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All you need to know about Google TV, the soon to be prodigal child of Google

manohar — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 19:18:16 +0000

Google TV has been making rounds everywhere ever since Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt announced its launch in May 2010. On 4^th October, Google has unleashed the website for its highly awaited, futuristic product. With more than 4 million TV viewers worldwide, the only thing that current day’s TV lacks is web connectivity. And Google aims at integrating TV with Web or for that matter, Web with TV, enabling users not only to tune to their TV channels they normally watch, but also visit their favorite photo, music and video sites right from their TV.

Google TV is an open source platform for TV-related devices and is built on Android. It runs the Google Chrome web browser as well as Adobe Flash 10.1 to let users access the web content. Google TV comes loaded with a handful of apps just like any other smart phone does. Developers will be able to work on Google TV apps by early 2011. They can further start optimizing their website for Google TV. Here’s is the guide for developers

Here’s a quick look at the apps that come loaded with Google TV.

Coming to the most important factor, the content partners, Google TV has already paired up with Turner Broadcasting, CNBC Real Time, HBO, Amazon Video on Demand, Netflix etc. Google is also working with variety of providers like news sites, music sites, and online TV networks including NY Times, USA Today, VEVO, Pandora, Napster, Blip.tv etc.

Put in Google’s own words, “The coolest thing about Google TV is that we don’t even know what the coolest thing about it will be.” One of those cool features can be that the users can use their android phone or iPhone as the TV remote and can use multiple phones to control the TV (No more remote wars!!).

All set to launch later this month, Google TV’s current technology partners include Logitech and Sony. Logitech with its special Google TV set-top box, the Logitech Revue plans to release the product by the end of October at a price of $299 (A bit pricey considering Google’s other services, eh?!). If you happen to be a Dish Network Subscriber, here’s some good news for you – You can own the device for $179, further topped up with the ability to schedule DVR recording directly over Google TV interface. More interestingly, Sony is planning on launching the world’s first Google TV embedded HDTV as well as a Blu-ray player towards the end of this year. The devices will be available at BestBuy stores in united states.

Do you think Google TV has what it takes to be the next revolutionary product that changes the TV, movie and the advertising industry? Share your opinions.

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All you need to know about Google TV, the soon to be prodigal child of Google

Gmail Old Version will be discontinued from September

Vasu — Thu, 12 Aug 2010 12:22:27 +0000

Three years back Google rolled out the new Gmail 2.0 interface, but they still provided a switch back link to older interface. You can find it in the footer of your inbox. It is because the new interface doesn’t work with Internet explorer 6. So, IE6 users are redirected to the older interface. Starting next month Google is going to discontinue the older interface and IE6 visitors will be redirected to ‘Basic HTML’ version which is used for the outdated browsers.

The following message is displayed if you log into the older interface.

You’re using an old version of Gmail which will be retired in September. At that point, you’ll be redirected to a basic HTML view. To get faster Gmail and the newest features, please upgrade to a modern browser,

If you are still using IE6, its time to upgrade your browser and experience the whole new Gmail interface which was updated.

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Gmail Old Version will be discontinued from September

Google Social Search – Watch Video

Vasu — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 13:49:49 +0000

Google rolled out a new feature called social search this week. It is now in beta.
The below video describes what is social search.

All you have to do is to create a Google profile and add other social profiles like Twitter, Blogger, etc.

If you’re signed into Google and do a search, you might see social search results for a particular search at the bottom of the results page under “Results from people in your social circle.”

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Google Social Search – Watch Video

Domain names extensions in International scripts

Vasu — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:09:22 +0000

In near future you may see a domain name extension in your language script.Yes, this is true.No longer just the Latin alphabet. ICANN-The body in charge of assigning the world’s Internet users their online addresses on Friday said it had agreed to allow the use of any of the world’s scripts, .
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which approved the change at a meeting in Seoul, said in a statement.”This is only the first step, but it is an incredibly big one and a historic move toward the internationalisation of the Internet,” ICANN’s President and CEO Rod Beckstrom was quoted as saying. “We have just made the Internet much more accessible to millions of people in regions such as Asia, the Middle East and Russia.”
The programme is set to rolled out in stages, starting Nov. 16. To see the full ICANN proposal click on (ind-cctlD-implementation) Initially, it will allow internationalised domain names (IDNs) using scripts such as Chinese, Korean or Arabic for the country code designators at the end of an address name. Eventually, the use of IDNs will be expanded to all types of Internet address names.

ICANN was set up in 1998 and operated under the aegis of the U.S. Commerce Department. It is the only body which decides what names can be added to the Internet’s top level domains (TLDs) such as .com as well as country designations. Last month, the U.S. government agreed to changes that in effect meant ICANN would no longer report solely to the United States.

What would this mean ?

Definitely a big step towards internationalisation of the internet , and it could lead to a rise in the number of Internet users dramatically.

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Domain names extensions in International scripts

Microsoft Office 2010 (Word,Excel,Access,Outlook) Screenshots

Vasu — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 03:13:27 +0000

Office 2007 SP2 is now available at Microsoft download center .They even previewed office 2010.Microsoft Office 2010 features are yet to be announced , Here are few screenshots for you. The product is expected to come in first half of 2010

Microsoft Excel 2010 Screenshot

Microsoft Office 2010 About Us Page Screen shot

Microsoft Office 2010 Access Screenshot

Microsoft Office 2010 Onenote Screenshot

Microsoft Office 2010 Outlook Screenshot

Microsoft Office 2010 Word Screenshot

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Microsoft Office 2010 (Word,Excel,Access,Outlook) Screenshots

How to Insert Images in Gmail – A Gmail Labs feature

Vasu — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 03:47:42 +0000

Google finally made easy to keep images while sending an email.Till now a HTML work-around was used to do the job. Google today rolled out a new feature called inserting images.The new feature called ‘Inserting Images’ in Gmail labs that lets you add images in message body. However, this is still in labs only.To enable this feature go to Settings > Gmail Labs and enable it from there. Once enabled, you will find an Insert Image option while composing a message as shown in the screenshot below.(Make sure you’re in rich formatting mode, or it won’t show up)

After Clicking Insert Image option, It will ask whether to add an image from computer or a web URL.Just give the location of the image.Once your image is uploaded, you can resize the image and position it by dragging it across your email.Since this is a labs edition feature, it is not enabled by default, you have to manually enable it by going to Gmail labs.

Note:

To protect you from spammers, Gmail doesn’t show URL-based images in messages by default.So if you are sending mail to other Gmail users, they will still have to click “Display images below” or “Always display images from …” to see images you embed.

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How to Insert Images in Gmail – A Gmail Labs feature

Now Send Email in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam from Gmail

Vasu — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 01:29:56 +0000

Gmail has rolled out a new feature that will please many Indian Gmail users. Now Gmail supports five Indian languages – Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam.

What it means ?

Well,you can send email in these 5 Indic languages from Gmail account. All Gmail account holders from India will have this feature turned ON by default. Other users can manually turn this feature ON from settings > Language.

This is not traditional machine language translation. Where you can translate into Hindi after writing in English.If you want to write something in Hindi make sure you know Hindi language. For example type Namaste as in English and hit spacebar – with Hindi option selected you will see नमस्ते ( Namaste written in Hindi language). Similarly, Namaskaram in Telugu and so on for other words.

Another great move by Google.Allowing to email in native language will definitely help in connecting more people.what do you say ?

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Now Send Email in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam from Gmail

Google Chrome Now Comes With Real Player Setup

Vasu — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 12:15:00 +0000

Google is trying many new things to increase the market share of its own browser “Google chrome”.Right from the launch they are promoting it aggressively through advertisements and a link on Google and its related websites.Now they are even bundling it with third-party software.

Google Chrome Bundled with RealPlayer

If you try to install real media player now, you’ll notice that the setup downloads Google Chrome. Its default is set to install Google chrome.Real player seems to be the first third party application promoting Google chrome.Google replaced Firefox browser in their recommended software pack.Google chrome even installs with the latest downloads of Google earth software.

Although this is a common practice used by many, It is slightly unusual for the search giant to play these kind of tricks.

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Google Chrome Now Comes With Real Player Setup

Nvidia Releases Graphics Drivers for Windows 7

Vasu — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 08:06:35 +0000

The world leader in graphic technologies and the inventor of the GPU, Nvidia released of its first drivers specially designed for GeForce card for Windows 7 Beta Operating System.Nvidia says that , Windows 7 will be the first Windows Operating System to fully integrate and take advantage of the GPU for both graphics and parallel computing.
The new Nvidia GeForce drivers for Windows 7 comes in 32-bit and 64-bit flavors, they Support the new Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) 1.1 which is a tweaked graphics driver architecture of standard Windows 7 that debuted with Vista and has promises the improvement in both 2D and 3D applications, including 3D Windows Aero desktop.

Some features of the Nvidia GF drivers version 181.71:

Installs WDDM v1.0 for GeForce 6 and 7-series DirectX 9 GPUs.
Installs WDDM v1.1 for GeForce 8, 9, and 200-series DirectX 10 GPUs
Supports NVIDIA CUDA – Compute Unified Device Architecture.
Supports Direct3D, Direct2D, and DirectWrite.
Supports NVIDIA SLI on DirectX 9, DirectX 10, and OpenGL applications.
Supports NVIDIA PhysX (this driver package automatically installs PhysX System Software version 9.09.0203 for all GeForce 8, 9, and 200-series GPUs).

Download v181.71 Nvidia graphics driver for Windows 7 Beta (32-bit) and v181.71 Nvidia graphics driver for Windows 7 Beta (64-bit).

Nvidia is expected to release regular driver updates for Windows 7 at http://www.nvidia.com/object/windows_7.html.

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Nvidia Releases Graphics Drivers for Windows 7

Rapidshare API Coming Next Week

Vasu — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 03:34:55 +0000

Rapidshare is a big player in online free file sharing. Many prefer to host their files with rapidshare. They made rapidshare more friendly by removing annoying captcha system for non-paid users, increasing per day traffic limit for many countries, security lock to protect accounts etc. Rapidshare developed and API (Application programming interface) to help software developers to build applications based on Rapidshare. They say that it is in beta stage and will be released within few weeks. The primary reason they build this API, is to protect its system from unwanted malicious third party programs resulting in system slow down.

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Rapidshare API Coming Next Week