You can buy the  LG Infinia 47LW6500 47-Inch Cinema 3D 1080p 240Hz LED-LCD HDTV with Smart TV and Four Pairs of 3D Glasses for $1084 with free shipping and no tax in most states right now.

Features

• LG’s Cinema 3D technology delivers flicker free, wide angle viewing through use of lightweight, inexpensive, battery free glasses (included: four pairs of glasses).
• Smart TV allows you to access limitless content, thousands of movies, downloadable apps, videos and the best of the web all organized in a simple to use interface.
• Enjoy your favorite 2D movies and shows in immersive 3D with LG’s 2D to 3D conversion feature.
• LG’s LED Plus backlight technology provides even greater control of brightness through local dimming that delivers better contrast.
• TruMotion 240Hz technology lets you see sports, video games and high-speed action with virtually no motion blur. Full HD 1080p gives it superior picture quality over standard HDTV.

Black Friday: LG Infinia 47LW6500 47-Inch Cinema 3D 1080p 240Hz LED-LCD HDTV Bundle $1084 - Originally published at ShanKrila.com on 2011/11/20 (RSS)

FIFA 2010 World Cup in South Africa is starting today. Some of us in the world unfortunately will be at work or away from home due to the timings of the matches.

But don’t worry, there are plenty of places to catch your favorite football matches online on the web. Here are a few

• ESPN3 – Online streaming from the popular sports network in the US. ESPN3 will be streaming all 64 games. One thing to note is that you should either be watching from a list of ISPs they have deals with and you might have to use your ISP login before you could watch the live stream. For eg. I had to login with my AT&T U-Verse account to start watching.
  
• CBC Sports – Canada’s national public broadcaster is streaming all world cup matches online.
• BBC Sports – All matches will be available to watch live online in high quality video.
• Optus – Australian telecommunications carrier will be live streaming 2010 football matches for free to their customers with compatible 3G mobile devices.
• UniVision – Is bringing the World Cup matches live in the US (in Spanish)
• iTV – Will have select content from all 64 games and will live stream whole matches that iTV carries in UK.
• TVU Networks – TVU is a live streaming Intenet TV platform and is known for it’s live tv streams from around the world. You can get some more info here.
• Facebook – Posted a guide to the World Cup. They have some official broadcast partners that enable users to share updates while you watch the games online live. You can check out partners by country listed in the blog post and here.

Also, TechCrunch has posted a Ultimate Guide to Digital Delight with a cornucopia of information on 2010 FIFA World Cup. Check it out.

Do you know of any other live streams? Leave a comment and we will add it to the list here.

Watch FIFA World Cup 2010 South Africa Live Online - Originally published at ShanKrila.com on 2011/11/20 (RSS)

I came across an interesting site this morning.

Typealyzer.com sets out to analyze a blog based on the content and determines the personality type of the blog.

Typealyzer Logo

Typealyzer analyzes writing style in the blog based on text patterns, etc and determines the type of blog. Of course, naturally I put ShanKri-la to the test and we came out as

ISTJ – The Duty Fulfillers

The responsible and hardworking type. They are especially attuned to
the details of life and are careful about getting the facts right.
Conservative by nature they are often reluctant to take any risks
whatsoever.

The Duty Fulfillers are happy to be let alone and to be able to
work in their own pace. They know what they have to do and how to do
it.

I am not sure if that is flattering or demeaning but I tend to take things positively. Even though the title seems a little discouraging, the details are more friendly and some of it even true.

I do like to work in my own pace – I feel no urge or desire to post for the sake of posting everyday or to some schedule. Of course, you know that as a regular reader.

One little secret I’d let you in is that actually I like reading others work more than I do writing. This results in me devouring a lot of stuff from the web but only writing about a select few that I really feel excited about here. I hope this shows in my writing than just being ‘dutiful fulfiller’.

Behind Typealyzer.com

There isn’t a lot of information about the site (no About page for starters) in the home page. But, the site does have an active Google Group for Typealyzer.

Reading through a few posts reveal that Typealyzer only analyzes the text directly on the url provided. So, I could have been really dynamic this whole year but Typealyzer determines the blog type by just the 10 posts in my home page.

So, try putting different pages of your site url to see what you get. For eg, search results page or archives page, etc.

Alternately, my wife’s Indian recipes blog SpicyTasty.com came out as ESFP – The Performers – the entertaining and friendly blog.

Our iPhone blog TopiPhoneResource.com came out as ESTP – The Doers – the active and play-ful type.

Let us know in the comments what type of blog is yours.

Typealyzer – What Type is Your Blog? - Originally published at ShanKrila.com on 2011/11/20 (RSS)

I use a lot of Google’s products and some of them I find indispensible. Besides the obvious reason that they are free, I find some of their apps absolutely something I cannot live without. I use Google, GMail, Google Notebook, Google Maps and Picasa almost everyday! Do you find yourself reading this and that about Google’s new features here and there? You might be able to follow them on your own with these links.

With a varied range of Google products out there and so many of them coming out everyday from Google Labs, how does one keep track of all the offerings from Google?

Official Google Blog
This blog provides very good information on new developments, acquisitions (which seem to be a daily fact these days) and insights into Google as a whole.

Google Blogoscoped
It is more of a community effort with lots of people contributing with most of the attention circling around Google. They talk about tips & tricks, new features, Google’s censorship amongst other useful information. It is a great blog to follow if you want to keep yourself up-to-date with Google like I do.

Also, they have a page with links to all the Google Blogs with the most recent article listed as a summary.

Google Sightseeing
‘Why bother seeing the word for real?’ – Their tagline speaks for itself. People find cool and weird stuff in the satellite imagery in Google Earth (this is one cool desktop app if you haven’t tried it yet). And they share their findings in Google Sightseeing. Very interesting time killer. I used to spend way too much time at home zooming into different locations with Google Earth but now i just go here.
Are there any good Google related blogs that I haven't found yet?

Are there any good Google related blogs that you would like share with us? We would like to hear how you keep up with this.

Are you a Google fan? - Originally published at ShanKrila.com on 2011/11/20 (RSS)

Dropbox seems to be in a bad run recently. I wrote about Dropbox security when they rewrote some of the lines in the privacy policy pages. This got some bad publicity and even though I love Dropbox for it’s usefulness started suggesting Dropbox alternatives.

Yesterday, Dropbox suffered another serious setback. One of the code updates made had a sever bug in their authentication system, that let anyone login to someone else’s Dropbox account with or without the correct password.

For about 4 hours!

Dropbox founder Arash said in a blog post:

Yesterday we made a code update at 1:54pm Pacific time that introduced a bug affecting our authentication mechanism. We discovered this at 5:41pm and a fix was live at 5:46pm. A very small number of users (much less than 1 percent) logged in during that period, some of whom could have logged into an account without the correct password. As a precaution, we ended all logged in sessions. (emphasis mine)

We’re conducting a thorough investigation of related activity to understand whether any accounts were improperly accessed. If we identify any specific instances of unusual activity, we’ll immediately notify the account owner. If you’re concerned about any activity that has occurred in your account, you can contact us at support@dropbox.com.

This should never have happened. We are scrutinizing our controls and we will be implementing additional safeguards to prevent this from happening again.

While it is commendable that Dropbox continues to admit their failings, it is rather troublesome. This issue highlights one of the shortcomings of trusting cloud services with your data.

I still maintain that you should consider again if you store sensitive data in the cloud – Dropbox or not. You could always encrypt your data and use Dropbox with Truecrypt for atleast the sensitive parts of your data.

Or you could use an online storage service like SpiderOak that encrypts your data before storing on their servers with the key only with you!

Check out here for more on Dropbox hacks. But, with solutions like portable Dropbox it is going to be hard for me to not use them for trivial stuff I don’t care if it gets out in the world.

The convenience of Dropbox far outweighs the small risk posed by security breaches like this one.

{ via Dropbox blog }

Dropbox Bug Leaves Accounts Open for Hours - Originally published at ShanKrila.com on 2011/11/20 (RSS)

Originally posted 2009-07-08 09:56:43.

We have heard rumors of Google’s plans to build an operating system for a long time. Guess what, it’s true!

When Google released its Google Chrome browser 9 months ago, the Google OS rumors kinda died down. Plus, the mobile devices OS platform Android was also another reason.

Google Chrome OS

Not to be confused with Android OS or the Google Chrome browser, Google Chrome OS is an entirely new build of an operating system sharing its roots with the Android and Google Chrome browser.

Google has attempted to rethink operating system usability and security and has built one from a Linux kernel that will run both on x86 and ARM chips.

The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies.

Google Chrome OS is a new project that is set to achieve a few goals for those who live in the Internet

• get your email instantly without waiting for your computer to boot up
• have a fast computer just as when you bought iy
• access your data wherever you are
• not worry about backing up your data
• don’t spend hours trying to configure new hardware you bought

It will be interesting to see how this project pans out. Google has a knack of keeping things simple and making it really usable. Even though I am such a Firefox browser fan, I can’t help opening Google Chrome now and then to get to some things fast. Of course, it is my fault that I have over 20+ Firefox add-ons installed.

Google Chrome OS is initially set to target netbooks. At present running even Windows XP on a netbook is a joke in terms of usability and this could be a sweet spot to hit for Google.

The Rumor is True! Google is Building an Operating System - Originally published at ShanKrila.com on 2011/11/20 (RSS)

Ever forget to print and take directions and a map with you while traveling? It’s not fun getting lost in a big city. Even if you are well prepared, plans might change and you might need to go to a place that you didn’t get directions for.

No worries. Just dial ‘DIR-ECT-IONS’ (347-328-4667) from your mobile phone to get directions to where you are going via SMS. You just call this number and say where you are and where you want to go. You will get turn by turn by directions to your mobile phone by SMS.

Quick Facts about Dial Directions

• It’s free but the SMS message will be counted in your cellular plan.
• You can specify an address of intersection for your location
• You can specify an address, or a business name or an event listed with Dial Directions.
• No prior registration required. Just dial the number.
  
• It is available right now in beta in 15 major metros in the US – Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Dallas, Denver, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, New York City, Philadelphia, Sacranemto, San Fransisco,  and Washington D.C.

Google 411

Google 411 offers a similar service where you dial 1-800-GOOG-411. You will can get the address and phone number of the business you are interested in. You could optionally choose to get this information sent to your phone by SMS. The SMS has the name, address, phone number and a link to Google Maps if you have internet enabled in your phone.

Microsoft LiveSearch 411

Microsoft has a similar 411 service where you dial 1-800-CALL-411. It is similar to Google’s service but you could also get weather, travel and movie information from here. You could also opt to get this info by SMS as well as have it shared with a friend. This will be awesome if your friends are on a different car and you can send this info to them as well.

Traveling can sometimes have its antsy moments when you are lost are trying to find a place. Having these free services at your disposal would definitely help ease such moments. I will be giving Dial Directions a test drive when I am in Las Vegas next weekend.

Have you ever been lost in a big city? How did you manage to find your way back? Let’s here some interesting/funny/scary stories.

Get Directions from your Mobile Phone - Originally published at ShanKrila.com on 2011/11/20 (RSS)

It’s time to look at some of the new Firefox extensions making the rounds lately. Without further adieu,

• TubeStop: This extension for Mozilla based web browsers disables autoplay on YouTube videos. It lets you open multiple videos in multiple tabs without them all playing at once. It also works on YouTube videos embedded in non-YouTube sites like some videos embedded here in ShanKri-la. One huge side-effect: Stops the upcoming video overlay ads. [via Kyles Cove]
• OpenDownload: This extension allows you to open ANY file from the internet with the default program assgned for the file type by your operating system. Very nice instead of having to choose the program you want to open with.
• FoxSaver: This extension can turn your idle Firefox into a digital picture frame. Use your own pictures of use your Flickr RSS feed or just use the ones handpicked by FoxSaver. This is a great way of sharing your pictures with friends and families. If they have your RSS set, they can see the new pictures as you update your albums. Plus, you can configure idle time, window configuraion, etc. [via Firefox Extension Guru]
• LeechBlock: If you are lacking in self-control, don’t worry. You can configure this extension to act as your mom and stop yourself from accessing time-wasting websites in the time periods you specify. Ideal for folks working from home, where you can lose track of time in sites like Amazon, Facebook or just that silly online Sudoku.
• Visual-Search: Let’s say you are searching for watches and Google brings up results with weather watches as well. You can just highlight ‘weather’ and hit the visual ‘-’ element and the query gets submitted again with -weather. It’s a very nice way to refine your searches visually.
• Paragrasp: Great extension for those who read a lot of text from your browser. This extension highlights paragraph that you are reading and once you are done you can move to the next paragraph with a keystroke. It helps immensely with your concentration. [via Lifehacker]

Hope you enjoyed this week’s roundup of extensions. Here is my usual plug of the Top Firefox extensions post which I am hoping to update this coming long weekend.

Firefox Extensions: Picks of the Week 2007-08-29 - Originally published at ShanKrila.com on 2011/11/20 (RSS)

We covered a list of best free Mac OS X apps few weeks back. It’s time to show the love to the penguin.

Lifehacker has again come up with an incredible list of free linux apps. A lot of the apps are what I use as well. So, here it is with a few of my own additions.

Productivity

• Gnome-do: A Launchy like app.
• OpenOffice.org – A Microsoft Office alternative that works great on all OSs.
• gedit: A customizable text editor and extensible with plugins.
• AutoKey: Texter for linux! You can save short keywords for long text blocks and insert it easily anywhere.

Internet/Communication

• Firefox – browser of choice for many
• Google Chrome – new Google’s browser worthy of a try
• Thunderbird – A great desktop email client
• Pidgin – one of the best instant messaging clients for Linux
• Skype – does it any introduction?
• Transmission – Not as feature-rich as the Mac counterpart but a great bittorrent client nevertheless.
• TweetDeck – Your social networking dashboard for Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare, LinkedIn, etc.

Media

• VLC – The best media player client of my choice on any platform. [VLC review]
• Handbrake – One of the best media converter that can pretty much convert any format to your format of your choice.
• GIMP – Open source graphic editing programthat can save you hundreds of moolah.
• Rhythmbox – A great music player

Utilities

• Dropbox – One of the best multi-OS file sync that integrates with the native file system seamlessly.
• Wine – Even hardcore Linux fans sometimes have a need to run a Windows program. Wine makes it easy to run a Windows program from inside Linux.
• Conky – A customizable system monitor for linux
• Yahuake – a snappy dropdown terminal
• VirtualBox – a free virtual machine that lets you run other operating systems within Linux.
• p7zip – A linux version of 7-zip utility.

I posted a bunch of free apps I am thankful for and you will see I listed a lot of the above apps.

If you are looking for some of the best open source software to download in one shot, check out the OpenDisc project for Windows.

Also, check out Ninite project for more free windows software packaged for ease of use.

{ via Lifehacker }

Best of FREE Linux Apps - Originally published at ShanKrila.com on 2011/11/20 (RSS)

Google just rolled out a nice two-pane Gmail interface for the Apple iPad and other tablet devices like NotionInk ADAM.

If you have been wondering if you could try it out in your desktop without selling an arm and a leg for an Apple iPad, you are in luck.

It’s the age-old switching user agent trick at play here.

Every browser has an user-agent associated with it – kinda like a browser signature – that websites use to sniff out and display different interfaces for different devices.

We have tried out iPhone interfaces here using the same trick. We just need to tell the website we are from the iPad browser with a modified user-agent.

Switching Firefox User-Agent

• Install User Agent Switcher extension and add a new User-agent – iPad
• Fill in the following fields
  Description: iPad
  User Agent: Mozilla/5.0(iPad; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.21.10 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.4 Mobile/7B314 Safari/531.21.10
  App Code Name: iPad
  App Name: Mobile Safari
  App Version: 5.0 (Macintosh; en-US)
• Change the user-agent to iPad and browse to Gmail

Switching Google Chrome User

• Right click on your Google Chrome desktop icon and go to Properties
• Append this to the ‘Target’ field
  -user-agent=”Mozilla/5.0(iPad; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/531.21.10 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0.4 Mobile/7B314 Safari/531.21.10”
• Even if it looks like it didn’t fit the field, just save by clicking on OK
• Launch Google Chrome and go to Gmail

Gmail for mobile is optimized for mobile and tablet devices and do not have the desktop features such as keyboard shortcuts. But, Gmail for Mobile is built for webkit based browsers such as Safari and Google Chrome and hence will perform really well.

Although it was nice to try out the iPad interface, I am a power Gmail user with ton of Gmail Greasemonkey scripts and Gmail sidebar widgets, keyboard shortcuts, etc. I felt handicapped in the iPad interface in my desktop. So, back to the web version for me.

[via Lifehacker & Google Mobile Blog]

How to Use Gmail’s iPad Interface in Your Desktop? - Originally published at ShanKrila.com on 2011/11/20 (RSS)

I am sure getting overwhelmed by email everyday is the norm these days. I am no different.

But, with Gmail and its filters and labels and stars and zillion cool labs features, I try keep my sanity when I am looking at my inbox.

And it works to a certain extent. Still a lot of the work in managing my inbox involves me spending a time deciding what is important and what is not.

Enter Priority Inbox feature in Gmail.

Gmail is good about marking spam mails but we sign up and subscribe and get tons of emails that aren’t outright spam but just serve to contribute to distraction and disrupting out productivity. Basically they are not as important as some other emails.

Priority Inbox basically tries to cull those and separate the important emails from the rest of the noise. It does so by analyzing who you email the most, which emails you open and reply and other signals.

Priority Inbox is like your personal assistant, helping you focus on the messages that matter without requiring you to set up complex rules.

Priority Inbox splits your inbox into three sections: “Important and unread,” “Starred” and “Everything else”:

As messages come in, Gmail automatically flags some of them as important. Gmail uses a variety of signals to predict which messages are important, including the people you email most (if you email Bob a lot, a message from Bob is probably important) and which messages you open and reply to (these are likely more important than the ones you skip over). And as you use Gmail, it will get better at categorizing messages for you. You can help it get better by clicking the or buttons at the top of the inbox to correctly mark a conversation as important or not important. (You can even set up filters to always mark certain things important or unimportant, or rearrange and customize the three inbox sections.)

Once this feature is enabled on your Gmail account, you will see a notification in Red on near the Settings link in Gmail. You can activate it from there. Google is rolling this feature out to everyone in the next week.

Once, activated you can customize the settings in a few ways. I have set it up to show Important and unread messages at the top, starred messages next, Important and read messages next and then everything else. You can also reset this in different order as well as set up the number of emails you want to see in each section independently.

Plus, you can also set if you want to see the regular Inbox or Priority Inbox on opening Gmail.

I love Gmail and they just keep adding more and more goodness to it!

Here is a video about this feature

{ via Google blog }

Gmail Priority Inbox Finds Your Important Emails - Originally published at ShanKrila.com on 2011/11/20 (RSS)

I am glad to say that the RSS full feed woes are finally over for me. I hope I didn’t drive off too many readers with these problems.

What went wrong?

Although I would love to put my finger on it, the real cause is still eluding me. But, here is the sequence of steps that broke it and fixed it, if it’ll help anyone facing the same issue.

• I broke the RSS feed initially when I added a 301 redirect to direct my shankrila.com traffic to www.shankrila.com to my .htaccess file. Because my feed was http://shankrila.com/feed, it started getting redirected to the www address.
• I fixed that by changing the source feed address to include the www.
• Feed works, but only shows partial feeds.
• WordPress Admin -> Options show full text feed enabled.
• Disabled Full Text Feeds WP plugin.
• Disabled Feedburner Feedsmith WP plugin.
• Enabled Better Feeds plugin
• Source feed now shows full text feeds. – Use IE to verify as Firefox tends to show excerpts. Or you can use View Source in Firefox to see if the full text is pulled in the feed.
• Feedburner feed still shows partial feeds. Figured it might be a Feedburner cache issue and decide to give it some time. (pinging Feedburner multiple times didn’t have any effect)
• After 3 days, it still showed partial feeds.
• My initial Feedburner feed was pointed at http://www.shankrila.com/feed/rss. I decided to try http://www.shankrila.com/feed/rss2 instead and pinged Feedburner again.
• Full Text Feed works now!

I am yet to enable Feedburner Feedsmith plugin to capture all the feed traffic at one place but this was a good learning experience for me. Being a Database Administrator by day, I am anal about having a backup before changing anything in the blog. But, this one just caught me off guard.

Again, my apologies to those who were inconvenienced by this and a big thank you to all those who poured in suggestions and tips to help me resolve this problem.

RSS Full Feed Problem Fixed - Originally published at ShanKrila.com on 2011/11/20 (RSS)

iDrive is a file backup service just like Dropbox. I have heard about this service before but haven’t tried it until now.

iDrive is running a promotion where you can get a free $10 iTunes gift card just for signing up and trying their service. You need to have a iPhone (or any smartphone) and a windows computer to avail this offer.

Here’s what you need to do

1. Install iDrive Lite iPhone app (or Blackberry/Android app). Create an iDrive account and it will backup your iPhone contacts to iDrive.
2. Download and install Windows iDrive client. Use the account you created to sign in. Choose a folder to backup.
3. Once the files complete backing up to iDrive, you will get a free $10 iTunes gift card by email.

I’d choose to backup a small folder to start with.

iDrive seems like a very interesting backup solution with 5GB of free space to start with. Although iDrive is also available on Mac OS X, this offer seems to include only Windows computer. (I haven’t tried doing it with a Mac, so if you do let us know in the comments)

I will write more about the iDrive lite iPhone app after I give it a thorough check.

iDrive Free $10 iTunes Gift Card Offer (Smartphone needed) - Originally published at ShanKrila.com on 2011/11/20 (RSS)

With our recent iPhone 3g purchase, it has been awesome to use GPS based iPhone apps that can find your location and suggest things you are looking for around you. The variety of apps that make use of this feature is just mind boggling. I could look up movies, restaurants, stores, etc right from our iPhone without knowing where we are.Plus, it takes the pain out of having to type in our location in a search takes the pain out of searching from a phone.

Mozilla Lab’s Geode

Firefox’s Geode is an experimental add-on from Mozilla Labs that brings the same functionality to your web browser. When you are in a new town, you can just fire up your laptop and go to a website that uses your location data and search for restaurants or or movies etc. Without knowing the exact location you are in, you can find stuff around you.

Native GeoLocation in Firefox 3.1

A new W3C Geolocation Specification adds native ability for websites to request your location and provide results based on where you are. Finding your location could be GPS-based, WiFi-based or manual entry. This should be available atleast in a primitive form in Firefox 3.1 beta releases and alpha releases of Firefox’s mobile version Fennec.

What is Geode?

Geode is just an early sample of this functionality that is coming soon so we can play with this today. Mozilla Labs is looking for feedback on the best set of features to be included as well as addressing privacy concerns that could arise with using location awareness to websites we are visiting.

Geode uses Skyhook’s Loki technology to map Wifi signals in your area to your location. So at the moment, you can try this out of you are on a WiFi. The cool thing about that Wi-Fi based lookup is that is takes just 1 second to get a lock whereas a GPS-based lookup could take upto 45 seconds to establish a lock. And it has an accuracy of within 10-20 metres! That makes a world of a difference when using a location-aware site.

Try Geode now

You can get the experimental add-on Geode here. And you can give it a whirl with a couple of services that use Geolocation already.

• Food Finder – find local eatouts within walking distance
• Pownce – A popular service that can attach location info to your messages, pictures, etc.
• Yahoo! Fire Eagle – A Yahoo’s service that brokers your location between you and any web service that can use it.

As the Mozilla labs article points out, the potential for this feature is just incredible. A RSS reader that displays different feeds based on if you are home or at work. Certain websites that would let you login only from a certain location improving security are a few cited examples.

I use a couple of awesome products from Mozilla Labs like Ubiquity, Prism, etc and love them! Geode looks like another one I will be using as Geolocation based features appear on popular services. What do you think?

[via Mozilla Labs]

Mozilla’s Geode Brings GeoLocation to Firefox 3 - Originally published at ShanKrila.com on 2011/11/20 (RSS)

Google has just started rolling out the new minimal look for everyone?

If you are like me and don’t see it yet, here is how you can enable it right now.

• Just go to Mail Settings
• Go to Themes tab
• Enable Preview or Preview (Dense)

Other than the new minimal look, Google has also moved the ad down and has some scrolling elements changed. For. eg. the action bar with labels, archive, delete, etc are fixed and easy to access no matter how long your email thread is.

This has to be one of the biggest Gmail re-designs ever and a different approach from the traditional blue themes we are used to.

If you are sharp eyed, you may also have noticed changes in the individual mail panels. Google has now added easy to access contact details with those in the email thread. This idea seems to be heavily borrowed from the Gmail add-on Rapportive I reviewed here.

Go get your new Gmail look right now. Let me know in the comments about what you think of it. I like it!

I am sure there will be a bunch of Gmail Greasemonkey scripts coming out tweaking this new look and feel.

How to Get the New Gmail Minimal Look? - Originally published at ShanKrila.com on 2011/11/20 (RSS)

Originally posted 2009-10-26 08:00:24.

Google Tasks has been a welcome addition for a lot of Gmail fans. Plus, Google Tasks has been made available from a variety of Google web apps like Google Calendar, etc.

The only downside so far is that Google Tasks opens in a small window inside of Gmail or Google Calendar.

Google Tasks can now be accessed in full screen in one of two ways.

1. Google Tasks via iGoogle
   iGoogle allows you to access Google Tasks in full screen by clicking on the maximize button. It gives you a nice toolbar access to get to the different lists quickly.
2. Access full view directly
   You can also open Google Tasks standalone in full view by going to https://mail.google.com/tasks/canvas


Although I use Remember the Milk extensively for managing my tasks via my computer or via Remember the Milk iPhone app, there are things like my blog ideas that I want to store somewhere quick and fast.

Google Tasks fits the bill perfectly and having it in its own Windows gives me the flexibility and better access than the tiny constrained window within Gmail.

Quick Tip: Access Google Tasks In Full Browser Window - Originally published at ShanKrila.com on 2011/11/20 (RSS)

This concept may not sit well with everyone but it is interesting nonetheless. There is a social network for everything. You name it and there is a network for it. 

Remember the site GDGT – a social networking site for gadgets where you can share, review gadgets you own and ones you want publicly?

Blippy.com is gdgt equivalent, only with Blippy you can share and review ANY purchase you make.

From Blipp’s about page

What is Blippy?

Blippy is a fun, free and safe site that lets you share your purchases and see what your friends are buying online and in real life.

What does it do?

Blippy lets you communicate about and share purchases with friends by syncing already existing e-commerce accounts to Blippy such as iTunes, Netflix, Woot, eBay and more.

Who uses Blippy?

Thousands of people use Blippy each day to have fun, stay connected and discover new and interesting things.

Blippy is an interesting concept. My traditional shopping experience is to usually read online reviews from strangers about a product. But, if someone I personally know vouches for a product I am interested in, that is equivalent to a 100 positive reviews in my mind.

If I could see what my friends are buying online and in real life and read their reviews, that beats any other review system that can be gamed.

Blippy lets you connect your credit card or debit card account securely to your Blippy account. It detects your purchases and stores it for your review. You can also connect your Gmail account and they will analyze the emails for receipts and purchases.

You can also connect your Apple iTunes, Netflix and a plethora of other service accounts with Blippy.

Another important feature is the ability to connect to your  Facebook and Twitter accounts and share your purchase reviews with just a checkbox as you publish it on Blippy.

Once they gather this data from your accounts, you could choose to publish purchases only after you approve and review them. You level up as you review more of your purchases. The nice slider showing number of review you move to the next level is a nice motivation to write more reviews.

I read through the privacy policy in the site as any site that stores my purchase history makes me nervous. Especially about the credit card part

You have the ability to share your credit card or bank card information with us for the purpose of allowing us to automatically or manually post your purchases so that your followers may view them. If you no longer wish to store your information on the site, you may delete that information at any time within your account.

It’s good to know that I can delete my information from the site anytime. But, it still didn’t instill enough confidence in me to connect my credit cards.

But, the service itself is very innovative and I am taking baby steps with this site at the moment. I had no qualms connecting my iTunes account and I am sharing my Apple iPhone/Apple iPad app purchases similar to my reviews on our iPhone blog.

So what do you think of a service like Blippy? Do you feel it is a bit too much to reveal your shopping history or do you just love to share everything you buy?

A Social Network to Share More of Your Life – Your Purchases - Originally published at ShanKrila.com on 2011/11/20 (RSS)

Google Apps has been a silent force taking over the enterprise both public and private sector. Google Apps is the enterprise version of the free web apps we are used to – Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, etc.

Most web applications rely on just an username and password and this is inherently insecure. Enterprises deal with this usually with the popular RSA keyfob based two-factor authentication systems.

With 2-factor authentication, besides entering the username and password, you have to enter a pin and append it with dynamically generated string of numbers from your RSA keyfob. This makes it very secure to access stuff online. Even some banks have started to do this for online access to their clients.

Google has now introduced the two-step verification for Google Apps accounts. Instead of a key fob, they have ingeniously utilized another device we constantly have on us – mobile phone.

No special tokens or devices required. Once you enter your username and password, a verification code is sent to your mobile phone as SMS, voice calls or generated on an application for Blackberry, Android or iPhone.

Google is doing 2 things on this front to make this a wide-spread adoption

• They have built this on an open standard to allow integration with other vendors’ technologies in the future
• They have also open sourced the mobile authentication app so companies can customize it to their needs

Two-step verification is available to Admins of Google Apps Premier, Education and Government now. Stand Edition Users (free) can expect to see it in the months to come.

Once enabled, end users can set this up in the Accounts tab in Gmail Settings.

Google has taken a right step in making Google Apps more attractive to Enterprises with security where the pricing was already really attractive.

Chase bank does this already and I really like the security comfort it offers and great to see Google Apps offer it too.

{ via Google Enterprise blog }

Google Moves to Secure Enterprises with Two-Factor Authentication - Originally published at ShanKrila.com on 2011/11/20 (RSS)

We were calling it the Google Chrome OS notebook. In fact, I received a Google Chrome OS notebook in Google’s pilot program.

At the core of this notebook is the Chrome OS browser. It is a totally different idea of a notebook.

These are not typical notebooks. With a Chromebook you won’t wait minutes for your computer to boot and browser to start. You’ll be reading your email in seconds. Thanks to automatic updates the software on your Chromebook will get faster over time. Your apps, games, photos, music, movies and documents will be accessible wherever you are and you won’t need to worry about losing your computer or forgetting to back up files. Chromebooks will last a day of use on a single charge, so you don’t need to carry a power cord everywhere. And with optional 3G, just like your phone, you’ll have the web when you need it.

Chromebooks have many layers of security built in so there is no anti-virus software to buy and maintain. Even more importantly, you won’t spend hours fighting your computer to set it up and keep it up to date.

At the core of each Chromebook is the Chrome web browser. The web has millions of applications and billions of users. Trying a new application or sharing it with friends is as easy as clicking a link.

Google has just announced the availability of Chromebooks on June 15 in the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Netherlands, Italy and Spain.

It is going to be very interesting to see the reception this receives amongst the slew of announcements at Google I/O.

Check out the following video

And now checkout Google Chromebook.

Google Introduces Google Chromebooks - Originally published at ShanKrila.com on 2011/11/20 (RSS)

Google Docs & Spreadsheets have started to make me think different about I use and organize documents. I keep track of some of my spreadsheets online at Google Docs just because I can access it from anywhere with a browser and update it.

I still missed at times when I found it easier to work from my desktop with OpenOffice that using Google Docs web application.

DocSyncer (beta) is here to take care of that missing piece for me and you if you have ever felt that way. DocSyncer works by automatically finding and syncing your documents to Google Docs and your DocSyncer account.

Quick Facts about DocSyncer

• DocSyncer monitors changes to documents and sync the updated files as well
• Install DocSyncer in as many computers as you want and have them synced at Google Docs
• Log in to DocSyncer from any computer to continue your work you left at half way in another computer.
• You can see all previous versions of a document as well
• Uses 128-bit SSL & AES encryption while syncing your docs for security
• With Google Docs Mobile Edition, you can even get to your documents in your computer from your cell phone.
• Launch Google Docs from your computer just like you open them in Microsoft Office
• You can open files in your My Account tab in your browser locally in your computer
• Custom folders work a little bit where you can turn off which folders inside Desktop or My Documents you don’t want to sync.
• You can also change your Google Docs account from inside DocSyncer.

Should I Use It

It sure looks like a promising way to streamline my personal document management. One thing that I don’t like right now is that if I update a document, it uploads it to Google Docs as a new document. But, they say a fix is coming soon to make it a version of an existing document. And I think it is a very important one at that before people start using it widely.

I am also looking forward to the promised features like the ability to email documents from anywhere to your DocSyncer account and have it in your desktop when you come home. Plus, the only folders they sync right now is My Documents and the Desktop folder and more control is in the offing.

Private Beta

I had signed up for a private beta and at first look the service looks very promising. Although, I am going tohold my horses until the service matures with the upcoming features before using it mainstream. You can sign up to get notifed of the launch or even an invite to the private beta.

I have been meaning to test drive a service such as FolderShare for a while and I will post about my experience with it compared to this and their differences in a future post.

Until then, I would like to hear from you what you think about this service and if you think it is something that you would like to use.

Early Look at DocSyncer – Sync Your Docs with Google Docs - Originally published at ShanKrila.com on 2011/11/20 (RSS)