profit could have been even more as the matches played in Indian stadiums could have generated heigher revenue from ticket sales. Profit was also reduced due to shifting of tournament from India to South Africa which added cost of shifting players, staff etc.

Profit for BCCI

Main income is TV rights for 10 years starting from 2008 sold to WSG (World Sports Group) / Sony for US $1.64 billion (Indian Rs 8,200 crore). Earlier contract was for US $918 million (Indian Rs 4,200 crore). However due to inclusion of BigDTH to show the matches as well the contract was renegotiated. Now Sony will pay Rs 670 crore per year for first four years and Rs. 1,100 crore per year for next five years. Before renegotiation of contract (contract of Indian Rs 4,200 crore) it was Rs. 280 crore/year for first five years and Rs 540 crore for next five years.

Profit for Multy Screen Media (formerly known as Sony Entertainment Television)

IPL Advertisement tariff Rs 4 lakh to 5 lakh / 10 seconds. (It was Rs 2 lakh to 3 lakh / 10 seconds in 2008). Sony has said to be earned above of Rs 400 crore this year as advertisement revenue which was about Rs. 275 crore last year.

Source: IIFL Research

SRK gifts a flat in Bandra as wedding gift to his bodygaurd Yaseen

2009-06-11T23:25:00.000-07:00

Shah Rukh Khan's bodyguard Yaseen Khan is getting married. And as a wedding gift, it is learnt, the actor is presenting him with a flat in Bandra!

Presently, Yaseen lives in Mannat. Realising that he'd need a place of his own after he marries, King Khan thought a house would be the best buy. Moreover, he'd like him to stay close to Mannat. As a result, it had to be Bandra for the bodyguard too!

Says a source, "Ever since he began working with SRK over a decade ago, he has been travelling with the actor wherever he goes, including his overseas shoots. But a single guy living under his roof is quite different from someone who has a wife and wants to start a family. And so,when he told SRK that he was tying the knot, it was clear to both that he'd need a new place. That's when SRK decided to present his most trusted guy a wedding gift he would remember."

On a short visit home

Yaseen, who hails from a small village in Karnataka, will tie the knot with a girl his mother has selected. He is presently on a short visit to his hometown and will join SRK who is shooting for My Name Is Khan in the US later. He says, "I have come home to complete some personal work." Does that spell his wedding planning? Yaseen laughs, "I didn't know my decision to marry would create so much buzz."

Date pushed back

He, however, admits, "Yes, I will be getting married. In fact, it was to happen soon but now I have pushed it back to a later date. I have to go to the US first." The bodyguard is not too keen to divulge details about his wedding. "That's too personal till everything is done, I don't want to say anything."

About SRK's gift he maintains, "He is my boss. And boss hamesha kuch achchha hi dete hai. I don't want to say anything more on this front."

MS Project 2003

2009-05-13T13:24:00.000-07:00

Microsoft Project (or MSP) is a project management software program developed and sold by Microsoft which is designed to assist project managers in developing plans, assigning resources to tasks, tracking progress, managing budgets and analyzing workloads. The first version of Microsoft Project was released for DOS in 1984 by a company working for Microsoft. Microsoft bought all rights to the software in 1985 and released version 2. Version 3 for DOS was released in 1986. Version 4 for DOS was the final DOS version, released in 1986. The first Windows version was released in 1990, and was labelled version 1 for Windows. An interesting thing to note is that the first version for DOS introduced the concept of link lines (dependency lines) between tasks in the Gantt chart.

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Microsoft Project Series, cbt nuggets Video Training

2009-05-13T12:52:00.000-07:00

Managing resources can be one of the toughest elements of Project Management.

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The real strength of MS Project is that it helps you react to changes when they happen, preventing headaches later on in your project. The Microsoft Project Series teaches you how to use it to do just that.Maximize your MS Project knowledge for easier Project ManagementIn this series you'll learn how to do all the fundamental tasks of setting up and managing your projects using MS Project. You'll learn how to create and assign tasks, create resources, manage costs, and create dependencies. You'll learn how to organize and finalize your project plan, plus track time through the project's execution. You'll learn how to manage the project in MS Project, and how to adjust it when things don't go as planned. Also, you'll learn how you can make MS Project do your earned value management for you, and how you can manage resources effectively through resource pooling. And, so you can report your project's progress to your managers and your project team, you'll learn about all the reporting and report sharing functionalities MS Project provides.Once you have a comprehensive understanding of using MS Project, Project Management will become an easier process. More things will be automated. Organization is easier. And reacting to changes in your project will be a snap.PrerequisitesThe Microsoft Project Series builds on your fundamental Project Management knowledge, by showing you how to use the primary tool used by Project Managers today. It assumes you have at least a working level of Project Management knowledge, as taught in our Project+ series. It also compliments the Project Management Professional series, for advanced Project Management skills.

The Microsoft Project Series contains these videos:-

Microsoft Project Overview (free video)

Using the Project Guide

Setting up MS Project

Setting up a Project

Creating Tasks

Advanced Task Options

Creating Resource

Managing Costs

Creating Dependencies

Organizing the Plan

Finalizing the Plan

Tracking Time

Managing the Project

Adjusting the Plan

Earned Value Management

Using Resource Pools

Creating Views

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Sharing Information with MS Office

Publishing Plan ResultsAll trademarks and copyrights are the property of their respective holders.

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Shah Rukh, Dhoni top brand pushes on TV

2009-05-13T11:48:00.000-07:00

Shah Rukh Khan’s name sells not only in Bollywood but also on television. The latest data from TAM Media Research reveal he endorsed the highest number of brands during 2008 on television, closely followed by India’s cricket captain, MS Dhoni.

He currently endorses 39 brands, including Pepsi, Hyundai, Airtel, Videocon, Sun Feast, Tag Heuer, Dish TV and Mayur Suitings. And, gets Rs 1-1.5 crore to be present at any function in India, according to event management agencies.
The brand endorsement business is around Rs 1,000 crore, including star appearances and events, according to Manish Porwal, CEO of celebrity management company, Percept Talent Management.

The report says Shah Rukh and Dhoni moved up in the ranking of celebrities endorsing products on TV during 2008, as compared with 2006. Amitabh Bachchan, Shweta Tiwari (Prerna) and Sachin Tendulkar, who were at the first, third and fifth place in 2006, respectively, were not among the top five in 2008.
Shah Rukh's most recent endorsement was with Linc Pen, one of the largest players in the branded pen industry, which appointed him its ‘brand ambassador’. Linc Pen had never opted till now for a celebrity brand ambassador to endorse its products. Says Deepak Jalan, Managing Director: “Shah Rukh Khan is someone who personifies style, entertainment and popularity and these values resonate perfectly with our brand attributes. Moreover, Shah Rukh cuts across age groups and demographics and appeals to a universal audience, just like our products, and was therefore a natural fit.”
Shah Rukh endorses Nokia handphones. D Shivakumar, Vice President (Markets), Nokia India, says the company is planning to bundle exclusive content featuring him for handsets sold in India. Nokia has bundled the full length ‘Om Shanti Om’ movie in the Nokia N96. It will look at bundling video clips and music of Shah Rukh Khan movies in the handsets. Khan, on his part, would extend collaboration with Nokia for such possibilities through his production house, Red Chillies Entertainment, he had told Business Standard.

Khan also has Kolkata-based Emami on his list of endorsements. For this, he is reportedly paid Rs 5 crore every year. The company is known for having the largest number of celebrity endorsers, including Madhuri Dixit, Raveena Tandon, Sunny Deol, cricket captain Sourav Ganguly and also Amitabh Bachchan. Shah Rukh’s ad campaigns for Emami include ads for Chyawanprash and some other herbal healthcare products of Emami; the firm gets more than half its revenues from their personal healthcare range.

Emami’s prime catch, however, has been Amitabh Bachchan, its umbrella brand ambassador. Bachchan is reportedly paid Rs 10-12 crore yearly for this endorsement.

Shah Rukh Khan would be paid around Rs 2 cr for a 20-minute performance at the wedding of Mumbai builder Kanti Gowani’s nephew. The actor had reportedly charged Rs 1.5 cr for his number at the wedding of steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal’s daughter.

Sources in GS Entertainment, the event management company handling the Gowani wedding shows, say Shah Rukh can be available, say for three days, for Rs 12 cr. On the other hand according to estimates provided by event management companies.

During 2008, Airtel led the list of the top 10 brands endorsed by celebrities on TV, followed by Pepsi, the report said. “It is natural that the endorsement price is heavily skewed in favour of icons like Aamir, SRK, Akshay Kumar, Sachin Tendulkar and MS Dhoni. These five, on average, get roughly three times what the next 10 get," says Porwal.

Design Expert 7.1

2009-05-12T11:38:00.000-07:00

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Shah Rukh Khan will be back on TV next year - KBC 4.

2009-05-10T11:31:00.000-07:00

With Shah Rukh Khan's Kya Aap Paanchvi Pass Se Tez Hai? on Star Plus ending next month, producer Siddharth Basu of Synergy Communications has begun work on the fourth season of Kaun Banega Crorepati, once again with SRK.

Though Shah Rukh was not so successful with Paanchvi Pass..., he will return next year for the fourth season of KBC 4.

Siddharth Basu has already had a meeting with Shah Rukh who said that his dates are available next year.
Amitabh Bachchan was also a choice but would be roped in for a different show by Star Plus.