The Pakistan Shop: September 2010

Latest News: Microsoft Launches Webcam With 1080p HD Sensor

Posted by Majid Chaudhry Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Microsoft has launched a new webcam dubbed LifeCam Studio with a Full HD (1080p) sensor.

The LifeCam Studio features 360-degree view range, improved auto focus and Microsoft’s TrueColor and ClearFrame technologies, which keep the colors bright and the video smooth even under low-light conditions.
Microsoft’s Windows Live Messenger 2011, which is currently available in beta, supports HD video calling in 16:9 format, a feature that should go hand-in-hand with the company’s new webcam.
However, bear in mind that the video software that comes with the camera caps video chatting/recording at 720p.
LifeCam Studio will be available exclusively at Best Buy stores later this month for an estimated price of $99.95. It’s currently available for pre-order on the retailer’s website.

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Nokia Launches Three New Symbian^3 Smartphones

Posted by Majid Chaudhry

N okia today announced three new Symbian^3 smartphones at its Nokia World event: Nokia E7, Nokia C7 and Nokia C6. These three share the OS with the upcoming Nokia N8, which (according to Nokia) is the only N-series device which will be based on Symbian^3.
The E7 is a device aimed at business users, with a full QWERTY keyboard, a 4-inch, 640×460 pixel touchscreen with Nokia’s ClearBlack technology for improved outdoor visibility and an 8-megapixel camera capable of recording 720p video. It touts 16GB of storage memory, and 350 MB of internal memory. In accordance with its business pedigree, the E7 can create PowerPoint slides on the go. It comes with a price tag of €495 ($638).
Nokia C6 has a 3.2-inch AMOLED screen (also with ClearBlack technology), while the C7 has a 3.5-inch AMOLED screen and a case consisting of stainless steel and glass. Both devices have an 8 megapixel camera with dual LED flash and the ability to record 720p video.
Nokia C6 has 340 MB of internal user memory, while Nokia C7 has up to 350 MB of internal memory and 8 GB of storage memory. The memory in both devices can be expanded with a 32 GB microSD memory card, and the price is €260 ($334) for the C6, and €335 ($430) for the C7. All three devices should become available before the end of 2010.

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An Easy Way to Embed YouTube Playlists

Posted by Majid Chaudhry

If you are planning to embed multiple YouTube videos on a web page, you may even consider putting all these videos into a single YouTube playlist and then embed the playlist into your page. This offers two advantages:
1. You can squeeze in more video content in the same amount of (visual) space.
2. A video playlist will reduce the (byte) size of your web page considerably because, technically, you now have to embed the YouTube Flash video player only once on your page.

How to Embed YouTube Video Playlists

The default embed code for any YouTube video playlist looks something like this (remember to replace the word “ID” with the actual YouTube playlist ID) :

<object width="480" height="385"> 
 <param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/p/ID"></param> 
 <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param> 
 <param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param>
 <embed src="http://www.youtube.com/p/ID" width="480" height="385" 
 type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" 
 allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object>
If you find the above code confusing, there a much simpler way as well.

YouTube offers an IFRAME option for embedding individual videos and the same code can be extended to embed video playlists as well.

<iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/p/ID" 
width="100%" height="500" frameborder="0"></iframe>
You may have to modify the value of height and width attributes to make the video player fit your page.

What’s the advantage? The code looks clean and, going forward, Google could make these playlists HTML5 ready. Then your existing video playlist will play on browsers that don’t have the Flash plugin without you having to change the embed code.

Here’s a sample YouTube playlist embedded using the new IFRAME style.

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A Guide to Choosing an Internet Based Fax Service

Posted by Majid Chaudhry

send fax from computer Although most people have switched to email, there are those rare occasions when you have to send signed documents with your written signature and a fax just seems like an appropriate solution then.
You don’t need a dedicated fax machine any more as there are quite a few good web based services, both paid and free, that let you send and receive faxes using your computer itself without requiring any extra hardware. You don’t need a “fax modem” or even your traditional landline phone to send a fax via the computer.
How Internet Faxing Works?
Most online fax services work in a similar way. They give you a dedicated fax number and any fax message that’s sent to that number is forwarded to you as an email attachment. Alternatively, if you want to send a fax from your computer to another fax machine, you can send your document as an email attachment to the online fax service who in turn will forward it to the recipient’s fax machine.
Choosing an Internet Fax Service
After researching the plans and features of about a dozen Internet based faxing services, I have shortlisted the top 5 services that have all the necessary features and are most cost-effective. They have plans for everyone from the consumer who needs to send or receive an occasional fax to the businessman who needs to send multiple faxes daily.
1. GotFreeFax.com – With Got Free Fax, you can send up to two faxes in a day for free to any number in the U.S. and Canada.
You can either use its online rich text editor to compose a fax or upload a PDF /Word file from your computer, type the recipient’s fax number and hit send. The service won’t add any advertisements or branding to your faxes. If you would like to send a fax to an international number, you can buy credits through PayPal.
2. myFax.com – My Fax allows you to send two faxes, with up to 10 pages each, per day for free. Unlike “Got Free Fax,” which only lets you send free faxes to US and Canada based numbers, My Fax supports a much large set of countries even for their free service.
MyFax offers a dedicated Fax number for an extra fee where you can receive faxes. All faxes sent to your personal fax number will arrive in your email inbox as PDFs.
3. GreenFax.com – With Green Fax you can again send and receive faxes via email. They offer a unique prepaid plan where you are only charged per page for sending faxes to US and Canada numbers without any monthly fees.
If you are sending a fax to an international number, you are billed per-minute of fax transmission time and unsuccessful transmissions are not charged.
4. eFax.com – If you need a fax number outside the USA, eFax is probably the best option for you. They offer your local fax numbers in 45 different countries for your incoming faxes. For a fixed monthly fee, you may receive up to 130 pages by fax per month while you pay a per page fee for sending faxes and this varies based on the destination.
With eFax, you may either send and receive faxes via your email program or they also offer integration with Microsoft Office programs.
5. RingCentral Fax – With RingCentral, you can send faxes worldwide through an email message, via their web interface, or from any Windows application. They charge a fixed monthly fee and their outgoing fee seems to be among the lowest in the industry.
Internet Fax Services – Plan Comparison Chart
The following chart compares in detail the pricing plans of various online fax services and also the cost of sending faxes to some popular destinations.

These rates often apply to fax pages that take less than 60 seconds to transmit. If the fax transmission is taking longer than 60 seconds, some companies may bill you on a per-minute basis instead of per page.
[*] FaxPipe and MaxEmail are two other Internet based fax services that let you send and receive faxes and they have an overall lower monthly fee but it has be paid annually.
Which is the best Internet Faxing Service for me?
It depends on your country of residence, the volume of documents that you plan to fax in a month and the location of your client (if you wish to receive incoming faxes).
For most consumers, who have to send a fax occasionally , GotFreeFax looks like a perfect service. They do not charge a monthly fee, the rates for international outgoing faxes are competitive and you can send a fax from the browser without requiring any setup.
If your clients /contacts are based outside the U.S., you can go with eFax as they will give you a local fax number in that country and your clients won’t have to dial an international number in order to send you a fax. RingCentral and myFax also offer attractive pricing plans for volume faxing.

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HTC EVO 4G Problems: What Users Complain about the Most

Posted by Majid Chaudhry Thursday, September 2, 2010

From screen separation to USB charging issues, here are the EVO 4G pitfalls users complain about most.

Looking into the HTC EVO 4G on Sprint? As the current king of the 4G hill, it has certainly earned its stars, but WiMax juggernaut has it’s shortcomings, too. Like the iPhone 4, early adopters ran into a handful of frequent problems with the EVO 4G. Here are the issues any potential buyer will want to be aware of.

Poor battery life

Sure, your shiny new EVO 4G will function as a Wi-Fi hotspot, sharing out your 4G signal to up to eight friends, but you had better find an outlet if you want to keep them happy. Although the EVO 4G has roughly the same battery capacity as most other smartphones, heavy 4G use can quickly whittle it down within just hours. It’s not a manufacturing error: Just an unfortunate consequence of pumping data way faster than your 3G peers.

USB charging issues

A small number of EVO 4G buyers report they have had issues charging their phones via the microUSB port. Some claim their phones will not charge at all, while others experience intermittent charging. The problem appears to be due to the female microUSB port working its way loose from the motherboard. HTC is aware of the problem and will exchange phones within the standard one-year warranty period.

Light leakage and glass separation

The 4.3-inch display on the EVO 4G, gorgeous as it is, has had some issues. Early adopters complained that the screens on some phones are not properly sealed, leading to light from the backlight bleeding out, and potentially in the long term, dust build up. HTC claims it has remedied issues at the factory that caused the problem.

Unresponsive touch screens

The EVO 4G uses the same capacitive technology found on devices like the iPhone and Droid, but some users complain the device can become unresponsive when it isn’t grounded (being held in the hand). Check out the demo video below.

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Iomega eGo USB 3.0 Review

Posted by Majid Chaudhry

We review Iomega's eGo portable hard drive with USB 3.0 which boosts transfer speeds up to 10x faster than USB 2.0.

Introduction

USB 3.0 has arrived, and with it, a whole new batch of drives designed to let you push around those Excel spreadsheets, PowerPoints, and Blu-ray rips of Pulp Fiction, even faster. While most USB 3.0 drives still command a premium, Iomega will be one of the first to drop the USB 2.0 entirely and fold USB 3.0 into all of its drives – without increasing prices – later this fall. We put the new eGo through its paces to see whether the upgrade is worth the wait.

Features and Design

Iomega hasn’t bothered to give the eGo a facelift to reflect its newfound speed, but that’s quite alright with us. The eGo USB 3.0 remains one of the slimmer drives on the market at just 0.625 inches thick, and its similar shape will allow you to use it with old eGo accessories, like the carrying case. At the moment, opting for USB 3.0 will limit you to only charcoal color, but that will change in October when USB 3.0 begins migrating over to even more drives and the prices drop to current USB 2.0 levels. For the record, charcoal has a clean, professional air, and if the drive enclosures weren’t plastic, the slippery glossy layered on top could almost pass for automotive-grade clear coat.

The only real clue you’re dealing with a new drive: Where a standard mini-USB jack used to lie, you’ll now find a USB 3.0 SuperSpeed connector, a new configuration that looks a bit like a long, sideways letter B. The extra pins here translate to better performance, but conveniently, that B shape also breaks it into connector into two ports, one of which you can use with old-style microUSB cables. Obviously, you won’t reap the benefits of full USB 3.0 speed, you’ll be thankful for it when you need to pull files off in a jam.

Testing and Performance

Unless you just cracked your computer out of its foam packing a few months ago – or built it yourself with one of the few USB 3.0-capable motherboards out there – chances are, you don’t have USB 3.0 onboard. We tested with a LaCie USB 3.0 PCI Express card, but just about any USB 3.0 adapter should provide similar performance. At the moment, they all use the same NEC chips.

To provide a performance baseline, we ran the eGo through the wringer at USB 2.0 speeds. It turned in write speeds of 23.67 MB/s and read speeds of 25.86 MB/s – a marked improvement over the last USB 2.0 eGo we reviewed, but still not as fast as one of our favorite USB 2.0 drives, LaCie’s tiny Rikiki, which hit speeds of 30.45 MB/s and 29.18 MB/s, respectively.

Switch over to USB 3.0, and things heat up. While claims of performance “10 times faster than USB 2.0” are sheer marketing hype, we found that you can expect an honest doubling of speed in real-life performance. We hit average write speeds of 49.35 MB/s and read speeds of 50.0 MB/s. At that speed, an entire 4.19GB DVD rip of The Empire Strikes Back transferred to the drive in just one minute, 24.9 seconds. You could hypothetically fill the drive to its entire 500GB capacity in two hours, 49 minutes.

While USB 3.0 performance is certainly impressive, it’s worth noting that Iomega’s FireWire 800 eGo still has it beat. That model hit 57.39 MB/s write speeds and 53.93 MB/s read speeds in the same transfer tests, just barely edging out the USB 3.0 model for speed supremacy.

Conclusion

Iomega’s eGo USB 3.0 portable drive maintains the same winning look and feel as previous iterations while essentially doubling transfer speeds. The 500GB version of the drive still commands a $20 price premium over the (list price) USB 2.0 version, but the USB 3.0 version will be a no brainer when Iomega switches the rest of the eGo line to USB 3.0, without increasing price, in October.

Highs:

Vastly improved transfer speeds
Sleek, portable design
Affordable (more so after October price drop)
Backward compatible with microUSB cables

Lows:

Not the speediest competitor in USB 2.0 mode

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4 Tips for Writing SEO-Friendly Blog Posts

Posted by Majid Chaudhry Wednesday, September 1, 2010

In addition to writing for their human readers, web writers and bloggers have to consider the digital web crawlers employed by search engines like Google Your business can’t skip the task.
Since most would-be readers use search engines to find blog posts, you need to make sure that Google ranks your site highly when those readers search for terms related to your business and the content you’re writing.
You could spend thousands of dollars to have a search marketing firm optimize your business’s blog for search engines, but chances are that you can learn a lot of the fundamentals yourself, saving yourself a lot of money as long as you have the interest and the time. Here’s a basic primer on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for your company’s blog.

1. Always Include Search Terms in Your Post’s Title

When Google reads a website to index it, it reads the code directly, not the snazzy presentation that humans see. The way most blogging platforms are built, the headline or title of your blog post is among the first things Google sees, and Google generally assumes the words that appear earliest are the most important. That’s why the title is the most important part of your blog post when it comes to SEO.
Think about who you want to reach with this blog post, and what that person might be searching for when looking for your business’s goods or services, then include critical words from that hypothetical search in the title. The most important terms should appear as quickly as you can reasonably fit them in. Just be careful not to make the title unreadable or awkward to human readers — that SEO effort will have been for naught if the reader is immediately turned off by the content once he or she finds it.
Here’s a pro tip: You’re not likely to win strong ranking for more than one or two search terms at once, so minimalism is a virtue here. Don’t get over-ambitious. Focus on one potential search term, then if you want to rank for a second term, write a separate and unique post specifically with it in mind.

2. Link Important Words to Earlier Blog Posts

Search engines generally assume that a blog post that has been linked to has more authority than one that has not. They also consider exactly what word or phrase linked to the post; a blog post about the iPhone is going to be more likely to show up in Google searches on the subject if another page links the word “iPhone” to the post.
You’ll get the most value from external links from sites that Google or other search engines already consider to be an authority of the subject (if the top blog about iPhones links the word to your post, you’ll get a huge boost), but all incoming links will still pass rank to your page, even those from elsewhere on your site.
So be sure and link important keywords to other pages or previous posts on your blog to gain some credibility and search rank. It will make a big difference. Just don’t overdo it; not only do human readers hate reading blogs so filled with links that they might accidentally click on something, Google may penalize you if you go overboard, too.

3. Hit the Tagging Sweet Spot

Most blogging platforms let you apply tags to your posts. Tags help organize your blog so both humans and search engines can find what they’re looking for. They’re terms like “consulting,” “local” or “technology” that reflect the topics and content of the post.
Google tries to recognize tags and use them to prioritize your site in its search ranking for those terms. The tags are usually links to other pages on your blog (usually a backlog of other posts with the same tag), and like we said earlier, linking search terms to other pages on your site helps too.
So by all means, add pertinent tags to your blog post, but be warned that Google and other search engines are wary of sites that try to game this system. They will penalize you in the search rankings if you use so many tags that the web indexing bots suspect you might be attempting to associate your content with unrelated topics just to score extra traffic.
The method for determining this is arcane, but a good rule of thumb from a pro blogger is that five to 10 appropriate tags are usually right in the sweet spot.

4. Use Google Insights to Find the Best Search Terms

You don’t have to play a guessing game about the best tags or search terms to link or put in your post’s title. Since Google is the most popular search engine, it makes sense to focus your efforts there. Whenever you’re not sure which terms to go with, hit up Google Insights, a web-based tool that compares the popularity of any search terms you want to know about.

For example, if your business is a coffee shop but you’re not sure whether would-be customers are more likely to search for “café” or “coffee shop,” Insights can tell you which one is more popular.

These four tips should get you on your way to having a more SEO-friendly corporate blog. Add your tips for search engine optimization in the comments below.

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How to Make your Windows Start-up Faster

Posted by Majid Chaudhry

Slow Windows Startup Does your Windows computer take really long to start-up?
Well, you are not alone with this problem but fortunately, with some minor tweaks, you can get your sluggish Windows to start much faster without re-installing Windows or adding any new hardware.
The logic is fairly simple. Your computer loads quite a few software programs and services during start-up (look at all the icons in your Windows System tray). If you can trim this list, your computer’s boot time will decrease.
I have been testing a free utility called Soluto and it helped reduce the start-up time of my Windows computer from 3.15 minutes to around 1.25 minutes. All this with a few easy clicks and without confusing the user with any technical jargon.
soluto boot problems
After you install Soluto, it sorts your start-up programs list into three categories:

No-brainer – remove these programs from start-up with giving a second thought.
Potentially removable – another list of start-up programs that may also be removed provided you know what these programs do.
Required – Certain programs and services are required to run Windows properly and therefore should not be removed.

Depending upon the software app, you may then either choose “Pause” to completely remove that app from the start-up queue or choose “Delay” when you want the app to run automatically but not immediately at start-up. Soluto will launch the “delayed” app once the boot up is over and your system is idle.
You can also hover the mouse over any program name and Soluto will display the number of seconds that the app adds to the start-up time. And don’t bother about making mistakes because Soluto has a useful “Undo all” feature that will restore the start-up list to the original state with a click.
system boot time

Once you are done classifying your start-up programs list, reboot the computer and you should notice a difference between the start-up time.
Where to download Soluto?
The official site for Soluto is soluto.com but in order to download the program, you should head over to mysoluto.com.
Alternatives to Soluto
If you are tech-savvy, you can also use a utility like Sysinternals Autoruns to manually prevent all the non-essential Windows processes and programs from running at start-up.
Just uncheck all the Autorun entries and Services that you don’t wish to load at startup and reboot your system. You’ll however need a separate program to get the “delay” feature which is so handy in Solute.
autoruns

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How to Embed YouTube Video Playlists

Poor battery life

USB charging issues

Light leakage and glass separation

Unresponsive touch screens

Introduction

Features and Design

Testing and Performance

Conclusion

Highs:

Lows:

1. Always Include Search Terms in Your Post’s Title

2. Link Important Words to Earlier Blog Posts

3. Hit the Tagging Sweet Spot

4. Use Google Insights to Find the Best Search Terms

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