Samsung's HMX-E10 camcorder does HD video and sports a 270-degree swiveling lens, while the ST80 camera offers WI-Fi and a 14.2 megapixel resolution.
South Korean electronics giant Samsung has taken the wraps off two new consumer photography products: its HMX-E10 high-definition camcorder and ST80 digital camera. The HMX-E10 features a 270-degree swivel lens that enables users to capture video from almost any angle; meanwhile, the ST80 digital camera offers a 14.2 megapixel resolution and integrated Wi-Fi for easy photo sharing.
First up, the HMX-E10 camcorder captures full HD 1,920 by 1,080 video at 30 frames per second, and can also be used as an eight megapixel still camera. The back of the unit features a 2.7-inch LCD touchscreen display, and the camera features both HDMI output and USB connectivity so users can connect it to any computer without using a USB cable—users can also charge up the camcorder via USB. The HMX-E10 stores video to microSD cards, but perhaps what’s most interesting about it is a 270-degree swivel lens that lets users take video from almost any angle. The unit also comes with Samsung’s intelli-studio video editing and sharing program, and—when connected to the Internet—offers a one-touch upload feature that lets users share video on Web sites and YouTube. Samsung says the HMX-E10 should be available in September with a suggested retail price of $199.99; it’ll be available in white and black versions.
Next up, Samsung is expanding its line of Wi-Fi equipped digital cameras with the 14.2-megapixel ST80. The ST80 features a 3× optical zoom, a 3-inch WQVGA touchscreen display, and the ability to record 720p HD video at 30 frames per second. The camera’s integrated Wi-Fi and Samsung AllShare (DLNA) technology simplify uploading and sharing photos; the camera also feature a number of smart features, including innovating cropping and scene recognition, and comes with an account for mobile hotspot operator Boingo so users can upload their photos from 120,000 Wi-Fi hotspots around the world. Samsung expects to put the ST80 on sale in September for a suggested price of $249.99.
[Poster] Common Passwords You Should Avoid
This poster has a list of top 500 common passwords that you should absolutely avoid using with your online and offline accounts.
A printed version of the password poster is available on Etsy.
Do More with your Browser’s Search Box
The search box is located in the upper right corner of IE and Firefox while Chrome has this thing integrated in the address bar itself. The function is however the same – it offers you a convenient way to search using your favorite search engine.
Other than search, there are some more interesting uses of the search bar as well.
1. Avoid Spelling Mistakes
If you writing an email inside the browser and are unsure about the spelling of some word, you can simply type that misspelled word in the search box.
Google will immediately offer you the correct spelling as a query suggestion that you can copy-paste into your email message.
2. Clean-up Formatting from Copied Text
When copying content from a web page into an email message, you can first paste that text into your browser’s search box and then copy it to the clipboard.
This will automatically convert the rich text into plain text removing all the hyperlinks and other formatting that you don’t want to add to your email message.
3. Correct Grammar Errors
The search box can also help you fix grammatical errors in your sentences.
Say you sometimes get confused between words like ‘affect’ and ‘effect’ or between ‘advise’ and ‘advice.’ In that case, just type the whole sentence in the search box and it should save you from making that silly grammatical error again.
4. Search Box as a Notepad
The search bar can be used like a notepad as it automatically stores all your search queries until you clear them manually.
This is so useful because you can easily save pieces of text in the search bar that you may repeatedly need inside your browser later.
For instance, I have an airway bill number of a package that I can store in the search box by performing a search only once. Later, when I am on the shipping company’s website to track the package status, I can easily retrieve that number by simply typing the first few characters in the search box -- there’s no need for me to hunt for the email that has that tracking number.
5. As your Password Manager
Ever since my Gmail account got hacked, I have switched to a very long and complex password. Now it may be hard for someone to guess that password but it is equally hard for me to type that lengthy string correctly especially when everything in a password field is represented as asterisk characters.
I therefore store this ‘complex password’ in the search box. Whenever I am need my my Google Account credentials, I simply type the first few characters of the password in the search box, the string appears in the drop-down from where I can copy-paste it into the password box. Here’s a demo:
This method saves time but, obviously, it is not recommended for people who work on a shared computer.
The Legal Issues Around Cloud Computing
Cloud Computing can help your business reduce costs as you don’t have to invest in hardware and other physical infrastructure, your data is stored on a secure location and you only pay for what you use – there are no licensing fees associated with cloud computing.
Legal Issues associated with Cloud Computing
That said, there are some important legal issues that must be taken care of before you sign-up with any of the cloud vendors for your business.These issues, discussed below, are more relevant for business owners who are planning to shift to the cloud and may not really matter if you are a consumer who merely uses the cloud for storing emails or office documents.
1. The Physical Location of your Data
1a. Where is your data stored physically?Your data could be stored in any country and you may not even know where the data centre is situated. The ‘physical location’ raises the question of legal governance over the data. The customer must be clear so as to the provisions of the prevailing law in that particular nation.
1b. If a dispute arises, what will be the place of jurisdiction?
In case a conflict arises between the cloud vendor and the customer (you), which country’s court system will settle the dispute?
Say you are a business owner in China and your cloud service provider is based in the US. The vendor will definitely prefer settling the case in in an American court but as a customer, do you have the financial means and resources to get the dispute settled in the jurisdiction of another nation?
2. Responsibility of your Data
2a. What if the data centre is hit by a disaster?It might happen that the vendor’s premises is severely affected due to a disaster. Even the 10-Q filings of Google Inc. with the U.S Securities and Exchange Commission mentions such a risk:
Our systems are vulnerable to damage or interruption from earthquakes, terrorist attacks, floods, fires, power loss, telecommunications failures, computer viruses, computer denial of service attacks, or other attempts to harm our systems.The question is whether you are indemnified by the insurance company for loss of your business or not?
2b. Is there any liability coverage for breach of privacy?
If a privacy breach occurs due to a fault of cloud vendor, is there any liability coverage policy taken up by the vendor? The scope of breach of privacy has widened considerably over the years in the field of cyber insurance. Some insurance carriers offer coverage even for breach of minor information and the customer is compensated on on behalf of the cloud vendor.
2c. What can be done if the data center gets hacked?
Though all cloud vendors try their best to fend off hackers, no security setting is assumed to be foolproof. If the data center gets hacked, can you move against the vendor for claiming lost profits?
3. Intellectual Property Rights
3a. Is your data protected under intellectual property rights?If it happens that the data is your own creation (like photographs, literature, etc), then is it protected under the intellectual property rights of that country? What means do you have if they get infringed?
3b. How secure are trade secrets?
Your data stored in the ‘cloud’ may have trade secrets or privileged information which must be protected under attorney-client relationship. How secure will such information be in hands of the cloud vendor?
Or consider a reverse situation. If you leak out a trade secret of another business entity, how far will your cloud storage provider go to protect your data when they have been summoned to the court with all your stored data, access logs, etc.
3c. Third party access?
The vendor may grant some privileged third parties access to your stored data. The identity of such parties, if any, must be disclosed to the customer. Here, the third party could be a legal authority or even an internal employee. The customer should always be informed before the vendor allows third parties to access the stored data.
To protect the interest of your business, it may therefore be extremely essential that your read the terms and conditions meticulously before signing up for a cloud based services.
If the vendor provides a standard form of contract (which is a general practice), then you must be must be fully aware of all the terms and conditions. It will save you from nasty surprises and you will be financially, mentally and legally prepared to save your business from unfavorable consequences of cloud computing.
The author Nikita Anand is the editor-in-chief of Mighty Laws where she seeks to explain complex legal jargon in simple English. Nikita is currently pursuing a degree in Law from NLIU. Continue Reading...
Should I Install 32 or 64-bit Version of Windows?
Windows 7 comes in two flavors – there’s the x86 32-bit version and the x64 64-bit version. When you buy a Windows 7 DVD, you have the option to install either of these editions so which one should you choose for your computer?
Choose between 32 and 64 bit
First, it depends on the processor that you have on your computer. For instance, if you have a 32 bit processor chip (like Intel’s Pentium or Celeron series), you have no option but to install the 32-bit edition of Windows.However, if your CPU has a 64-bit processor (like Intel’s Core i5 & i7 series or AMD’s Phenom and Athlon range), you have the option to install both 32-bit x86 and the 64-bit x64 version of Windows.
A major advantage with 64-bit is that it supports more RAM (> 4GB) so if you have any of the ‘big’ software applications (like a video editing software), it should run faster on a 64-bit Windows machine provided the RAM is more.
All software programs written for 32-bit version of Windows should work on the 64-bit version of Windows as well though that’s not true for hardware device drivers.
Drivers designed for 32-bit versions of Windows won’t work on computers running 64-bit versions of Windows. So if you have an old printer with a driver for x86 version of Windows, it may or may not be compatible with the 64-bit version of Windows.
Which Windows Version Do I Have?
To determine which version of Windows is currently installed on your computer, click Start, right-click Computer, and then click Properties.- For a 64-bit version operating system, "64-bit Operating System" appears for the system type under System.
- For a 32-bit version operating system, "32-bit Operating System" appears for the system type under System.
Disabling the Touchpad on your Laptop
The touchpad provides full mouse functionality to your laptop but there are instances when you may actually feel more productive without the touchpad.
For instance, if you have attached an external mouse to your laptop, you may not need an alternate input mechanism which is the built-in touchpad.
Sometimes your thumbs or palm may accidentally touch the touchpad while you’re typing and this may inadvertently move your mouse cursor to a different location in the document. If you were not looking at your screen when the pointer jumped, you may end up typing at the wrong place.
How to Turn off the Touch Pad
To avoid running into such situations, it may not be a bad to disable the touchpad at least during the time when you are using a mouse or are typing a long document.Some laptops don’t have dedicated buttons but you can use Function keys (like Fn + F5 on Dell computers) to toggle the state of your touch pad. In the case of HP laptops, you can hold the top-left corner of the touchpad for few seconds and it will disable the touch pad – repeat this to re-activate it.
New laptop computers either have a physical on/off button to easily disable the touch pad or there’s an icon in the system tray that lets you manage the various settings of the touchpad. If you don’t have that icon, you can go to Control Panel –> Mouse Properties –> Touch Pad to enable or disable the touchpad.
The touch pad can also be disabled through the device manager. Type devmgmt.msc in the Windows Run box to start the device manager, expand “Mice and other Pointing devices”, right-click and disable the driver entry that says Touch pad or likewise.
If none of the above solutions work for your brand of laptop, try TouchPad Pal – it’s a free Windows utility that will temporarily disable the touchpad of your laptop as you go into typing mode. The utility runs in the system tray and requires no configuration.
Finally, if you would like to get rid of the touchpad completely, you can consider disabling it through the BIOS itself. The exact path that you need to follow to reach the Pointing Devices section in your BIOS may however vary for different laptops. Continue Reading...
Give your Eyes a Break with the 20-20-20 Rule
If you spend a good part of your day using the computer, the 20-20-20 rule, that I recently learned recently from my doctor, might also help you relax your tired eyes.
The rule goes something like this.
The screen is bright and therefore, if you don’t blink your eyes as often as you should while working at the computer for long hours, you can have dry eyes sometimes even followed by redness.
To help you deal with this problem, the 20-20-20 rule suggest that after every 20 minutes, you (the computer user) should take a break for at least 20 seconds and look at objects that are 20 feet away from you.
Since it is nearly impossible for any computer users to remember that they have to take a break every 20 minutes, there are free software programs that can help you in your mission.
For instance, there’s a Windows utility called Eye Defender that sits in the system tray and, after a fixed interval, it will auto-run a visual training (see video below in full screen) for the eyes on your screen.
You are supposed to follow the pointer on the screen and this in turn should help relax your eyes.
WorkRave is another handy app that reminds you to take breaks at regular intervals to prevent computer related stress (including eyestrain).
It offers two kinds of breaks – micro-breaks, these are short and are mean to relax your eyes, and then there are rest-breaks where you are supposed to walk or stretch a little. Workrave also has a built-in wizard that demonstrates the various types of stretching exercises that you can do during these breaks.
If you are an active computer user, these tools need to be on your desktop.
Create a Video Sitemap for your WordPress Site
Do you ever embed YouTube videos in your web pages? If the answer is yes, you should create an XML Video Sitemap as it will help improve your site’s performance in Google and other search engines.
Why Create XML Sitemaps for Video?
Video Sitemaps are plain text files containing a list of videos that are either embedded or hosted on your website. During regular crawling, Google mostly ignores video content that’s embedded in web pages but with the help of a video sitemap, you can easily inform Google about all the videos that are on your site.
Video Sitemaps will help your site pages rank in both video search results as well as Google’s universal search. If you would like know more about XML Sitemaps for Video, watch this video or visit google.com/videositemaps for more technical details.
How to Create XML Video Sitemaps?
If you run a WordPress blog, you can use my Video Sitemap plug-in to generate an XML Sitemap for your site with a click. Install the plugin, click the “generate” button and it will instantly create an XML Sitemap file in your site’s root directory using all YouTube clips that are on your site.
Once you have created your Video Sitemap, you can either ping Google directly or use the webmaster tools of Google and Bing to permanently associate your video sitemap with your website or web. Here’s a video demo:
The Limitations with XML Sitemap
The XML Sitemap plug-in currently works with YouTube videos only though future versions may support Vimeo, Facebook, Flickr, Daily Motion and other online video hosting websites.
This will generate video sitemaps for self-hosted WordPress blogs only. If you are on Blogger, WordPress.com or Tumblr, I may have something for you at a later date.
Do Not Use Nofollow with your Internal Links
PageRank, in simple English, works something like this. Google assigns a fixed number of points to a page that are then equally divided among the other pages that are linked from that page.
For example, assume that Google has assigned a web page some 100 points and there are 5 hyperlinks on that page. Each of these pages will therefore get 20 points from Google. If two of these hyperlinks are written using the rel=nofollow attribute, Google won’t give them any points but the remaining three pages will still get 20 points each as before. The balance 40 points (100 – 20*3) are lost.
So should you use the nofollow attribute at all in your internal links? Google’s webmaster site recommends the use of nofollow in some scenarios:
Search engine robots can’t sign in or register as a member on your forum, so there’s no reason to invite Googlebot to follow “register here” or “sign in” links. Using nofollow on these links enables Googlebot to crawl other pages you’d prefer to see in Google’s index.This stand is however completely different from what Matt Cutts has suggested in one of his recent videos (embedded below).Matt has unequivocally advised that web publishers should not use
rel=nofollow when linking to any of their internal pages even if they don’t want to see those pages in search engines.He didn’t share any specific reason that made Google to change their original stand on the use of
nofollow in web pages but, as a publisher, what matters more to us is the current recommendation which is ” no nofollow on internal links.”
Continue Reading...
WordPress Plugins that Power Word Investor
My tech blog is powered by the very-awesome WordPress software.
Following is a complete list of all the WordPress plugins that work behind the scenes to add new functionality to these sites that’s otherwise not available in the vanilla version of WordPress.org.
Must-Have WordPress Plugins for your Site
1. Google XML Sitemaps – Since you want Google and other search engines to know about each and every page of your WordPress website, you should have an XML sitemap and this plug-in makes it a one-click process.2. All in One SEO Pack – While WordPress software now includes the rel=canonical directive by default, if you wish to write search friendly titles that are different from the heading of the page, get this plug-in.
3. Automatic WordPress Backup – I host the static JS and CSS files of this blog on Amazon S3 and this plug-in helps me create a backup of all the essential WordPress files (like themes and plugins) and the MySQL databases to the same S3 account.
4. Hyper Cache – This is a nice caching plug-in for WordPress that helps in reducing the load on your web server. I was initially on the more popular WP Super Cache plug-in but had to switch to Hyper Cache as the former was not quite compatible with my web host.
5. Redirection – If an external site is linking to a non-existent or a 404 page on my site, I use the redirection plug-in to forward all the incoming traffic to the right pages.
6. Bing 404 – If someone lands on a 404 page on my site for which redirection is not yet enabled, this plug-in will display links to relevant article on the error page. For example, a 404 pages like wordinvestor.com/flickr has links to my Flickr related stories.
7. WordPress.com Stats – Google Analytics is obviously the best solution for tracking visitors but if you want something quick and simple, WP Stats is something nice-to-have alongside Google Analytics. The advantage – it will display the traffic charts right inside your WordPress dashboard.
8. Akismet – I generally close comments on my stories after a couple of days while Akismet helps me filter out spam comments on fresh posts.
9. SlideShare – This helps me easily embed SlideShare presentations in any of my stories using short codes. It saves time and the embedded presentation automatically fits the width of the site – .
10. WordPress PDA – If you ever had a chance to visit @wordinvestor on your mobile phone, you may have noticed that the layout is completely different. Earlier, the mobile version of the site was done through Google Reader but now its the PDA plug-in that handles the mobile traffic based on the browser’s user agent.
11. WP-Paginate – If you scroll to the bottom of any archives page , you may see some numbered boxes – they are done through the Paginate plug-in.
12. Debug Queries – This is another awesome plug-in that helps me debug which of the MySQL queries are taking time to execute and thus slowing down the blog.
13. YARRP – The related posts plug-in adds links to old stories that may be contextually related to the content of the current story. It also helps you expose your archived content to search bots.
14. Smart YouTube – Like the SlideShare plug-in, Smart YouTube helps me easily embed videos from YouTube into my site. Here, I just have to copy-paste the URL of a YouTube video and the plug-in will automatically convert it into an embed code.
15. WP-Associatizer – This plug-in will automatically rewrite any Amazon URLs in your posts to use your Amazon Associates ID. Continue Reading...
Track 404 Errors on your Website as they Happen!
Your website can display 404 errors for two reasons:
Reason #1 (in your control) – If you change the URL of an existing page or decide to delete it completely from your server, your visitor will get a 404 or “File Not Found” error when they try to access that page.
Reason #2 (not in your control) – You page URL is abc.com/xyz and another site decided to link to your page but they mistakenly used a wrong URL (say abc.com/xyy) – if anyone visits your page through the other site, they’ll see a 404.
Track all the Missing Pages on your Site
It is extremely important that you get your 404 errors fixed as soon as you spot them because they not only spoil the visitor experience but your site is also losing Google juice. You get juice from every incoming link to your site but the benefit is lost if that link is pointing to a non-existent page.Let me now share the various tools that I use to track track 404 error pages on my site.
The only issue with the Google Analytics approach is that it can artificially inflate the actually pageviews of your site though by a very small number.
My next favorite service is LinkPatch – they have a version that is free for tracking one domain. LinkPatch is purely for tracking 404 errors – you just to have add a line of code to your 404 template* and it will send you instant emails as soon as it discovers any 404 page on your site.
While LinkPatch and Google Analytics will get you the information you are looking for, there’s one obvious downside – both these services require you to add some JavaScript code to your template’s 404 page and they’ll therefore not work with blog sites hosted on Blogger, WordPress.com, etc.
In that case, I recommend using the very-awesome Google Webmaster tools. Go to Dashboard –> Diagnostics –> Crawl Errors and select the “Not found” option.
[*] WordPress users can add the tracking code to either their 404.php file or anywhere in the template through the function is_404(). Continue Reading...
A Chair Made of Old CDs
If you are thinking of more creative ways to reuse the old CDs, here’s another one – this ‘panda chair’ is constructed from a simple base covered in CDs lined up in rows.
Got Kids? A Simple Way to Block Adult Sites on your Computer
If your tech-savvy kids are spending a fair amount of their computer time surfing the Internet, there’s a chance that they may sometimes accidentally stumble upon adult sites that you would definitely not like them to see.
Keep your Kids from Seeing Adult Content on the Web
It is nearly impossible for any parent to manually monitor their child’s entire computer session and what you therefore need is a solution that works in the background even while you aren’t around to watch over them.
There are couple of options. For instance, YouTube has a safety mode to block videos that aren’t appropriate for children. Then you have OpenDNS that you can configure with your router or computer to block an entire category of websites that contain violent or adult content.
There are some site blocking programs (NetNanny for example) that monitor your kid’s activity on the computer and will automatically restrict them from visiting sites that aren’t meant for them. Then you have the slightly-geeky 127.0.0.1 trick to that helps you block any of the known websites on your computer.
A More Straightforward Solution to Block Sites
If you are looking for a more simple solution to keep all adult sites off your computers, switch to FamilyShield as described in the following video:
FamilyShield is part of the previously described OpenDNS service but the advantage here is that you don’t have to do any tweaking to block adult content – just change your DNS server entries (these are different from the original OpenDNS values) and the web filters are immediately activated.
If you chose to setup FamilyShield on your router, sites that contain adult content will automatically get blocked on all your computers, gaming consoles and even mobile phones that are part of your home network. It even blocks proxy sites that are commonly used bypass the web filters.
It can’t get easier than this and there’s no software to install though your kids are likely to encounter ads when a site they’re trying to visit gets blocked – that’s the business model of OpenDNS.
What’s Inside any Private YouTube Video
When you upload a video to YouTube and mark it as private, the video can only viewed by your own Google Account. You can choose to share that ‘private video’ with select YouTube users but they again need to be signed-in before they can watch your clip.
For instance, here’s a private video – youtube.com/watch?v=FkTSUqPqsGE – that I recently uploaded to YouTube. There’s nothing interesting inside except its private nature and therefore you should see a message saying “this video is private” if you try accessing that video from your computer.
What’s Not Private about ‘Private’ Videos
That said, if you know the URL of a private YouTube video, you can easily see some of the still frames of that video even if the owner has not shared that video with you.
The trick is simple – just get the ID of any YouTube video from its URL (in our case, FkTSUqPqsGE) and replace it in the following links.
- http://i.ytimg.com/vi/FkTSUqPqsGE/0.jpg
- http://i.ytimg.com/vi/FkTSUqPqsGE/1.jpg
- http://i.ytimg.com/vi/FkTSUqPqsGE/2.jpg
- http://i.ytimg.com/vi/FkTSUqPqsGE/3.jpg
YouTube creates images thumbnails of every video that’s uploaded on to the site and these images are public even in the case of private videos. An image is often worth a thousand words and here, you have three images so you can sometimes connect the dots. Continue Reading...
Gmail Introduces Rich Text Signatures
As of today you can use a rich text signature in Gmail, meaning that you can add links and images to it, as well as change the text’s format, font and color.
To change your signature in Gmail, click on “Settings,” and scroll down to the “Signature” section. You’ll see a new signature editor which contains the same functions that are at your disposal when you compose an e-mail.
If you have more than one e-mail address associated with your Gmail account, you’ll be able to choose a different signature for each one using the drop-down menu (the menu doesn’t appear if you have only one e-mail address associated with your Gmail account).
Motorola Unveils a New Android Phone: The T-Mobile Charm
Motorola today announced some specs, images and availability details for a new Android phone.Dubbed the Motorola Charm, this oddly shaped device will ship to T-Mobile subscribers this summer with a 2.8-inch screen, the current Android 2.1 operating system (not Froyo), and a slew of social features.
If you’re thinking this looks and sounds a bit like the ill-fated Kin — small screen, square-ish shape, social emphasis, physical keyboard — we can’t really blame you for your déjà vu. But we won’t consign the Charm to the technological junk heap just yet; we still don’t know just why the Kin failed, so we aren’t convinced that similar features in another phone will lead it to the same demise.
In addition to its keyboard — a welcome feature for heavy texters and social media addicts — the Charm sports a touchscreen and a navigation pad. Called the “Backtrack” pad, this hardware feature is located on the back of the device and works like a laptop touch panel. Without having a review model, we can’t say whether this feature will be a blessing — saving space on a tiny touchscreen so you can actually see what you’re navigating around — or a curse — you can’t tell what you’re navigating around or accidentally use the pad while holding the phone. Another hardware perk is its two-microphone noise cancellation functionality for clearer calls in ambient noise-filled areas.
The phone’s social features will have customization and filtering options. Charm will also play nicely with Flash, and it’ll come pre-loaded with the usual suite of Google apps. Its 3MP camera might not compete with a more media-centric device like the Droid X, but this phone is aimed at a more social, less “artistic” crowd, we’re guessing.
And, like the Kin’s Studio feature, the Charm features browser-based access to all the device’s data, including media such as videos and photos. Data can be transfered via a USB port or WiFi connection.
We’re expecting to see the Charm hit shelves before the end of the summer.
As far as smartphones go, most of the big-name devices have launched on Verizon, AT&T and Sprint. The former network has the blockbuster Droid, and Sprint is seeing plenty of buzz around the Evo, which it’s billing as the first 4G device on a 4G network. And of course, the iPhone 4 is selling like hotcakes, much to the delight of AT&T, with whom Apple still has an exclusive contract.
If the Charm turns into the high-volume, tween-friendly phone the Kin wanted to be, T-Mobile might have a winner on their hands. What do you think — is the Charm a device that interests you?
MB&F HM4 Thunderbolt Watch Becomes Official
BlackBerry Shortcuts for Reading Lengthy Emails
Carry a BlackBerry mobile phone? Here’re some keyboard shortcuts that will help you quickly navigate through any of the long email messages that you may have in your BlackBerry Inbox.
If you in the middle of a lengthy email message, the “T” key will move you to the top of the screen while you can hit the “B” key to scroll to the bottom of the message.
Then you have the space key that lets you scroll through an email message one page (or screen) at the time. You can also use Space with the Shift key to move up the screen just like the Page-Up key on your desktop.
Finally, you have the very useful but lesser-known “G” key.
Let’s say you are reading a long email inside your BlackBerry and then have to close the mail app because there’s something more urgent at hand. When you re-open that same message later, you can hit the “G” key and it will take you back to the exact position in the message where you left off.
If you are using Pearl with SureType, press GH instead. This shortcut was recently shared by the BlackBerry team on Facebook and I doubt if its documented in your BlackBerry manual.
New HP Printers Support Web Printing via Email
The dream of a “paperless office” is still far from reality and printers continue to be an ubiquitous part of our homes and workplaces.
Printers are still “dumb”
However, in the last few years, while mobile phones have transformed from being mere “calling devices” to “smart computers”, printers are still seen as “dumb” devices that are too dependent on the computer. That’s because you always have to install device drivers on a computer for the printer to work and second, you can only send printing jobs to a printer through a computer.
So, for example, if there’s an airline e-ticket or an Excel sheet on your BlackBerry or iPhone that you want to print on paper, you’ll have to first transfer that file to a computer before printing because printers and smartphones are still not familiar with each other. Yes, there are some apps that permit printing from mobile phones but these are again tied to the computer.
HP has recently launched a new range of consumer printers that seem to tackle this problem in a very interesting way.
The printers are web-enabled and you can just connect them to the Internet through an ethernet cable or over Wi-Fi – they work out of the box without requiring a computer and you therefore don’t have to worry about installing any device drivers.
Email is the new Print Command
Every printer is assigned a unique (and impossible-to-guess) email address – you can just send your Office documents, pictures or PDFs to this email address and the files will get printed within the next minute. Since the email message is the new Ctrl+P, you can use the printer to print stuff from any device that is capable of sending email be it a mobile phone, a gaming console, an old PDA, your Internet-enabled TV or even an iPad.
I have had a chance to play with these printers and they almost work as advertised. You send an email from your mobile phone and, assuming there’s no paper jam and that there’s enough ink in the printer, the print job is ready within the next 30-60 seconds. If your email message has multiple attachments, they’re all printed but on separate sheets.
Print Apps for your Printer
There’s more. You can download and install apps on your printer (just like a mobile phone) and these apps can pull web pages and other content directly from the Internet.
For instance, there’s an app for Google Calendar to help you print your daily or weekly calendar. Or you can get the daily news headlines using the Yahoo! News or USA Today app. The Google Maps app lets you find addresses using the virtual on-screen keyboard (it’s fairly usable) or you can even print driving directions without requiring a computer.
The Print Apps Marketplace isn’t huge yet but the company will soon provide an SDK to third-party developers and that might change the equation. All apps are currently free but there are plans to have paid apps as well where HP will split the revenue with the developer using the industry-standard 70-30 model.
The Google Docs Connection
Finally, there’s another brilliant feature in these web-enabled HP printers that’s worth a mention – you can store files to the Google Cloud directly from the printer. For instance, you can scan a document and the scanned image will get stored to your Google Docs as a searchable PDF.
Going forward, you should also be able access your Google Docs files directly on the printer though these features weren’t available at the time of writing.
You can watch the following video to understand how apps work on the printer.
Printing Web Content on Phones
There’s however one limitation with email based printing on smartphones. How do you print stuff that you cannot attach to an email message. For instance, most smartphones don’t offer you an option to save a local copy of web pages so how do you send web pages from the phone to the printer?
HP won’t comment on whether or not they are working with phone companies like Apple, HTC or RIM to bring native printing support in smartphones but until then, it will not be easy for consumers to print raw web pages directly from their phones.
That said, if you are out in the market looking to buy a new printer (or an all-in-one) that is more than just a worthy replacement for your old printer, it obviously makes more sense to go for these web-enabled printers because you get all the features of a regular printer, you can print documents and photos directly from mobile phone(s), you don’t have to turn on the PC for printing your daily dose of Sudoku and the same device can also help you go paperless once the Google Docs storage link is live.
You can visit hp.com to learn more about the various printer models that are web-enabled while the HP ePrintCenter has details about the various print apps that are available for these printers.
Record your own Writing Process with EtherPad
Etherpad, as you know, is an online word processor where multiple people can edit the same document at the same time and changes appear on everyone’s screen in almost real time.
This feature, called collaborative editing, is now present in almost every other tool including Google Docs, Zoho and Microsoft Office 2010 but let me highlight a slightly more interesting feature of Etherpad that’s unique to the service – you can use the tool to visualize your writing style.
Start a new (blank) document inside Etherpad and then compose an email message, a Word document, an article for your blog or even a chapter of your next book in the available writing space.
All your editing related actions are automatically captured in Etherpad and you can hit the Time Slider to replay the entire writing session. Here’s a demo:
Easily Share Large Files over the Internet
If you are to share a large file with someone over the Internet, there are generally two options – you can either attach the files to an email message or, if the files are too big to fit in an email program, you can upload them to an online storage service and then share the download links with the recipient.
Let’s now explore some of the popular services that’ll make it easy for you to transfer large files over the Internet without any hassles or costs.
A: Share Large Files over Email
The Gmail service cannot handle email attachments that are larger than 25 MB but the recently-revamped Hotmail service is a much better alternative as it lets you send email messages as large as 10 GB.The maximum size of an individual file that you can attach to an Hotmail message is only 50 MB but you can use a file-splitting utility like HJ-Split to break a big file into smaller chunks and then attach them all to a single message. The recipient can then join these chunks to restore the original file and he can do without requiring external programs.
B: Share Large Files without Email
The downside with email attachments is obvious – most ISPs and web-based email programs (including Gmail) will reject incoming messages that have big attachments and therefore, if you are sending a bulky file via email, the recipients also have to be on Hotmail as well in order to receive that file.One of the best options for sharing large files without email is Dropbox. Once you install the the Dropbox utility on your (Windows, Mac or Linux) desktop, you can upload files of virtually any size to the Internet – it’s only limited by the size of your Dropbox storage which is 2GB in the case of free accounts. Alternatively, if you don’t want to install Dropbox, you can upload files straight to the Dropbox website from your browser but the limit in this case is 300 MB per file.
You can even consider using Google Docs to share those big files over the Internet. Google Docs lets you upload files up to 250 MB in size and they can be in any format. You have 1 GB of free storage space for storing all the non-Office files on Google Docs but you can also buy more space for a reasonable fee.
Unlike FTP servers, services like Google Docs and Dropbox don’t support resumable downloads. That means if the connection breaks while the recipient is still trying to download your “huge” file, he or she will have to resume the download from scratch. That can be a deal-breaker for lot of people.
SkyDrive, part of the Windows Live family, can solve this problem in a way.
The service offers 25 GB of free online storage, with individual files limited to 50 MB. To upload a large file, split it into chunks of 50 MB each and then upload them all to a single folder on SkyDrive. The recipient can download the entire folder as a ZIP or, if he’s on a flaky connection, he can download files one by one and then join them all at his end.
C. Share Files without Registration
Finally, if you are looking for something quick and simple that doesn’t even require registration, talk to YouSendIt or WeTransfer (if the file size is really big). Just upload the files via the browser, enter the email address of the recipient and hit send. WeTransfer lets you send files up to 2 GB in size while the maximum allowed limit is 100 MB in the case of YouSendIt (free version).Chart: Comparison of file sharing services
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