Close your outlook from home.

You are waiting for an important mail and want to read it from home through webaccess but you fear that the mail might sink into your pst file. What are the solutions?
First solution: Go to your office close the outlook or reply to the mail if it has already arrived.
Second solution: Just send an email, to your official id, which is pre-configured to close Outlook in your machine. Sounds great, huh!! But how....
Here is the trick:

Open Notepad
Type “tskill outlook” //without the quotes
Save it as closeoutlook.bat, in a secure location

Open Outlook
Go to Tool-> Rules and Alerts
Choose “New Rule”
In the “Rules Wizard” popup choose “Start from a blank rule”. Leave the default option of “Check message when they arrive”. Click Next.
Tick “with specific words in the subject or body”.
Click on “specific words” at the window and type a text like “kindlyclosemyoutlook”.
Click Next.
In the new options pane, tick “start application”. Choose the “closeoutlook.bat” file by browsing. By default it will show only *.exe files in the browse panel. Choose all files to view your file.
Click Next and then Finish.
Voila! You are done.

Test it by sending a mail to yourself with the text “kindlyclosemyoutlook” in your mail subject or body.
Thanks Namita for the tip.

PS: While creating the rule you can give your other email address from which you are going to send the close mail, so that only mails from that address can execute the file.

Create a Game, Mashup or a Web page with Microsoft Popfly

Now architect your imagination with Microsoft's Popfly. The project Popfly announced a year back is now in Alpha version. Popfly is the fun and easy way to build and share mashups, gadgets, and Web pages. It’s made up of online visual tools for building Web pages and mashups and a social network where you can host, share, rate, comment and even remix creations from other Popfly users. You can make your own game and add it to your website, blog or facebook.
Popfly seems to be quiet a handy tool for all those non-techies who wants to try their hands on some tech stuff.
Note: If you are able to make a good game then do share it with me :)

What's Next on the Web? Future Web Trends.

Following is the presentation by Richard MacManus at the XMediaLab event in Wellington New Zealand, entitled: What's Next on the Web? Web Technology Trends for 2008 and Beyond.

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Download YouTube videos with Moyea

I always wanted to download videos from Youtube. Recently I found a tool Moyea FLV Downloader. Actually these videos are in Flash Video(FLV) format, so to download them you need an FLV downloader like Moyea and to play them you require FLV player.
All you got to do is download Moyea from here, install it and you are ready to go.
Just provide the URL of the youtube video, give a name to the file and save it in the hard disk. To play these videos download use Moyea player

Microsoft to introduce multi-touch Windows 7

Microsoft is all set to introduce its multi touch Windows 7. It was announced in All Things Digital Conference.

Windows 7 (formerly known as Blackcomb and Vienna) is the working name for the next major version of Microsoft Windows as the successor of Windows Vista.
The D: All Things Digital conference always attracts the elite of the tech world and this year is no exception, with a lineup that includes Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Jerry Yang, Tom Glocer and Mark Zuckerberg, among others.

Kicking it off, Microsoft’s Gates and Ballmer showed off new Windows features that are based on multi-touch software that will be part of Windows 7. Ballmer said touchscreens were just one way Windows would be improved.

It is expected to be released in second half of 2009.

Check out this You Tube video on Windows 7

Google Web Toolkit 1.5 - Now Available

GWT 1.5 is now available for download, although its development isnt finished yet and currently its use-at-your-own-risk. GWT enables Java developers to convert their swing Interfaces in Ajax-based web interfaces. The current release of GWT includes support for Java 5, including Generics, Enums and Annotations. In addition to this it has support for Generics in Remote Procedure Calls.
The only catch is that its not ready for production use.
Download GWT from here.

Firefox 3 vs IE8

This weekend I downloaded Firefox 3.0 and Internet Explorer 8 Beta. As I was going through both the browsers I thought of doing a small speed test.
So here are the results of my initial testing:

Target Site : www.indiatimes.com
Website timer : Webwait

For the 1st call Firefox 3.0 took 10.02 sec whereas IE 8 took 17.97 sec.
While the page was cached, the average of next 4 calls were : Firefox 3.828 sec and IE 6.185 sec.

Test shows Firefox 3.0 is much faster than IE 8 and the kind of changes done in the new version of Firefox, it is sure going to rock the web world.

I am yet to try Opera 9.5.....probably next time.

Outlook Attachment Remover Add-in

Recently I was searching for some add-in to increase my Outlook's performance and thats when I landed on Outlook Attachment Remover. Its an Outlook add-in for saving and extracting attachments, decreasing the size of your Outlook files. Easy-to-use. Plenty of features, but for free. You can download this add-in from here. There is also a How to use section on Kopf's website. You can also increase your Outlook's performance by archiving your mails from time to time.
Note: I am away from my outlook for few days so I am yet to analyze this add-in.

Own a site with Google Sites

Google rolled out its wiki Google Sites which is a relaunch of Jotspot another wiki site acquired by google 16 months back. The interface is extremely simple and you can add widgets to your site. Like Google Docs, Google Sites wikis can be made private, shared with others, or made public. You can select from a variety of templates, but cannot yet customize the look and feel of the site. Somewhere down the road, Google says, they’ll release an API for the new service as well. Editing is done with a rich text editor that allows for basic formatting.

Now stop reading and take your favorite URL before somebody else takes it.

Xobni - Social networking from your Outlook Inbox

Xobni(that's inbox backwards-innovative huh!) an Outlook plug-in provides a sidebar in your inbox that automatically tracks contacts and organizes emails into fully searchable threaded conversations linked back to those people.
Xobni claims to "expose the hidden social network" in your email.Xobni taps into email's hidden social network by creating information-rich profiles out of every person you have ever corresponded with by mining your email for information about them.

The Xobni software has several features, including fast email search, email analytics, automatic phone number discovery, threaded conversations, and more.
The email search is fast and begins finding the people and/or emails you're looking for as you type. A search for a contact will pull up their profile and every email where you two have corresponded...in 0.3 seconds.

A Xobni profile is created for every person you've emailed with and is displayed on the right side of Microsoft Outlook inside the Xobni sidebar. Each profile displays relationship statistics, contact information, related people, threaded conversations, shared attachments, and the author of the message you are currently looking at.
I am yet to try out Xobni on my outlook. You can download Xobni from here. Catch Xobni on YouTube.

Enable USB port in your office

This trick is for all those who wanna use the USB port on their office PC. The trick works only on Windows XP SP2
Click Start->Run->Regedit.

To disable usb storage devices:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\USBSTOR\
DWORD
Now in the right hand side panel double click start and set its value to 4.

To enable usb storage devices:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\USBSTOR\
DWORD
Double click start and put its value to 3.

To be able to write to the USB device try the following step:

Navigate through HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control
Select StorageDevicePolicies.

Double click on WriteProtect from the right panel and change its value to 0(zero).

To enable read only policy put the value as 1 instead of 0.

Warning: Messing up with regedit might lead to re-installation of Windows.

Search Images with Picitup - New Visual Search Engine

When it comes to Search Engines Google is the first word that comes to our mind. There a lot of minor players looking to make a dent in search engine technology. One of the yet to be conquered fields in search includes image search. Visual recognition in search is a prominent breakthrough and whoever can do it with the most accuracy and efficiency has much to gain. Picitup has now entered in this area with its Image Search Engine. It’s a visual search engine, that like so many other search engines, piggybacks off of Google or Yahoo and begins with a textual search. Simply enter your query in the search bar, and Picitup will show the results from one of the two. You can filter searches by clicking Similar Pictures under the picture of your choice or filter by Color, Landscapes, Products and Faces. For fun, you can toss in a picture of you and your closest friends and play Celebrity Matchup—see which celebs you resemble most. Picitup is now in public beta. Check it out!

GoTalkmobile - GTalk for your mobile

I have been using this mobile application since last 8 months now and believe me if you are one of those GTalk fans than you just gonna love it. GoTalkMobile is GTalk instant messenger (IM) client for your J2ME-enabled cell phone.
Chatting with GTM is as convenient as writing an sms and moreover its faster and cheaper to communicate on GTM than through sms. It uses your GPRS connection.
This application is secure and run in the background without hindering the normal work of your mobile.
Above all, its free!
Download GTM on your computer from here. To download directly on your mobile click here and click install link from main page - just click link!

Be the first one to watch latest movie trailers

Now this one is for all you Hollywood movie freaks. Check out this new tool for Windows Vista. Its called Movie-List Player. Add it to your Windows sidebar and immediately get, new and constantly updated movie trailers. New trailers are added to the rotation daily, and all you have to do is sit back and enjoy.
What more, you can add MLP to your blog/website for the incoming traffic to view the trailers.
Download MLP from here.

Now iPhone has competition!

iPhone might have to face the heat of competition in the coming months. Mobile phone manufacturers like HTC and Sony Ericsson are all set to introduce their touch phones in the market very soon.

HTC unveiled its Touch Diamond phone that has ground-breaking features led by a 3D touch interface called TouchFLO 3D and enhanced web-browsing capabilities that enable one-handed zoom and panning navigation plus automatic rotation from a portrait to landscape view when the device is turned on its side. It is lighter than iPhone and includes a 3.2 megapixel optical auto-focus camera, 4 GB internal memory, integrated GPS, Bluetooth 2.0, WiFi 802.11b/g and runs on the Windows Mobile® 6.1 Professional operating system.
The HTC Touch Diamond will be available to European customers in June, Asia and the Middle East will see it around September and the North American and Latin American versions will be arrive in the second half of 2008.Read More



Sony Ericsson is all set to roll out its Windows OS based phone Xperia X1. Sony Ericsson's new XPERIA brand will focus on multimedia and mobile web communication. The X1 has a 3-inch wide VGA (800 x 480) touchscreen display, A2DP Bluetooth, aGPS, WiFi, and microSD memory support. X1 comes with arc sliding QWERTY keyboard and a 3.2 megapixel camera with Autofocus that allows additional features like moving the autofocus box into the viewfinder eliminating the need to center the image in the camera. The Xperia supports 3G in UMTS/HSDPA and HSUPA (faster than HSDPA). Watch an Xperia video here.

UBS reports quarterly loss of $10.97 billion

Adding to the US sub-prime issues Swiss bank UBS reported a first-quarter loss of $10.97 billion and said Tuesday it will slash almost 7 percent of its work force. In the same period last year the bank reported a net profit of 3 billion francs against the 11.5 billion Swiss franc loss this year.

The bank said it will cut 2,600 jobs in its investment banking arm — which took the blame for most of UBS’ record $37.4 billion in write-downs since last summer. The major chunk of job cut will be done in Britain and the U.S. UBS has more than 83,800 employees worldwide.

In a conference call with analysts CEO Marcel Rohner confirmed reports that UBS is selling parts of its subprime portfolio to U.S. asset manager BlackRock Inc. for $15 billion (9.7 billion euros).

Free sms service; No need to shell out Rs 6 /sms

If you don't want to shell out upto Rs 6 for getting those Value Added Services like cricket score, jokes, sun signs etc then just try out www.mytodaysms.com. All you need to do is to send a one time sms @09845398453 to subscribe for a particular topic and that is it. You will be charged only Rs 2 one time for sending the sms and all daily incoming sms thereafter are free. The service is only available for residents of India.

McAfee + Yahoo = Secure Search

McAfee Inc and Yahoo Inc are joining hands to offer alerts about unsafe and dangerous websites while displaying search results at yahoo.com.

With this new security feature, which is expected to come into effect by May 6, people who search the internet using Yahoo will see a red exclamation mark and a warning next to links that McAfee has identified as serving dangerous downloads or using visitors' e-mail addresses to send out spam.
Dangerous downloads can include "adware," which shows unwanted advertisements; "spyware," which secretly tracks users' keystrokes and other actions; and other malicious programs that can give criminals control over users' computers.If McAfee has identified a site as having employed such tactics, Yahoo users won't see the link at all.
After Google, Yahoo operates the second most popular search engine among U.S. users, with 21 per cent market share compared to Google's nearly 60 per cent, according to data for March, the latest available, from ComScore Inc.
McAfee also benefits from teaming with Yahoo because it can use Yahoo's search data to identify sites to examine for security holes and include within its products.
I tried using Yahoo search today but couldn't locate any such red exclamation sign.

Black monday for Yahoo's stock.....

Yahoo's stock took a hit as the US financial markets opened on monday morning, may 5. This happened after Microsoft abandoned its offer to buy Yahoo. Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo at $33 per share whereas Yahoo was eyeing a bid of $37. While I am composing this post the stock is down by more than 15% and Microsoft is trading flat.
What would have been the outcome of the merger if Microsoft had not walked out with its bid? MicroYahoo.
Now that Microsoft decided to give up on acquiring Yahoo, Yahoo's stock price is softly moving down towards a micro value(good one huh!!!)....
There are rumors that Microsoft might again try to acquire Yahoo. Lets wait n watch.

Apple's iPhone in India by June 2008

India may get its first iPhone by June this year. Apple is planning to roll out its much hyped touchscreen mobile phone in Indian markets through Reliance and/or Vodaphone as carriers. The news about Vodaphone being one of the carriers is not confirmed though.
Initially its 8GB model would be available for sale which might make the pockets lighter by 28 grands INR. The same model costs around $400 in US that comes out to be 16 grands INR. The phone is available in the Indian gray market at a price of around Rs 22000. The 16GB version will be available later this year.
The features of iPhone includes 320 x 480 px 3.5 inches colored screen with a 2MP camera. It has 128MB DRAM, 8GB of storage space with 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.0. The size of the phone is 4.5x2.4x0.46 inches weighing 135 gm (Wow!!!). The iPhone comes with Safari browser for web accessibility.
Apple has filed more than 300 patents related to the technology behind the iPhone.
Although I am a die hard NOKIA fan, I would still like to grab one of the first pieces of iPhone when it is rolled out in India.