dailyApps

Youtube India Is Now Live

Karthik Kastury — Thu, 08 May 2008 15:23:12 +0000

Google has just launched the Indian version of Youtube, which is good news for Indians not only in India but worldwide. Viewing videos online is fast catching up here in India with the growing penetration of Broadband. By offering localized content on Youtube Google has taken one more step to dominate the yet untapped internet video market in India.

Youtube India features all the content from the global Youtube as well, but the difference between the two begins in popularity charts etc.. The top video charts on Youtube India will reflect what Indians are watching now, the featured videos are programmed to cater to an Indian audience, and Google has also signed up local partners to distribute their content through YouTube.

Check out this funny YouTube India promotional video:

YouTube has also partnered with several content creators like Zoom Channel, NDTV, UTV, Rajshri Group, Indiaglitz and Music Today to distribute them on YouTube India.

Visit Youtube India (http://in.youtube.com)

HTC Touch Diamond Unveiled - Its Beautiful !!

Karthik Kastury — Tue, 06 May 2008 14:33:46 +0000

HTC officially unveiled its HTC Touch Diamond high-end handset during the “May 6 HTC Event” held in London which ended a few hours ago. As expected and as seen in several leaked images that appeared yesterday, the new device from HTC is slim and compact, and has a very nice overall aspect. The rumored diamond-like pattern on the phone’s back case is real, providing a look that is not only unique but also awesome to look at.

HTC Touch Diamond’s official dimensions are: 102 x 51 x 11,5 millimeters, and weighs about 110 grams. In this slim case, HTC managed to put together enough advanced features to attract about any user who wants to have the latest technology in a handset and I seriously believe that it is going to give the iPhone some serious run for its money.

Here are the official specs :

Connectivity: WCDMA / HSPA: 900/2100MHz. HSDPA 7.2 Mbps and HSUPA
Operating system: Windows Mobile® 6.1 Professional
Display: 2.8-inch VGA touch screen
Camera: 3.2MP, with video calling
Internal memory: 4 GB Internal Storage, 256 MB flash, 192 MB RAM,
Bluetooth: 2.0 with EDR
Wireless: WiFi 802.11b/g
GPS: GPS/AGPS
Interface: HTC ExtUSB™ (mini-USB and audio jack in one; USB 2.0 High-Speed)
Battery: 900 mAh
Talk time: GSM: up to 4 hours
Standby time: GSM: up to 300 hours/100 hours with push email
Chipset: Qualcomm MSM® 7201A™ 528MHz

The HTC Touch Diamond is scheduled to be available to the general public sometime in June, when we are also expecting Apple 3G iPhone. The price of HTC is not yet known but the retail one will surely be pretty high in my opinion. But even otherwise, the price of a phone generally depends on country, operator and/or data plan, so the Diamond will surely have lots of price tags when launched. All we can do now is wait until June.

Here are some more pictures of the HTC Touch Diamond for you to enjoy :

The only advantage that the iPhone currently has is its simplicity and effective design. The iPhone UI is one of the best in the industry and the Windows Mobile interface just doesn’t cut it for the iPhone. Another thing is that with the impending launch of 3G iPhone things are definitely going to hotter in the smartphone market.

Do you think the HTC Touch Diamond has the punch and prowess to put a blow on the mighty iPhone? For more information on the HTC Touch Diamond visit the official page here

OoVoO - Video Conferencing Redefined

Karthik Kastury — Mon, 05 May 2008 14:44:44 +0000

I got an invite email from a friend of mine, and it was for a product named OoVoO. I usually delete all invite emails before marking them as spam. But this time, I opened this one to see what it had to say. After reading the features, I ended up installing he product and now I feel so happy for having opened that email, because I’m now a big fan of OoVoO.

OoVoO also happens to be a Webware 100 Winner and here’s what it does basically :

OoVoo is a free, standalone desktop chat application that has both a text and video chat capabilities. It can handle as many as six people in one video conference as well as a dozen in the integrated voice chat conference. Users can drop in and out of conversations, and the video windows will scale with a similar effect to iChat’s “swoop.”
OoVoo also doubles as a video e-mail service. Users can send each other video messages as long as a minute in length that are available right in the application or via e-mail. Users who get the e-mail are also provided a link that takes them to a live Flash version of the video, so they can access it while away from their home computer.

OoVoO is a real time video conferencing product. We can easily compare it with Yahoo messenger or Live messenger. But OoVoO is far superior, when we compare the video conferencing aspects of the product.

The video and audio quality is really mind blowing. Even when the bandwidth is limited it performs above what you’d expect it to. The video is almost instantaneous and there are no jerks in the voice.

OoVoo supports video conferencing for upto 6 people at a time. Even when all the 6 people are active the conference quality remains the same. The product has a neat interface in which all the 6 videos can be arranged.

One major feature that most of the other products in this niche lack and OoVoO has is the conference record facility. We can record the audio and video conferences that we conduct at the press of a single button. Already many companies here in India are using OoVoO for conducting discussions and recording them to be distributed.

I suggest you give this amazing app a try. You can download it from here.

This post was guest blogged by Kenney Jacob. He is a Successful Entrepreneur and Technology Evangelist. He blogs regularly at I am a Techie and his Personal blog.

[Rejoice] Microsoft Finally Gives Up On Yahoo!

Karthik Kastury — Sun, 04 May 2008 15:15:17 +0000

Finally it looks like Steve Ballmer and his team found too much of trouble running behind Yahoo for the past three months. Microsoft considers Yahoo to be its golden goose, and it feels that it will lay golden eggs in the future of online advertising.. I had written a post detailing What A Combined Microsoft Yahoo Looks Like weighing all the pros and cons if this deal went through. Somehow Yahoo managed to push Microsoft to such an extent that it had no choice but to accept defeat.

Now that Yahoo is staying on as an independent company, Jerry Yang and his team have some important tasks at hand. Let me reserve what exactly do they need to do for another post and focus on the ramifications of the breakout of this deal.

Microsoft issued a statement here

“Despite our best efforts, including raising our bid by roughly $5 billion, Yahoo! has not moved toward accepting our offer. After careful consideration, we believe the economics demanded by Yahoo! do not make sense for us, and it is in the best interests of Microsoft stockholders, employees and other stakeholders to withdraw our proposal,” said Ballmer.

Yahoo! responded by issuing a statement

“From the beginning of this process, our independent board and our management have been steadfast in our belief that Microsoft’s offer undervalued the company and we are pleased that so many of our shareholders joined us in expressing that view. Yahoo! is profitable, growing, and executing well on its strategic plan to capture the large opportunities in the relatively young online advertising market. Our solid results for the first quarter of 2008 and increased full year 2008 operating cash flow outlook reflect the progress the company is making.”

Looking at the two statements, it is clearly evident that Microsoft sounds like a looser while Yahoo sounds like a clear winner either way you look at it. Considering that Yahoo already has a search advertising deal with Google, Yahoo should now focus on improving the services and increase the ad revenue across the board.

With the Microsoft hurdle out of the way, I feel that there are more important Google and Yahoo tie ups on the way. This is just the beginning and from now on, Google has got some interesting times ahead, and it will be worth watching how Google dodges the challenges being thrown at it.

Look out for a post soon, wherein I’ll be detailing as to what Yahoo needs to exactly do to stay clear and profitable in the future. I’m no guru but I love Yahoo and would never want it to go into the evil hands of Microsoft.

What do you think about the fall through of this deal? What do you think is going to happen to Microsoft, Yahoo and Google as individuals? How do you think the Internet will react to this? Pitch in your opinion by dropping a comment.

I never wanted to this deal to go through and it looks its finally happening. Yay! I can’t be more happy for Yahoo than am right now .

TweetWheel : A Cool New Way to Visualize Your Twitter Friends

Karthik Kastury — Sat, 03 May 2008 22:45:25 +0000

If you are a having a slow weekend, and you happen to love cool new visualizations, then I got some great news for you. Yes you heard me right, you can now visualize all your Twitter friends in a cool new fashion all thanks to TweetWheel. Basically TweetWheel visualizes you and all the connections to your friends and their friends and you and soon.

All you have to do is enter your Twitter username (no password needed) and TweetWheel will go to work digging up all of your contacts, and then probing their contact lists. Please note that this can take some time, so you will have to be prepared to wait, probably with a cup of coffee in hand.

Once you are done with the long wait, you get to see a cool picture with all kinds of links between people here and there. You can’t make out much when you look at it directly, instead hover over a particular user to see all his connections.

Well the screenshot above is the visualization that was generated for me, and for the sake of comparison here’s is Scoble’s. I’m sure you can make out the obvious differences. Maybe you could help me a bit by following me on Twitter.

Via Twitterholics and Download Squad

Tip : Import/Export Firefox Passwords With Ease

Karthik Kastury — Sat, 03 May 2008 16:25:57 +0000

Firefox happens to be my favorite browser. Being the person I am there is nothing on my Firefox install other than saved passwords and some toolbar bookmarks. For everything else I use online accounts like Del.icio.us, and other productivity sites like Remember the Milk.

But recently in a computer crash, I had to wipe out Windows and reinstall it from scratch. In the process, I lost all the saved passwords, and after the reinstall I was left scratching my head trying to remember the passwords.

Thanks to Sizlopedia I found a cool Firefox addon that does exactly what I was looking for. Password Exporter adds the ability to view all of your saved passwords, and to export them in an encrypted or unencrypted file CSV or XML file. Whenever you wish to import those passwords to a different Firefox installation, just install Password Exporter again, find your file, and click the import button. Sounds simple isn’t it?

Well not so simple really. The catch is that Password Exporter is hidden in your security settings, which can be accessed by clicking Tools>Options>Security. Once you’re at the security screen, you should see the import/export passwords option .

I hope that Password Exporter will save a few headaches for you!

Mozilla Addons Password Exporter | Via Sizlopedia

Microsoft Live Labs Launch Photosynth

Sidharth Bhansali — Fri, 02 May 2008 16:24:25 +0000

Recently Microsoft Live labs introduced cool app called Photosynth. Microsoft says that this app brings in new technology which will forever change the way people think about digital photos.

Photosynth is currently supported as an addon for Mozilla Firefox and Internet explorer.Another requirement is a good graphic subsystem installed for all the graphic shine. So if you have an older graphic card on your pc like the Intel’s 8xx series then Photosynth will not work.The application is free to boot and has an inbuilt image gallery to view some cool stuff.

Here is a screenshot of Photosynth in action:

Here are some notable features of Photosynth :

Occupies less memory - You must have an active Xcontrol in the system (about 5mb) for Photosynth to run. It doesn’t occupy large disk space.

Awesome Zooming capacity - Perhaps the best feature of the Photosynth, whether the image is megapixels or gigapixels in size you can zoom in and out without any hesitation whatsoever.

Navigate in 3D model - Photosynth provides easy controls for exploring large collection of photos in 3D with a simple click of the mouse button.

Web application - Photosynth can help you connect your photos to the tubes we call the Internet, allowing you to browse a virtual universe of interconnected scenes that constantly evolves and changes over time.

Microsoft Live Labs says their are plenty of other features as well which are to be explored, but i suggest you try out Photosynth Now!

Apple Refreshes Its iMac Lineup

Karthik Kastury — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 23:49:09 +0000

Apple on Monday refreshed its iMac lineup with the latest and greatest in Core2Duo Processors and more powerful graphic options for the 24″ model. The updated iMac’s now feature Core2Duo processors using the latest penryn chips manufactured using the 45nm technology, more efficient compared to the older 65nm technology.

Prior to Monday’s update, the iMac featured either a 2GHz or 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo chip. The updated machines run at 2.4GHz, 2.66GHz or 2.8GHz, depending on configuration. Apple also offers a 3.06GHz processor as a build-to-order option. The only other Macs to top the 3GHz mark are build-to-order configurations of the Mac Pro, with either 3GHz or 3.2GHz Quad Core Xeon processors. So its nice to see the iMac receive some pro treatment ain’t it?

Apple also increased the amount of RAM that ships with two of the three standard iMac configurations. The 20-inch 2.66GHz iMac and the 24-inch 2.8GHz iMac ship with 2GB of RAM; in comparison to the previous offerings of 1GB of memory.

Other changes to the iMac line include a 1,066MHz FSB on all three iMac configurations in comparison to the previous 800MHz. Also NVidia 8800GS is also an option on the 24″ model which is good news for hardcore gamers because NVidia cards seem to outperform ATI ones in every world.

The new iMacs come in three basic models:

The $1,199 20-inch with a 2.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 1GB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive, and an ATI Radeon HD 2400 XT with 128MB GDDR3 memory;
The $1,499 20-inch model with a 2.66GHz processor, 2GB of RAM, a 320GB hard drive, and an ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO with 256MB GDDR3 memory; and
The $1,799 24-inch offering with a 2.8GHz processor, 2GB of RAM, a 320GB hard drive, and an ATI Radeon HD 2600 PRO with 256MB GDDR3 memory.
The $2,199 build-to-order 24-inch model that ships with the 3.06GHz Core 2 Duo chip, Nvidia GeForce 8880 GS graphics card and 500GB hard drive.

All iMac models are now available and are shipping immediately. For the performance comparisons on the new iMac with its other Mac cousins and the older iMac head over to Engadget

Is CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER The New CTRL+ALT+DEL On Vista?

Karthik Kastury — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 22:30:02 +0000

Windows Vista’s UAC can be overly frustrating at times. There are times when a program needs to be launched with administrator privileges from the start menu, and right clicking and clicking on “Run as Administrator” just doesn’t cut it when you are in a hurry and need to get something to be done in a hurry.

For example, to open Command Prompt as administrator, click Start, type cmd in the Search box and press CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER. You should see the User Account Control window popping up for task elevation confirmation. Press ALT+C to continue. By using the keyboard shortcuts life certainly becomes a lot more easier doesn’t it?

The CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER shortcut is extremely useful for Keyboard junkies like me. It should be noted that this shortcut works only on the Start menu and nowhere else.

Windows Vista has been a lovely companion for me, but the UAC frustrates me all the time. With these keyboard shortcuts I’m actually trying to figure out if I’m using CTRL+SHIFT+ENTER more than CTRL+ALT+DEL on my PC!

Did this shortcut make life easier for you?

Hack Attack : Find The Most Obscure MP3’s Using Google

Karthik Kastury — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 16:31:17 +0000

photo credit: RossinaBossioB

Music sharing has been of the most common file sharing activities on the internet. There are many ways you could find the music you were looking for by using tools like Limewire, BitTorrent etc.. But most times nothing beats a Google search does it? Yes you heard that right.. Google may as well be your best friend if you are looking to find music freely on the Internet.

Just follow the instructions below, and you will be on your way to find the music that you otherwise won’t find on P2P networks. The hack simply involves the major search engines revealing their vast indexes to you so that you can find what you are looking for.

I’m going to give some modified special search strings that will help you find hidden stuff from Google, Yahoo and MSN.

How to Accomplish the Hack

Click on the links below for your favorite search engine. Modify the details according to your liking (for example replace Linkin Park with Radiohead or just the song name). Change the “wma/mp3″ tag to other format such as “ogg” if you wish to download the music in other not so popular formats.

Google

“parent directory” mp3 OR wma OR ogg OR wav Linkin Park -html -htm -download -links

Yahoo Search

“parent directory” AND (Linkin AND Park) AND (mp3 OR wma OR ogg) AND NOT(”download”) AND NOT(”links”)

MSN Search

“parent directory” AND (Linkin AND Park) AND (mp3 OR wma OR ogg) AND NOT(”download”) AND NOT(”links”)

Using the major search engines should help you find any kind of music you are looking for, but there other alternative music only search engines also available that deserve a mention. Check out Alltheweb Audio (mp3), mp3realm and espew

So that was it. I hope this guide will help you find the music you have been looking for quite some time now.. Have a musical day ahead. Do drop in a comment with the song/artist/band that you found with this hack!

Special Credit to Blog Anything

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